“Mr. Kitty” was made by LEGO builder Mike Nieves (aka “Retinence“), and it really is an impressive beast – especially when you think about how those Bionicle pieces were never intended to be used for making animals, and most Bionicle creations simply end up looking like robotic warriors. Not this one. Retinence definitely thought outside of the box with this beast. Apparently it was a huge pain to find all of the orange pieces, but he definitely managed to pull it off. If you look closely, you’ll even notice that Mr. Kitty’s shoulder is made from a Bionicle mask. Very clever, indeed.

I just love all of the details, like the striped tail, and the sharpened yellow teeth, but its builder isn’t completely satisfied yet, and plans on refinining his design even further in time for Brickfair 2012. I’d love to see an entire menagerie of fierce animals made from Bionicle parts now.

[via Brothers Brick]

Well, that’s exactly what Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing did. He’s been working on tobacco-related art projects for the past decade, and this cigarette tiger skin rug is the third in his series of three works of art called the Tobacco Project.

It looks like a fluffy rug you might find in some rich person’s mansion, but I doubt that this will be able to provide you with much comfort. Cigarettes aren’t exactly the most comfortable material there is to rest on.

This 440-pound rug is currently on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts until December 4, 2011. It will then be moved to the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut in January next year.

[via MyModernMet via Neatorama]

They called the zoo, rounded up a team with tranquilizer guns, and sent them out in a helicopter to keep them from being eaten by sending them on foot. As the police neared the beast it likely sat quite still and didn’t care that the helicopter was hovering nearby and a shooter was taking aim. The reason said tiger was so meh about the copter soon became apparent when the tiger blew over thanks to the wind created by the helicopter.

Yep, the tiger that caused all the ruckus was a stuffed toy. Let me say again, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I would have thought that upon receiving a report of a tiger on the loose the police would have done two things. Number one, someone would have at least used some binoculars to peep the tiger ahead of mounting a aerial assault on the beast. Number two, could the zookeepers not have ran over to the tiger cage and took a head count. Seriously, the stripes aren’t that confusing. The police are now searching for the owner of the stuffed toy. I wonder if they are using the helicopter to look for him.

[via BBC]

These origami tigers were designed by the Australian firm LAVA and they were made to raise the awareness of tigers as an endangered species.

They are powered by low-power LEDs and were constructed out of aluminum as well as Barrisol skin. This makes them really striking day or night. They stand a whopping 8.2 feet high by 23 feet long. However, they only weigh 441 lbs, which isn’t much considering their size.

They kind of look unreal, like a cartoon that’s decided to appear in real life. For some reason, I’d expect them to morph into robots, or something like that.

The origami tigers are being set up in front of the Customs House in Sydney, Australia, where they will be on display from February 11th through March 14th, 2010.

[via DesignBoom]

Bricksmith was created by Allen Smith. The application includes a parts browser, a full Lego color palette, drag-and-drop building, and more. It’s been around for a few years, but an updated version has just come out. The new version boasts added functionality and a sweet minifig generator.

You can download Bricksmith 2.0 for free from Sourceforge, but you have to have a Mac with OS X Tiger (10.4 or later.) Happy virtual bricking!

[via Make:]