Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

Love love love these figures designed by Amanda Visell for Kidrobot: Tic Toc Apocalypse.

I don’t know what’s going on here and I love it and I could watch it over and over for hours. The music is by U900, a Japanese Ukulele duo. Let me repeat that because OMG I’ll never get the chance to type those words together again: Japanese Ukulele duo.

If anyone knows who produced the animation and created the toys, please let us know!

26-year-old Singaporean shopkeeper, toy maker, painter and all around crafty gal, Weng Pixin (aka Xin) creates some of my most favorite things these days. Using second-hand clothing and recycled fabric, Xin has been cranking out wonderful goods for the past four years, with hopes to keep working ’til she’s “an all white-haired kooky granny from the shop around the corner who sews funny toys.” Xin admits her work process involves very little planning and that most of her ideas spring from the sketchy doodles in her head, which must be why her creations feel so spontaneous and spirited.

She is currently working on a comic journal about a failed relationship, documenting all the “weird, funny, quirky and mundane conversations, like a shared science project.” If it’s anything like the rest of Xin’s charming creations, I’m certain it’ll bring a smile to the face of all who read it.

To see more of her work, please visit her website, blog or flickr page.

Josh Finkle’s handcrafted wooden toys of recently extinct animals are lovely. The bandicoot, in particular, is just about the cutest thing ever.

Toy designer, Steph Lemoine, posted these awesome designs, before-and-after shots and process notes she made for a set of Yo Gabba Gabba playsets.

The toys were apparently released last week – here they are on Amazon. This is what the beatbox playset looks like IRL!

More Yo Gabba Gabba stuff on Drawn.ca

Photographer Mike Stimpson photographs plastic toys, particularly LEGO. His Flickr stream is loaded with lovely, colourful photographs of everyone’s favourite stackable block — including a super fun Star Wars set.

But it’s his LEGO recreations of famous photos, like Raising the flag on Iwo Jima or National Geographic’s Afghan Girl, that I find particularly interesting.

Dick Balzer’s collection of magic lanterns, zoetropes, thaumatropes, phenakistoscopes, and other optical toys is one of the finest in the world. He has been collecting “anything and everything invented before the movie camera that produces an optical effect” for 30 years.

The site’s boasts some new flash galleries which replicate some of the pieces’ effects (note: doesn’t seem to work in Safari).

Swedish illustrator Anders Nyberg (previously) has started a blog where he posts photos of his non-illustration projects like this fun wooden toy and this beautiful-looking lap steel guitar.

I can’t remember when I first stumbled upon CW Wells’s work on Flickr, who posts her work under the name Snailbooty, but seeing some new images pop up today, I thought it’s a good a time as any to share her work here. I was first drawn to her photographs of toys and dolls that walk that beautiful line between unsettling and playful, but her collage work is similarly exciting.

Aaand I just snagged myself this photo for my studio from her Etsy shop.

I am always in awe of sculptors, especially those who can capture likenesses. So here’s Adam Beane, who not only does just that, but does so on a tiny scale. These sculpts for some Shaun of the Dead figures are spot on.

(via Dude Craft)