Hasta La Gadget!

While I like playing the occasional game of chess, I don’t think I’d be able to make it through a round playing with this chess set without throwing up a little bit in the back of my throat.

Yes, what you’re looking at is an entire chess set made from taxidermied mice. It was made by Etsy creator TheCurious13 “to get people’s attention.” Well, mission accomplished, Curious, mission accomplished.

According to its description the set is made from “fur, taxidermy, mouse, mice, foam, cotton, wire, beads, fabric, wood, paint, paper, and glue.” That’s right, there are so many mice, he had to state it twice. Hey, I made a rhyme!

Each mouse has been dressed in appropriate garb, including tiny crowns for Kings and Queens, and these adorably creepy little bishop’s outfits:

Each of the 32 mice in the set was already dead, frozen and bred to be fed to reptiles, so I suppose this is a slightly more pleasant outcome for them. I guess. Unfortunately (or is it fortunately), the set has already been sold, so we don’t have to worry about the cat eating all our pawns any time soon.

[via Dangerous Minds via Geekologie]

If its predecessors are any indication, the PlayStation 4 will eventually be released in a variety of colors and finishes. It probably won’t be released in faux wood though. That’s where dbrand comes in. The Canadian company sells gadget skins made from 3M vinyls. One of their newest products is a mahogany skin for the PS4.

I don’t like how the vinyl looks on the Dualshock 4, but the console looks sweet. If you’re of the same opinion, don’t fret because the skins for the console and the controller are not bundled. In fact the skin for the PS4 is actually made of several pieces, which again can be bought separately.

You can order the mahogany vinyl for the PS 4 from dbrand. It will set you back $45 (USD) if you choose to buy skins for the entire console and one controller. You can also mix and match your order with other types of skins, such as carbon fiber and several metal finishes. Dbrand doesn’t have skins for the Xbox One yet, but I don’t think that will be the case for long.

[via Reddit]

Unless you’re an invertebrate, you probably have a skeleton. But even though we all have these bony structures holding us together, we still find skeletons kind of creepy. French artist Chris Panda seems to have an obsession with skeletons, having created a series of illustrations which let us see the bones of cartoon, video game, and pop culture icons.

The image of Sylvester with Tweety Bird in his stomach is pretty amusing, and Batman looks quite majestic, but Ariel’s skeleton put me in the mood to eat fish for dinner tonight. Is that wrong?

The series of images includes everyone from The Legend of Zelda’s Link, to Fionna and Cake from Adventure Time to Popeye. But the most disturbing image of all has to be this one of Miley Cyrus twerking with Beetlejuice. That’s even harder to look at than the original – now that’s an accomplishment.

Check out the entire series of illustrations over on Chris’ Facebook page.

[via ufunk via Who Killed Bambi via Laughing Squid]

Look what grandma Xenomorph made you for Christmas! It’s a life-size facehugger hand knitted by Etsy seller Katie aka Knitrocious. Its legs have clips on their ends so you can wrap it around your head or any part of your body for that matter.

You can order the knit facehugger from Knitrocious for $150 (USD). If that’s too pricey for you, you can wait for ThinkGeek’s plush version to be back in stock.

[via Fearnet]

Shotaro Kaneda’s red motorcycle has become the unofficial symbol of Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk masterpiece Akira, beating out its memorable characters or even its visionary plot and themes. Two highly talented LEGO builders going under the name The Arvo Brothers pay tribute to Otomo by constantly working on a LEGO model of the bike.

The Arvo Brothers have been working on the scale model for more than a decade and are now on their fourth version. Writing about their latest build on HispaBrick Magazine, the brothers describe it as “a stylised model that is not very aggressive, homogeneous, without excesses, but it works as a whole.” Their dedication to this single build led them to create a 200-page book about it.

HispaBrick Magazine writer car_mp summarized the Arvo Brothers’ book as follows: “It isn’t a book about ideas, although in its pages you can find many, nor is it a book about building techniques even though from its pages you can decipher the way these guys build. It isn’t an instruction manual either, even though one is included. It is all of that and more. It is a book about an evolution, the evolution of a model and its builders, about a constant search for perfection to confer physical qualities to a dream that arose from a manga.”

The Arvo Brothers will release a digital copy of their book for free. You can get it from them starting December 14 by contacting them at arvobrothers[at]hotmail.com. They will also make it available on their website, although they didn’t say when. Meanwhile you can read more about The Arvo Brothers and their scale model on issue 18 of HispaBrick Magazine, which is available as a free PDF.

If you think that car_mp’s description of the book is mere hype, read the magazine and you’ll see just how passionate the Arvo Brothers are about their project. For instance, they wax poetic about the beauty of their model’s disproportionately large rear wheel. For better or for worse, these guys are consumed by their obsession.

[The Arvo Brothers & HispaBrick Magazine via Gizmodo]