Hasta La Gadget!

Sometimes, I get the feeling that digital artwork lacks the personal touch that you find in traditional artwork. You can’t really see the strokes the artist made on the canvas, for one, and any errors or misplaced strokes are quickly edited out.

If you’re a fan of watercolor art and want to get the best of both worlds, then you might want to consider getting the WaterColorBot.

The WaterColorBot was conceived by 12-year-old Sylvia Todd in collaboration with Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. It’s basically a robot that turns digital vector artwork into actual watercolor paintings. All you need to do is feed the bot with a digital file of the image, and it will then set out to work to create a watercolor replica of that image.

The ‘bot is dubbed as a “friendly and educational art robot” and has high potential for STEM and STEAM education, especially as a means to get younger people interested in robotics and technology.

The WaterColorBot is currently up for funding on Kickstarter, where you can get one of your very own with a minimum pledge of $295(USD).

[via Laughing Squid]

Have your butler clear off your work bench. Put your billion dollar company on hold! You have some weapons to make! Or you could just have Wayne Enterprises make these awesome batarangs. However, since most of us are not Bruce Wayne, we will just have to do it ourselves.

Instructables contributor Triumphman built this amazing folding steel weapon himself. He used an angle grinder to cut the shapes out of steel, then drilled a pivot hole. After that he smoothed and sharpened the edges, painted it, and screwed it together.

It looks great and folds up nicely to tuck into your utility belt. Head over to Instructables for the full details on how to make one for yourself. It looks pretty straightforward if you know how to work with metal and you have the right tools in your lair. No doubt, it looks horribly dangerous for the rest of us.

[via Neatorama]

Demakes are one of the ways that creative gamers to express their nostalgia for the games they grew up with. Though I must say, I never expected I’d see a demake of the already ancient Super Mario Bros. It’s called Princess Rescue, a Mario clone for the Atari 2600.

Animator Chris Spry is Princess Rescue’s Miyamoto. In an interview with Wired, Spry said that he was inspired by an Atari 2600 demake of Mega Man. With the help of a programming software called Batari BASIC and just 32 kilobytes of memory, Spry was able to make 16 levels worth of homage to one of the most beloved games of all time.

Mario’s Princess Rescuer’s stomach is a black hole! As with Ed Fries’ Halo 2600, Spry partnered with Atari Age for a proper release of his game, cartridge and all.

You can order Princess Rescue from Atari Age for $30 (USD). It already has two favorable reviews! I highly recommend you read Wired’s article on the game as well; it has a shot of a portable Atari 2600 that Spry made for himself.

[via Wired]

Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro said that he wanted the robots to be unique. Apparently that also applies to their names. How else do you explain monikers like Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka? And now we have 4th String Jaegers:

4th String Jaegers is a single purpose blog. Its contributors use the Jaeger Designer web app that Warner Bros. made to promote the movie to create hilarious posters featuring their own ideas for Jaeger names. Some of them bring countries to the mix to make puns, while others go off on another tangent and replace the names with funny captions instead. Sadly some of them use offensive language, so the blog isn’t safe for kids.

4th String Jaegers accepts contributions from anyone, and the Jaeger Designer is still online. Make your own 4th String Jaeger and cancel the apocalypse! Or just delay its flight! There is a Jaeger named Caramel Fluffybutt, your argument is invalid!

[via I Heart Chaos]

Robots are slowly but surely taking all of our jobs. Even jobs that we thought were safe – like being an artist. e-David is a robotic painter developed by the University of Konstanz in Germany. It takes photographs, then uses its software to develop a unique set of brush strokes to make a one-of-a-kind painting of the subject. There’s another job gone.

It creates using five different brushes and a palette of 24 paint colors. It can also change its painting style on the fly, making adjustments to future brush strokes by observing the results of those it has already made. e-David even signs its work with a reverse-written signature, which is a nice artistic touch.

The team built the robot painter to learn more about the techniques human artists use. They want to boil painting techniques down to their basics by creating algorithms that can mimic them.

Sure, e-David paints a great painting, but can it cut it’s own ear off like Van Gogh? Nope. No passion. No crazy. No heart. How is that art again?

[via Geekosystem]