Man Made DIY

I've been to Di Fara's pizza in Brooklyn once. It was very, very tasty, and I waited more than an hour for it.

Many have dubbed it the best pizza in New York City, and perhaps in North America. Filmmaker Margaret Emily MacKenzie created this fascinating short film about Di Fara and its owner/chef, Dom DeMarco. "Hailed as the 'godfather of Brooklyn pizza,' for forty-five years Domenico DeMarco, Italian émigré and father of seven, has been slinging pizzas in his legendary corner shop, Di Fara. Employing five of his children, Dom works tirelessly from morning until night hand crafting each and every pizza himself while his kids take orders and manage the mob of devoted pizza aficionados. The Best This I Ever Done is a portrait of DeMarco and his beloved pizzeria, an exploration of his rise to fame and an ode to pizzaioli who take their time to 'make it… read more

With the exception of Ed Wood, I do my best to avoid Tim Burton movies. (Well, and PeeWee's Big Adventure, but that doesn't really qualify). Sure, they've got the visuals down, but dude can't tell a story...After six minutes, I'm boooooooard.

Thankfully, Burton's first animated short, Vincent, last's just that long. It's a stop-motion treatment of a Burton's eponymous poem about a macabre little boy obsessed with Vincent Price (who narrated) and Edgar Allen Poe. No surprise there, but it's quite fun to watch each year around… read more

Which came first? The Lego-Created MakerLegoBot, or the MakerLegoBot Lego-Creation?

Engadget reports, "The machine takes input from a PC running MLCAD, a sort of industrial design tool for blocknauts, and then churns out anything you like -- so long as it is comprised of 1x2, 2x2, 3x2, 4x2, and 8x2 bricks. These are fed by the machine and methodically placed in exact position, as shown in the video… read more

How'd they do that!?

A short-stop motion feature that wonders what might happen if your shaving cream allowed you to grow a beard rather than get rid of it.

Very fun to watch, and to try to figure out how they… read more

At ManMade, we will always support the DIY efforts that allow folks to live out the things they love. Especially when it involves outer space. 

We were super excited when Robert Harrison took still photos with a digital point and shoot attached to a giant weather balloon, and think this latest effort by photographer Luke Geissbuhler is simply amazing. 

"Geissbuhler spent eight months fine-tuning a miniature spacecraft that could withstand the extreme conditions of the edge of space. He also had to get approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration.

In order to be able to retrieve the footage, the device would have to survive extreme weather conditions, sub-zero temperatures and a… read more

While we're certain this isn't the first time that someone's re-created a game of Pac-Man using stop motion animation, but we're pretty sure it's the best.

French-Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond, the same guy that did the human Tetris game a few years ago (see below), is back with his most ambitious project to date: a two-minute full level of Pac-Man created with 111 human pixels, lots of colored t-shirts, and a really, really tall tripos at the Trafo cinema in Baden,… read more

We really appreciate the latest craze of using stopmotion techniques to animate the most unlikely of 3D models - human beings. It's fun, it's clever, and it always seems to go so well with a tiny, twee, Casio-infused pop song with female vocals.

But we get even more excited about really well-done animation in the traditional approach - using stopmotion to bring non-animate objects to life.

The 1980s may have brought us MTV as the definitive place to display promotional videos from record companies, but we hold the 1990s as the peak of the artform - the clever storylines and memorable visuals often stick in our minds much better than a song's lyrics or album title, and evoke that last moment before the complete takeover of Clear Channel and the YouTube era, where you could actually discover something new by staying up late and watching Alternative Nation, or the Buzz Bin. (sometimes...)

The Pitchfork Staff have assembled their favorite fifty from the decade, and it's a pretty fine list. There are the quintessential entries from directors who've gone on to create major motion pictures - Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek, F. Gary Gray - and those from music video mainstains like Chris Cunningham, Adam Bernstein, and Hype Williams. Plus, a healthy dose of electronic and dance artists that never quite hit heavy rotation in the… read more

Hit Chicago-based chef and restauranteur Grant Achatz had an interesting weekend dabbling in a bit of molecular mixology.

"Achatz tweeted... that he and [Chef de Tournant] Schoettler were "playing with sensation and texture in a gin and tonic," with a link to the above video (h/t Grub Street Chicago). "Playing with sensation and texture" seems to be an understatement. The gin and tonic Achatz is sampling in the video contains Anchor Junipero gin, yellow chartreuse and "cucumber alginate… read more

I may be a little behind on discovering this new video by Cee Lo, the vocal half of Gnarls Barkley and former Goodie Mob member. "F**k you," the first video from his new solo album "The Lady Killer" is a is pure eye and ear candy. It features only the lyrics of the song, ever so slightly animated against brilliant colors. Stereogum says: "It’s a sunshining piano soul kiss-off just a shade off from Cee-Lo’s Danger Mouse jaunts, and sees him playing a character that is most definitely not based on his life: can’t afford his lady Ferraris, comparing his replacement to an Xbox while he’s just an Atari." 

The screenprinted gig poster medium is still a viable and valuable scene, with designers and print shops all over the world creating original, catchy, and unique one-off posters for music shows and festivals.

Kansas City-based printers Vahalla Studios teamed up with Micah Smith of My Associate Cornelius to create this cool two-color poster for a free Hot Chip show in NYC, sponsored by MySpace. They made this cool video of the process, from designing in Illustrator to printing to - and passing them out at the show… read more

French electro-pop duo Daft Punk always perform live in space helmets, a nod to the playfulness and the electronic nature of their music.

Atlanta-based prop designer Harrison Krix decided he needed one for himself, and so created an amazing replica over a period of seventeen months!

And, he's created this killer video demonstrating the process that appease music and making-things fans… read more

We at ManMade do not condone smoking, but we do indeed condone Mad Men. Humorists and pop culture videosters Whirled have chopped up the DVDs of the first three seasons of Mad Men and pasted together a whole heap of smoking scenes, and set it to a ridiculous country-western commercial library song.

And the results are… read more

NPR Music is featuring this exclusive premiere of the "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" by the Avett Brothers. The visuals are sparse animated paintings by Jason Ryan Mitchum that detail the rise and fall of a single landscape's urban development.

" 'Head Full Of Doubt/Road Full Of Promise' was written about the temporary nature of our buildings and our mentality,' says Scott Avett.  'Accepting the temporary state we may be in.  (Artist) Jason (Ryan Mitchum) with his landscape paintings, and some that I'd seen that he'd animated, dealt with the temporary nature of the world around us.'

"Rather than make a… read more

The World's Largest Skateboard, built by California Skateparks, is twelve and a half times the size of a standard issue piece. It's a full thirty-six feet long, nearly nine feet wide, and three and a half feet tall, making it the size of a city bus.

"Normally The World’s Largest Skateboard is ridden by several people at one time, but recently California Skateparks CEO Joe Ciaglia decided to take it a for solo ride while visiting Camp Woodward in… read more