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Everyone has dreamed of visiting a flying city or castle in the sky, right? Okay, maybe not if you’re an acrophobe or you’re allergic to clouds, but even people who fit in those groups can agree floating structures in the sky, all shiny and full of fantastic potential, seem like a pretty cool place to let your imagination soar.

That’s exactly how Inbal Breda’s animated short The Flight makes you feel- like you’re watching imagination take flight, into a mythical city in the sky full of mysteries and unknown history.

The fact that the characters don’t talk does seem a bit odd at times, but overall this student film, which Inbal created as her graduation film for Bezalel Academy, is one mighty big feat of imaginative storytelling and well worth five minutes of your time.

Via io9

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Stunt performers, magicians and body modification fanatics use their bodies in grisly and dangerous ways to wow audiences and make big bucks nowadays, but they all act like they’re the first ones to attempt such a death defying feat.

Chief White Eagle was staring death in the sockets without a care for his own life, flying through the air suspended by his hair, in the 1920s.This newsreel footage was taken in the 1920s and shows the Chief, billed as "the man with the world's strongest head of hair" dangling by his locks far above the ground in an insane airplane stunt he performed with the famous aerial stunt squad the 13 Flying Black Cats.

Chief White Eagle later died doing what he loved, when his hair failed to hold his weight as he performed an aerial stunt dangling from a plane, but he’s truly the first death defying stuntman with a rock star image, and all performers who perform similar stunts nowadays owe Chief White Eagle a tip of the hat.

Via Dangerous Minds

Artist Aganetha Dyck felt like the porcelain figurines she uses in her works were missing something, so she put her friendly neighborhood swarm of bees to work helping her finish up each piece with some hive worthy modifications of their own.

Aganetha’s works make those old fashioned honey bee hives look like something from the Dark Ages of bee home design, and soon no garden statue will be safe from real estate hungry bees looking to build a fancy hive of their own.

We first featured the honey bee collaborative works of Aganetha Dyck here on Neatorama way back in 2007, and it seems both she and the bees have been hard at work since then, because there are a lot more bee-claimed works to buzz about on her site.

Via Hi-Fructose

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If you’ve been waiting for a video game that will truly make you jump out of your seat in fear, a game that captures the dark atmosphere, chills and deadly mortality of a true Horror genre movie, then check out this trailer for the upcoming game from Zombie Studios called Daylight.

Daylight looks like it captures the aesthetic qualities of Horror perfectly, and the scary bit at the end shows it will definitely be full of thrills.

One of their selling point for Daylight is that it changes every time you play it, which could make for some very compelling Horror gameplay and a high replay value, two things that are sorely lacking in most Horror themed video games. I guess we'll see how it holds up when it debuts on Steam sometime in 2014.

Via Kotaku

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Snoop Lion may have lost the dogg in him, preferring to go through the rest of his years as king of the felines, but he certainly hasn’t lost his love of video games.

The new video for his song “Get Away ft. Angela Hunte” casts the rap superstar in a Pokemon style 16-bit video game, with producer Major Lazer along for the ride, and even if you don’t like the music hit mute and check out the pixel perfect video.

It’s a lot of fun to watch, and it will definitely make you want to dust off your NES and dive back into some old school gaming.

Via Destructoid

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Despite the name some extremely conservative folks will find a bit crude, Damned is a damn fine, gosh darn adorable animated short by Richard Phelan about a beaver who wishes for a way to keep the mega-dam he has built from being damaged, the product of his dreams of building the next Hoover Dam.

The hand drawn quality of the short is mighty appealing, and the storyline is simple animal character animation at its finest, with themes of sacrifice for the good of others, dreaming big and watching those dreams come tumbling down. It’s a delightful way to spend ten minutes, and despite a length that seems long the story moves along nicely and keeps you tuned in to the bitter end.

Via Geek Tyrant

Urban art, graffiti and otherwise, led the way for urban vinyl to make a splash, mostly because the toys were based on artwork by graffiti and lowbrow artists. Now we’ve reached the urban paper stage, since nobody can afford to collect vinyl toys anymore because they’re too darn expensive!

A new papercraft site recently launched called Urban Paper Collective, where you can download some fresh sheets to fold, shaped like a blocky badger and a cute little clown aaaand that’s about it for now. They’re mighty passionate about paper toys, though, so expect many more fun things to cut out and fold up in the future.

Via Super Punch

Photographer Jon Uriarte found male subjects willing to both wear their girlfriend’s clothes and have those images shared with millions on the web, which "addresses the recent change in roles in heterosexual relationships from the relations of our predecessors and how those changes have affected men in particular".

There are some definite themes of gender identification, body image and transvestism going on in Jon’s series The Men Under The Influence, and the fact that the men look quite comfortable wearing women’s clothes is meant to be a statement about how important clothing is to our expression of gender identification.

Or else you can just look at the whole series with a smile on your face, thinking these guys look ridiculous dressed in their girlfriend’s clothes, since many consider art to be purely subjective.

Via Beautiful/Decay

There’s a fine line between an annoying digital image glitch and one which transforms the image into something else entirely, a happy accident of unintentional creation that is extremely difficult to replicate.

Google maps may seem like a mundane place to source digital art images, but the glitches created by Google’s map service can sometimes look quite spectacular, and may be the type of digital art images we see hanging on walls in the near future.

At least that’s what artist Emilio Vavarella is hoping, as he races to collect these images and share them as his own in a series entitled Report a Problem.

Via 22 Words

You know him as the voice of early Jazz, some called him Satchmo while others simply referred to him as Pops. Louis Armstrong was the charming and ridiculously talented Ambassador of the early Jazz scene, the performer of hits like "What A Wonderful World" and "Ain't Misbehavin" which are still beloved to this day, even by folks who otherwise can't stand Jazz.

Louis' sign off in letters read “Red Beans and Ricely Yours, Louis Armstrong” which friends and family found adorable, if a bit odd, until they tried his famous Ham Hocks and Red Beans. Now you can try your hand at making Ham Hocks and Red Beans the Satchmo way with his favorite recipe, perfect for celebrating your in-laws finally leaving town after the holidays, or simply because you like to get down with some down home cookin'!

(Images via Kilian Schönberger)

Peruse this photo series by German photographer Kilian Schönberger and you’ll see why the Brothers Grimm were inspired to set their dark and creepy fairy tales in Middle Europe. The land fairly oozes spookiness, and looks like the perfect setting for a horror movie, or the next Silent Hill game.

Kilian’s photo series was inspired by the stories he heard as a child, and the fact that he grew up looking at such a lonely, beautiful landscape, but the real wonder of his photo series is the fact that he is colorblind and has to have a friend check the image colors for him before he has them printed.

Via DesignTAXI

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Fans of retro animation such as School House Rocks!, The Peanuts and the shorts featured on 70s kids shows such Sesame Street and Electric Company will simply adore this short by Priit Pärn, and those looking for a slick CGI short to watch will simply have to move on.

Exercises in Preparation for an Independent Life is a hand drawn vintage masterpiece, with a surreal charm that juxtaposes crudely drawn scenes of childhood with repetitious, almost frightening scenes of adulthood that can only be described as Plymptonian, aka a lot like something you’d see in a Bill Plympton short.

And that’s all in the first minute of the short, you’ll have to watch on to find the message which is there, begging for you to find it after you to get past the initial “wait, what just happened?” feeling.

Via Cartoon Brew

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Most people have tried their hand at jumping rope once or twice in their life, generally because they wanted to see what was such a big deal on the schoolyard, or because they were lured in by the strange rhyming songs being sung by those pigtailed rope swingers.

But as you grow older you realize there’s something magical about jumping rope, and not just because the callers can predict how many kisses you will get with their song, and the art of jumping rope is alive and well in competitions across the globe.

This video features Hungary’s rope skipping team blowing minds with incredible stunts and making it all look so easy, this ain’t no playground jump rope session- these guys and gals mean business!

Via Stuff I Stole From The Internet

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From the look of things 2014 is going to be one tripped out year for the video game industry, and indie games will be leading the pack in both strangeness and originality.

Here’s an entry worthy of note, it’s called Burrito Galaxy 64: Mega-Tortilla Bean Saga 30X6 - Planetoid SAL-5A XIV Directors Cut: Extreme Edition: Push it to the limit, or simply Burrito Galaxy if you prefer.

Burrito Galaxy is a superflat first person shooter with some downright wacky story elements (you play a Bean Commander and wield burritos and churros as weapons) that make it interesting despite the minimalist artwork.

Wanna check it out before it's released on Steam? Play the prototype version of the game. (Link courtesy of Destructoid commentor ninjapresident, thanks pres!)

Via Destructoid

Andrew Shears, certified cartography nerd, Mansfield University geography professor and the guy behind The United States of TV map we featured here on Neatorama a few years ago, created another map in 2011 that re-envisions the United States as it could've been if every state that ever tried to secede from the Union had succeeded.

50 states would have been turned into a whopping 124, and some states would have ended up with totally far out names like Trans-Pecos, Nova and Cascadia, and otherwise things would have probably turned out to be much the same as they are now.

Via Gizmodo