We've featured the works of Aaron Ristau, a talented mechanical sculptor, before; his latest whimsical mechanical found-object mice are sweet and odd and lovely.

Dan Jones (AKA Tinkerbots) was kind enough to add this charming fellow to the Boing Boing Flickr pool. There's plenty more where that came from.

Spaceboy Robot makes beautiful, steampunky junkbot sculptures; he's also a talented photographer of same, and he has an Etsy store (though it's on hiatus).

Spaceboy Robot

(via Neatorama)

From the Boing Boing Flickr Pool: a glorious junkbot called the "Scout Ship for Landfill Art project" from CyberCraft Robots.

Scout Ship for Landfill Art project – Industrial and Found Object assemblage sculpture from CyberCraft Robots

Etsy seller Deetsy is selling off her adorable polymer clay robots to benefit Ann Arbor's 826 Michigan literacy center. It's part of 826 Michigan's second annual Robot Art Fair, which runs to Saturday with robot-themed activities and art for adults, kids and families. — Read the rest

Andrea Petrachi (AKA "Himatic") makes beautiful junkbot sculptures that incorporate creepy fragments of discarded dollies and toys.

Andrea Petrachi a.k.a. Himatic

(via Super Punch)

SpratMan makes and sells (on Etsy) adorable rusty junkbots called "Forgotten Robots." He says: "They've been in the factory so long that most have forgotten their names. The original Makers either left or died off long, long ago.

Over the eons the robots 'woke up'. — Read the rest

Andy makes and sells groovy scrap-metal light-up "tripods" that look like aliens; he uses the money to fund an enormous, ambitious steampunk pirate ship for Burning Man. The engineer who formerly provided the firmware for Andy's tripods has pulled out of the project and now he's desperate for technical help:

What we Need:
The physical design requirement for the PCB:
1-1/8″ x 2-1/8″.

Here's a cute hard-drive-based junkbot design. It's only CGI, but it'd make a dandy sculpture (or, for that matter, a fun character animation). Artist: George Guo.

hard disk robot

(via Super Punch)

Etsy seller Robolamp makes electric junkbot lamps out of PVC plumbing, flex hose, and miscellanea. They're quite lovely, too!

Robolamp

(via Neatorama)

Japanese papercraft sculptor Takahashi Masakazu makes all manner of lovely things (especially robots!) out of recycled consumer packaged goods packages.

Papercraft

(via Super Punch)

Junkbot artist Andrea Petrachi has the true gift for conjuring the inner friendly robot from random piles of techno-detritus. A rare and increasingly valuable skill.

Andrea Petrachi

(via Make)

Dark Roasted Blend has a fantastic roundup of junkbots and other robotic ephemera and goodies. I'm really taken with
Ultrajunk's creations, which really take advantage of the decay and use-marks on his found-object materials to make robots that have a lot of texture and implied history. — Read the rest

On Wired's Gadget Lab, a gallery of sculptures made from dead hard-drives made by sysadmin Miguel Rivera, including this wonderful junkbot.

Old Hard Drives Get Sculpted Into Cars, Bikes, Robots

Robert sez, "I found this scrap metal homebuilt steampunk chubby R2D2 in Tokyo's Nakano Broadway. Pretty good welding!"

Steam Punk R2D2

(Thanks, Robert!)

Kansas City's Nicholas and Angela make and sell sweet found-object junkbots that they call Nerdbots.

Nerdbots: Found object robot sculptures for your inner nerd

(Thanks, James!)

17 year old Phan Van Mam 19 year old Vu Van Thang is a prizewinning Vietnamese roboticist who builds beautiful working junkbots from household trash:

– Vu Van Thang, 19, from Thai Binh province has won one of the five top prizes at the National Creativeness Competition for Children and Youth 2009 for his robot made entirely from items found in the trash.

Colombian junkbot builder Mario Caicedo Langer made the "PROCTOR SILEX: DEFENDER OF THE KITCHEN" robot out of broken kitchen appliances, noting "when you grow up watching 'Transformers', 'Short Circuit', 'Batteries not included', 'Mazinger Z", 'Festival de los Robots', 'Bots Master', and every TV show and movie with robots, you finish thinking robot!" — Read the rest

These 25 places around the world are all dedicated to bugs, celebrating and reminding us to appreciate the little guys. Whether you want to befriend some bugs from a distance or get up close and personal with some creepy crawlers, this list curated by Atlas Obscura provides many ways of interacting with and learning about them. — Read the rest

There's a very special maker space waiting for you up west. "Commander" RR  Anderson and Ms. Darcy have created a fantastic resource that's a joy to visit, in person or online. It's TinkerTopia of Tacoma, Washington.

What makes it special are the hilarious and imaginative touches everywhere in the store. — Read the rest