The mission....to create a mosaic of Annabeth Gish....out of LEGO® bricks.
I was browsing through Eric Harshbarger's site, admiring some of the sculptures and mosaics he had created using LEGO® bricks. One thing led to another, then I got the idea of creating a mosaic of Annabeth Gish.
LUGNET™ (LEGO® Users Group Network) has a utility named Mosaic Maker. You input an image URL, select width, style, brick colors used, dithering, etc., and the utility creates the image as a mosaic.
I tried several pictures from All Things Annabeth. It was a bit discouraging at first. I wanted to attempt a mosaic using dithering, but there was no way I could acquire that many bricks. Solid colors would be easier to fill, but wouldn't match the original colors in the image.
I took the same images and cropped them to a reasonable size. I wanted to limit the size to a 96 stud width (an extra large baseplate is 48 studs wide). I reloaded them into Mosaic Maker. Instead of selecting a picture first then converting to a mosaic, I narrowed down my selection to a few and tried various mosaic configurations.
I decided to go with the picture shown above, from Fitness Magazine (March 2002) courtesy of All Things Annabeth. But instead of the basic 5-color LEGO® scheme, I opted for grayscale.
The picture to the right is the same picture created in grayscale. It consists of black, white, light gray, and dark gray. If you look very closely, you will see that there is only one white 1x1 brick used in the entire picture.
The next task was to gather up the bricks. Actually, I started buying the bricks prior to selecting the mosaic, so I didn't really concentrate on which colors to buy. I first bought a few extra large baseplates and a bucket of bricks (LEGO® Creator set 4107, to be exact -- you know, in case anyone decides to get me LEGO® bricks for Christmas or my birthday). Then I bought bricks from different sources -- The LEGO® Shop, eBay, etc.
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The pictures to the left were taken at different stages during the project. The white portion at the lower left corner in the second pic was my attempt at some type of signature. By January, The LEGO® Shop ran out of dark gray bricks. All sizes. Apparently, it was a popular item during the Holidays. I really want to know how many kids place "Dark Gray LEGO® bricks" on their Christmas list. Then my other sources started running out of dark gray bricks. I had to put the mosaic aside. In February or March, the Lego Shop offered packages of dark gray LEGO® bricks in mixed sizes. But the catch was....they were backordered until the second week of May.
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With Annabeth's birthday just around the
corner, I couldn't complete the mosaic in time. Two of the panels were
complete. One of the unfinished panels had a little square of
emptiness. The other had a huge space of blank. I wound up
removing the dark gray bricks and re-distributing them between the two
panels in an effort to even out the mosaic. And in doing so, I had to
remove the signature. Here's what the mosaic looked like in March.
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May rolled around soon enough, and I bought more dark gray bricks...lots. I completed the mosaic in late-May, with plenty of bricks to spare. This is an overhead view of it.
Other views of the mosaic:
Close up, to prove that they are LEGO® bricks
How many bricks were used?
I don't know an exact count, but I imagine around 3100 pieces. I say that because I gave up counting around 2700.
Now that it's complete, what am I going to do with it?
I'm not sure. It is literally sitting on my floor occupying space at the moment. If I don't hang it up or sell it, I may just take it apart and re-use the bricks for a different mosaic.
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Group which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse Annabeth Gish Video Vault or All
Things Annabeth. LUGNET™ is a trademark of
Todd S.
Lehman and Suzanne D. Rich. Unless noted otherwise, all pictures on this
page are Copyright © 2003, 2004 Annabeth Gish Video Vault.
Please do not reproduce without permission.