MosaicBricks

"A Wicked Smile"

2012-02-08T08:28:00.000-08:00

Chris Howard (Duckingham) made this rendition of the artwork from the Broadway Musical Wicked. With just a few simple lines and shapes, the mosaic manages to capture a lot of attitude.

As the first commenter on the flickr post stated it, "Dats wicked awesome!"

Casey previously interviewed Chris; you can read that interview here. Also, don't forget to check out his covers for DuckJournal and Mime Magazine.

The Duke's Ballroom

2012-02-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

Quite awhile ago I saw a MOC with a tiled floor that I loved. I thought at the time that if I had a LEGO blog, I would certainly post this MOC. Well, now I am contributing to a blog, and so here's the post. ;-)

Alex Fojtik (BrickFX) built this lovely ballroom that includes tile flooring and forced perspective, both of which he said were new to him. I think he did an excellent job with both.

Here's an overview of the whole MOC:

And here's a closer, more in-focus look at the lovely mosaic floor, which is done mainly with headlight brick squares interspersed with 1x1 plates:

I rather like the look of the flags, windows, and chandeliers as well.

For more patterns made from headlight bricks, be sure to check out this set by Brendan Powell Smith. There are also photos in that set that show the construction of the basic headlight brick square. I also experimented with headlight brick patterns before, with lots of variations. Some of those experiments can be seen here and here (among various others; the headlight brick square is incredibly useful for building all sorts of different patterns).

How to Make a Cheese Slope Mosaic

2012-02-04T20:34:00.002-08:00

One of my favorite things to do with LEGO is to use cheese slopes to make different mosaics. I once took a series of photographs that show how to make a simple stained-glass window out of cheese slopes. I'm going to present them here, with some instructions on how to do it.

First off, here is the final result:

Any of the colors can be changed, of course; I love to take a design that fits into a certain space, and then change the coloring repeatedly until I find all the different shapes and patterns that can be highlighted. For some designs I'll even make a completely white template, print up copies, and then just color all sorts of different designs with markers, which are much easier to manipulate than cheese slopes. You can see some of these coloring pages here.

To make the star mosaic, you'll need the following. The colors listed are those shown in the photograph:

2 - 2x6 black plates
2 - 1x2 black plates
1 - 1x4 black tile (or plate, if you don't mind the studs showing through the "glass")
6 - 1x2 black bricks
1 - 1x4 trans-clear plate (or equivalent)
6- 1x2 trans-clear bricks (or equivalent)
16 - trans-blue cheese slopes
12 - trans-yellow cheese slopes

The first step is to make the case for the mosaic to be held in. This is done with the black and trans-clear bricks and plates.

Start with a 2x6 plate:

Then put on the two 1x2 black plates, black tile, and trans-clear plates as shown. I didn't have a 1x4 trans-clear tile, so I used an assortment of 1x1 and 1x2 plates.

Add on the 1x2 bricks, black on the sides, trans-clear in the back.

Then add the other 2x6 plate to the top, to complete the case.

Now it's time to add the cheese slopes. Here is a layout of the design before I put it into the case:

I carefully add in one layer at a time, starting from the bottom. I find that my fingers are big and clumsy when working with cheese slopes, so I usually have a toothpick that I use to nudge them into place, or to help pull them out if they fall onto the wrong side. I've also heard people who say they've used tweezers to good effect.

If you used a plate instead of a tile, the first layer of cheese slopes will fasten into those studs.

Sometimes the last few pieces can be difficult to wedge in. It's important that they're tight, so they don't fall out, but if they're too tight, the case will fall apart. When creating cases for different-sized designs, it can be tricky to get the tension just right. I usually do a lot of trial-and-error till I get it to work. But once the tension is right, a mosaic can be placed vertically without falling apart. For this design it's easy to just loosen the top plate a bit, perhaps even remove it entirely, put the cheese slopes into their spots, and then re-attach the top.

Some designs fit their cases so perfectly that they can even be held upside-down, as you can see here, here, and here. (That last one is definitely my favorite.)

I suppose that's just about enough self-promotion for one day! But if you would like more ideas of cheese slope designs, you can look through this set. There are often more examples of this technique in the Cheese Slope Cubes flickr group.

Micro-Mosaics

2012-02-04T08:22:00.000-08:00

Arthur Gugick (torgugick) recently completed a printed tile mosaic of Einstein, using a new technique in which he overlapped the tiles, so that only a 1x1 square of each tile is visible. This allowed for greater resolution of the resulting mosaic, which he calls a "micro-mosaic".

The entire image is smaller than one 32x32 baseplate. Impressive.

In the future I would like to explore a bit of the history of the printed tile mosaic, and do a more thorough examination of Arthur's work, which is extensive. For now, here is a link to his mosaics set on flickr.

Lucky Baby!

2012-02-02T11:03:00.003-08:00

Jeff Shaw (unpoko77) recently had a new little one join his family. His wife asked him to make some LEGO birds for decoration in the baby's room. After he finished those, he kept making more LEGO animals and framing the ones that worked. The result is a series of very cute and happy mosaics. Jeff said that he wanted to use just bricks to make the animals. While animal shapes could be made to look much more realistic with more sophisticated parts, the use of the basic bricks makes these seem very toy-like, perfect for a child's room.

I can't decide which one I like best, so I'm going to include the whole series here:

Jeff said that his wife actually built the werewolf, and he just added some depth to it. I think it's a lucky baby who has parents who work together to make a LEGO werewolf decoration for their room (not to mention all the other cute critters).

Also, be sure to check Jeff's photostream for more LEGO goodness, including a Star Wars Holiday Village.

Fabric Patterns

2012-02-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

Yvonne Doyle ({YVD}) has used a wide variety of different colors to make LEGO mosaics that resemble different fabric patterns. Her latest is a saddle blanket design that uses colors such as magenta, medium violet, and sand purple:

Previously she has worked on a number of different tartan patterns in various colors. Here are a few of those:

When I look at these, it's hard for my brain to tell which colors are actually being used. The intersections of color look so natural, like two different dyes intermingling. Then I remember it's in LEGO, and Yvonne had to pick each color perfectly in order to get the desired effect.

You can see more examples of fabric and patterns in this set.

Now if only you could wrap yourself up in them...

Yin and Yang

2012-01-28T12:03:00.000-08:00

Sharon Prue made this lovely Yin-Yang mosaic for BrickFair Alabama.

I really like the juxtaposition of the transparent colors against the dark black background.

(I found this posted at GodBricks, which is always worth a read.)

Happy New Year!

2012-01-21T20:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know that much about Chinese New Year. I did once march in the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco, and it was wild and exciting, with lights and noise and masses of people, some of whom liked to throw fireworks practically under our feet. My best friend Google tells me that this year the Chinese New Year is January 23, and Rack911 uploaded these adorable characters to celebrate.

I found that the use of mosaics of Chinese characters in the background really added to the presentation.

King of the Squiddies.... and of the Mosaics

2012-01-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

While I think of Dave Shaddix as the King of the Squiddies, he actually has completed a large amount of mosaics, too. His most recent one is a portrait of Albert Einstein:

He does, happily, also have a mosaic of Squidman:

One of my favorites is this mosaic of bowling pins on the wall of a bowling alley:

And then there is this Spock mosaic, which was autographed at the Phoenix ComicCon by Leonard Nimoy himself! How's that for combining two nerdy interests in one fell swoop?

You can find many more mosaics (including the "I Want You" mosaic that Casey previously blogged) in this set on flickr.

Forever Enshrined Behind Some Old Glass Pane

2012-01-18T15:15:00.000-08:00

Barney Main (SlyOwl) made this scene for an entry in an Iron Builder competition. For the contest he was required to use the yellow triangle piece in each creation. The triangles made for very nice medals, but for me the highlight of the MOC was the mosaic portrait.

It uses bricks and plates heading in several directions in order to give the impression of a soldier in an old, tattered photograph. All together it makes for a rather poignant scene.

While on the topic of Barney, I should mention that he was featured extensively in the latest LEGO Ideas Book. I received this book for Christmas, and it is packed with wonderful models from several people I have "met" in the online LEGO community. It also includes an extensive mosaic section, which I will try to cover in a future post.

LEGO Logo Graffiti

2012-01-16T07:04:00.001-08:00

Tyler Clites (Legohaulic) recently posted this little mosaic that he built ten years ago when he was 14. It is the LEGO logo done in graffiti style. When I first saw it, I expected it to be much larger than it actually is.

I found some other mosaics in his photostream too. The first one shows lettering on a Bible. I was particularly impressed with the gold he used, since that color is available in many fewer parts, which are generally much harder to work with.

I also notice that his buddy icon is a mosaic incorporating the L and the H from his user name.

Clever!

Sirens-Of-Titan's Castle Mosaics

2012-01-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

I love to see bits of mosaics and patterns incorporated into larger LEGO creations. Alex P. (Sirens-Of-Titan) has been making some incredibly neat castle scenes over the past year, and my favorite parts are always the bits of mosaics that he incorporates into the design. These bits can be found on floors, walls, windows, and doors, and add lots of visual interest to the larger creation.

One of my favorite examples is in his Tower of the Arcane, where mosaics are used as pictoglyphs that hold secrets of magic:

Another one of my favorites is the City of Omurtag, which features mosaics running up, down, and all around its walls and floors.

The throne room for that Dwarven City is also covered with mosaicky goodness:

And finally, here is an image that shows mosaics used for a rug as well as for stained-glass windows:

Be sure to check out Alex's photostream for all sorts of fantastic castle MOCs. I also collected some of the best examples of his incorporations of mosaics into a flickr gallery, which you can see here.

31 Flavors of LEGO

2012-01-13T01:00:00.000-08:00

Ryan H. (LDM) has been making copies of various album covers out of LEGO. His most recent one is a mosaic that incorporates 31 different LEGO colors. Here you can see his mosaic on the left, and the original album cover (Narrow Stairs by Death Cab For Cutie) on the right:

I'm not sure I could even give the names of 31 different LEGO colors, let alone use them all in a single mosaic. I have plans to write-up some techniques that different people have used to increase the palette of available colors for mosaics. Ryan here demonstrates one of the simplest: just make use of the wide variety of colors already available. There have been quite a few new colors introduced lately, which is great for potential creations (but not so great on the wallet!).

Never Too Old to Rock (or Brick)

2012-01-10T19:38:00.000-08:00

I thought the lettering on this Homer Simpson mosaic by Hans Demol (hd_lego) was quite nice. The black-and-white color scheme with gray accents also seems very effective to me, making for a bold and entertaining image.

Gray-Scale Mosaics

2012-01-04T22:12:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I talked about DJBaggadonuts' mosaics, which can be found on flickr and on his own website. He has several interesting techniques. One that particularly interested me was his attempt to make gray-scale mosaics.

The basic idea is that he used differing amounts of transparent plates stacked on top of each other to create lighter or darker shades of color. A tall stack of plates would make a darker color; a shorter stack would make a lighter color. It appears he went through a fairly lengthy trial and error process to figure out how to make this work out. One interesting problem that he encountered was shadows from tall stacks of plates disrupting the clarity of the image. You can read about this process of trial and error on his blog, here and here. The latter entry also includes a very ingenious solution for shaking loose 1x1 round plates onto a baseplate in such a way that you can press another plate down onto them and have them stick 32 at a time.

I think it was this idea of stacking transparent plates to change shades of colors that lead to later attempts of stacking plates in different colors to try to achieve a greater color palette. I plan to examine some of these attempts in the future.

Windows to Another World

2012-01-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

Ever since I started receiving Brickjournal Magazine at the beginning of 2011, I got the idea to start sharing a few of the great findings Joe Meno and his crew gather up each issue. In each issue or so, you can spot around 3-4, and the last issue, #17, a few really caught my eye.

Lego Certified Professional, Nicolas Foo, created these brilliant 'Imagine Posters' mosaics that really have to be seen.

As you can see, the mosaics combine the background imagery with the Lego poster to seamlessly (or attempt to seamlessly) merge. The Lego colors really work nicely with the background especially with the second poster.

If you haven't read Brickjournal before, I highly suggest trying at least one issue out. It's filled with interviews, instructions, and galleries that me and my little brother like to read and look at from time to time. You can read more up on the posters in issue #17 by checking out Brickjournal here. And in case you'd like to read the blog article where the pictures were found, it is located here. Nicolas Foo also does some other amazing work, so be sure, if you have time, to check out his blog here.

And no, Brickjournal didn't pay me to do this. ;-D

Happy New Year!

The Creative Brick Company Mosaics

2011-12-31T13:09:00.000-08:00

Today I found a website run by The Creative Brick Company. It has a section featuring a gallery of computer-generated images of LEGO mosaics. There are also YouTube videos showing the creation of the mosaic. I have to admit that the Patrick Stewart mosaic is what first caught my eye, since Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of my all-time favorite television shows. But there are also mosaics of other well-known figures, including Audrey Hepburn, William and Kate, and Yoda from Star Wars.

These mosaics can also be found on flickr.

Also, I wish you all a very happy New Year!

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in Mosaic

2011-12-22T15:30:00.000-08:00

I found this wonderful Christmas tree mosaic on the LEGO Diem blog. It was made by Dark-Alamez.

I love the layering of elements to make a more detailed picture. Very festive!

Creative Processes

2011-12-19T18:06:00.001-08:00

Casey's post yesterday about the Lord of the Rings mosaics reminded me of a small "Eye of Sauron" mosaic I made.

I post this also to show different ways that LEGO creations can develop. A lot of times, a builder will think of what they want their final product to be, and then work on the techniques that they need to make it. Other times, a builder might learn certain techniques and then try to figure out what can be made using those techniques.

For example, the "Eye of Sauron" mosaic above originally looked like this:

I had been trying out different possible patterns that could be designed with cheese slopes. When I posted this mosaic, people thought that it looked a bit like the eye of Sauron. So then I re-did it with different colors and lighting. Thus the technique led to the product, instead of the product leading to the technique.

I suppose that most people use some combination of both methods. I can see advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. I usually find a technique and then see what I can do with it. This has given me the freedom to explore with a lot of different techniques and sometimes find novel ways of doing things. But I feel very limited in my ability to build a wide variety of different MOCs. It's not easy for me to have someone tell me to build something specific and achieve successful results.

What approach do you use?

One Plastic Brick to Rule Them All...

2011-12-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard the buzz lately, The Lego Group recently announced their partnership with The Lord of the Rings properties, taken from the great epic by J. R. R. Tolkein. And boy, has the internet been in mad discussion! To celebrate the license, here are three mosaics to showcase the arrival!

The Doors of Durin by ktraphagen (Which is technically made out of Modulex, which is a smaller brick form, like Duplo is a bigger brick medium.)

Saurom is Watching You by Legoorci

untitled (aka J. R. R. Tolkein's Signature) by Repoort

If you'd like to check out more exciting Lord of the Rings, There and Back Again/The Hobbit, and Tolkien Lego creations, be sure to check out Bruce N H's new blog, entitled TolkienBricks (and while you're there, check out his other great blogs too!).

Just as a side note, I hope everyone has been enjoying the new content with Katie's fantastic posts. Now that schools out I'm hoping on getting into the Christmas/Holiday spirit with some mosaic posts and exciting new ideas.

Stick around!
Casey

Cathedral of St. Mirtin

2011-12-17T23:57:00.000-08:00

I have a soft spot for mosaics that are integrated into a larger LEGO creation.

Milan Bikics' cathedral does this beautifully. It is very eye-catching, and one of its most striking features is the intricately mosaicked roof.

Some other good shots of the beautiful roof can be found here and here , and throughout the majority of his photostream. Last I heard, the cathedral is still a work in progress. Once Milan said that his goal was to acquire one of every kind of LEGO piece ever made and to use them all in his cathedral. While I tend to focus on a limited palette of pieces, I think the "more-the-merrier" technique is quite effective here.

(I am fairly confident that Casey hasn't posted about this already, but if he has, I will just say that it certainly deserves a second look.)

"Design a Holiday Stamp" Contest Winner

2011-12-14T10:09:00.000-08:00

Brixe63 has made a lot of neat LEGO creations, such as her optical illusions, highly-detailed house, and nesting Modulex piggy banks. Talent must run in her family, because her son just won a grand prize in Germany for the LEGO "Design a Holiday Stamp Contest." His entry was this charming little Christmas tree:

As part of his prize, he won a professionally designed and framed mosaic of his design, made to look like a postage stamp:

It's a MOC of a MOC. Now we just need someone to make a MOC of this, and we'll have nesting MOCs, just like the nesting piggy banks. Silliness aside, it's a lovely prize for a well-deserving entry. Congratulations!

There are apparently grand prize winners for the US and the UK, too. I'll have to look around to see if I can find those entries and prizes, too.

My LEGO Pony

2011-12-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

I have two pre-school aged children, so I end up watching a lot of kids' TV shows. My favorite one, without a doubt, is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Now it's true that I had lots of ponies when I was young, and loved them and saved them for my own daughter to play with. But beyond that, Friendship is Magic has a lot of intelligence and humor that makes it enjoyable. Apparently this show has spawned quite an internet following, which has started crossing over into the world of LEGO mosaics.

The first that I saw was this Rainbow Dash at BrickCon. I'm not sure if it's a mosaic in the strictest sense of the term, but it's definitely meant to be viewed as a two-dimensional creation.

According to the BrickCon MOC card, this was made by Dani Dougherty and Thomas Michon and "needs to be about 20% cooler".

Then there is this rendition of Derpy Hooves, done by Andrew Somers:

Andrew also used Derpy in a parody entitled, "Call of Derpy: Modern Horsefare", dressing her up as a soldier and re-writing the My Little Pony theme song. You can find that parody here.

I found a few more pony mosaics and mosaic-like creations, although the image sharing has been disabled for those photographs.

Natron77 made mosaics of Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle which he hung on his cubicle at work.

And finally, JK Animation made Rainbow Dash, Derpy Hooves, and Apple Jack, which you can see here.

LEGO "LiteBrite"

2011-12-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

I love to see all the different creative ways that people come up with to make LEGO mosaics. I heard someone joke about how he was going to show up to BrickCon with a mosaic made entirely out of LEGO tires, and I thought that might not be a bad idea at all.

I see that DJ Baggadonuts has come up with several interesting mosaic techniques. One of them is to stack headlight bricks into columns, and then stick jewels into the holes. Light will shine through from the back of the mosaic, creating an interesting effect. If the backlight is strong enough, it will light up, "sort of like a LEGO LiteBrite," as Mr. Baggadonuts says in his blog. (The blog archive is worth a look; in it you can find links to all sorts of entries explaining how he accomplishes his different mosaics.)

Here are two examples of this jewels-inserted-into-headlight bricks technique:

The stability of the mosaics can cause a problem, as they are made of columns of headlight bricks and have very little cross-bracing (which only occurs in the black sections). But with persistence, it can be done.

Mr. Baggadonuts has several other interesting techniques that I would like to cover in future posts. ;-)

(Yes, yes, I love to use smileys. I can't help it! Everything seems so very serious without them. ;-) )

Teeny Tiny Mosaics

2011-12-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

The winner in the small mosaic category at BrickCon this year was Dave Ware (BrickWares) for this tiny mosaic made from light sabers:

He says it was based on the cover of A Clockwork Orange. You can read his discussion of this mosaic on his blog.

A similar technique that I've seen is to use axles instead of light sabers, as Linus (minkowsky) does here:

Linus devised a mechanism to make the axles "wave" at him, as can be seen in the video here, with a behind-the-scenes glimpse here.

I Scream for Ice Cream Mosaics!

2011-12-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

I probably should have included this in the previous post, but Mariann Asanuma (Model Gal) also brought her ice cream truck to show at BrickCon. It has a different mosaic on each side, so as to represent both names that the ice cream company uses. Once again I'm really interested in the bricks going at different angles so as to increase the amount of detail possible in such a small space.

And since we're on the topic of Mariann's mosaics, here is another small one that uses five different shades of blue to create the impression of a Wyland ocean painting:

When Mariann writes about this picture in her blog, she talks about how she has to simplify the details in order to make it come out correctly. I hope she won't mind me quoting her wholesale here, but here is the paragraph:

"And here’s a Model Building Tip for you: Generally when I am doing a mosaic, especially when it is small like this one, I have to simplify the image and take away some of the details without losing the general look. Trying to do all the lines or shadings is almost impossible at this size, so you have to pick and choose what you keep in and what you take out. Sometimes that is easier to say than do. "

I'm not really sure how to accomplish these kinds of detailed mosaics like Mariann does; it might be worth asking her about sometime. ;-)

Remembering 9/11

2011-12-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

This post is a bit late in coming, but better late than never, right? I was able to attend BrickCon in Seattle for a day, and got to see lots of cool mosaics. The winning mosaic in the large category was called "Remembering 9/11" by Mariann Asanuma (Model Gal).

I'm very impressed by the complicated techniques used to render this image. There are plates and bricks heading in all sorts of directions, which allows a greater amount of detail to be used. Mariann said this took her 100 hours to make this, and I'm not surprised.

I first saw this mosaic on Mariann's blog, Model Building Secrets. You can find her original write-up on it here.

I Want You!...To Build Me Out of Lego Bricks...

2011-11-30T18:06:00.001-08:00

Frequent mosaic builder, Dave Shaddix, re-creates the famous U.S. Army Recruiting Poster.

Uncle Sam supports Lego, you should too!

Flower power!

2011-11-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

Hello! Here is my very first Mosaic Bricks post. It's a bit ironic that I've been invited to contribute to a LEGO blog right at the time that I started taking a little break from actual LEGO building in order to spend time doing a few other things. But I still have quite a backlog of mosaics and mosaic techniques that I've admired in the past, and I would like to share them here.

For today, I would like to share some mosaics Jason Allemann (True Dimensions) made entirely from LEGO flowers:

I find it very interesting how he's overlapped the flower petals to give the impression of solid blocks of color. You can also see how each row of flowers is elevated slightly from the one below it, so that the petals have room to fit next to each other (I would guess). I thought it was all very clever.

Announcing MosaicBricks' Newest Author!

2011-11-19T10:33:00.001-08:00

Hear ye! Hear ye! Announcing MosaicBrick's latest addition to the blog! With the recent (or not so recent) contest, MosaicBricks has been expanding! In efforts to boost productivity, the blog will be adding more authors to add a variety of new content!

I'm proud to announce that mosaic master, Katie Walker, has agreed to join the blog as an author! If you weren't aware, Katie has designed the logo at the top of the site, she has been featured on The Brothers Brick Blog almost ten times, and has received an abundance praise throughout the community for her stunning work. Be sure to check out her flickr stream to see her fantastic creations, or you can check out the interview we did with her last year here.

Katie will be adding techniques and tricks & tips to the blog, as well as user creations, so look forward to her posts! If you're ever not sure if she has posted, or if I have (Casey), at the footer of the post, it will display one of our names. So, thanks to Katie for joining and thanks to everyone for sticking with us!

MBMMMC Contest Winners!

2011-11-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

Hello there peoples! How's it going? Great! I'm doing quite well myself (more like the complete opposite). Aside from being totally consumed with school lately, I'm here today to announce the winners of the 2011 MosaicBricks May Mosaic Madness Contest!Yes, yes it's late, but better late then never. The contest ended Sep. 20th 2011, and it's Nov. 13th 2011, but I'm trying my hardest here.

Now, admit-tingly I only received two entries. Which is fine, more prizes for them right? So there was much deliberation as to who to pick for the winners. So without much ado,

The Entries:

First we (and by, we and mean I) received The NFPA Chemical Hazard Label mosaic by Bruce N H, admin at classic-castle and author of (way) too many blogs.This one has a lot of great things going for it. In some of the larger shots, it's hard to quite make out what you're looking at, but when you look back at it, you can really recognize the letter and numbers. Second, it's built sideways. Very clever. It reminds me of the mosaic by au_riverhorse's bandit mosaic from a while ago. It's simple, clean, and gets the job done.

Concept: 4/5 - Picking a mosaic that is still relevant, while picking one that not many people would choose. Taking day to day objects and building them out of Lego, is always a great idea.
Execution: 4.5/5 - The mosaic looks spot on to the original design. Admittedly, some of the letters do look at bit wonky being sideways and all, but it's almost an exact copy (especially when you look at it from far away, or in a lower resolution).
Originality: 3.5 - The mosaic is not an original work, but is one that not very many people make mosaics of (day to day warning signs, etc.)
Overall: 12/15 - An overall, nice mosaic with bright colors and a great design perfect for applicable day-to-day use.

Check it out here.

Second, we have "the pretties picture", by Katie Walker, mosaic guru and master of cheese slopes. In art class during 8th grade, I learned of what makes art really great, one point of which was a focal point. With this mosaic, you really get your attention set to the middle, really capturing your attention from the get go. The colors work well together, and setting the 1x1s on their sides just a little bit, is really cool.

Concept: 3/5 - If you were trying to describe this mosaic to someone, you wouldn't honestly know (Or I wouldn't, at least) what to tell them what it is other than, a 'picture', a 'pattern', or a 'design', without getting really technical. It's hard to put your finger on quite what it is, making it difficult to explain, unlike a brand logo, a portrait, etc. Not saying that the concept is bad, but is hard to put context to.
Execution: 5/5 - Now it may seem weird thinking the concept is, o.k., but saying the execution is phenomenal. But, it's true. The intricacies and techniques in here are really great and beautiful, really showing off Katie's skill as a builder.
Originality: 4.5/5 - Like I've stated previously, the 1x1s on their sides is really a great technique, along with the focal point's bold slope usage. I'm not an art aficionado, so I'm not sure if a piece of art that looks like this exists, but the mosaic is a pretty original idea.
Overall: 12.5/15 - Overall, a solid work of art. Techniques and choice of color is really superb.

Check it out here.

So who wins? Katie comes out on top by .5 of a point, but since we only had two entries, I decided to up the winnings!

The Swag:

Prize pack #1 includes:
- One (1) $15 Lego Store Gift Card (Also redeemable online).
- Two (2) Series 5 Collectible Minifigures
- One (1) 40005 Bunny
- One (1) 40012 Pumpkin

Prize pack #2 includes:
- One (1) $15 Lego Store Gift Card (Also redeemable online).
- Two (2) Series 5 Collectible Minifigures
- One (1) 7606 Frog
- One (1) 7871 Whale
- One (1) 1999 McDonald's Chicken Car (Not sure set # or name)

Both are now virtually the same, and both will receive a $15 gift card, perfect for a large PaB cup, or anything else your Lego heart desires. If any of you two have questions, feel free to contact me. Katie, you win by just a little bit, so you have first pick on said pack! I will be contacting both of you to get these sent out. ;-D

Thanks to both the competitors! Hopefully next year's will be grander, and more well organized, but that's a while away from now. I apologize for being so busy, life and school really have gotten in the way of every hobby that I want to do. Look around here more often because I'm really really trying harder to get school done faster, so I can do what I love. But, no promises. Thanks,
~Casey~

WARNING: The following post is rated: Arrrrgh!

2011-08-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

Shannon Ocean made Guybrush Threepwood from the Monkey Island series of video games. I've personally never played them, but I hear they're quite entertaining.

Nothing like some pixel-y goodness!

Oh...my...goodness!!

2011-08-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

During Brincka LEGO Show in Tomar, Portugal, 1-3 July 2011, the members of PLUG organized this insanely epic and humongous mosaic.

It reminds me of Rivendell (Lord of the Rings), although I'm not quite positive as to what it quite is. All I know, is...it's stinking awesome! By the way, This was found by Bruce on Lego Monster's flickr stream.

IT'S MAGIC!!!...Well, not really...

2011-08-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

In the mosaic world, it's now all the rage to do "morphing mosaics" where when you're looking at a mosaic from one angle, it appears to be just a single image, but as you shift to another side, the image morphs into another image.

This effect was first done with Chris Doyle's Portrait of Dorian Bley using "cheese slopes" put next to each other. Looking at the image strait on will make it look really weird, so using this, you get some very cool transforming creations. Now, it's been copied and re-done all across the community and I only suspect it to gain more traction:

Arthur Gugick's Darth Vader/Anakin mosaic.

Daniel Stoeffler's Lego Harry Potter/Lord Voldemort (he who must not be named!) mosaic.

Reasonably Clever Chris's original Dorian Bley featuring the original technique.

DuckJournal and Mime Magazine!

2011-08-07T13:18:00.000-07:00

Chris Howard, (Duckingham) who we interviewed a year ago, created two hilarious and clever mosaics. DuckJournal (Parody of "Brickjournal") and Mime Magazine (Parody of "Time Magazine".)

Check out what he's done on his flickr stream to see all the great photos!

*** Note: I'm back from vacation. (obviously!)

I'm off!

2011-07-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

Alrighty fellow Lego enthusiasts! I'm off to vacation! MosaicBricks will be on hiatus for a week because I'm going to lay on the beach for a while! Time to reflect and relax, and prepare for the upcoming school year.

Special note, thanks to Bruce N H of Classic-Castle, Brick Tales, and too many blogs (hehehehe) as well as rjg173 for identifying a mosaic in the Legoland Discovery Center post as from "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. Check out the post for more details.

Be sure to read our latest interview where we catch up with Ben Caulkins, despite being not all that mosaic related, it was fascinating a ton of fun talking with him.

Anyway, See ya later people!
~Casey~

Interview: Catching up with Ben Caulkins (Benny Brickster)

2011-07-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

Recently, I caught up with Ben Caulkins, who we interviewed last year. Over the course of a few days, we talked about his Halo Spartan/Master Chief armor, the Halo series, and Brickworld 2011. Let's get started!

MB: Ok, so, it's pretty much been a year since last "talking" as far as an interview goes. Catch us up on what you've been doing. In what ways have you seen your building, or your Lego community experience change and improve over the course of a year?

BC:"Well, the greatest change was made through a recent creation of mine: my Master Chief costume. Before I had even finished, it brought me a great deal of attention from the internet and LEGO fan community, and, I dare say, gave people a reason to take me seriously as a MOCist. But that just stemmed from another change, namely my tendency to build exclusively Halo MOCs. In my last interview I mentioned several MOCs that I wanted to build, yet none of them involved Halo. Unfortunately I never did actually build any of the MOCs I listed, but rather built several new Halo creations. I'm not sure why I became addicted to Halo: maybe its the angular look of the UNSC vehicles, and the contrasting smooth and reflective look of the covenant craft, but either way, it stuck with me. I don't regret it either,
otherwise I might not have ever built the Master Chief costume."

MB:Yeah, I've certainly made claims of MOCs I'll build and then never build them, and build something else. I find though it also shows me where my building priorities are.

(Moving away from Lego for a bit) Since you build heavily in Lego Halo, would it be safe to assume you grew up with the Halo franchise on the classic Xbox? Or did you not start playing it 'till later in life? Have you never played it? Overall, When did you encounter the games?

BC:"My story with the Halo franchise is actually a strange one. I never had an xbox, and I never even knew what Halo was until a few years ago, but I can remember the first time I played it. I was so young, I didn't even know what I was doing, who the bad guys were, or how to operate the controls, but I remember what it looked like: it was the level in Halo CE where you have to reenter the covenant's flagship, of course I didn't figure that out until many years later. After that, several years later, I met a guy while on vacation in Maine who I'm now good friends with. He had an xbox and Halo 2 with him, so we played that. We never actually played it to win the game, we just sort of played it. I was still pretty young, and I payed no attention to the storyline, so I had no idea what was going on. Fast forward to spring of 2010. That same friend from Maine was at my house, and we were on the floor building, and I told him, "name something you want me to build." He said, "a warthog", so that's what I did. From then on, I started to delve deeper and deeper into the Halo franchise, and then, last summer, I was again on vacation in Maine, when I went over to my friends house, and as usual, we played Halo 2, but this time we actually played to win. Its not as if we had literally agreed to play it to the end, but rather there was now a determination to finish that hadn't been there before. Sure enough, within the two weeks I had been there at about one hour a day, we beat Halo 2. Then over the course of the last year, I bought Halo CE for my computer and played Halo 3 at a different friends house, so now i can finally say that I've played the essential trilogy."

During E3, we found out during the Microsoft conference that they will be releasing two new games. Halo 4 and Halo:CE Remastered. Are you excited about these new games? Do you think they will inspire you to create more Halo MOCs? Do you think they will inspire other Lego community member as well?

BC:"When I saw the Halo 4 trailer, I was very disappointed. To me, Halo ended with the Chief floating towards that distant planet. What made it so cool was the mystery, the lack of knowledge of the Chief's next adventure. Now that there making a Halo 4, that mystery is lost. Plus, 343 industries is known to handle the expanded universe side of the Halo franchise, publishing the novels and stuff. What worries me about their taking over of the project is that they're going to try and force a personality onto the Chief as they do in the novels, to try and make him into a different character than what we all imagined. Part of what makes Halo "Halo" is that we know so little about the chief so that we can imprint our own personalities onto him. Also, how can you make a Halo game without the covenant, which is exactly what Halo 4 is going to have to do. 343 better have some big tricks up its sleeve, otherwise I'm going to pay this game no mind. As for the Halo CE re-release I am very excited. Still though, all there doing is giving the old Halo a spit-shine, nothing really all that special. As far as inspiration for MOCs goes, will just have to wait and see what new surprises Halo 4 has in store for us."

MB:(Back to Lego!)What led up to creating a full body suit of a Halo spartan? When did the idea start the project happen?

BC:"The root for the idea I guess could be my first attendance of Brickworld last year. The things I saw there really heightened my standards of building and I realized, if I was going to get any attention at all, I was going to have to go big! It was on a walk when I was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming that I really thought of a specific thing to build: a Master Chief suit made entirely out of LEGO. Why not? Simafol had done it. Of course, it took a lot more thinking before I actually thought it would be possible."

MB:So once you had the idea, where did you go from there?

BC:"I knew I wanted to start with the helmet, so that's what I did. It took me three weeks and was an instant hit with the blogs, but that only lasted for so long before I was back to work. From that point on it was months of work constructing all of the different segments, and as I progressed I gained more experience, so some of the pieces of armor that I finished later in the process are actually of a higher quality than some of the earlier pieces. But in the end, it all came together beautifully."

MB:So, walk us through how you would put on this contraption.

BC:"I put it on from the ground up, so naturally the first that goes on are the shoes. The legs can crack in half so I can snap them on over my legs. The thighs don't form a full circle, so those are pretty easy to put on. The belt can separate into two halves, so I put one on usually which sticks using Velcro, and then attach the other half to it. The next part is pretty difficult: the torso. Those thing that loop under the armpits can come off so I can put the torso on over my head, then the armpit loops reattach. Its a pretty tight fit, but it works... mostly. Next is the most hazardous part, the upper arms. I never really thought them through all that well, so the only way to put them on is to slide them up my arm, which is difficult because they're covered in Velcro, and my entire neoprene suit sticks to Velcro. Also, I made them to small, so whoever is helping me has to push really hard in order to get them far enough up my arms. Once, in fact, one of them exploded because it couldn't fit on my arm...oops. Then the most irritating part: the forearms. They can crack in half similar to the legs, but there is a very precise place to put them on, and most of the time it ends up attached wrong, so I have to make my helper take them off and do it all over again. Afterwards comes the gloves, and finally the helmet. In the end, I feel very satisfied, and my helper is pissed at me for being so bossy, but I think he's a little satisfied too."

MB:Oooooh! So it does require an extra person...I was going to ask that. Ok, so let's move on to BW'11...

How did you like general vibe from Brickworld? Was it better than last year's or about the same?

BC:"Its difficult to judge this years Brickworld. My personal experience was very different as I was part of a group layout for the first time, so I got to meet some really awesome people. Also, I got a lot more attention from attendees due to the suit. But, as a person just visiting Brickworld, I'd say it was about the same. There was no serious leap in the total size of the convention or the quality of the MOCs in general, but I should say that the quality of the MOCs is probably beyond improvement as many of them are superb. Now that's not to say I didn't enjoy Brickworld, I did very much, but it's just more of the same from last year, which is a good thing because that formula works."

What was the public's reaction to the Halo armor?

BC:"The public's reaction to the Halo armor was overwhelming. Everywhere I went I was followed by a crowd of people trying to take pictures. I ended up not moving for long periods of time as parents took picture of me with their kids over and over again. Also, I even had a few attendees following me who I had never met, so I guess its akin to stalking. If it wasn't for Nick Jenson (Nick Brick) I probably would have been trampled by a crowd of people, as he was the one made holes in the crowd for me to pass through (also, here's a bit of shameless plugging: check out Nick's Halo weapons, they are sick!). As the man in the suit, I was constantly giddy with joy. Sure it was difficult to walk in and the crowds did get pretty annoying, but still, it was awesome to be noticed like this."

MB:You (and I) attended the advanced mosaics workshop by Roy Cook. What did you think of it? Did you find it helpful, inspiring, or interesting in anyway?

BC:"Although I don't plan on making mosaics in the future, I found the workshop very informative. I found his discussion on how he made his Halle Berry mosaic especially interesting, what with all the unique techniques that went into it."

MB:Did you attend any other workshops or presentations from this year, and if so, which ones stuck out for you?

BC:"My favorite workshop was presented by Jamie Berard (LEGO Creator designer) on what life is like as a designer in Denmark. Not only did it reveal some pretty interesting facts, but it also answered some questions that I had about LEGO product design. Plus it didn't hurt that Jamie is a really nice guy."

MB:So at one point, you were given the epic privilege of destroying this cylinder of Brickworld 2011 made entirely of 1x8s. What was that like?

BC:"To be honest, I was actually kind of nervous. I was mainly concerned with looking like an idiot in this big bulky suit. Secondly, I was worried the suit would break, which of course it did, and I have yet to fix it. When Nannan posted the video of me knocking it down, I was worried that I would look really stupid. But when I watched it, I actually think I did a pretty good job considering the limitations of the suit. The only real problem is that you may notice that part of my knee armor is missing."

^^^ My video of the epic destruction ^^^

MB:Overall, do you plan on attending next year?

BC:"Absolutely, although I don't know how I could possibly top myself next year considering the standards that I have now raised myself to. But my goal is to win some kind of award, because the last two years have been teasing me with two nominations per Brickworld, and I thought I had it this year with the suit, but Ryan McNaught's massive Loveboat bested me at that. Anyway, I can't imagine not going to Brickworld again, because getting to talk to people who genuinely get this obsession with LEGO is such a treat, and how one forget the hundred of awesome MOCs populating the display tables. Yup, I will definitely be going."

MB:Ben Caulkins has certainly made himself a name for himself. How does he top this? Got any grand schemes?

BC:"At the moment, I've got nothing. Or at least nothing on the same scale as the suit. But what I am working on is the first minifig scale Halo 3 Pelican, and I hope to follow this up with a similarly scaled Halo 3 Phantom.

To see Ben's fantastic MOCs, visit his Flickr photostream, here or visit his MOCpages account here.
Many thanks for the interview, Ben! It's always a pleasure. ;-D

And, I leave you with this photo...

^^^ Ben and I, looking epic. ^^^

Mosaics at the Legoland Discovery Center!

2011-07-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I recently stopped by the Legoland Discovery Center for my fourth time because the attendees of Brickworld 2011 got free coupons (and get 10% off at the gift shop!)! Coming back with a mindset to snap photos, I got a lot of photos of mosaics! Enjoy. ;-D

So first up we have a lot of castle pictures...

These sheild heraldry mosaics were at the beginning of the dragon ride and were pretty sweet. Following with the dragon theme...

...these were mosaics that were found during the dragon ride. The first photo turned out really nicely while the other one is not so great, as you can tell. It was quite difficult to get them while riding. =) I think these were my favorite ones. The glowed quite nicely in the dark.

Continuing on...

We also found this cartoony mosaic and was pretty neat.

Moving on away from Castle...

All these mosaics were found by the bathrooms. There were 2 day camps eating lunch at this time I took them, so they didn't turn out exactly like I wanted them to, but I'm hoping they're still easy to look at.

Across from the bathrooms by the "Model Workshop" section, we had some more "artistic" mosaics.

Now I'm sure that second one is Van Gogh's Starry Night, but I can't tell what the first one is. (If anyone knows, leave a comment or email me at mosaicbricks@gmail.com). The one below is the Mona Lisa, but didn't turn out that great due to a TON of glare.

*** Note, thanks to Bruce N H and rjg173 for letting me know the first one is "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.

So, yeah! There you go! There was one extra mosaic, but it had even more glare so I figured it wasn't even worth it. The interview with Ben Caulkins is coming up soon. Thanks for reading!

Vvvrrroom! Vvvvvrooooom!!!

2011-07-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

Still easing back into our regular posting...

Brickshelf member, mwv1970 (Bill Vollbrecht), built this great looking motorcycle. Flame on it looks great.

Bill also has some really amazing stuff in his Brickshelf folders so be sure to check all his cool models out.

House Keeping

2011-07-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm still transitioning back into the whole Lego thing trying to give each of my sites and stuff face lifts. I've update my avatar to a new up-close shot of my sig figgy's face and I'm working on my MOCpages homepage.

You might notice that MosaicBricks has changed with two banners for the two other blogs, and a new favicon! Speaking of two new blogs!

1. A Boy and His Bricks - My personal blog so I don't keep on getting that sort of stuff in MosaicBricks. I'll be posting my creations, my thoughts, my goals, and my process of starting to become a brickfilmer. I'm going to over the next four to five months trying to re-create several key scenes from the Nolan Batman Trilogy. The contest on Lego.com ends Nov. 15 so I've got to get busy!

2. JumboBricks - A Blog coming soon. I'm not sure when I'll start it. Probably in the school year which starts around August 24th when I get my brand new spank-a-dank-in' laptop.

Don't worry there's stuff for MosaicBricks...

Updates for MB:
- Interviews on the way including a follow-up interview from Ben Caulkins!
- Part 1 of how to build a mosaic! (coming out during when I'm on vacation)
- Part 2 of Lego Logo mosaics! (Brickshelf)
- Regular mosaic coverage
- Secret updates... ;-D (WIP)

(Speaking of vacation, I'm leaving in less than a week to go on vacation so there unfortunately will not be any posts besides the Part 1 which should be enough. I'll let you know when I'm leaving. =) )

The contest we're running is doing O.K. so far. We've only gotten one entry, but with my tutorial posts and the interest we've already taken, I think we'll see a few more. Plus, using my platform on MOCpages, maybe we'll get some others as well.

Anyway, be sure to keep updated! My personal blog will also give a lot more background to this blog too.

Thanks for sticking with us!
Casey

What the Brick just happened?!?!?

2011-07-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

Where have I been? Well that's a good question thanks for asking...

Well, it’s been a while hasn’t it. A lot has gone by on since the almost year that I haven’t posted regularly. Don't worry, I'm not dead!

In the summer of ’10 when I was very active in the community. Probably too active. I was doing wayyyy too much during that summer. I was in three contests (I placed 1st 3rd and 5th by the way!), helping out with my Lego VBS, creating MOCs, doing daily life, taking music lessons, posting on a couple different forums, and on top of that, my cousin was over for a total of 1 month that summer. I was basically the humongous Lego fanatic, and it was tiring. Towards the end of the summer, my creativity was shot and I was drained. Without getting any time to recover from the creativity drain I was sent into the abyss that is Freshman year.

I’ll be honest…I hate every school subject so that didn’t help. Over the school semester I started to fade out, just getting too busy with a lot of different classes. A family moved from Kentucky and joined my homeschool co-op and in September we started playing a game called “Warhammer”. I originally discovered that game in 2006. Things started to hit the backburner and then I found another game in November, this time a video game, called Minecraft. I’m not going to talk about how amazing the game is, because this is about Lego, but I got distracted with that too. Not to mention I had a surgery on Christmas Eve Eve and I was just getting lost. I still kept up with collecting small sets and stuff, but not posting anything or building either.

Anyway, lots of family issues that I can’t talk about happened in the 2nd semester and I started to also have more medical problems with school getting harder to keep up with. My grades started to suffer and I barely survived the 2nd semester. Not to mention that 3 of my friends have moved away this summer. My whole online life was basically decimated though.

This summer though, I did my Lego VBS again and not to mention that I signed up for Brickworld 2011 originally in December and went with my friends this summer. I met up with a couple of TFOLs I knew/interviewed so that was fun. And overall I came out with a tired, but fun experience. I’m definitely going to change the way I do BW next year, but it was very fun. We'll cover it here, in a little bit.

And…What does this mean? I’ve decided to become a “casual TFOL”. I’ve got a lot of old MOCs and a couple new ones that I want to post on my MOCpages, so I’m going to try and do that with the rest of the summer. I’m going to try and stay in, but not obsessed with the Lego community with Flickr, my blog MosaicBricks, C-C, and my MOCpages. I've started to finally realize, you can't catch everthing. Something that's so obvious. My interests have shifted a lot though. I started making Minecraft videos after being inspired and that’s doing well so I’m going to try and pursue that as well. I’ve taken a humongous interest in Brickfilming so I’m going to try my hand at that as well. Saving up to get a new webcam.

I’m going to a new private school this upcoming semester so I'm going to a new private school this next semester and I’ll get my own laptop. So yeah, I’m back and hopefully to stay. Right now, I’m trying to find balance in life, and I just wanted people to know (if they were possibly wondering) where I was.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN ABOUT MAY MOSAIC MADNESS?
That is also a good question. We received one entry, when I dropped off the face of the earth, and we have three prize packs to give out! I've decided to have the (Delayed) May Mosaic Madness contest! The contest will now run 'till the 22nd of September, and I'm going to try and get it out there as much as possible. I'm going to do some more interviews, as well as some follow-up ones. Normal posting will continue!

Thanks to everyone who's been reading! Even in my two month absence of posting, we hit a spike in reading! Weird huh? Oh, by the way, I'm going to start a personal blog, so look for that soon.

May Mosaic Madness Launch!

2011-04-30T17:20:00.001-07:00

MosaicBricks May Mosaic Madness!
Celebrating mosaics all through the month!

Hello everyone! It's May, and I'm declaring it Mosaic Month! I think it's already stroke awareness month sooooo make sure you lower your cholesterol...and make some kick butt mosaics too! I wrote out a schedule that I'm going to try my hardest to follow that will have one post a day so make sure you don't miss a thing!

But, I'm going to be hosting my very own contest! That's right! There's no real name for the contest, how about, "The First Annual MB May Mosaic Madness Challenge (32x32)!" (TFAMBMMMC for short )

Official Rules and Guidelines:
1. The creation must be a mosaic. Hello? It's a mosaic contest...
2. For this specific contest, the creation must be a 32x32 studs up mosaic (No smaller or larger). EDIT: A lot of people have been asking to do not studs, up which I've said it's perfectly fine for people to do if they wish. I'd just like to keep it very broad to all ages of people. AFOLs to KFOLs. Which brings me to my next rule...
3. Contest is open to all ages.
4. Clone branded bricks are not encouraged. Please use only Lego Bricks. If one slips through, I understand. Just try to stay away from them. ;-D
5. You can enter up to 3 times, but you are only eligible for placing once.
6. Please use only new creations.
7. I reserve the rights to change any of the prize descriptions at any time for any reason.

DON'T KNOW HOW TO BUILD A MOSAIC? NO PROBLEM!
All throughout May, I'll be doing a 5 part series on how to build your first 32x32 mosaic. It's not as hard as you think, trust me! First post is on the 4th!

Prizes:
1st Place:
-$15 Lego Store Gift Card
- Bunny and Pumpkin Polybag
- Your choice of any Two Collectible Minifigues (I'll be posting these soon)

2nd Place:
-$10 Lego Store Gift Card
- Choice of 1 of 2 Polybags (I'll be posting these soon)
- Choice of any One Collectible Minifigues (I'll be posting these soon)

3rd Place:
- $5 Lego Store Gift Card
- Default of the Polybag (I'll be posting these soon)

How you enter:
- Email me at mosaicbricks@gmail.com with either pictures directly, or a link to your Flickr pictures, MOCpages pictures, Brickshelf Gallery, etc. with a short description of your mosaic and a title for it.

Judging:
Judging will be based on these three criteria:
- Concept
- Execution
- Originality

So get building and be sure to follow MosaicBricks all during May!

May Mosaic Madness! (Woohoo!)

2011-04-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

I'm declaring May Mosaic Month! I guess...heheheeh...

With the blog being not so active over the school year I'm going to do a massive re-start to the blog that I've been wanting to do for a while. May Mosaic Madness! One post for each day in May! I'm hoping to have around 4 interviews, tutorials, and lots of posts! Maybe a contest? I'll be updating this list from time to time, but here's the schedule: (All the "tutorials" ones/"how to"s are WIP titles)

April 30th: MMM Launch! (Contest announcements!)
Sun. May 1st: Lego Logo Mosaics Pt. 2 - Brickshelf
Mon. May 2nd: - Creation Post -
Tue. May 3rd: - Creation Post -
Wed. May 4th: How to Make a Mosaic Pt. 1: Picking a Picture and Getting it into the size you want.
Thurs. May 5th: - Creation Post -
Fri. May 6th: - Creation Post -
Sat. May 7th: Interview with ___________?
Sun. May 8th: Lego Logo Mosaics Pt. 3 - Flickr
Mon. May 9th: - Creation Post -
Tue. May 10th: - Creation Post -
Wed. May 11th: How to Make a Mosaic Pt. 2: Finalizing your Mosaic and Choosing your building Materials
Thurs. May 12th: - Creation Post -
Fri. May 13th: - Creation Post -
Sat. May 14th: Interview with ___________?
Sun. May 15th: Lego Logo Mosaics Pt. 4 - Conclusion
Mon. May 16th: - Creation Post -
Tue. May 17th: - Creation Post -
Wed. May 18th: How to Make a Mosaic Pt. 3: Finishing Building and Taking Photos/Editing Photos
Thurs. May 19th: - Creation Post -
Fri. May 20th: - Creation Post -
Sat. May 21st: How to Make a Mosaic Pt. 4: Picking a Photo Hosting Option
Sun. May 22nd: Official Lego Mosaic Sets Pt. 4: Modern Lego Mosaic Sets
Mon. May 23rd: - Creation Post -
Tue. May 24th: - Creation Post -
Wed. May 25th: How to Make a Mosaic Pt. 5: Other, Extra Things - Going Bigger and Better
Thurs. May 26th: - Creation Post -
Fri. May 27th: - Creation Post -
Sat. May 28th: Interview with ___________?
Sun. May 29th: Interview with ___________?
Mon. May 30th: Contest Winner(s) Announced!
Tue. May 31st: Thank You!
Wed. June 1st: Resuming Normal Programming...

I'm pretty excited! Stay Tuned!
~Casey~

BW11 Plans!

2011-04-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

So I apologize for not posting recently, but I've been getting back into building again. It's been such a long time since I sat down to actually build and stuff. I'm planning on bringing 3 mosaics and 3 other things. I'm bringing my darth vader mosaic, and two QR codes, one for MosaicBricks and one for a secret project...

Here's a preview of the one for MB:

(32x32)

If you don't know what a QR code is, it's this little picture you scan with your phone and it directs you to a website. So in theory, you could be able to scan a mosaic and it will do the same thing!

I've had a job at my school so I'm going to be putting in a nice Bricklink order soon.

Thanks for reading everyone! More mosaic to come... ;-D

Octopuses? Octopi? Octopodes?

2011-03-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

Flickr user, Reasonably Clever Chris, created/creates a somewhat 3-mosaic in one. It's absolutely a great mosaic because it's made nearly out of all trans pieces that are also built sideways. Very cool. ;-D

Check out his flickr here. Or his wesbite here.

"You're mocking me, aren't you?"

2011-03-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

Overall podcaster and cool guy, one of my roll models James Kennison built a Lego Buzz Lightyear mosaic in his church's children ministry and posted it on his creative blog "You're Mocking Me Aren't You". It's obviously not one of our eye popping super epic mosaics here, but you can see how iconic it is and it's a lot better than what I could have done just doing it freestyle.

His description is:

This Buzz happened so randomly. I was at church working elementary childcare. I pulled out some Lego bocks from a cabinet to keep the early kids busy. Soon I found myself sitting with them working on the chest piece of a Buzz Lightyear. The kids started asking if I was going to make a Buzz… I just said, “We’ll see.” and kept plugging away. After about 40 minutes I had created what you see here.

Note the attention to detail: all three buttons on our left, the big red button to the right, the yellow nameplate above. There weren’t any purple blocks so I used blue. Bet you didn’t even notice until I said something. The wings were the final touch… I laid all of the blocks down so they would be half the height as the rest of the figure. I feel it gave it a bit of a 3d look. If I had a chance to do it over again I would have made his dome half height as well.

Special thanks to Scotty, Austin, Nathan, Jewel and Jessica for their help and support. You guys make me feel like a genius.

This Buzz says, “I was made at church… so I’m automatically a religious artifact!”

Check out the blog here and the main site here.

Wow. I'm overhwhelmed and burned out. But BW11 rocks!

2011-03-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

Hey there. Remember this blog? Me too! It's been roughly two weeks since I posted. Two weeks.

Wow. I've been overwhelmed recently. Like really. Let's rewind, shall we? We're going a little personal today.

Summer of '10. Fun time. I was in Two competitions, one on MOCpages, one on a Lego Star Wars forums (I got 3rd/90 and 5th/20-ish!). I entered in another competition from the Brickshow (Got 1st!), I was active in forums, posted regularly, I helped out in my church's VBS which had a Lego elective. Not to mention having one of my cousins over for a total amount of time for 1 month and also having other things to do with family and stuff.

So as school starts to roll around, I'm doing pretty good, but I'm starting to feel burned out. Like really. I've got big plans for the blog, Brickworld 11 and general stuff. School is just hard this year though. I've got nothing on Tue, I help out at church on Wed nights, I have music lessons on Thurs, and I'm generally free the rest of the weekend, just very busy with school. In Sep. my brother and I start playing Warhammer (It's extremely nerdy) and later on in the winter, I came across this game. Computer Game. Minecraft. It's amazing. Literally. Wow. I use periods. A lot. Hahaha, just kidding. ;-D

Christmas Eve Eve I have surgery, and at this point after I'm just not that in to Lego. Pieces need to be sorted, haven't posted in a while, and I'm just not in to it necessarily. Not to mention worries about getting a job, learning how to drive and all that stupid junk.

But! Recently. I've got really excited. Brickworld '11! Heck yeah! I'm signed up! My friends and I are going and I've got big plans. Plus, it has inspired me to really get back to the basics and reorganized my priorities. What's most important, and what's not.

What I'm just telling you is, the blog has been falling behind. And I'm going to change that! Finally! Conpetitions, more interviews, more mosaics!

Thanks for reading guys. Felt like I owed you an explanation.
Casey

These pieces have actual uses?!?!

2011-03-03T19:35:00.001-08:00

Flickr user, Legoorci finds away to use the Collectible Minifig Bases as a "part sculpture" "part mosaic" creation.

Structure a photo by Legoorci on Flickr.

I would have never thought of that. ;-D Looks awesome.

"Beep Beep Beep, Boo-Beep!"

2011-02-26T23:00:00.001-08:00

Flickr user, andertoons made this really cool R2-D2 (from Star Wars just in case you've been living under a rock) last summer.

MOC-026 LEGO R2D2 Mosaic - 3
Originally uploaded by andertoons

Looks spot on. ;-D

Just Give Up Now!!

2011-02-19T23:47:00.000-08:00

Flickr user and generally known mosaic master, eilonwy77 creates one of the most beautiful cheese slope I've ever seen...

Just...wow!

Woah, there!!

2011-02-17T21:43:00.000-08:00

Flickr user, andy_0306uk created a really cool mosaic that reminded me of a post early on in the blog, kind of. He made this great black and white Optical Illusion Mosaic, and its really quite stunning.

Do you see how it is sort of popping out at you? Pretty cool, huh? Great job, Andy. ;-D Be sure to check out the larger version here.

Classic Castle. The site, and the themes!

2011-02-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

Recently the winners for the 8th Annual Colossal Castle Contest (CCC) on classic-castle.com have been announced here! WOO!

Speaking of classic castle, I found a pair of mosaics of the Black Falcon and Forestmen crests built by Siercon and Coral on flickr.

--------

Really great mosaics! Congrats to the winners of the contest, and go Forestmen!

The Superbowl #45!

2011-02-08T21:25:00.000-08:00

Alas, the dust has settled, the threats of whose team is better are over, the reviews of that horrendous sad excuse for a halftime show are out!, and the actual National Anthem lyrics are being googled.

Apparently, Henchman #21 created a little series of mini mosaics on a 48x48 baseplate and posted it Saturday. Just in case you're not sure, it contains a NFC division, a AFC division, a Superbowl 45 logo, a Packers logo, and a Steelers logo.

Boo on the Packers! Go Bears!

Gorillas...Oooh you mean, Gorillaz!

2011-02-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

Flickr user, Tracy Lee, created a series of mosaics based on the band Gorillaz. Gorillaz is sort of a virtual band sort of thing composed of animated characters where the actual music is made by real people though. Check out the cool mosaics below:

View more on the band here, and view more of Tracy Lee's great mosaics here.

Update: January/February updates...

2011-01-31T20:58:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, just a few things before we dive into February, I've got a couple things that I'd like to do for Feb. that I'd like to share with you, things that should be generally expected:

- Lego Logo Mosaics Pt. 2
- Official Lego Mosaic Sets Pt. 3
- An interview with a very special builder (stay tuned :-D )
- and more mosaic coverage as usual!

Thanks everyone for reading, and I will see you in Feb.!

~Casey~

Goooooooogle!

2011-01-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

Lego certified professional and creator of Mocpages, Sean Kenney (The man. The myth. The legend!), was commission in 2007 to create a mosaic for Google Inc. for their NY offices. When looking at it normally, it appears to be a normal mosaic,

But when you get close and look at it from a different angle,

It is really just a bunch of random bricks, like doors and strange things all cobbled together to make a mosaic. Pretty neat huh? View the rest of the creation here.

Sean Kenney is one of my favorite builders, be sure to check out all his great creations and commissions by visiting his website: http://seankenney.com/

*** It should also be noted that Sean Kenney also made another Google Logo mosaic for Google Inc.'s Denmark office. Check it out here.

Campbells. Mmmm, mmmm, Good!

2011-01-26T21:45:00.000-08:00

On the blog here, I have this little flickr stream down the page the has goes through all sorts of Lego mosaics on Flickr. One thing that I've seen come through there is this a mosaic of Campbell's Tomato Soup.

Created by TheWorldInBricks (or David Haliski), the mosaic is 30"x40" and is very impressive.

You can check out David's website here. Make sure you do so because he has some pretty sweet creations. In this one section you can interactively walk though a gallery. Incredible!

Official Lego Mosaic Sets: Part 2.5 - #3443 Variations

2011-01-24T20:44:00.000-08:00

Continuing on our series of official Lego mosaic sets, we're doing a little half-way point between parts 2 and 3. While visiting http://thebrickblogger.com/ (great website, if you didn't see my post about it, click the link here), I was able to find a couple more variations of #3443. These I'm pretty sure these were a lot less common then the normal 3443 (the one with boy on it), but in my opinion were maybe a little cooler (sorry, Johnny Thunder is awesome!).

Sources:
- Bricklink.com

Give me (Wings of) Liberty! Or give me death!

2011-01-22T17:59:00.000-08:00

Continuing in our series of creations from Brickworld 2010, I stumbled across a Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty display by Pepa Quin (I'm pretty sure it is Pepa) displayed at Brickworld 2009 and 2010, from what I can tell. You may need to click on the picture to get a bigger picture of the mosaic in the display, by the way.

A really cool mosaic, I wonder if it will be there at BW 2011?!?!?!?!

Sir Build-a-Lot - Esquire of Legoland!

2011-01-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

Registration for BW11 got me thinking of my experience last year of going to BW10. There were a ton of cool mosaics there! I was looking around on the web, and I don't know how I missed this mosaic...

MOCpages user, Chris Phipson who posted a recap of what happened at BW that year, had a photo of this great SNOT tapestry. I can't tell it is based off an actual flag, or coat-of-arms of sorts (I don't know, maybe I'm just dumb ;0 ), but it looks great. Not sure who the actual builder is though...

I looked through pages and pages of the flickr stream of BW, but could not find the builder. (If you are out there, or know who built it, please come forth!)

By the way, I think I'll continue posting a couple of the mosaics I missed from BW10 as well as continuing our mini-series on Official Lego Mosaic Sets, not to mention, I'm planning another interview! Stay tuned...

Brickworld 2011 - Registration Now Open!

2011-01-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, just wanted to inform you that registration for Brickworld 2011 is now open!

You might have already seen the news, but for those of you that are on the fence, I strongly encourage you to go. Last year there were two mosaic workshop classes, and at least 20 or more mosaics scattered throughout the rooms.

Not only will you see amazing mosaics, but run into cool AFOLs as well. Did I mention the huge presence of mosaics?

Yeah, I will be planning on attending (hopefully), I'm talking to friends, family, and my parents ;-D. But If I'm going, I need to get my butt in action (attendance for full registration is capped at 650, but we'll see how long that lasts ;-D ) because my friends and I have been designing a huge 3 ft x 3 ft display for BW!

There are already (within a day), almost 200 signed up, so if you haven't, do so! I haven't attended as a full attendee previously, only as a public day attendee, but the full sounds great!

Hopefully see you there! ;-D

Update: Special Lego Mosaic Resources

2011-01-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

Sorry about not getting that post of part 3 up, I had a couple things come up, but through a certain reader of the blog sending me a message of a certain website, it brought me to some great mosaic resources.

The website is called, thebrickblogger.com and has three great articles so far. They explain somethings better than I ever could! The posts are on:

- Resources for Mosaic Builders (Extremely useful!!)
- Mosaics & the Stained-Glass Effect (A great resource for different types of mosaics)
- A gallery of mosaics

The website, in of itself, is very useful in general, so go check it out! ;-D

Sorry about the long pause between our series and stuff. This week of school coming out of break has been horrible. ;( Don't worry though, more mosaic is on the way!

~Casey~

Official Lego Mosaic Sets: Part 2 - The Illustrious #3443

2011-01-07T18:11:00.000-08:00

Continuing on in our series of official Lego sets, we have a most notable, rare, and illustrious set. The amazing 3443. If you happen to own one such 3443, that is something special.

Set 3443 Mosaic Set (Yes, same title, yet again!) was a set that came out in 2000, and was generally released with all other cool sculpture sets such as the Statue of Liberty, the Green Dragon, and the Maxi-fig.

Above is the box it came in. It contained 1993 pieces which in it had a 48x48 baseplate. That's right. All that for $30. That's 2 cents per piece!! And over half of the piece were 1x1 black plates. A full inventory can be found here. I'm also pretty sure it taught you how to make Lego mosaics as well. The set was mostly sold in the Legoland Gift-shops, Lego Stores, and sold/traded on early Lego community sites. You can't even really find one these days.

Above is an example of what you could make with the set. I'd be really curious as how they'd make it. Now, on Bricklink, I believe this set is categorized as k34434, which I think it means that it is the same set! Look below...

In this picture you can see the pieces that they used to create the frame as well as how they used a different image then a child.

Set 3443 is quite awesome. I'm not sure if there would be quite a reason to get one know, but it's just really cool. ;-D Probably one of the best Lego mosaic sets.

Thanks for reading, come back on Sunday for Part 3 of Official Lego Mosaic Sets.

Resources:
- Brickset
- Peeron
- LUGNET
- bricks.argz.com
- Lego Wikia
- Bricklink

Official Lego Mosaic Sets: Part 1 - Ye Old Mosaics

2011-01-05T20:27:00.001-08:00

Beginning in 1984, we saw the first ever official Lego mosaic set!...well...Duplo set...well...not even that either being labeled as Dacta! Set 1012 titled: Mosaic Set, marked a new era of mosaics!...sort of!

Anyway! Today we're starting a new series sort of thing of official Lego mosaic sets. I'm going to have it sort of like a mini-history of kits produced. Let's get back to it! ;-D

Like I was saying, set 1012...

As you can see from the picture above it, consisting of several 2x2 printed tile pieces (in Duplo dimensions) and a small red baseplate, was the first official set produced by the Lego company as far as I can tell. Although, I'm pretty sure that mosaics were built by the company, but not put on shelves or anything. No retail price on this, but I would think that it would have gone for maybe $10, $20, possibly $30 during its time.

When I first uncovered these Dacta sets, I knew they looked familiar. And they were because my library used to mount several of this next set on the wall with tubs underneath them. (that or they were knock offs :-P ).

Set 1000, again called Mosaic Set, was basically the same thing as 1012, except released in 1986 had a lot more pieces and a bigger sized baseplate. And this one had a retail price at $46.75. It was quite a step up from the previous set with having idea panel/book things.

And lastly, just to tie things up, in 1987 there were a couple more sets released with animal-like themes, for example:

Set 1019, Mosaic Set (Lion) (again!!) was liked a "themed" mosaic set, if you will. If only had a few pieces, all of them lion pieces. This retailed for $8.25.

Anyway, here's a little brief thing on mosaics, and I'll have more in-depth parts later on. This one was a bit informal, but informational. I hope you enjoyed this, and are looking forward to later ones!

Resources:
- Brickset.com
- Lego Wikia
- LUGNET

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T21:51:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to put a quick post! Happy New Year! I hope you are enjoying yourself with friends and family...or whatever.... ;-D

Just wanted to say I've got a lot of things planned and I'm looking forward to a new year! Thanks again all you readers who are still reading. It's been quite a bumpy ride so far. It will get smoother. ;-)

Thanks,
Casey

Update: WOW! It's been this long?

2010-12-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Oh my gosh! I haven't posted in 2 weeks! I am so sorry! I can't believe this happened. I guess I just couldn't keep track of things with the holidays and stuff that I got distracted and forgot about the blog. Once again, I'm sorry. Thanks if you are still reading ;-D

Well, for Christmas I got some very nice Lego stuff such as Lego A Love Story, The Unofficial Lego Builders Guide, and a 1 year subscription to Brickjournal (woo!).

I really want to post more often, I'm new year's resolution is to post 3 times a week (at least!). We'll see if I can keep it up! ;-D I'll try to post once of course before the new year. By the way, my surgery that I had went fine and stuff, but it is kinda hard to walk now. Oh well! More building, right? ;-D

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, more mosaics on the way,
~Casey~

"The Wall"

2010-12-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if you could technically call it a mosaic, it's more like a sculpture in my opinion, but Flickr user, torgugick, creates this really cool face coming out of a wall of somesort. For those of you that know (I don't ;-P ) he says it's Pink Floyd's "The Wall".

The most incredible part about it is that it is made only out of three different elements! It is made out of 2 types of 1x2 plates, and 1 type of a 1x1 plate. Awesome!

Mall of America LEGO Store Unveiling Mosaics

2010-12-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

A bit of a "not so regular" post today, but I am subscribed to the youtube channel called, LegoClubTV , which I'm pretty sure is the "official"-ish Lego Company youtube channel. They recently posted a video of the Mall of America LEGO Store Unveiling, and they actually had mosaics in it!

Now, there are only a few and they are only in the beginning of the video, but boy are they awesome! Man, I wish I was there! ;-D

Check them out below:

"Ho ho ho! Merrrryyy Christmas!!!"

2010-12-11T17:54:00.000-08:00

Flickr user, Alfred jr, posted a photo of a FFOL building/fixing/sitting by a Lego Santa mosaic during LEGO Kid's Fest 2010 of Hartford, CT. I'm not sure if the woman in the photo is the Flickr user (I doubt it), but if anyone can I.D. her for me, that would be great!

Anyway! The mosaic is awesome. ;-D

"Ho ho ho! Want do you want for Christmas, Susan? Lego! Of course you do! Ho ho ho..."

** Thanks to Bruce N H for sending me the link to the mosaic. If you have a mosaic you want to see featured, email me at mosaicbricks (at) gmail.com

"The weather outside is frightful, but the mosaics are so delightful..."

2010-12-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

Flickr user, eilonwy77 (a.k.a. Katie Walker), creates a beautiful Holiday mosaic 9-pack filled to the brim with Christmas cheer that would fill up even the biggest of stockings.

Check out our interview with her here, in case you have missed it.

Update: Oh my gosh!!

2010-12-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

Hey guys!

Another update. I've been really busy again lately. Lots upon lots of stuff going on. Just to let you know, I STILL think about the blog and stuff, I've just been really busy lately. Just letting you know.

I hope to continue posting Christmas things on the blog and stuff. I am going into surgery on Christmas Eve Eve so I won't be able to walk for around a month (or at least it will be dangerous and hard) so I will have lots of free time for posting!

Anyway, just wanted to tell you quickly that I exist. It has almost been a week since I last posted.

See ya'!
Casey

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

2010-12-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa everyone (which ever holiday you celebrate)! We're now going to start spreading spirit here on MosaicBricks all through the month of December! Unfortunately, I'm unable to change the colors of the blog right now to green and red. It's weird because blogspot (the website blogging thing I use) has been acting up lately.

Anyway! On to mosaics!

MOCpages user, Jacub Maur, created a great mosaic of a snowman and a Christmas tree (Obviously, but that's what he called it).

It's actually a really, really big mosaic so make sure you check out the creation here to see the entire thing.

So, yeah, time to get in the Holiday spirit!

Update: Christmas Time is Here!

2010-11-28T20:58:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to put up a quick little post. I've been a little busy lately with Thanksgiving, and Black Friday shopping and stuff, but don't worry, I'm still thinking about the blog! ;-)

The next post will come up December 1st and the whole blog will be redone to being Christmas themed! So make sure you check back then. See you around!

Thanks for reading!
Casey

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-24T21:18:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I trust all of you are having a great time with your relatives eating plenty of great food (and scoping out the great Black Friday deals)!

Unfortunately, I have some bad news. I looked everywhere for a thanksgiving or turkey style Lego mosaic, but I couldn't find one! So instead, I found a very cool turkey mosaic (non-Lego). Enjoy!

Once again, Happy Thanksgiving!

Seperation of Day and Night

2010-11-19T19:39:00.000-08:00

MOCpages user, alyska bailey peterson, creates an absolutely beautiful stained glass window.

Here's a description of the mosaic MOC via the post on MOCpages:

This trans Lego stained glass mosaic, measuring 15x28", is based on the stained glass window "Creation: Day Four" at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Bilton, Rugby, England. The original window was designed by artist Aidan McRae Thomson in 1998-9.

This is the first in a series of five panels based on the creation story that I'm working on, hopefully to exhibit as a pentych at Brickworld 2011 in Wheeling, Illinois. (I'm already halfway through the second panel as of this posting!)

View the MOC here.

"It's a bird! It's a plane! It's another superman mosaic!!!"

2010-11-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

We're back again with another superman mosaic! Bricshelf user, davidmackenzie, has an image (I'm not positive if this mosaic is made by this user) of a great, giant superman mosaic with a great use of color.

The mosaics just keep on getting bigger and bigger!

My Good Friend Dug Who Digs

2010-11-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

Brickshelf user, MichaelLau, creates several mosaics on one baseplate of characters and monsters from the 8-bit arcade game, "Dig Dug", a favorite of mine (while my dad is a huge Pac-Man fan).

Check out the rest of MichaelLau's cool video game mosaics, here.

"Got any kings? Go fish!"

2010-11-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

Flickr user, Marin Stipkovic creates the King of Diamonds from a 52 card deck. The mosaic is incredible with great parts useage and excecution!

Be sure to check out Marin Stipkovic's flickr stream to see some of his other great creations (especially his scaled up ones).

** Thanks to Katie Walker and Bruce N H for sending me the link to the mosaic. If you have a mosaic you want to see featured, email me at mosaicbricks (at) gmail.com

"It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a...mosaic!!!"

2010-11-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

MOCpages user, Michael Taylor creates the famous Superman symbol in Lego mosaic form.

I personally am not really a superman fan, so you can view his Batman and Spiderman symbols here (Woo! Batman!). You can also view a Lego comic book specific blog here. ComicBricks, run by Bruce N H.

* Edit - Hahahahaha, looks like Bruce beat me to the punch for blogging this...go (mini)figure.

** Thanks to Katie Walker for sending me the link to the mosaic. If you have a mosaic you want to see featured, email me at mosaicbricks (at) gmail.com

"1.21 Gigawatts? 1.21 Gigawatts? Great Scott!"

2010-11-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

November 10th, 2010! Today marks the 25th anniversary of the very first Back to the Future movie. I actually saw the whole trilogy a little earlier in the year (around May), and those were great movies (Although I didn't quite agree with the third movie's theology behind time travel and such).

Exactly a month ago, icgetaway built a mosaic of the famous DeLorean in the movie, going back to the future.

In BTTF 2, they go to the year 2010, and they have hover boards, but yet, We don't right now!! Man!...

** Thanks to Bruce N H for sending me the link to the mosaic. If you have a mosaic you want to see featured, email me at mosaicbricks (at) gmail.com

Interview: Dave Ware (Brickwares)

2010-11-09T20:07:00.000-08:00

Dave Ware, a titan in the mosaic world, has built some awesome mosaics. Over the course of a few days, I was fortunate enough to interview him over the course of a few days about him, his "War of the Worlds" mosaic, and his experience at Brickcon.

Who are you?

"I’m Dave Ware (Brickwares). I’m an AFOL who specializes in LEGO Mosaics. I’m a husband and father. I live in Calgary, Canada, and I work in as a Business/Systems analyst in the Energy industry."

How long have you been into/playing with Lego? Have you ever had a dark age?

"I loved LEGO as a kid, my friend had all of the space sets, and I would play for hours, making mostly the interiors of ships etc. My dark age would be from the usual (13? 14?) until I was about 27, when I saw the Witch’s Windship, and bought it on impulse. Since then, I’ve been collecting sets. I started building mosaics in 2006, after a trip to the local science center with my almost 3 year old son. It was a LEGO Egypt exhibit, and I was fascinated with the map they had built, and wondered if I could make something like that. The answer is “yes”. I started experimenting with colors and designs, and have built around 20 mosaics in the last four years, and have been honored to win the Best Mosaic category at BrickCon in both 2009 and 2010. These days I’m looking at ways of expanding by mosaic building into a side business, trying to find art galleries to hang my pieces in, etc."

How and when did you find the online Lego community?
"I started searching on the web for other mosaics probably in 2006. Early on, I was using MOCpages a lot, but these days I pretty much post my works on my website (brickwares.com), as well as my facebook group and flickr. I’ve made a lot of friends through attending BrickCon the past 2 years, and most of them I stay in touch with through Flickr and facebook. Readingwise, I enjoy Brothers Brick and Eurobricks, and check in daily to see what other people are building. Seriously, the best thing about this hobby is the imagination and creativity that people show, with seemingly no limits."

What themes do you like to build in? (if any?)

"I like building Town stuff, mostly. I’ve been collecting the “Cafe Corner” style sets, and have a nice street made up. I’m trying to learn how to work in that style so that I can make my own buildings, as I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of wonderful style houses in my travels. I also have a soft spot in my heart for the Islanders theme (sub theme of pirates). I can’t explain it, I just really like them."

Ok, now let's move on to your mosaic, "The War of the Worlds."

Where did the inspiration for this mosaic come from?

"Apart from portrait style mosaics, I like to make mosaics of comic book covers, art deco style stuff, and generally iconic images. The important thing to remember about larger scale mosaic building is that you’re going to be working on, and staring at, the image for dozens of hours, so you HAVE to choose subject material that inspires you, something you’re excited about. I had done a classics illustrated comic book cover last year (“To The Stars”,), and found that the comic book covers really have a lot of style and big splashes of color, without being overly intricate. Often I’ll just randomly do Google Image Searches, and also on flickr, to find subjects I think are interesting, and save them to an “idea” folder. I’m a big sci fi fan, as well as a comic book reader, so War of the Worlds was a natural fit. The thing that really grabbed me after I started tinkering with the image was that there were big areas of bold color, which really stand out for me."

The mosaic is absolutely huge! It's one of the biggest I've ever seen. How did you go about designing such a large project?

"It’s big, for sure. I’ve made a couple that were bigger than this, but not many. This past summer for the opening of the first Canadian LEGO brand store, I built a Stampede Poster mosaic that was 7 feet tall by 5 feet wide . And to certain, there are bigger ones out there. The issue you run in to, quickly, is that more baseplates means more brick, and adding a row or column to the mosaic translates to a LOT of brick and time. When I’m trying to sort out how big something needs to be in order to pull the details I need, I always have to keep in mind that adding 1 baseplate in width could translate to an extra 4-5 baseplates worth of brick."

Once it was all designed, how does it stand right side up? Do the bricks connect to baseplates, or do you glue them, or something else?

"The baseplates (X-large) are drilled through, and attached with screws to a piece of 5/8 or ½ inch MDF. I tried plywood in the past, but it bends too easily. There’s a LOT of weight, and it tends to warp the wood quickly. Most people tend to use plate, which would be a lot lighter. I’ve never switched over, I work only in brick. I use everything from 1x1 up to 2x10. I’ve never glued, as that would easily double the time involved, and make the works permanent. That’s fine if it’s for a commission, but with stuff around the house, I generally want to build something else sooner or later, and use the bricks again. Also, it’s LEGO. It won’t fall off or loosen unless lots of people are touching it. For something really public where folks are touching, I’d consider glue."

Were there any other particular challenges that went along with building this mosaic?

"The biggest challenge was one of capacity. I built this for BrickCon 2010, and I wasn’t about to trust it to the airlines, so I knew I’d be driving it, which meant I had to keep the size down to something that would fit in my CR-V. Width-wise I was fine, but it was too tall. I had to remove the top row of16x32 baseplates, and mount those to a separate piece of MDF, and then assemble on site. Recently I installed this piece in a local comic book store, so I had to do it all again. Essentially, there’s a point where big mosaics become all about carpentry!

The other issue I ran into, is that skin color doesn’t translate well in LEGO, so while there is a tan color, it’s not quite right. So for the central gunner in the picture, who was wearing a tank top in the original, I added some camo sleeves to avoid this. Also, there’s a lot of fine detail towards the bottom, so there was some changing and new color choices involved in trying to keep some of the detail."

Next, we're on to Brickcon...

What was your experience at Brickcon 2010 like?

"I had a blast at BrickCon. It’s a great chance to meet other AFOLs, to get inspired about new things, and to see the brilliant creations that people come up with. I made a lot of new friends, and tried out a few new things, like the Speed and Master build challenges. I recommend going to BrickCon, or the other conventions to everyone. Because of the size of the mosaics, and the fragility of them, I end up driving down. It’s a two day trip, but I really enjoyed the whole experience."

Was there a large presence of mosaics there?

"I think there might have been fewer mosaics this year, but the quality was certainly there. There was a beautiful castle mosaic in a very classic style, an Obama “Hope” poster, and a few others."

You also mentioned that you won an award for the War of the World's mosaic which is also your second mosaic award from Brickcon. What was that like? Were you shocked to win again?

I was honored to win the award, it’s always thrilling to be recognized, especially by your peers. While I don’t build the mosaics for BrickCon for awards, it’s certainly a nice pat on the back. Hopefully we can encourage other people to create mosaics for next year.

Do you plan on going to Brickcon next year?

"I’m planning on going. It’s a long time from now till then, but unless something major comes up, I’ll be there."

And lastly...

What does the future hold for Dave Ware?

"Short term, I’m working on displaying my work in local shops and hopefully a gallery. Long term, I’d love to do this for a living. Until then, I’ll keep building things I like, and hopefully others will feel the same way."

Many thanks to Dave Ware for the interview! Even more thanks for your patience! ;-D View all kinds of things about Dave, below:

- Flickr - MOCpages - Website -
- TV Mini-Interview - Facebook Page -

"A tail isn't a tail to them, it's just a little bit extra at the back."

2010-11-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

Flickr user, mandy314, creates the very gloomy, and sad donkey from Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore. What I really like about the mosaic, is that there is a great use of color going on here.

Be sure to stop my mandy's flickr stream, because she has a lot more, awesome mosaics on it. Find it: here.

Update: Got a mosaic you want to see featured?

2010-11-04T18:35:00.001-07:00

Email me!

Hey guys, just wanted to say that if you have an awesome mosaic that you saw and would like to see it blogged, or someone you want to be interviewed, email me! I've taken a couple suggestions in the past, and I'm just publicly telling people that they can email their suggestions to:

mosaicbricks(at*)gmail.com
*at put in so I don't get spammed and such, just remove it and add in the "@" symbol when sending.

I'm not saying I'm running out of content, I'm just giving people the opportunity. I'll check it around every other day, so yeah...

Anyway, I've got another interview on the horizon so look for that soon!

So remember, email me, thanks!

~Casey~

Creations for Charity 2010

2010-11-02T22:35:00.000-07:00

A really cool charity is back for a second run, Creations for Charity. A charity organization run by Nannan Z. for underprivileged children. Here's the announcement:

"Creations for Charity 2010 is here! This is an annual fundraiser where builders donate MOCs to sell and raise money to buy Lego for underprivileged children. This is probably the only occasion where buyers can own the original Lego creations by diverse and talented builders (while funding a good cause too!). Last year we sold 30 creations ranging from custom minifigures to spaceships. We donated almost $3,000 worth of Lego to Toys for Tots! Starting now, you can contact me for MOC contributions through December 1st. Please check out the full details here. We’re planning to set a new record this year and I hope to see many of you take part in the success of Creations for Charity 2010!"

One such thing donated was a mosaic of Harry Potter by Jordan Schwartz.

It is still up for grabs and it's for a great cause. Get it while you can! Here's a bunch of links for you to check out:

Creations for Charity Eurobricks Annoucnement
Nannan's Creations for Charity Flickr Announcement
Creations for Charity Brothers Brick Announcement
Creations for Charity Flickr Group

'Tis the Season to visit Dentist!

2010-10-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

Put on your Halloween costume and head out to collect succulent amounts of dentist drawing delights! It's that time of year for carving pumpkins and watching the Charlie Brown Halloween special! A time of Lego mosaics!

I've collected five great Halloween mosaics from across the web and assembled them for a very special MosaicBricks Halloween post.

First up, we have a double feature from eilonwy77 (Katie Walker). Two cheese slope mosaics, one a neat little spider on top, and a cool jack-o-lantern on the bottom.

Second, we have a scary face with a ton of different colors by DJ Baggadonuts.

Third, we have another mosaic by DJ Baggadonuts that will forever haunt me. ;-D

Fourth, we have a very creepy mosaic from the "Phantom Zone from the Superman I/Superman II films". Regardless, it's an awesome zombie looking mosaic built by Reasonably Clever Chris (Doyle)

Lastly we have our fifth, and final mosaic of the post. Frankenstein's monster, forever haunted by fire, is built beautifully in a cool technique in which you built SNOT vertically and horizontally at the same time. It looks awesome! Built by Legohaulic.

Happy Halloween! Have fun everyone! Try and beat my record of 30 lbs. worth of candy (2005)! :-)

~Casey~

Interview: Albert (au_riverhorse)

2010-10-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

Au_Riverhorse is a somewhat little known AFOL with some very awesome mosaics! He's been previously blogged here on MB, for his cool green army man mosaic. For my fourth interview I was able to talk to him about himself, his mosaics, and his experience at Brickworld 2010.

Who are you?

"Hi, I'm Albert. Yep. Oh, and Canadian, Greater Toronto Area. The interesting parts of the 'who am I' question are really in my other answers."

How long have you been in to/playing with Lego? Have you ever had a dark age?

"I have happy memories of shuffling DUPLO boats and trains, my dad assembling an airport set with me around my third birthday, so I guess it's been a while! The blocks were put aside during high school, roughly corresponding to the end of the Royal Knights line, the introduction of Starcraft, and a move. They found the light of day for a university project, but it wasn't until Battlestar Galactica (and after university) that I tried my hand at making something of my own again. So, thank you, BSG."

How and when did you find the online Lego community?

"I had heard about Brickshelf in 2007, but wasn't aware of the existence of LEGO conventions until 2008, when I found out about BrickCon through The Brothers Brick. I browsed their links, went to the convention (air miles!), found Flickr, and have been easing my way in since."

What themes do you like to build in? (if any?)

"I got back into LEGO thinking that I would do a lot of space (because of BSG) or castle (because those were my favourite sets), but it hasn't worked out that way. It looks like I build to purpose, to express an idea, or to try one out. So, you've got a couple of contest entries, an amateurish response to a bathroom renovation headache, and tinkering with CubeDudes. Lately, I'm comfortably bouncing between mosaics and miniland figures, but if I mix the two categories then I would get sculptures..."

Now, let's move on to mosaics...

Why do you enjoy making mosaics? Has it been something from your childhood, or something that has recently developed?

"Mosaics are relatively new to me. I tried one of Taylor Swift in mid-2009, and after struggling to get a computer-generated template it was really relaxing to just let my mind coast a little and pop in all of the pieces. It being my first mosaic (and Taylor Swift), I also took the time to align all the 'LEGO' etchings on the top of the bricks!

A lack of pieces and the confusion about making templates kept me from exploring this further, but driving out to Brickworld 2010 meant that I could attend two mosaic workshops, and fill my car up with little plastic bricks. After that, it was off to the races!"

Do you have a favorite mosaic you've made (so far)?

"Besides Taylor Swift? I wouldn't say so, although a few are still up in my LEGO room. What I enjoy is that, so far, there's been something new to discover or try out from doing each mosaic - insights into borders, cramming detail into small spaces, freehand adjustments to initial templates, use of colour..."

In one such mosaic of yours (my favorite), "Bandit", the mosaic is built sideways, which had me scratching my head for quite a while. What's the story behind this mosaic?

"Well, this one started from Brickworld, packing Pick-A-Brick cups with pink 1x1 bricks without a clue as to why. After coming back home, I had about one thousand pink bricks, an itch to make a mosaic, and still no ideas. Mixing 'pink' and 'picture' led to my photogenic friend, who graciously allowed me to use a picture of her playing with a scarf. I also had grays and green, so it was an easy decision to go for grayscale with pink accents."

Was it (The Bandit Mosaic) particularly hard to make being sideways?

"There were a number of challenges - the first was cleaning up the original image, then getting a good template. I had tried tilting the image while working on it, but wound up tilting my head too and getting neck cramps. Repeatedly rotating the image kept blurring and moving the colour edges, so eventually I had to restart from earlier saved files and get something that was usable enough to be adjusted freehand. The diamond portrait managed to capture the face, scarf, and hands while keeping the pink and background brick count down, so I guess it worked out!"

On the topic of Brickworld 2010, despite it being three months ago, what was your experience at the convention like?

"Wow, I have to think back a little, now. I remember that it was a huge operation. After registering, it took me half a day of seminars and browsing the main room before realizing that there were more rooms to see! I chose to take in many of the seminars, including the mosaic classes, and the movie theater. Those were probably the more relaxing activities, since focusing on a single topic kept me from getting overwhelmed with everything on display!"

Were there a large presence of mosaics there, or any you found particularly interesting?

"Yeah, mosaics were well represented there, mostly off in one room. Of note: it was fun seeing "The Portrait of Dorian Bley" in person, and the transparent pieces used for "The Great Wave of Kanagawa" gave it a whole other dimension."

Did you attend or help out with any of the mosaic workshops?

"Actually, since Brickworld is around Father's Day, our family made it a big road trip, and I got my parents signed up for the basic mosaic class. That worked out great, since they got to make something to take back as a souvenir. I picked up their notes and attended the advanced class, where we explored ways of jamming the 1x1 stud area with more detail and color. These two classes gave me the kick I needed to get started with my own stuff, so I'm glad I went!"

Do you plan on going again next year?

"That's the plan, for sure. And since Brickworld 2011 will feature 'the world of light and sound', I've been kicking around ideas on how to incorporate that into a mosaic..."

What does the future hold for au_riverhorse?

"Well, on the mosaics skills side I'd like to explore different techniques - studs up, mixing studs up/out, transparent pieces, layers and relief, color schemes, dithering vs. blocks of color...I'd also like to do more freehand pieces and try to develop a more intuitive feel for how things fit, as inspired by the amazing play (I know it's 'work' and it's work, but it looks so fun!) of Katie Walker. Beyond techniques, I've just finished making a wedding mosaic with a few friends, and I think I like that sort of thing, doing pieces for people. Who knows where that could lead?"

A big thanks to Albert for doing the interview! To check out Albert's creations, view his Flickr stream here

The Coolest MMORPG on the Web!

2010-10-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

Since early 2010 (somewhere around March), I had the privilege of being a beta-tester for LEGO Universe. Not one of those people who's the very first person to try out the game, but I was still a tester very early on. I must say, watching the game develop from then, to now, has been a lot of fun. Seeing what I thought the game was going to be, to seeing it now is unreal. The minifigs for this game are insane! I thought you could had cool armor, but not awesome armor! Anyway, as the summer wrapped up and I got busy, I no longer could play the beta. I just didn't have any time, and then in late September, the beta finally closed. I'm not a full blown player, but I've seen some pretty sweet screenshots.

Anyway, in LEGOLAND California (I've been there once!), now has a brand new "Club House" that features LEGO Universe. Inside the club house, there's an awesome mosaic for the four main characters that represent the four different factions. Sentinel, Adventure, Assembly, and Paradox.

Check out more about the Clubhouse in Legoland here: LINK. And you can watch the brand new trailer for Lego Universe here: LINK

Van Gogh's Starry Night

2010-10-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

Ed Hall or "Buxley" (unconfirmed, but I'm pretty sure it's him), recreated (back in 2001) Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night painting in Lego mosaic form. It's entirely built with 1x1s.

You can read more on this awesome mosaic: here

"Who lives under a pineapple under the sea?"

2010-10-21T21:26:00.001-07:00

Flickr user, lights (and his wife), built the famous sea-sponge that swept the deep blue sea. (err...bikini bottom...err...world...or USA...)

"Absorbent and yellow and porous is he!"

"The White Lotus Tile is much more than just a game of Pai Sho!"

2010-10-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

Flickr user, Crimson Wolf, creates a very intricate and unique mosaic of a white lotus flower breaking through the pavement (or at least that's what I thought it was. ;-D )

(If anyone knows what TV show the quote for this post's title is from, leave a comment saying what TV show it's from, and I'll give you a virtual cookie!)
- Casey

"We are looking for Blue's clues! We are looking for Blue's clues!"

2010-10-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

Flickr user, Brickfrenzy, creates the logo from the extremely popular kids' show, Blue's Clues.

"Maybe we should play Blue's Clues to figure out what she wants to do today!" - Steve

MosaicBricks' New Header!

2010-10-17T07:19:00.001-07:00

After recently interviewing her, Katie Walker built two awesome mosaics that said "mosaic bricks". One of them is now the brand new header for the blog!

Thanks Katie! *Links to her stuff above*

"Go Fish!"

2010-10-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

Lugnet user, Robert Enloe, creates a great joker card. The size of the mosaic is huge compared to the table it's sitting on. I also think that it's SNOT (Studs not on top), as well.

Very cool, and possibly a little creepy??? Check out the gallery: here

Interview: Katie Walker (eilonwy77)

2010-10-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

Katie Walker is a FFOL pioneering the niche of patterns, designs, and stained glass cheese slope windows, developing new and creative designs. Over the course of a few days, I was able to talk with her about herself, her building, and her experience at Brickcon 2010.

Who are you?

"My name is Katie Walker, and I’m 32 years old. I’m married and am currently staying home to deal with the shenanigans of my 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son."

How long have you been in to/playing with Lego?, and have you ever had a dark age?

"I remember playing with DUPLO when I was young. I loved to connect a bunch of the train cars together, and then build houses on top of them, so that my DUPLO people could live entirely on a train. Sometime around my 12th birthday I decided that I really loved Legos (yes! We called them “Legos”! Heresy!) and told everyone to get me Castle and Pirate sets for my birthday and Christmas presents. I spent many a happy afternoon during my early teens building away in my room.

I did have a dark age which essentially started when I left for college. I did bring my LEGO collection with me, and a few times dumped it out on my dorm floor so my friends and I could fiddle around with it. After college, my friends and I re-enacted the song “Space Oddity” with LEGO, including dangling rocket ships over the edge of the loft where my bedroom was. But I think you could say those were just dim points of light in a dark age that lasted till we bought the first DUPLO bricks for my daughter."

How and when did you find the online Lego community?

"In 2008 my husband and I bought our daughter a 33-piece DUPLO set. It became quickly apparent that I couldn’t build anything cool with just 33 pieces. I did some investigating and discovered e-bay, and then BrickLink. It wasn’t long before we’d built up a fairly impressive DUPLO collection. At some point during my attempts to find cheap bricks I became exposed to some of the other LEGO activity on the web. I discovered the existence of LEGO blogs in 2009 and suddenly became aware of how cool LEGO creations could be. I also realized that lots of people posted their pictures on flickr, and I had an account there already. So I started posting our DUPLO pictures, and shortly thereafter created the LEGO DUPLO flickr group.

In the fall of 2009 I got out my “little Legos” (as we call them) to show my daughter. I fiddled with them a bit then, but mostly just came to the sad realization that my “immense” collection was actually teeny-tiny by AFOL standards. It wasn’t till 2010 that I finally bought some more of the smaller bricks and got around to really using them. I feel like that really marked my entrance into the online LEGO community. People started leaving positive comments on my photos, which gave me the confidence to start participating in groups and forums."

What themes do you like to build in?

"The majority of my building thus far has just been about me trying to teach myself how the bricks go together. During this process I’ve come to realize that I’m rather obsessed with patterns and geometric designs. Occasionally I pause from those investigations and make a more official MOC. Those have all fallen in the Castle theme, partly because I really like castles, but also because there are lots of opportunities to display the patterns I discover in a fancy palace."

Now, lets talk about your designs and patterns...

When did the "obsession" with patterns and geometric designs start? Have you always enjoyed them since you were young (or younger), or is this a new thing?

"I’ve been interested in geometric designs off and on since the elementary school art class where I learned that you could make an apparent curve out of straight lines. Over the years I would draw geometric designs, such as the ones seen here. I didn’t really set out to do geometric designs in LEGO, but once I started doing them I found them very compelling."

Did making the designs and patterns come easy to you? Or was there a there a learning curve you had to overcome? Or...has it always been a uphill battle the whole time?

"Making designs and patterns is very easy for me. Often I will be trying to make something non-geometric, but a pattern just somehow comes out instead. It feels a lot like plugging numbers into a formula and having it spit out results. My struggles have been in making something that isn’t obsessively symmetrical; photography has been another challenge for me."

Recently, you've made a "switch" to doing stained glass windows that are made out "cheese slope" pieces, maybe a little more "mosaic" side of your building. What brought these about?

"I was trying to design an intricate floor for a MOC. While working on that design, I came up with the need to somehow fill an empty square which had sides 2.4 studs long. The solution to the problem came through using “cheese slope cubes”, which is just two cheese slopes placed together to form a cube shape. I had to add in some 1x1 plates to make it work, which then sparked some ideas for other cheese slope cube patterns. Then once I had done a few, it seemed like a great idea to try to do them in transparent colors and make them into windows. After a little bit of experimenting, more ornate designs started to develop.

Were these especially challenging, as well?

"Yes! The cheese slopes do not attach to each other; they are all held together by compression and friction. They are rather small to work with, and I often have to use a toothpick to try to finesse them into the right spot. They have a tendency to tip over, and it is a true pain to try to frame them securely enough to stand completed patterns up as windows. Another problem is that cheese slopes are shaped like triangles with one of their points cut off, so a lot of patterns end up with disfiguring gaps where the missing points ought to be. I truly get pains in my neck from working with them! But the results were so lovely that I wanted to keep at it. Besides, challenges can be lots of fun. I do get the urge to scream a little, though, when I have an unprotected window that dislodges and “shatters” to pieces. I didn’t have enough transparent bricks to hold the upper windows of the atrium in place, and one of them did come apart when I was moving it around trying to photograph it. That night I had all sorts of bad dreams about my stained glass windows falling apart and raining down cheese slopes on me."

(Link to the completed atrium: LINK | Link to the back side: LINK )

Do you have a favorite (or especially rewarding) cheese slope stain glass window, or pattern/design of yours?

"I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I haven’t been able to pick out a favorite. What I really like is the sense of discovery, of figuring out how different elements can fit together. I think that’s part of what makes LEGO fun for lots of people: you get the chance to put the bricks together in different ways and see what happens. There are literally an infinite amount of possibilities. At times I feel a bit like a scientist, trying out a certain idea and seeing what happens. Sometimes a particular pattern is especially difficult to figure out, and then I tell myself “I will make this happen!” Then I do feel a bit more rewarded when I finally get it to work."

Over the course of the summer and up 'til now, you've been gaining a lot more notoriety, and I'd say becoming a pioneer in patterns and designs. You've been blogged here, and posted there. What has that experience been like?

"Honestly, the best word that I can think of to describe it is “bizarre”. After the first time I was blogged at The Brothers Brick, I got a ton of views and comments on my flickr account. It was hard to believe that that many people were interested in something I had made. Then I got excited, thinking to myself, “Wow, maybe I’m not that bad at this.” That brief moment of optimism was quickly followed by getting really nervous. I felt like I could never build anything else that would live up to that again. Anything else I made was bound to be a disappointment.

But then after a few days things settled down and my fingers wanted to start moving bricks round into crazy patterns again. (It does seem like my fingers are the parts of me that figure things out; I think my brain is only an assistant in the process.) I still like to say that my reservoir of ideas is going to run dry in the near future; how many patterns can there possibly be to discover? But thus far my fingers always manage to figure out something else, and I remember that there are an infinite number of possibilities. Then the cycle tends to start over: I make something, and if it turns out well, I get excited, quickly followed by becoming a bit anxious about it. The public attention, to whatever extent I get it, is both exciting and nerve-wracking."

What was your experience at Brickcon like?

"I went to BrickCon with my mother for the day on Saturday. I was a bit frazzled when I got there, because Snoqualmie Pass had been closed for rock blasting, and we had to sit on the freeway for quite awhile. I thought I’d be too late to register, but thankfully they let me in. I took the atrium with the fountain and stained glass windows, and then threw in a spider mosaic I had been trying to design for a friend to use. I was so nervous and shaky when I got there that I could hardly set up my MOCs. The stained glass windows got most of the attention, but the spider was the MOC that won an award, for best small mosaic. That was exciting.

Overall, the experience was a lot of fun. I was a nervous wreck much of the time, because I tend to be shy and have a hard time talking to new people. But the LEGO creations there were really fantastic, and once I started talking to people, I found that they were all really nice. Now I keep thinking about the different things I saw and did at BrickCon, and look forward to being able to attend again in the future, hopefully for more than just one day."

Was there a large presence of mosaics there?

"There were some. Someone mentioned to me that there weren’t as many as in past years, but the large ones that were there caught the eye. Truthfully, I didn’t see many small mosaics. I think that the favored technique of making mosaics using 1x1 bricks works best on a larger scale, so most mosaics tend to be larger. I’ve been working on using cheese slopes to create more angles and details in a mosaic on a smaller scale, but I have only seen a few other people do this. (Building a Battle Bug is a much more popular endeavor!) My goal is to be able to incorporate small mosaics into larger MOCs as window, wall, or floor decorations."

What does the future hold for Katie Walker?

"The future will mostly hold more of the same. I don’t have any big projects planned, being short of both bricks, time, and space. I’ll probably just keep experimenting and getting new ideas, and then occasionally will try to incorporate them into a more official MOC, though I imagine they’ll remain on a fairly small scale for quite awhile. I hope to visit BrickCon for a day next week. I’d like to go for longer, but can’t really be away from my kids for that long yet."

NOTE: Many thanks to Katie Walker for the interview and the long delay of its posting. Thank you for your patience. ;-) For her links look below:

Flickr - MOCpages

DK Attempts to break Guinness World Record of Largest Lego Mosaic

2010-10-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

Special Announcement:

Saturday 23rd, Sunday 24th and Monday 25th October. 10am - 5pm Saturday & Sunday and 10am, LEGO & Dorling Kindersley have got together to promote the launch of the LEGO Star Wars Brickmaster book. It will be a free event at Shoreditch Town Hall, London and an attempt to break the Guinness World Record of the largest LEGO mosaic ever assembled. Pictured above, the dimensions of the mosaic will be 16 meters x 7 meters comprised of 1,500 baseplates and 384,000 LEGO bricks. You can attend this free event by registering on the DK site. Registered attendees will also be included in a drawing for a 4 tickets to LEGOLand Windsor. You can read all the details and register at the DK website.

Sounds pretty exciting! I wish I could be there! From what I know though, that will break the record of the largest mosaic which is currently in the Unofficial Lego Museum in Ohio, USA.

Sources:
- Brickset
- FBTB (From Bricks to Bothans)

Update: I'm not Dead!!

2010-10-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know, I'm still alive. Apologies for not getting the blog running in stuff. School is intense this year. Stinkin' freshman year...

Anyway, I was just saying that I think about this everyday and stuff.

I have a lot of things planned for the blog, though! Coverage of Brickcon, three interviews, and an announcement about a world record breaker!

Stay Tuned!
Casey

"I pledge allegiance, to the mouse..."

2010-09-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

Flickr user, my_disney_pics, creates a beautiful, patriotic mosaic of one of the world's most famous mice saluting the American flag.

"And to the Magic Kingdom, for which it stands, one nation, under Walt Disney..."

"Rutt Row!"

2010-09-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

Brickshelf user, Y-Bros-P, creates a cultural phenomenon of the one and only detective dog, Scooby Doo. Check out the creation here.

Check out the rest of Y-Bros-P's mosaics here. He (or she) has a lot of great ones.

Update: Beginning of School and Stuff...

2010-09-20T20:55:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Here's another update. I'm three weeks into school now so Lego and most 'fun' activities are now hitting the backburner for me. Who knew being a high schooler could be so hard...

Anyway, I'm just saying that the irregular posting might happen every now and then more so. I'm going to try and keep it at having only three days between posts at the most, although I'm going to try and post more often than that, of course.

I have two more interviews, very exciting ones, on the horizon for mosaicbricks which has got to be one of the most fun parts about this blog, so stay tuned for those. They'll be up in roughly a week as I finish and format them (although there will be a space between the two so they're not sandwiched together).

Thanks for reading!
Casey

"Neeiigghhh! Neeigghhh!"

2010-09-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

Mocpages user, Viorel Birsan, creates a majestic, black and white mosaic of a stallion galloping in the wind. The great part of the mosaic is that the image conveyed in such a small area, but still looks really good.

View the creation here.