Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity!

After being gone for a little while, it's been nice getting back into the Lego community after being engulfed in school. Upon returning and looking around the Lego landscape, I stumbled upon two little micro-mosaics that I found very interesting. Check 'em out:

First we have Botanical Gardens by Flickr user, gid617. Small, but effective.

And secondly we have Vortex by Flickr user, eiffelben. I found this one particularly captivating by it's the perfect size of fitting into the vignette space (as it's 8x8). It's just so... mesmerizing.

Anywho, two that I thought were neat.

More to come!

~Casey

Castle-y Goodness

Check out the mosaics all over this gorgeous room by Etzel87.  I especially love that center square. 

Sanctuary Overview, by Etzel87

Another gorgeous interior is this Room at Toberg by Benjamin Jakobson (bentoft):

Room at Toberg, by Benjamin Jakobson

The Room at Toberg was an entry for the Colossal Castle Contest at Classic-Castle.com.  You can find the categories and rules here. 

What a Rush!

After badgering Josh to post it on his blog, I'd be remiss to not post this here, too.  (I was just meeting deadlines before I got around to it; I wanted to have time to post it properly.)  Isaac Mazer (Ricecracker.) has made one of the most exciting mosaics I have ever seen. 



Moving Pictures, by Isaac Mazer

When I saw this the first time, I honestly thought it was a 3-D model.  The sense of perspective is so amazing I couldn't believe that it was flat.  But -- it's pretty flat.  Simon tells me it's 40x40 and 3 bricks tall.  Isaac has used all sorts of different (and crazy) techniques to get this image into such a small space.  If you go to the image on flickr, right click on it, and then hit "all sizes", you can zoom up really close to see all the magic.  Some obvious things are the arches and the round pieces for columns.  But if you look closely, there is a really great use of gaps as shadows, gaps which help to make the image seem more three-dimensional than it actually is.  And the occasional studs that are showing (in the gaps) help to give the picture more detail.  I also love the clever details, such as the door handles behind windows in the center doors.

At my presentation on cheese slope mosaics at BrickCon I had a section about eliminating gaps in your mosaics.  Then we looked at Paul's mosaic from Atlantis, and talked about how the gaps actually seemed like another color, and added to the whole design.  In the case of Isaac's mosaic, that is definitely the case.

This mosaic was part of ToroLUG's show at the Hard Rock Cafe, just like Isaac's Dark Side of the Moon album cover.

Interview with Sean and Steph Mayo

This is an interview with Sean and Steph Mayo that I did for HispaBrick Magazine.  I know it's not about mosaics, but hopefully readers of this blog will find it interesting anyway. 

 

BrickCon 2012

The following is a preliminary version of the article about BrickCon that I'm doing for HispaBrick Magazine.

Batman!

Batman seems to be everywhere, these days.  First, here are a few Batman mosaics.  Josh Wedin and Dave Ware made very similar ones; one main difference is that Josh's mosaic has the studs pointing to the right, and Dave's has them pointing up (towards the head).  The changing orientation makes slight differences in how the mosaic turned out.  I notice differences especially in the lettering, and also in the face.

Batman Mosaic, by Josh Wedin



Batman Mosaic by Dave Ware

Batman was also hanging out around BrickCon this year, too.  Here's half a Batman mosaic, hanging out next to the Super Friends Hall of Justice, made by VicLUG's Ryan Willougby:

Hall of Justice, by Ryan Willougby

Over in the Art/Mosaic/Sculpture section, Bruce Lowell won an award for this 3-D Batman mosaic.  The colors and shapes make for quite the brooding ambience. 

The Silent Guardian, by Bruce Lowell

One of the highlights at BrickCon this year was this amazing Bat Cave, by Wayne Hussey and Carlyle Livingston.  It's not really a mosaic (though I see some yellow lines we could pretend are mosaics, if anyone wanted to be picky about it), but -- wow!

Bat Cave, by Carlyle Livingston and Wayne Hussey

And lastly, here is a photo of the new upcoming LEGO set, Arkham Asylum.  Once again, not very mosaicky, but look!  Stained glass windows!  And gargoyles too!  (Though, sadly, not the peeing kind.)

Arkham Asylum -- upcoming set

Halloween Bricks

Hey folks. Katie has been kindly reminding me that I haven't posted anything here in a while, and so this time, I made sure that MosaicBricks gets the scoop.

I was recently asked to make a mosaic for the Calgary Lego Kids Club meeting, held at the Lego Store. Since it was the weekend before Halloween, it was pretty simple to choose a subject, and when I went looking for Monster Fighter images, I found one I liked a lot. The Werewolf's claws didn't come out as well as I had hoped, but on the whole, it turned out ok. It's fun, bright, and has lots of colors in it!

I've been in non-stop build mode lately, with a lot of commissioned pieces, so once I'm done a few of those, I'll post pics up here too.

Dave (brickwares)