Evolution of a Cheese Slope Mosaic

The Mayos came up with the idea of having a "Flash MOC".  It's like a Flash Mob, but with LEGO models instead.  A bunch of models would show up all at once, all following a similar theme.  The theme was of a fantasy world filled with polar bear warriors.  You can see the results of the group collaboration, including the story line, in the Urtican Blitz'ard group on flickr.   

I made a model of a bear divining the future with bones. 

 

It's no secret that my true love is geometric mosaics, and I put them in MOCs mostly just to show them off in a more interesting way (and to show that they could be useful for other builders, too, I suppose).

Here is the mosaic in a different picture all by itself:

I felt inspired to write up a step-by-step description of how I came up with this on flickr, and I would like to expand on it here just a little:

I started with the idea of using curved walls, straight walls, and hinges to make different shapes that could be filled with cheese slopes.  Here are some of the shapes I tried first:

The first mosaic I made with one of these shapes was this flower petal study:

I tried it again, trying to blend the colors from white to black a bit more:
 

 

   

After that, I moved on to trying out another of those original shapes.  I first tried the skinny petals all the way around to make a flower, and tried connecting it around the outside, too. However, the outside framing was too tight, and the whole frame came up on the outsides like a bowl.

 

 

So I took the outside frame off, and just concentrated on filling the center and the petals with cheeses and tiles. I probably found four ways to do the center (only one is pictured).  Each petal was filled in a different way, to see which would turn out the best.   Some turned out better than others. An ideal filling would not only have the space completely covered, but would also have some symmetry or interesting geometric shaping in the patterns of the cheese slopes, for making interesting color designs with.

I picked the designs I thought would work the best, and tried them out.  Then I tried again to make an outer frame all the way around the petals.  I found a way that you can see on the right side of the below picture, but I wanted to make it a little cooler looking.  So I added little nubs that stuck out like a snowflake.  But that new attempt was too tight, and after I got to about 9 of them done, the plates and hinges that make up the center circle couldn't handle the tension and one of them popped apart. The inner circle wasn't all connected together anymore, though you can't really tell from the photo:

I think at that point I started to take the nubs off, because they couldn't handle the tension.  And then this happened:

The frame for the innermost circle burst apart at two places. Very clearly my frame was not working.  So I went back to the simpler and less interesting frame, so that the tension on the inside of the mosaic remained at tolerable levels. And in the meantime, I had a good excuse to redo the middle circle to a colored design that I liked better.

(Sorry it's not the best photograph of the mosaic -- I didn't think
to take a better one, since I wasn't done with the whole MOC yet.)

 

You'll notice that the outside edges don't actually connect, but leave gaps.  It's so tight that the cheese slopes stay put anyway. Filling in the outermost shapes was very hard by the end. I had to put the pieces into each shape in a specific order, so that some of the pieces would help to hold the shape more open so that I could cram in the rest of the pieces. The last ones were very difficult.

Then I started working with lights. My kids have little lamps with red and blue lightbulbs, and we have 4 blacklights (which make the trans-medium blue cheese slopes glow).

For the final MOC I did a lot of work on the walls, putting double layers of black and double layers of trans for the windows, so that gaps wouldn't show through. It was also tricky to do the walls because the corners of the design were too tight, so I couldn't connect the sections at the bottom, but interlaced them. I layered tiles at the junctions, kind of like interlacing your fingers. By the time I got to the top there was enough give that I could connect all the wall panels together. That really helped with the stability.

For the final lighting, I had two black lights underneath, one on each side right next to the MOC, a blue light in the back, a reddish light sort of shining in the vicinity, a light on in the nearby closet, and then waved a flashlight on the bear's head to try to fill it in with light. It was hard to hold the camera still for the long exposure while holding the flashlight.  It took forever to get something passable, and I'm not sure it's as good as I was hoping for, but it works, I guess:

I took some photos with more red in them, which I liked, but it didn't feel as cold as a mystical polar bear place should feel.

(I realize there is a slight inconsistency with this story versus the one I told on flickr.  I thought more about how I did the outside frame and made some changes to the order of events.  Don't hold it against me in a court of law, please!)

It was fun to work on a project with friends, and it's always great to have a reason to make another cheesy mosaic.  ;-D

Mosaics at the Legoland Discovery Center!

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!

Octopuses? Octopi? Octopodes?

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.