Back to 2012 I was asked by my RomaBrick friends to design the first giant community mosaic for the event “ItLUG Latina 2012”, the largest south and central Italy exhibit of works made of LEGO®. That marked the beginning of a consolidated ritual which consists in creating a new mosaic each year: for the themes of this series I chose to depict some of the most iconic monuments in Rome. The mosaic is intended to be a free activity for visitors, who then receive the necessary equipment: a baseplate, a bag containing the exact number of parts and finally the scheme of the tile assigned. Generally it takes 4~5 hours to build a 187 tile mosaic with 15 seats.
Colosseum @ ItLUG Latina 2012
8 colours | 44352 bricks | 77 baseplates 48x48 | 11 columns x 7 rows | 420 cm x 270 cm
8 colours | 44352 bricks | 77 baseplates 48x48 | 11 columns x 7 rows | 420 cm x 270 cm
Right from the start, for generating the Lego mosaic I chose to not use any of the softwares available on the web because they did not enable an accurate workflow. Therefore I preferred to work with a photo editing software, at the beginning The Gimp, at present Photoshop. Once the image is resampled at the needed dimension - where one pixel corresponds to one base element (usually 2x2 brick) - it is necessary to adapt the colours in the photo to the LEGO® palette with its limited availability in colours. To better measure out the colours, I use a zonal sampling: depending on the area and on the result I want to achieve, I adopt on it just a selection of the overall palette chosen.
Behind the scene of the latest mosaic in Photoshop
The first mosaic only had eight colours, whereas the last one, which was displayed on april 30th 2017, had 17 colours.
To generate the tiles schemes I chose the excellent software of Mario Pascucci that also permits to customize the instructions layout.
To generate the tiles schemes I chose the excellent software of Mario Pascucci that also permits to customize the instructions layout.
Except for logo mosaics, I always used photographs as reference image, most of them shot by me. For the last work I made an exception: I appointed Gabriele Zannotti to create a specially-made render with my artistic supervision, the idea was to place Benny as main character in front of one of Rome’s monuments and I visualized it in front of the LEGO® Trevi’s fountain.
Trevi's fountain @ ItLUG Latina 2013
9 colours | 43520 bricks | 170 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 10 rows | 435 cm x 258 cm
9 colours | 43520 bricks | 170 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 10 rows | 435 cm x 258 cm
Spanish steps @ ItLUG Latina 2014
13 colours | 43520 bricks | 170 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 10 rows | 435 cm x 258 cm
13 colours | 43520 bricks | 170 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 10 rows | 435 cm x 258 cm
Edit of the Colosseum @ CioccoBricks 2014
15 colours | 43520 bricks | 170 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 10 rows | 435 cm x 258 cm
15 colours | 43520 bricks | 170 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 10 rows | 435 cm x 258 cm
St. Peter's Basilica @ ItLUG Latina 2015
11 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
11 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
Quirinal Palace @ ItLUG Latina 2016
16 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
16 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
The colourful Quintana carousel @ ItLUG Ascoli 2016
16 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
16 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
Benny in front of Trevi's fountain @ ItLUG Latina 2017
17 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
17 colours | 47872 bricks | 177 baseplates 32x32 | 17 columns x 11 rows | 435 cm x 282 cm
