Desmond Howard Lego - The Pose

Submitted by Bakers and Best on

For the third year in a row I spent the weeks leading up to football season buried in maize and blue Lego bricks.  This year I created a Lego version of Desmond Howard's Heisman pose.  Last year I posted about my two previous projects, a Michigan football and helmet. 

Two years ago I made a Lego mosaic for my sister as a wedding gift, and had wanted to do a Michigan related project for a while.

It is about 4,700 pieces, is 3.5 feet tall and 2.5 feet wide. I spent about 30 hours designing it over several weeks (gif here of the partial design progress) and then another 20 or so hours to build. 

Complete Imgur album available here, I'll also embed some below.  While not as technically challenging as the helmet and football, I think I'm most proud of this one.  It now occupies space next to my other prized Michigan possession, a signed Zoltan Mesko jersey.  

Edit: Oops double embed below. 

MGoBoard
Football
Desmond Howard
Lego
Heisman Trophy
The Pose

Bakers and Best

September 6th, 2017 at 2:40 PM ^

I'm more than happy to share the design, such as it is. Can't promise how easy to follow/intuitive it might be for someone else, though given the detail you're working with this should be accessible. 

 
 

Joined: 05/04/2015

MGoPoints: 617

Bakers and Best

September 6th, 2017 at 9:29 AM ^

Yeah, the cost is mainly what limits me to one of these projects a year.  Including shipping costs I think this was around $250.  The helmet and football also cost a similar amount, but with maybe 1/3 of the pieces.  I've gotten better at designing without some of the pieces that are particularly expensive. 

Joined: 05/04/2015

MGoPoints: 617

The Maizer

September 6th, 2017 at 9:30 AM ^

This is very cool and I wish it was mine, but before I saw the picture, I thought this was going to be a 3.5 foot tall 3D Desmond doing the pose. That would be ambitious, but awesome. Next year?

Joined: 08/07/2015

MGoPoints: 10228

Bakers and Best

September 6th, 2017 at 9:37 AM ^

That is a skill set I'm still trying to build. The football and helmet I made the past few years were good learning experiences, but still simpler symmetrical and regular curves.  I've been working with some 3D modeling software to try and learn more about how to build irregular 3D shapes, I think something like that will be my next project. 

Joined: 05/04/2015

MGoPoints: 617

Bakers and Best

September 6th, 2017 at 10:18 AM ^

There are a few different ways, I designed this one mostly in photoshop. 
 
There is some software out there to help, I've used LD Digital Mosaic Creator in the past as a starting point.  It lets you define dimensions, brick orientation (do you want studs up or layered), and a few other things.  You can then select/deselect which colors you'd want to use.  If you have a simpler photo, or are just using fewer colors, you can usually get a great result without any extra work.
 
 
One issue with the mosaic programs is you can't bulk select certain areas to be a specific color.  So for example in this project I knew I wanted the jersey to be mostly dark blue lego, but the program kept coding it as black.
 
The alternative is to create a grid in photoshop where each cell is the size of a 1x1 lego plate. You can then overlay the picture on it, and set filters so that only specific colors appear.  Essentially you are doing the same thing as in the mosaic program, but you can now change and color individual cells if you want.

The first picture in this gif of the design process is the best I could get out of the mosaic program.  From there I ported everything to photoshop and did it cell by cell. 
 
However now you are stuck with a grid of 1x1 plates, which would be terrible to build.  So then I'll go back and convert sections of the plates into larger plate or brick sizes (for example 4 plates wide X 3 plates tall is a 1x4 brick).  

Joined: 05/04/2015

MGoPoints: 617

03 Blue 07

September 6th, 2017 at 10:40 AM ^

I was never big into Legos as a kid, but...man. That is so awesome. You should sell the design layout so others can emulate it. That would look so cool on my wall (or a Woodson one). 

Joined: 07/01/2008

MGoPoints: 3427

bpurbancic

September 6th, 2017 at 11:02 AM ^

As you can guess from my points, I don't post much. I clicked on this just to thank you for excluding an "s" from the end of Lego. But now that I see your work, I would be remiss not to comment on it. Very impressive!!

Joined: 09/14/2009

MGoPoints: 14

CLord

September 6th, 2017 at 12:58 PM ^

Love it.  Don't bang me up too much for saying this (I was an Art minor at Michigan focusing on portraits) but can we do a little more to detail the face?  Saw it and only thought was Rorschach from Watchmen.

Joined: 09/11/2011

MGoPoints: -6344

Bakers and Best

September 6th, 2017 at 1:18 PM ^

That is definitely that part I struggled with the most. I tried so many different variations with the eyes and never was fully satisfied with how it turned out.  You can't see his left eye in the original photo, and none of the ways I tried with a visible eyeball/lid seemed to look any better than keeping most of the right eye in shadow.  

If you're standing 8-10  feet away it looks great, but unsurprisingly becomes an issue the closer you get. 

Joined: 05/04/2015

MGoPoints: 617