View larger image on my Flickr page.
Those that know me know I am a sucker for multitudes. Many of anything intrigues me more than single things ever could. So it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to find out that I took 2925 dice and formed them into a bitmap image of the Madonna. Thats the Madonna, and not just plain ol’ Madonna.
For those interested in the process, it is quite simple.
Step 1: Get drunk on martinis and buy a shit-load of dice from Amazon.
Step 2: Wait one week. Arrival!
Step 3: Think of an image you don’t mind spending several hours immortalizing.
Step 4: Size the image and make it 6-color grey scale.
Step 5: Select each of the colors, from darkest to brightest, and recolor the pixels to something more contrasty (I used ROY-G-BIV for mine).
Step 6: Depending on the size of the image, you will want to make a system for dealing with small sections at a time. I chose to do 5×5 squares.
Step 7: Make sure you keep track of which parts of the image you have done already because trying to go back in and find where you left off can be tricky.
Step 8: Photograph and post results on Flickr and blog so you can show dozens of strangers just how little you have to do on a Saturday night.
Step 9: Rest.
Wow man. What a clever idea. If it makes you feel better, I just WASTE my Saturdays watching movies.
Nice one. Really like the result.
it makes for a great decor piece.
how long it took for you to complete it? it’s way cooler than a regular puzzle.
Bloody hell mate, good job!
Good job!!
This is amazing. Wow. You are a genious.
I really want to do this.
Wow.
That’s really neat
I wonder what kind of Saturday projects are in those other drawers
[...] interesting things, when he’s not making the coolest visualizer (now part of iTunes) he’s making a giant Madonna out of dice… via BBG. He writes… Those that know me know I am a sucker for multitudes. Many of anything [...]
[...] things, when he’s not making the coolest visualizer (now part of iTunes) he’s making a giant Madonna out of dice… via BBG. He writes… Those that know me know I am a sucker for multitudes. Many of [...]
[...] (now part of iTunes) he’s making a giant Madonna out of dice… via BBG. He writes… Those that know [...]
[...] Madonna made from dice [...]
Tinkerer.
I know you’ll hate me for this Robert – but I just couldn’t stop myself: here’s yourself rendered in virtual dice by a little Peacock contraption I built: http://a.viary.com/artists/mario/images/robert_hodgin_diced
[...] Flight404 [via Boing Boing Gadgets] [...]
Haha, Mario, thats awesome. Why would I hate you for that? I love your tinkerings. You too, Jer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyfkVooQnmo
It’s step 8 that sold it to me!
[...] I decided to take another step in the short evolution of Robert’s fun dice-table images. Mario Klingemann raised the bar with his Aviary filter that transforms images into dice-images. [...]
Hey Robert,
Jumping on the bandwagon (with Mario), I decided to create an interactive dice mirror for your browser.
http://things.sansumbrella.com/2008/10/mcrozinhodgin-dice-mirror/
Sweet! Took me a while to get it to work… my cam settings were on some 1080 60hz DV instead of the default iSight. Well done.
Hiya Robert,
I caught your presentation at FITC Toronto this year (”oh shit, i think i just bought 10000 dice”). Glad to see you finally did something with all those dice! It turned out great. I suggest a martini glass for the next version!
Hey,
Check out the “Customers Who Bought Items Like This” section on the Amazon page for the dice (here: http://www.amazon.com/16mm-Clear-Translucent-Red-Dice/dp/B000GXO3AO/ )
Its a bunch of Processing/ Maker books.
Either you (Robert) are the ONLY one to buy these, and it defaulted to the other Amazon products you bought, or you have inspired some fellow processing tinkerers to buy thousands of dice as well.
I am looking for some idea and stumble upon your posting
decide to wish you Thanks. Eugene
I thought about doing this myself after some stuff from one of the originators of this technique. I think he wrote a python script using PIL which just output the dice values in a excel sheet. I guess I just never got drunk enough to order the dice.
[...] Table Made of Dice? Published October 23, 2008 Uncategorized This is how you do [...]
8 kinds of genius. Completely jealous.
[...] all manner of distractions » Blog Archive » 2925 [...]
Cuadro hecho con 2925 dados…
Esta persona ha construido un cuadro de una virgen con 2925 cuadros y además te explica como hacerlo….
My comment from reddit’s link to this site:
Seems like he could have gotten a better image if he took the orientation of the dice faces into account. Since only half the faces on of a 6 sided die have enough symmetry to look the same regardless of orientation {1,5,4} the remaining faces {2,3,6} have 2 different orientations which make for interesting possibilities using a rough approximation of subpixel rendering techniques common in lcd panels. I suspect the picture would raster out to something a bit closer using these “9″ different pixels and accounting for the dot density along shared edges and corners dependent on orientation of the 2 or 4 “pixels” that bound the intersection.
Just some thoughts, spurred by the diagonal lines formed in the areas to the left and right of the face.
This is definitely a neat project though.
Step 10: ???
Step 11: Profit
Just to tidy that up for you
Awesome image