Escher Paintings with Lego Bricks

sciuro writes "a couple of guys (A Lipton & D Shiu) have built three of M C Escher's 3D-distorting paintings using Lego bricks (and some carefully chosen camera angles). Balcony, Belvedere & Ascending and Descending are all down at the bottom of the page. Nice!" Some other pretty pieces as well.

Comments

White Stripes Video

[Mtn_Dewd]

If anyone has seen the White Stripes video where the entire thing is done in lego-like animation, that is what this reminded me of. The filters to create this animation are quite unique.

Re:White Stripes Video

[nullgel]

Perhaps he meant (and I believe this to be the case) that most, if not all, of the video was shot normally with the musicians/actors/sets. They then might have taken the raw video through some filters adjusting the colors to LEGO colors and perhaps "pixelating" the video. They could then use these filtered frames as a reference to build the LEGOs.

Only a theory, but this is how I would attempt to do it anyway.

Re:White Stripes Video

[protohiro1]

I think this video was done manually, most animators aren't programmers (but some are, I know). Animators are patient people. Also I think they probably doubled frames, so there are "only" 12 frames to come up with each second. they probably projected the video, then lined the bricks up with the projection. (a pretty common technique for "roto mation") You should check out some of the classic animations. There is one that features an animated cab calloway, done using this technique.

Intelligence Aside...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

I wish I had that kind of time...

DAMN cool, though!

Two thumbs up!

Mona Lego

[kaosrain]

This article got me to wondering what other art works had been made with Legos. What I found isn't quite the same, but I still enjoy it nonetheless. You can find a complete recreation of Mona Lisa made with Legos by Eric Harshbarger at this site.

carefully chosen camera angles, eh?

[e40]

The same perspectives used in the original works, I might add.

Re:carefully chosen camera angles, eh?

[jedie]

I think the visual deceit only works from those specific angles (because of shadows and whatnot that fool the eye and brain of the beholder).
I do actually wonder though what the sculptures would look like from different angles: it would be interesting to see what's *really* there, and not just what our brain thinks there is.

I made a 3D model of belvedere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the 3D models I made of Belvedere, it has Side and back pictures as well, if you wanted to know how it was done. I had to program it at the University of utah, in a language for their alpha_1 modeling. Took me two weeks to learn the language and make it.

Yeah, but did you see the links?

[milkmandan9]

This one is flat-out amazing. Some lady has managed to build scale models of all sorts of construction equipment--and functional, too!

Mind-blowing design work, that's for sure.

Animated Lego

[TwistedSpring]

Fans of motivated lego may be interested in this link to a winning demo for the Assembly '01 "wild demo" competition. Stop frame photography + lego blocks + talent = cute little movie (38mb mpg).

Penrose Staircase in VRML

[saha]

Here is a link to our lab's website featuring the Penrose staircase.
You'll need a VRML 97 compliant plug-in in your browser to view the model.

Perose Staircase in VRML

Michael Gondry

[sh0rtie]

Michael Gondry speaking about his video for white stripes in an interview with RES ....

"I really like the basic-ness of the music - one voice, one guitar, and one drum. I like this concept, and I thought it was very close to the primary color of the Lego blocks." On the video's creation: "We shot a very basic video of the band [in London], we edited it and then we had a program that pixelized the video, roughly the size of the Lego blocks and then we printed each frame [25 frames per second] on paper. Then we had an animation team building up Lego blocks to match each frame. Then we reshot each of those frames on a film camera. We didn't have enough Legos to do more than five frames at a time, so after five frames were shot [the Legos] were demolished to build the next five frames."
The imagery is kinetic and jubilant. Audio levels thump, people swim, a walk sign says "go!", and the candy cane-colored White Stripes jam out.
To acquire this job, Gondry didn't write a treatment. According to Meg, "One day he came to a restaurant and he had Jack's head in Lego." Jack: "You couldn't argue with that. When someone brings a Lego sculpture of your head to dinner and says this is what the video's going to be, you pretty much say, 'That's it, go ahead.' " (credit)
"I've seen 'Star Wars' build-ups and huge model displays, but this is the most intense creation that I've ever seen done in Lego, and definitely the most creative and original," said Roger Cameron, a senior designer at Lego. "It definitely has that retro feel, because they used just the basic colors and pieces from 30 years ago. They didn't even use green or orange." (credit)
The video has won many, mostly technical, awards, including an MVPA Award, and 3 MTV Video Music Awards. Jack and Meg accepted the MTV Breakthrough Video award on Michel's behalf.
"Girl" is available in America on a companion DVD issued with new copies of White Blood Cells. You can also find a Quicktime copy on #2 of a 2-CD single set released by Third Man/XL Recordings (UK).
Excellent copies of this video are at sputnik7.com. 'boards mag has a MOV here.

his other works can be found here [try not to kill it]