✨Your Smarticles✨: How We Made Kobe Bryant on our Lego Wall

So much time and SO many busy hands came together to make this Kobe Bryant Lego Mural a reality.

and this was NO small task (if you look closely you can see that we ran out of Legos!)

Here's How We Did It

Step #1: Converting the Image to Bricks

The project started by locating an image of Kobe and then uploading it to the Photobricks software that is FREE, but from what I can tell, it is only downloadable on the Mac at this time. Legoizer is a possible substitute, but I have not completed a project using it.

In Photobricks, you upload your image and experiment with the color palette until you've achieved your desired result AND have selected the colors of Legos that you have the most of in your collection. I limited my colors to 6 colors and still found that I had to order (and reorder) legos to complete our final mural.

Depending on the colors you choose, you can get a great variety of results

Once you've gotten a satisfactory image, you export the file (as large as possible) as a png file.

Step #2: Printing and Enlarging the Image

My go to site for enlarging images is Rasterbator. Once you have your .png file, you can upload it to Rasterbator for enlarging. I chose the A4 Paper type and a 2 x 3 landscape layout for a final formatted mural of approximately 60 x 60 cm. The Rasterbator site will convert your image into a PDF for you to print and assemble. The large poster makes a great guide while building the wall.

Step #3: Build It!

It took us about 3 weeks to build the mural. We counted and crossed off (or dotted) the squares as we went along. Dryden Art gives some great tips on breaking apart the mural by squares and providing each student with a Lego builder's plate to complete and then piecing the whole thing together. We just worked straight on our Lego wall.

As we built, this tool was INVALUABLE! I kept a student on standby at all times to be my remover. The standby students were so cute and would rush in to the rescue with their tool to pull off any errant pieces.