You guys know I’ve always loved a good Mosaic. I write about them on the blog a lot. When LEGO Art Mosaics came out, I was thinking it was really about time. So imagine my surprise when I saw that you can finally make your own LEGO Mosaic online at Shop@Home!

I immediately checked it out.

About LEGO Mosaic Maker

If you’ve never heard about the LEGO Mosaic Maker, you’re probably not alone. The mosaic maker is a product where you upload an image and then you are presented with a mosaic image you can build out of LEGO.

LEGO released their in-person version of the LEGO Mosaic Maker several years ago in a few stores. As a matter of fact, here in the states, there are only two stores: one at the New York store and the other at Disneyland Resort.

So having them release the LEGO Mosaic Maker as a Shop@Home product is a big deal!

So What Is the Online Process Like?

Well… it’s interesting.

Starting the process at this page, LEGO presents you with an agreement that reads as follows:

You must first agree to the LEGO.com terms and conditions before uploading an image to create your LEGO® Mosaic Portrait. No trademarks or copyright material may be used. Only images that you have the rights to use may be submitted.

*Image cannot exceed 15 MB, supported file types- .jpg and png

The following images are NOT acceptable:
X Weapons or references to violence
X Drugs or Alcohol
X Nudity
X Celebrity images or any images you don’t have the rights to use
X Offensive Content
X Brand Logos
X Trademark or Copyright Material

Once you agree, LEGO then presents you with examples of what makes a good mosaic image and what makes a bad mosaic image.

After your quick tutorial, you get the opportunity to upload the image you want to use. Then the website gets busy working on building your LEGO Mosaic.

Attempt #1

For my first attempt, I decide to use a product image for the LEGO BrickHeadz Mr. & Mrs. Claus (40274). The image seems to meet the requirements for what would make a good LEGO Mosaic… plus, it’s Christmas-themed, so there’s that.

There’s one more screen that discusses how to make adjustments to your image. You can drag it around the canvas, or use a slider to change the size of the image. Finally, you’re presented with the end result:

I played around with the images for a while, finally settling on the mosaic above. If you’re like me, there’s a few things you’ll notice:

The distinct lack of color

As you can see, the mosaic builder limits you to 4 colors: black, white, gray and yellow. And yes, I did notice the mosaic samples they shared on their product page, but I guess I was hoping we wouldn’t be limited to just that.

I get where they’re going with this, but you have to want this type of look from your mosaic. I certainly don’t.

The lack of detail

If you look at the yellow and black image above, you can see there isn’t much detail when it tries to render the full image. Once I saw that, I decided to focus on Mr. Claus and create, what I hoped would be, a more detailed mosaic.

And even with focusing in on his face, I was still missing a lot of detail.

Attempt #2

Not completely happy with my first attempt, I decided I’d try a different image:

And the results were similar:

Not enough detail when trying to mosaic the full image or just a section of it. Although, I will admit this version of Santa looks much better than the other one above.

My Thoughts on the LEGO Mosaic Maker

I do feel that the LEGO Mosaic Maker is a fun concept. But I guess I have high expectations for mosaics and the desire of seeing a ton of colors make a larger, more cohesive image.

If my two pain points above don’t bother you, then this is definitely the LEGO product for you. It makes the process of creating a mosaic from a personal image super easy, to the point where you don’t even have to do any searching for LEGO pieces to create your final product.

But for me, while the Santa in attempt #2 does look better than the one in my first attempt, I don’t know that I would choose to have the LEGO Mosaic Maker create an image for me and then purchase the parts through them. I definitely prefer creating a full color image. I’ll deal with the pain of collecting the pieces for the finished look.

Now that you know my thoughts, what are yours?