How I was inspired by former street artist "Invader" to realize a mosaic with one of my favorite video game character, the Bubble Bobble litle green dinosaur!
Some capitals such as New York, London or paris, are covered with a beautiful and quite hyper resistant street art project called "Invasion", made by... "Invader". This consit in reproducing pixel-drawings (also named as "sprites" in the video game industry) with mosaic and stick it on the walls, in the streets. invader has a simple technique : he is using a glue that is more solid and resistant than the tiles itself, so any attempt to steal these pieces of street art remain unsuccessful. Quite clever!
Knowing nothing about how to do tiles mosaic and where to by the stuff, I started to do some searchs on google image to find an appropriate drawing to convert into mosaic. With a bit of luck I knew I could find one that will exactly fit my wills : not too small, and not to large. A 25x25 tiles mosaic was my absolute limit as it's already involving 625 tiles.
I finally failed in google images, and before starting to convert a bigger image into a smaller one, I did some extra effort to find an original sprite with the size I wanted (pixel design is so well done that I couldn't expect to get the same quality by myself). I finally found the exact 18x18 pixels image I wanted, in a backup of a nintendo GameBoy Advance cartrige. I had to extract the content and one particular design on a splash screen fitted my needs perfectly. I can't reproduce the drawing here as it's strongly under copyright.
Some capitals such as New York, London or paris, are covered with a beautiful and quite hyper resistant street art project called "Invasion", made by... "Invader". This consit in reproducing pixel-drawings (also named as "sprites" in the video game industry) with mosaic and stick it on the walls, in the streets. invader has a simple technique : he is using a glue that is more solid and resistant than the tiles itself, so any attempt to steal these pieces of street art remain unsuccessful. Quite clever!
Knowing nothing about how to do tiles mosaic and where to by the stuff, I started to do some searchs on google image to find an appropriate drawing to convert into mosaic. With a bit of luck I knew I could find one that will exactly fit my wills : not too small, and not to large. A 25x25 tiles mosaic was my absolute limit as it's already involving 625 tiles.
I finally failed in google images, and before starting to convert a bigger image into a smaller one, I did some extra effort to find an original sprite with the size I wanted (pixel design is so well done that I couldn't expect to get the same quality by myself). I finally found the exact 18x18 pixels image I wanted, in a backup of a nintendo GameBoy Advance cartrige. I had to extract the content and one particular design on a splash screen fitted my needs perfectly. I can't reproduce the drawing here as it's strongly under copyright.
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Signing UpStep 1: Sketching the mosaic - Tiles count, color selection
I then reproduced the drawing on my notebook with stabilo pens, adapting the colors to the simple colors possible, as I didn't know at this time the choice of color i will have for the tiles. I ended up with 5 different colors, and one color for the background. I had another version with two different greens but this one was working pretty well so I went for the simplicity. I then decided to ad a 1 tile frame around the drawing and started to count the number of tiles for each color.
For my 18x18 mosaic I needed : 20 orange tiles, 26 yellow tiles, 16 black tiles, 63 green tiles and 36 white tiles. I also needed 162 tiles for the background, for a grand total of 324 tiles.
I then started to look for the material. I did researchs, I found mainly the Briare's tiles in every shop, which are very expensive ($180+ for the tiles), so after a few weeks i put the project in standby. One year later, I finally found the appropriate materials at a decent price.
For my 18x18 mosaic I needed : 20 orange tiles, 26 yellow tiles, 16 black tiles, 63 green tiles and 36 white tiles. I also needed 162 tiles for the background, for a grand total of 324 tiles.
I then started to look for the material. I did researchs, I found mainly the Briare's tiles in every shop, which are very expensive ($180+ for the tiles), so after a few weeks i put the project in standby. One year later, I finally found the appropriate materials at a decent price.
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Just at add a few extra snippets of information:...
The tiles can be bought in sheets of 25x25 in most tiling stores. Topps Tiles in the UK have them, as do many of the 'tile warehouse' places. If you're planning to buy a lot, ALWAYS negotiate a discount. If you buy by the sheet you're likely to get a full 225 tiles for the same money as those 36, but you will be limited by the available colours. The sheets I bought were in 5 shades of grey from black to white, so they're ideal for greyscale images. For full-colour images you'll need to buy a mix of sheets.
The tiles are glass. They can be cut if necessary using a 'score and snap' style hand tile cutter - I probably had to cut around 500 individual tiles to fit the various corners of the room, and yes, it took forever, and a lot of blood was shed.
For a bathroom you need a waterproof adhesive that specifically says it's suitable for mosaic tiles. The same goes for the grout. Don't be tempted to use a generic 'fix and grout' product, especially if the tiles area is likely to get wet.
Use a special adhesive spreader designed for mosaic tiles - these have a closer spacing and apply a thinner layer of adhesive. Be very careful not to leave any adhesive 'squished out' between tiles - it tends to dry a darker colour than the grout and looks bad.
Oh, one final piece of advice - don't try to tile a whole room this way, unless you really have a lot of time to spare, or you're stupid like me.
A lot of people have done similar things though. There's an example here and another here.
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