Catwoman Mosaic

Name of Model: Catwoman

Created by: Henry Lim

Found at: http://www.henrylim.org/Catwoman.html

Details: You may remember Henry Lim (we've featured him before), one of the first few LEGO hobbyists to build sculptures on the scale of what the LEGO company uses for promotional events and LEGOLAND attractions. This time, we take a look at his mosaic of Catwoman (as portrayed in the movie Batman Returns). This mosaic was made in greyscale, using the shades of grey available in bulk from LEGO during the heyday of official mosaic kits in the late 1990's / early 2000's. In a departure from the instructions (actually a computer-generated image - this mosaic line was based on being able to upload a photo and purchase a "custom" kit with everything you needed to build a low-resolution, studs out, greyscale mosaic of that image) offered in the official kit, this was built in a studs-up manner. I'm sure any experienced builder can imagine what can go wrong here - we're talking about an image made almost exclusively out of stacks of 1x1 plates. Needless to say, some structural adjustments had to be made. The final version of the mosaic is actually two studs thick, and the front layer is tied into the back layer with larger parts wherever possible. Since larger elements in one of the colors (very light grey) are rare (Bricklink only knows of 24 parts in the color, and additional parts are likely only available to LEGO's own professionals), it can be particularly difficult to tie this together sturdily. In spite of all that effort, this mosaic fell down and fell apart - once. Now it's been re-built with glue to ensure that it stays together.