This subject keeps popping up now and then. This I think is the largest I seen yet but I can't remember.

My company is looking to do attention grabbing advertising, so I've just ordered 560 mini-cubes for $250 and will be making some 28x20 cube pictures (the site was showing 17x13). This is a 84x60 pixel canvas with six colors, so hopefully we can get some attention. $250 is cheap by advertising standards. Now we just have to come up with an interesting picture (our logo is fairly boring, from a picture-in-cubes standpoint).

It is sad to note that in one purchase the company will more than double my puzzle count ;(

I'll be sure to post what I create.

Dave

P.S. Anyone need 560 key chains with no cube attached? We'll probably put them up on ebay...

The mini-cubes arrived and boy, 560 cubes is a lot. That's over 30 thousand stickers.

NONE OF WHICH ARE WHITE.


Yes, these cubes have pink (PINK!) instead of white. Try dithering a picture without white in the palette. They also have light and dark orange, not really red. This is not good news for my project.

I'm hoping Cubesmith can come to my rescue and do some special batches of white stickers all in a sheet (I'll resticker 20 cubes at a time, 5x4), but it will require the special backing film to do it right.

Needless to say I'm disappointed, but there is still hope...

Dave

What's the deal with the "Rubik 9-11"? It sort of reminds me of that Indian 9/11 sand castle.

dude, that artwork is crazy. FINALLY! a form of art that i appreciate! lol, i really want to see how your art turns out, it's bound to be interesting.

Eh, didn't do much for me.

Hana Bizek has a whole book about Rubik's Cube Design

WOW, that must cost a bundle of money to make though... But I guess it's worth it, it does look really cool

Dave, What's the colour scheme on those minis anyways?

Cool. I was interested in trying 3d projects as well, but hadn't given it too much thought. I'll have to try something.
Check out the PinkNotWhite.jpg I attached a few posts above.

Dave

I saw it, but it doens't distiguish what is opposite of what.

I see.

Blue opposite Dark Orange, Green opposite Pink, Yellow opposite Gold

Dave

Thanks. I just have never seen a scheme like that before. It's quite odd.

Well, good luck on your Advertising adventure. Keep us posted.

And make LOTS of pictures

OK, how does one resticker 480 cubes in a reasonable amount of time?
This is what I am attempting, and what I've come up with.

(Why 480 you ask? Because given that I've got pink, I might as well use it. So I'm restickering in groups of 80 cubes, and replacing a different color each group. This way I have seven groups of 80 cubes, each lacking a different one of the seven total colors. So 80 cubes I get to leave alone as the "doesn't have white" batch. I'm sure some picture will require more 7 colors in a nine sticker face, but I'll just have to substitute a close color if that comes up.)

1.) Resticker in bulk. I chose to do groups of 3x3 cubes. I initially wanted to do 5x4, but that is a bit unmanagable, and not the best use of sticker roll area.


2.) Build an alignment frame to fit around this block fairly tightly. Bevel one set of edges to help inserting the cubes.


3.) Get a set of 3x3 white keychain cube stickers (9x9 stickers). If you can't get in touch with Cubesmith (and I couldn't, and even if I did I'm not sure he has time for custom patterns), you may be lucky enough to know of a cube-sticker-cutting-demigod to test out a few things. For those of you who don't already know, Adam Zamora is awesome. Test before generating a ton of stickers, and please don't take Adam's favor as a sign he wants to go into the bulk sticker producing business.


4.) Apply application tape and remove stickers from their backing. I used painter's "delicate surface" tape, which seems to be just the right adhesion.


5.) Place the application tape and stickers face up, and place the alignment frame around the stickers (bevel side up). The application tape tends to curl, so I had to hold it down with handy objects.



6.) Insert cubes and press.


7.) The pictures show taking the frame off first, but I've since found it is much easier to remove the appilcation tape with the frame still on.



8.) Remove the frame and presto! Pink stickers become white!


9.) In my case, repeat 50 times

Dave

yeah yeah i know i am the best. but you dont have to call me god, that name is reserved for Tony Fisher God of Gods.

glad you liked them

I believe it was "demi-god". You know, perhaps the "Hercules of sticker cutting".

Dave

*bows down* Wow Adam, i knew you were a master, but i had no idea .....

560 mini cubes packaged in groups of 12, and each individually wrapped within that group of 12:

If you want to remove 560 keychains, get some help:

Me removing packaging and keychains:
(reeeech: Mustard Plug Rocks!)

A big block-o-cubes:

Note that all the bagged cubes behind the block had at least one sticker so bad it would interfere with the movement. I've since fixed them all up, but it took some time with a pocket knife peeling them up and re-applying them. The failure rate was about 12%.

A big box-o-cubes:

560 keychains. I'll post when they go up on ebay

The 31x18 cube frame (93x54 pixel picture space):


Adam's big batch of 5000 white stickers should arrive tomorrow, and the re-stickering will get under way.

Dave

how sturdy/cheap are those mini 3x3x3s?

also. is that you wearing the michigan ska shirt?

i moved to the east bay from michigan.

I'm going to Eastern Michigan next year for college.

hehe nice post dave

ha, a convention of cubers... that almost looks fun, i'm always by myself when i cube, not counting those on MSN

They pretty much suck. But most keychain cubes pretty much suck, so they aren't that much worse. The stickering is pretty bad though, which has been a problem when I sticker over them with white, the mis-aligned base stickers often show more than I want, and it is a pain to fix.

Yep that is me, and Mustard Plug is one of my favorite bands.

Dave

Those are just my co-workers, none of whom solve the cube at this point. I'm teaching one of the guys.

Dave

Dare i asked how you managed to get your co workers to agree to help you on such a time consuming and meaningless (to them) task? I would have a hard time convincing cubers to participate in something like that, let alone non cubers...

It is interesting, as a novelty. A small amount of time is not too much to ask if you actually get along with your co-workers, particularly if it is for a work related project. Most are interested to see how it turns out.

Dave

ooooh. i get along with people, and i doubt they would want to help... i'm like a nerd among nerds, totally nerd to the maxxxxx.

lol

Things are moving along with the project. Here's a picture of the partiallly completed frame:

The restickering went fairly well, here are some picts of the final process:

Stickers on the application tape

Restickered 3x3 set of cubes in the frame

Taking off the application tape was a bit delicate as it often took some of the stickers with it.

Once restickered, not everything was aligned very well, so there were quite a few to fix up:

They weren't too hard to peel up with my pocket knife:

And easy to re-apply with the knife as well:

It fixed up fairly nice:

Another method I used was to just cut the exposed under sticker if it was off and the white one was fairly centered:

Here are the 560 cubes, in piles corresponding to which color I restickered:


Just when I thought I was done, I realized 31x18 isn't nearly so good as 32x18, so we ordered more. I had wanted to order just another 18, but my friend wound up bidding on 100, and won. OK. So now I have 660 to work with

Dave

I'm looking forward to the follow-up of this interesting story, well documented with many pictures!

does this mean that you need more stickers? let me know.

How did you guess?

Yeah, another 5 sets would be great if it isn't too much trouble. I'll put some money in your paypal account.

Dave

Could you put some money in mine aswell?

Thanks

Sorry, that offer is for reserved for sticker-cutting-demi-gods only

Dave

So what is the design going to be? Or did I miss the post?

yeah, throughout all of this resticking madness (oh, but what fun it looks) you never did really say what you are going to be making a picture of...


and my friend bough 24 mini cubes on ebay, they are nice to have in school during those boring classes...

First off I'll do our company logo, because they are putting up all the money for these cubes After that I suppose I'll do fun pictures that may bring business to the site. Stephen Colbert is a good bet I'll probably do a picture of a cube as well, just for fun. Here are a few .gif files showing what it might look like:

Dave

good luck, LOL. there is no way i could ever put together something like that, due to a general lack of patience and non artisticness

Might I make some other design suggestions?


Erno Rubik?
http://cubeland.free.fr/infos/ernorubik2.jpg


Mona Lisa?
http://www.religionfacts.com/da_vinci_c ... sa-300.jpg


Girl with a Pearl Earring?
http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/Jan-Ve ... 77355.jpeg

or a giant hippie smiley face thing! i don't have any pictures, but i giant smiley face would be funny to see

All of these are pretty hard because they are dark and require some detail, but here is what they would look like:

Dave

ha ha, you should definately do the mona lisa one! that would be awesome!

If you do Stephen Colbert, I guarantee you'll get a spot on the show, or at least a reference.

oh, so he's a TV host? DO IT! cubers need to be put on TV without looking stupid... something this large scale would be interesting.

An update:
It is hard to find time at work for me to build the frame so I've stalled on that a bit. It turns out people don't like the sound of hammering while they try to work...

But I had to get started, so my desk is the temporary frame. Here is our logo that I am trying to represent. Note that it is fairly boring, and the colors don't map well on to the colors of the mini cubes I have. But it should look OK from a distance when completed:

Here is the same picture dithered into the cube palette with a grid superimposed to demark the cube divisions:

Here is my work in progress. Sorry for the poor photo, it is from my cell phone and so the color and resolution are terrible. But better than nothing. I'll get a good picture with a real camera when it is closer to completion.


Dave

Good luck Dave!

I recently got 1 dozen of the same kind of mini cubes.

Have fun twisting all of those.



BTW, are you going to do your own design later?

The quality of the cubes, now that I have played with over 100 to make the existing parst of the image, is terrible. Some are acceptable, but others have horrible defects. I've already broken one center piece just turning it to get one face solved. Others have worrying creaks and snaps that lead me to believe they will break soon down the line. But at about $.43 a cube, what can you expect?

Yeah, I plan on my own pictures after doing the company logo. Probaby Stephen Colbert first, then perhaps the Girl With A Pear Earring. That one looks like it will turn out nice with these cubes.

Dave

sooooo why does your cube depiction of the logo have pink in it, while your company logo does not?

I've gone back and forth over whether or not the dithering algorithm of my paint program is giving me what I want. Here's a version with a palette without the pink:

Some people think it looks better, some not. I think the paint program is using the value (light value, that is) of the pink to get a better approximation of the true value, even though it adds some red to the color. From a distance, it blends in and you get a somewhat smoother look, although the color isn't quite as good.

I think with solid colors I'm doomed, it is only on more complex pictures that the dithering actually does a better job.

Dave