Arcane à la Cheese: Dan O’Connor’s Friction-Fueled Mosaic

League of Legends is such a popular game that even non-gamers are familiar with it. That’s probably because of the Netflix hit Arcane. If you are not familiar with it and you are looking for something new to watch, then Arcane might be the show for you. It has solid animation with often vibrant colors and a captivating storyline. The same goes for this vibrant MOC built by Dan O’Connor.

Forced Perspective

It features wonderful colors mixed together in an often challenging pattern—a MOC that tells the story of the hero of the underworld! Dan was so kind to tell us a bit about how this MOC came together.

Cheese Slopes and Friction: A Chat with Dan O’Connor

Marco: What inspired you to make an arcane MOC? Are you a fan of the game or the Netflix series?

Dan: Aside from building LEGO, I also spend a lot of my free time gaming. Surprisingly, I have never played League of Legends, but I am a big fan of the Netflix series. When the show first came out, I was hooked and binge-watched the first three episodes… and then rewatched them again the next day. Since then, I’d been wanting to build something from the series.

original shot from the series

Marco: What made you choose this specific shot from the series?

Dan: This scene was part of the Season 2 trailer, and it instantly caught my attention. I was looking to brick build something prominently featuring Jinx since she is the most iconic and recognizable character of the show, and I really liked how it showed her in a heroic light. I also thought that the mural would work well as a brick-built mosaic.

mosaic

Marco: What made you want to build a mosaic? Maybe because it’s something different compared to most of your other work?

Dan: When Season 2 of Arcane came out in November, I was in the middle of working on another build featuring several cheese slope mosaics as part of the wall and floor designs. When I saw the mural scene again in the show, I added it to a list of future build ideas and put it on the back burner for a while. I like using mosaics as background detail and intricate designs as part of builds, but this was the first time I decided to make one so large and complex and have it be the main focus.

puzzling

Marco: How did you get all the angles right, because it’s quite the puzzle with some difficult angles! Was it trial and error or did you use a digital program?

Dan: This project was daunting to start, especially when I looked at the whole picture. The very first thing I started with was Jinx’s braid, since it was the only straight line, and then built up Jinx from there. I then built the city and smoke below, and then started locking Jinx into the frame. I was also considering just leaving the build as Jinx standing atop the city, because I was struggling to figure out how to incorporate Vander in the background.

I’m very much a trial-and-error style builder, so I’m always just testing and replacing stuff till I find what works. I’m also not the best at remembering LEGO math and complex techniques, so I frequently referenced some articles from Katie Walker on making cheese slope mosaics.

Marco: How long does a MOC like this take to build, because it’s not simple stacking… And does that experience make the process of building more fun?

Dan: It took me about a month and a half to build this, building on and off. Although the final results are rewarding, this style of building with cheese slopes is very much NOT an enjoyable building experience. While building, the cheese slopes and other pieces are just freestanding on a frame of bricks and they tend to shift or fall over. I use a pair of tweezers at times to place and line up the bricks, and they frequently get knocked out of place.

Marco: With MOCs like these, there is often a “show-side.” Is everything connected at the back? Or are there a lot of pieces just snugged in there and not attached to one another?

Dan: At the end, everything is held in place only by friction and stress, not secured to one another. It is strong enough to turn upside down and have everything stay in place (in theory), although I’m not too keen to test it rigorously. The back is smooth so that it can lie flat. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan out the back as well as I would have liked, and I had to change the directions the bricks were facing in the back at several points throughout the build, which made the frame more complex and a bit less stable than I wanted.

backside

Marco: You’ve mentioned on Flickr that this is your biggest mosaic yet. Any ideas yet for another one?

Dan: I’m going to take a break from cheese slope mosaics for a bit, but I’ve started laying out a new build featuring a brick-built wall mosaic of a phoenix.

Marco: Thank you so much for your time. And I look forward to seeing that Phoenix come to fruition!

Have you ever used intricate cheese slope mosaics in your builds? Let us know in the comments below.

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