63. Collection Mosaic Skull

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Photo Mosaic (made with the help of awesome free program MacOSaiX). Since I've been getting so many great submissions of skulls from people's personal collections I thought I'd take a moment (day) to catalog my own.

Here's the process if you're interested:

I spent the day photographing every skull in my house (and on myself) except for those on books and CDs or ones I've created specifically for this project and ended up with 55 unique images (though some were of groups of similar skulls), which I then uploaded to my computer and cropped to squares. Since that wasn't quite enough for a decent pixelated image, I made 3 additional copies of each image (and 180 white squares for the background so I ended up with 400 total squares). I then took a new photo of one of my skulls to use as a source image and cropped it out of the background. After converting the source image to black and white I made several passes using the mosaic software (set at a 20x20 pixel grid) adjusting the size and contrast of the main image until it came up with something that looked pretty decent, and finally I hand adjusted individual pixels to bring out the details.

Here's a list of what I photographed:

• 1 kitchen magnet
• 1 painting from Istanbul
• 1 clear plastic skull lamp I made
• 1 branch and bark articulated skeleton
• 2 hand-painted wooden standing skeletons
• 1 ceramic skull centerpiece from Mexico
• 1 ceramic statuette of a monkey holding a skull
• 1 plastic life-size skull model
• 1 vintage ceramic candle holder
• 1 vintage Visible Woman box
• 1 vintage puzzle package
• 6 small plastic skulls from a capsule (gashapon) machine in Japan
• 1 pirate flag
• 1 wooden skeleton model from Paris
• 1 vintage medical diagram poster
• 1 letterpress/silkscreened greeting card
• 1 small shoulder bag from Brighton Beach, UK
• 1 vintage tattoo flash art poster
• 2 boxes of pirate bandages
• 1 pair of underwear
• 1 sweater
• 8 T-shirts
• 1 short-sleeve buttoned shirt
• 1 sugar skull from Mexico
• 1 real dog skull (that I bought at an antique store)
  
• 1 real possum skull (that I salvaged from a possum that died in my back yard)
• 1 pair of roller skates
• 1 tie
• 2 belt buckles
• 1 pair of custom sneakers
• 1 badge/pin/button
• 1 bone bead bracelet
• 1 metal pendant necklace made by a friend
• 1 pair of socks
• 1 wrist warmer made by a friend
• 1 printed scarf from Paris
• 1 glass mug from Las Vegas
• 2 styrofoam headstones
• 3 tattoos
• 1 candle
• 3 kitchen towels

P.S. Dang, I just remembered at least 2 other skull items I forgot to include: some pirate flag stickers and a small Day of the Dead diorama from Mexico! Ah well.