Meet the Designer Who Recreates Iconic Album Covers Out of LEGO
A lot of the time, art inspires new and different forms of art. Meet Adnan Lotia — a designer who recreates iconic album covers out of LEGO pieces.
On his Instagram page, you'll find photos of a variety of different albums, artist logos and images from all different genres. We were so intrigued by his talent that we reached out to ask him about it.
"I grew up idolizing '80s pop superstars, played grunge in my high school band, got into electronic music and R&B in college, went deep into progressive rock as an adult, and recently fell back in love with '70s disco and funk," Lotia told us. "I move around music genres a lot because there’s very little music that I don’t enjoy."
The creator's passion for creating designs out of LEGO started when he was teaching after school robotics classes. From there, he started building motorized LEGO models based on movies and television shows, such as Batman, Airwolf, Short Circuit and Knight Rider.
"I picked up digital construction using BrickLink Studio along the way, and absolutely love how much freedom, flexibility, and speed it provides to LEGO artists. I hope that designers continue to explore the capabilities of this fantastic (and free!) resource in the future," he explained.
It wasn't until earlier this year when he was listening to Pink Floyd's legendary album The Dark Side of the Moon that he became curious about reimagining album art with LEGO. He was specifically fascinated by the rainbow that comes out of the prism on that particular cover, and wanted to see if he could make it happen.
"I realized that I didn’t have the right pieces in my collection to attempt this, but by using BrickLink Studio, a digital building software that can render LEGO elements in any color, I was able to remake the entire cover," he recalled.
His rendition of The Dark Side of the Moon was uploaded to his Instagram in April of this year. "I started wondering what other cover art could be adapted into LEGO and I’ve been trying to refine my process ever since."
At first, he experimented with notable album covers that had simple designs as he became more experienced with the software. He often redesigned album covers that he owned and knew very well, and as time went on, he took on more complicated covers.
"I try and build as much as I can in my head before actually putting any pieces down. In some cases, I look for focal points in the album cover that might be suggested effectively in LEGO, and work outwards from there," he described of his creative process.
"Most of the time, these details don’t make it into the final build. But they are perfect springboards to start work on a new cover. Capturing intricate details and likeness in portraits is always a challenge, but the online LEGO building community is so awesome that I could never run out of new techniques to learn from and improve."
As of now, he's tackled albums such as Metallica's Ride the Lightning, Black Sabbath's Paranoid, Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies, Soundgarden's Superunknown, Pearl Jam's Ten, Nirvana's Nevermind, Foo Fighters' The Colour and the Shape, Stone Temple Pilots' Core and more.
"I used to run a poll on IG every weekend where people could vote to determine a musical genre theme for the following week. At the moment I am revisiting hip hop and R&B legends," Lotia noted.
See some of the images below, and check out his Instagram for more and to follow along with his journey — he has highlights on his page separating his work by genre.