They broke down Manjunath’s photo to build it again, in 3D

LUCKNOW: It was a tough task to begin with but the attempt was lofty and so was the outcome. When three students of IIM-L final year thought of attempting a Limca Book record in the honour of their alumnus S Manjunath on his 10th death anniversary, the task ahead was excruciating, to say the least.
It began by procuring a photograph of Manjunath which was then transferred to photoshop a month ago.Reducing the file size of the image and zooming in to get the pixels that appeared as proper squares, 23,278 Rubik's cubes finally gave shape to an elliptical mosaic portrait of the alumnus.
With a total of around 940 segments,each of which consisted of 25 cubes each, 17 teams of volunteering IIM-L students began the process of sorting the cubes in the colours that were needed for the picture. “For most parts, we needed white and blue so 30% of each took up the entire portrait and the other four colours took the remianing 40% cumulatively,” said Manish Meshram from the core team that also had Panchu Gorui and Tanuj Lodhi on it.
While the curves of Manjunath's spectacles and the knot of his tie were the precise points of concern, diagonally placed cubes helped in creating the final curves. “It took us three hours to get the image together and another 3-5 hours to break it down into segments to be handed out to the volunteers. Had we been professionals, it would have taken even lesser time,” said Panchu. Tanuj added, “The photo was transformed into an oval shape on photoshop using the mathematical formula for an ellipse.”
The final portrait, for which the volunteers had been training for the past week, had 23,278 Rubik cubes signifying the birth date of Manjunath: 23-02-1978. A sum of Rs 2,35,000 was spent on buying the cubes that made up the 10.7 meters long and 8.75 meters broad portrait.
The cubes will either be sold off to a wholesaler after Manfest-Varchasv for funding one year of education of a girl child or be put in fixed deposit to get recurring amounts for investing in scholarships or charity works. Once the student team is able to fulfill the documentation required in the record procedure, it will send it to the Limca Book team. If verified and certified, the record will find a mention in the 2016-17 Limca Book of Records.