This great video by Fujiya & Miyagi inspired me:

Why not write a Processing sketch that will take an image and render it in dice? It might be fairly easy:
Divide the image into square sections.
Calculate the average brightness of that square – like I did in my engraving sketch. ¹
That average brightness should fall in one of six or 12 levels of brightness.
Choose a die face that matches that brightness level.
Paste that image into the image.
Done!

What could you do with that? You could produce a print. You could use it as a guide for actually laying out the dice and putting them in a frame – or using them to print letterpress style.

When you get into the physical dice, laying them out gets tedious. The next big step would be to have an arduino system ² that picks up dice and places them for you.

You could offer physical pieces for sale.

1. Click on the picture. The farther right you click, the lower the brightness cutoff. The higher you click, the finer the line detail.   (back)
2. Arduino controller code is based on Processing   (back)