College Cuber makes $8,000 collages of sports stars out of cubes

It begins with a portrait of his favorite basketball player, Luka Doncic. Then there’s NBA star Damian Lillard. International football clubs such as Manchester United and FC Barcelona have taken notice. A major League baseball team reached out, as did the National Football League.

Before he knew it, Dylan Sadiq was flooded with requests for his collages to include cubes (like in the Rubik’s Cube, but fakes). Sadiq, 21 years old, was a student at Rutgers University, where he is now known as Cuber College.

Sadiq charges $8,000 and can create a cubic portrait in less than four hours. Following interest on social media platforms and retweets on Twitter, teams including the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, the National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils and the Philadelphia Union and New York Red Bulls’ Major League Soccer Search for Sadiq’s work.

“This is not what I expected,” Sadiq told CNBC this week. While he was speaking, a new mosaic he created of Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Captain’s star quarterback, went viral.

Without direct internship opportunities or practical school experience, Sadiq took a detour. He combines social media accounts and his love of the technique to master the Rubik’s Cube.

Sadiq loves telling the story of how his brother, Brandon, challenged him to solve a cube at age 10. His reward is Activision Blizzard’s Video game Call of Duty. Sadiq said it took him a week to complete the task.

In February 2021, Sadiq practiced solving cubes to get faster. He then turned his newly learned skill into a path to artistic creation.

Sadiq bought $1,000 cubes and figured out how to assemble 560 pieces to make one Doncic mosaic, the all-NBA custodian of the Dallas Mavericks. He posted it on Instagram in April, and the Mavericks noticed, sharing it with the team’s followers. That sparks another Lillard mosaic with similar results from the Portland Trail Blazers.

“I’m not sure Luka Doncic has ever seen the mosaic,” Sadiq said. “And Mark Cuban, I’m not sure he saw it either,” he added.

Cuban, the owner of Mavericks, told CNBC he didn’t see it.

While Sadiq said he’s almost certainly giving up potential engineering jobs, he’s not considering his time at Rutgers, which could make more than 40,000 dollars a year, like a waste. He said the university hires him for live events, including the football game against Ohio State in October and the inauguration of the school’s new president.

That’s a huge part of why I’m College Cuber, says Sadiq. “Everything has been ruined because of Covid. But where I feel valued is through my artwork.”

In July, The Detroit Pistons have become First professional sports team to pay for a mosaic. Sadiq took a trip to Car City and created a portrait of Ben Wallace, the centerpiece of the Pistons Hall of Fame. While in town, he made the Red Wings the mosaic for their NHL draft party.

He also sold to the NFL’s Lions and, for MLB’s Tigers, he created a mosaic of slugger Miguel Cabrera. The team gave it to him to celebrate his 500th run home.

“I didn’t understand what I was doing,” Sadiq said of his experience in Detroit. “I’m just trying to make an experience out of it.”

Wandering around Detroit, Sadiq said he became interested in artwork that promotes black pride in the city. That gave rise to the idea of ​​expanding College Cuber.

“The artwork is amazing,” Sadiq said. “One of the things I imagined – I wish I could have seen the work in person. I feel it deserves the participation of a large audience because artwork like that has such a powerful message. and it looks beautiful. It’s colorful, vibrant – I wish I could see it created in front of my eyes.”

So Sadiq made it happen. He started charging up to $3,000 for a live performance and was able to create a work of art in about three hours. For a flat fee of $8,000, customers can watch the event live and keep artwork.

Last September, Sadiq turned College Cuber into a limited liability company. He said that of the $38,000 he’s generated in revenue since Pistons became his first paying customer in July, about $27,000 is in profit. He keeps costs lower through a deal with a toy wholesaler and doesn’t pay rent for his mother’s basement studio, where he makes his collages.

“She’ll probably start charging (hire) me right now,” he joked.

Sadiq predicts he could exceed $100,000 in sales this year. So far, the Chiefs have bought the mosaic of Mahomes, and the Titans run against Derrick Henry looking for a piece.

The NFL paid $8,000 for a mosaic of league commissioner Roger Goodell, after Joe Favorito, a prominent sports public relations specialist and a professor of sports business at Columbia University, watched a video of one of Sadiq’s collages. Favorito said he was “immediately blown away,” and coordinated an intro.

“Creative talent, sometimes we take it for granted,” says Favorito. “I think it’s our mission to help promote these young content creators who do something really unique. His technical and scientific background motivates him in one way or another. concrete and that’s how he’s able to do it, in fact, he can almost do it in his head, and then know what parts to put together and create something remarkable and being unique for a few hours is a gift.”

It all started with a trip to Detroit.

“I learned a lot from that experience,” says Sadiq. “I went from being a kid creating online videos to acting. I can say that weekend in Detroit changed my entire life.”

Sadiq is not the first to make money from jigsaw puzzles. In 2019, CNBC profile Italian artist Giovanni Contardi, who uses Rubik’s products to create art. Contardi sold a mosaic of the late Amy Winehouse for about $5,000 and gained attention on social media thanks to a piece about NBA star LeBron James.

Sadiq contacted Rubik’s for the branding. Company owned by Canadian laptop manufacturer Spin Master, trading on the market without a prescription.

“The pandemic is an issue for him, but it also creates digital opportunities that he can take advantage of,” Favorito said.

Social media is central to College Cuber’s business. His Instagram account is eligible for Facebook’s bounty program, which pay creators to post coil. Sadiq said he has made about $550 from Instagram so far. He’s also on TikTok’s creator fund after his Mahomes mosaic gained more than 100,000 views.

To get more revenue, he would do a collage and charge customers $750 for videos that companies can post in their ads.

But Sadiq doesn’t charge professional sports teams for video posts. Instead, he finds ways to retweet or repost to increase visibility. Manchester United and Barcelona have helped football fans, and the NBA’s Orlando Magic has also boosted the work Twitter.

Sadiq said he plans to use the extra attention as an incentive to do good.

Last year, he attended his first NBA game at the New York Knicks after creating the all-star Julius Randle mosaic. Sadiq, a New Jersey native, said visiting Madison Square Garden was “life-changing” because he was able to understand more “the culture and unity of [sports] fan. “

Sadiq now requires customer-facing teams to offer free tickets to fans who have never attended a sporting event.

“That’s what I want to experience with my artwork – to bring the fans together,” he said.

When building College Cuber, Sadiq said, “It was just something that happened, and I realized the value I brought to people.”

CLOCK: This 24-year-old man creates portraits out of hundreds of Rubik’s cubes