Lukas Exemplar

His name is David Michael Williamson. He is also the voice narrator on the Team Kanohi's BIONICLE: Masks of Power stuff as of late! While Tony Wedgewood did some work for Crainy's BIONICLE: Quest for Mata Nui.

Some LEGO instruction manuals have been spotty in the past and present when it comes to the color of pieces. Also, the image could be color-graded to look like that. Or it could be a CGI model rather than a photo - just a really well-made one, which had a slightly different color for whatever reason. But you're right, it is good evidence.

Furst asked on social media if people wanted there to be any. Does not seem like anything a professional composer would ask if there wasn't some interest in the fandom. Maybe not a huge amount. We'll see... it would be interesting to see a movie or fantasy or sci-fi compilation concert to sneak in some of his music

Agreed!

I do not think it is going to truly die, and neither is the strong fandom. Not with all the great things that have happened in recent years, with all the huge fan projects and undertakings we've taken. The Doronai Nui RPG, BIONICLE: Masks of Power, the short-lived but very well-playing Mata Nui Online Game 3D, aka the fan sequel to MNOG 2, the discovery, release and continous work on, to update and fix, BIONICLE: The Legend of Mata Nui, the release of Nathan Furst's BIONICLE Miramax movie trilogy scores and the potential live concerts of them in the future. We're not dying, we're not going away. Unity, Duty, Destiny. And as one of the few of us remaining, I am one of the people hoping to see a continuation of specifically G1 one day. No matter what anyone says to me, that world need more... and that's why I joined many of the projects I listed above

I still have no idea why they changed their website layout to such an ugly one. What is to be benefited from that?

4. Technically it would be the 21st anniversary, as the line already begun in 2000 in Europe, although many people don't count this year.

It felt like it was already dead after the malicious attack it had years ago which put the site off for a year or so, and after we had to let go of the old archives when it had come back

Holy , holy , holy . I am so excited. This is a an amazing time to be alive!!!

In my opinion you deserved to win this. I am sorry that you did not.

Awesome rendition dude. Here's another take on them, which you probably remember, since you were involved in the project where it stems from: Source: http://biosector01.com/wiki/index.php/User:Takatahu

Hello BZPers (is that really what we call ourselves?) This is going to get a little wee bit technical and scientific, and astrophysical, geological even. Sciency. I know the world of BIONICLE doesn't really have real world physics, but I was wondering anyway, does anyone think that Spherus Magna (and by extension, Bara Magna, Bota Magna and Aqua Magna) have/had plate tectonics? Today, in astrophysics, astronomy, geography and geology, it is thought that a planet needs plate tetconics in order to have life on them, for several reasons. One is it is indicative of active core inside the planet. And without an active core, you get no atmosphere, and by no atmosphere you get no oxygen, at least in the real universe. Another reason is that with the moving plates, and the constant recycling/reformation of the plates, all the stuff of life is replenished on our Earth. Things like large amounts of water and carbonate (the mineral form of Co2) is recycled back into the Earth as the plates move as well. I've gathered some text from articles on the subject. They are both a bit long, but hang in there please! I have something to say afterwards... Here is a bit of text taken from the article Plate Tectonics Could be Essential for Life at Astrobio.com Says Spohn, “plate tectonics replenishes the nutrition that primitive life could live on. Imagine a top surface that is depleted of the nutrition needed for bacterial life. It needs to be replenished, and plate tectonics is a method of achieving this.” Spohn found that the further he delved into the issue, the more important plate tectonics seemed to be for life. For example, it is believed that life developed by moving from the ocean to the kind of strong and stable rock formations that are the result of tectonic action. Plate tectonics is also involved in the generation of a magnetic field by convection of Earth’s partially molten core. This magnetic field protects life on Earth by deflecting the solar wind. Not only would an unimpeded solar wind erode our planet’s atmosphere, but it also carries highly energetic particles that could damage DNA. Another factor is the recycling of carbon, which is needed to stabilize the temperature here on Earth. Spohn explains, “plate tectonics is known to recycle carbon that is washed out of the atmosphere and digested by bacteria in the soil into the interior of the planet from where it can be outcast through volcanic activity. Now, if you have a planet without plate tectonics, you may have parts of this cycle, but it is broken because you do not have the recycling link.”<END OF QUOTATION> Another article, "Does a planet need plate tectonics to develop life?" from phys.org says about the movements of plates and habitable planets: Plate movements Plate tectonics provides a mechanism for this global thermostat. Most volcanism on the Earth occurs at plate boundaries in response to plate tectonics. And the most important volcanic products by mass – by a large amount – are two greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide and water. As they move over the Earth’s surface, some plates get recycled back into the mantle, at places like the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Enormous amounts of water and carbonate (the mineral form of CO2) get recycled back into the interior as they do. Plate tectonics also form mountains, and one of the major sinks of CO2over geological time periods is weathering of mountains, where CO2dissolved in rainwater reacts with silicate minerals, forming new minerals, and drawing down atmospheric CO2 levels. In concert, these mechanisms act as a thermostat. If the Earth gets too hot, high levels of rainfall and erosion start bringing CO2 levels down. If the Earth gets too cold and freezes over, the erosion mechanism stops. But volcanism, due to plate tectonics, continues pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and levels build up, eventually melting the icecaps. It was this mechanism that allowed Earth to recover from a global ice age in the Neoproterozoic, about 600 million years ago. Habitable planets This association between habitability, and plate tectonics, has become so entrenched that the search for habitable exosolar planets has focused on super earths. These are rocky planets larger than Earth where the odds for plate tectonics were thought to be higher. But the case is not so clear cut. Over the past decade, simulations of these super earths suggested that they may not have plate tectonics, but rather be in a stagnant-lid state, where a hot interior powers high levels of volcanism, but without moving plates. Our recent work has looked at the question from an evolutionary viewpoint. How do Earth-like planets evolve from their hot, violent beginnings to their eventual cool, quiescent twilights, radiating their last heat to space? We found that the evolutionary track a planet takes depends not only on its size, but on how it starts. For example, two planets identical in every other way, but with different starting temperatures, may evolve down very different evolutionary paths. We also found that plate tectonics may simply be a phase in the evolution of planets, and that planets may begin and end with stagnant lids.<END OF QUOTATION> Now, we do know that Spherus Magna had (or maybe have?) a core, which is, or was, comprised of Energized Protodermis. But do we know it acts like planet cores do in the real world? Earth's core generates heat, some of which is done through uranium in our core (yeah there's radioactive material in there), which by warming the adjacent molten material, rises to the earth's crust. This powers continental drift creates earthquakes and volcanoes, and mountains. But the movement of the molten iron of our world's core also creates magnetism, which protects the surface of the earth from the UV radiation coming from the sun. The fact that the core is semi-liquid is what makes the tectonics possible by the way. Now, the question is, does the core of Spherus Magna act like this too? Does SM even have an atmosphere? Wouldn't the 40,000,000 feet tall mechanoid the Great Beings built on there make that impossible? I mean, there is oxygen on there, or an equivalent, because beings, organic and biomechanical, have beem shown to have lungs. But an atmosphere would be needed to keep the oxygen in right? So is the atmosphere just super huge, reaching further out than Earth's? Or does the robot go through the atmosphere without any complications, like the atmosphere somehow breaking, if that's even possible to do by going through it, or being pierced constantly? And if plate tectonics does appear on Spherus Magna, what do you think the geography looked like in the past compared to the present? One last bit of speculation. When Aqua Magna and Bota Magna split from Spherus Magna, did they bring some of the Energized Protodermis with them, forming smaller cores of their own? It would seem like that would be necessary right? But again, real physics don't apply to BIONICLE, but it is still fun to theorize with the mindset that there are some kind of physical and scientific rules to all of it. Most of the best speculative fiction set in different worlds have its own rules and system, and follows them after all. I've found another article from Astrobio called "Earth’s Breathable Atmosphere Tied to Plate Tectonics?" It also has a bit about astrobiology later on, but I've only quoted the first two parts of the text below, The rise of oxygen is one of the biggest puzzles in Earth’s history. Our planet’s atmosphere started out oxygen-free. Then, around 3.5 billion years ago, tiny microbes called cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae) learned how to carry out photosynthesis. They began using energy from sunlight to make their food from carbon dioxide and water, giving off oxygen as waste. But it took another 3 billion years for oxygen levels to climb from trace amounts to at least 20 percent of the atmosphere, or high enough to support the emergence of complex life. And so far the mechanism behind that rise has remained unclear. Now a new study by University of Exeter biogeochemist Benjamin Mills and his colleagues offers a new potential clue. Using a computer model, they showed that plate tectonics may have fueled an increase in oxygen between 1.5 billion and half a billion years ago. In particular, a process tied to the way continents remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may have increased the supply of phosphorus, a key nutrient for photosynthetic microbes in the ocean. The paper was published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. “This is a novel perspective for the late Proterozoic—a critical time of dramatic climate change, rising oxygen in the ocean and atmosphere, and origins and diversification of complex life,” says Timothy Lyons, a biogeochemist not involved in the study. From Seafloor to Terrestrial “Weathering’ The chemical weathering of rocks releases calcium ions in rivers and oceans, where they react with carbonate dissolved in the water. The product of that reaction, calcium carbonate, is then deposited onto the ocean floor, where it becomes limestone. (Photograph ©2009 Greg Carley.) Continents play a crucial role in the carbon cycle by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide mixes with rain water, forming a weak acid (carbonic acid) which slowly wears down or “weathers” rocks on land. The process releases minerals such as calcium and magnesium from the rocks. These minerals then combine with carbonate and settle at the bottom of the ocean forming layers of calcium carbonate, or limestone. In other words, the weathering process simply pulls carbon from the atmosphere and turns it into a layer of sediment on the seafloor. However, continental rocks aren’t the only route by which carbon is removed from the atmosphere. Ocean ridges, the places where fresh crust is made on the seafloor, can undergo a similar “weathering” process. In fact, seafloor weathering was the main route of carbon removal in the early chapter of Earth’s history, before the formation of continents. According to the new study, the rise of oxygen may have been due to a shift in balance between the two processes—between seafloor and continental weathering. Also, bump ;P

The link to the tabs for Lhikan's Theme isn't working again.

I guess no one really cares :'( Or maybe no one went to a convention he was at? I was asking whether anyone is going to go to one, not if they have been to one And he seems to appear at a lot of them, often with acting advice.

I guess no one really cares :'(

Other than being the wildlife of the MU, and being used for transport in some cases, I believe that it was said by the Story Team once that they were basically the white blood cells of Mata Nui, or something like that. Seems weird, since the Toa always seemed to be this to me. Maybe some of them have abilities that the Matoran also take advantage of in their society. There may be some Rahi that has lightning powers, which the Matoran could use to power some generators or an electricity grid in some village. Seems a bit slavery-ish though.

Are there any people here who's going to a convention soon where Lee Tockar is gong to appear? If so, please, for the love of Unity, Duty, Destiny and Friendship, ask him to do the Makuta voice, and record and/or film it. Just... please....

I tend to bite off way more than I can chew... I had this great idea to build an isometric fighting engine to supplement the game, however it was too much for one person to do alone. and now that I've invested so much time into it, I cant bring myself to just scratch it out of the game. Ever finish a game and then just sit through the credits?..... aaaand 15 minutes later your still watching credits.... I'm starting to understand why it takes an army of people to build video games. I'm still going to try to get Chapter 2 part 2 done.. I want to leave this game in a place where others can pick it up easily if there is interest to continue this and not leave them with half-completed stuff. so, Is this project dead? Yes and No, I am going to continue wrapping up the battle Engine and Chapter 2 part 2 if I can, but beyond that I cant realistically see this going much further. I don't mean to sound rude or anything like that, but it seems like BIONICLE fan projects are quite literally cursed. Everytime a bigger BIONICLE fan project, like a game, a graphic novel, animation etc. is announced, and everyone goes crazy for it, it is eventually cancelled, put on hold indefinitively, or the creator just disappears. It's quite sad. I undersatnd why it is hard to build something like this, and why you feel like you may want to quit, and I don't see any fault in it. It's just depressing that it happens a lot in our fandom. Not trying to say "Come on!" Not at all. I am just talking aboutr in general, how our projects seem to fall apart often, like the new MNOG3D that everyone was so overly nuts about. I really want to know, though, if it would be possible for you to make this game if people helped? Some of our projects fall apart when there's more as well, actually often, but if you come up with a screening process to find the most qualified people, and if you manage the project wisely, which is pretty much where all projects like this one collapses, you could really make this happen. If you're going to let others continue the game, just like they did with MNOG3D, you might as well continue it yourself but with other people. Let them build what you describe, then tweak it and build on it in the weekends. If that is completely impossible, I see no reason not to give up the files to other people like you suggested But maybe you should give them to some specific people instead of just uploading them here for everyone. Not because I think you should restrict access or anything. The fact just is, when people give up project files like this to everyone, the project always seems to fade into obscurity, never to be touched again, while if you find someone who you know to be dedicated, and talented, and give the project to that person, it might actually lead somewhere. Do you know what I mean?

This always seems to happen with all larger Bionicle fan projects, especially the ones that gets publicity on BZPower. Maybe the site is cursed.

is there an explanation why jut ma specifically doesn't exhibit the assimilation/reduction? Is it because it would sound slightly awkward having an N after the T in jut, or is there a more complicated explanation?

Hm you, I think you midspelled "Tahu." Also "Gali" is not from Maori. It is a Hewbrew word I believe, meaning "fountain" and "wet." By the way, I know this is an old blog post, so you may already know this Gali thing by now

Why is Y repeated both in Consonants and Vowels? It is a vowel to my knowledge

Back to the topic of seasons, do we know whether the Matoran Universe, or even the island of Mata Nui, had climates and different weather? Like, did it ever rain in either one in the story? Or did it ever have "natural" storms? I put the quotation marks because inside the MU weather would have been controlled by some kind of machinery, maybe some kind of vaporing devices and other technological factors. Also, by natural I mean to roll out any storms or other weather changes brought upon by characters using their powers or a machine. Mata Nui regulating weather controlling machines is a different story. EDIT: Apparently storms do occur on Mata Nui, since the Matoran have the term "Dermis Turtle weather" for bad weather. The Dermis Turtle page on BS01 reads: "The Dermis Turtle can also detect upcoming changes in weather. When these Rahi hide in their shells for what looks like no particular reason, it means that a storm is coming. Matoran often use the phrase "dermis shell weather", meaning there is unpleasant weather conditions." But still, have we ever seen any changes in weather like this in the story? Like rain? Thunderstorms? Storms? Anything like that which was not brought about by powers or machinery operated by a character (except Mata Nui as in the case of the GSR.) Mentions of storm or weather changes are okay though. EDIT: We do know that there was a Ta-Matoran on Voya Nui who was very knowledgeable on weather patterns and who predicated an incoming hurricane. So that makes weather changes canon, at least on Voya Nui, in case the Dermis Turtle thing didn't already convince most people. But still, I wonder if Mata Nui, or any of the isles in the GSR, gets rain, storms etc. I don't think it would be very practical for there to be such weather changes, seeing how it would probably hinder the Matoran's work, but any slight wrongs in the construction of the robot could create something like a bioquake now and then, from some pieces of the robot grating on each other, or islands getting too close.

A few times in the first comics Pohatu appears with a Mata torso that is not flipped as his body. Even the original cover has him with the non-flipped torso body.

Hi. I was wondering about something. You know that guy Nicrophoros-Americanus who has that series "Fleshing out the Matoran Universe" on tumblr? Well, I re-read the first part of that series and he/she has a really good concept for how there can be seasons in the MU: http://nicrophorus-americanus.tumblr.com/post/95197612943/fleshing-out-the-matoran-universe-part-1 He/she is also a member here on BZP, and theorizes here in S&T, but I am embarassed to not know what your username is on here. If you see this post Nicro, then please post below He/she writes: * Seasons did exist in the Matoran universe, and were the effects of Mata Nui’s self-regulation of temperature. Much energy was produced in his hands, feet, and internal engines, which he then circulated through the rest of the universe on a regular cycle. The lands of the Su-Matoran and the Southern Islands, however, were almost always swelteringly hot This then got me thinking. If the MU did have seasons, then they must have a calendar too, or perhaps more than one system to count days. Perhaps years and months as well. But what kind of system? And here's a better question: How long is a day in the MU? How long is a year? If the GBs based the cycles of years in the MU on what Spherus Magna had, it must have been very long, considering the immense size of SM, unless our own universe's physics don't apply here as it often does not in the world of the BIONICLE. We do know that they measure time, or at least the Great Beings did, since they made the Great Sundial, which have 24 markins, each representing an hour of a day.