Devak

1: Tahu. The best but also least "original" design. haven't changed anything on him yet. 2: Kopaka. A reall good and cool set. In an effort to rebalance the sets (making pohatu less of an aftertought) i ripped off the gold shoulderpads and changed the legs. 3: Lewa. Other than the fact that he can't look up, a very good set. I can't help but think his gunmetal axes are a production error. A quick swap with Gali makes it SO much better. 4: Gali. The yellow pieces and red pins look awkward. She has gunmetal and silver armor, blue, transblue, black, aforementioned yellow. Just too busy. Ripped off the silver shoulder pads, gave that to Onua and swapped axes with Lewa. 5: Onua. The gold looks awkward. I changed it with silver. IMHO his chest armor looks weird and he feels too wide. 6: Pohatu. Most of an afterthought, it took some effort to modify him into a more acceptable Toa. Golden armor pads from kopaka, golden armor from onua, symmetric arms, swapped around skeleton, neck piece from onua. IMHO, 1&2, 3&4 are pretty much a tie.

And I'm still convinced that these "silly" character quirks will be utilized to a great degree once they meet each other. Each Toa compliments another and I can't wait to see them interact! -NotS Yes, i would love to see a more in-depth team interaction than G1. Tahu seemed to grow up so fast. I'd like to see more Tahu VS Kopaka, each their own half of the team. Tahu trying to out-hero Kopaka and kopaka trying to out-perfectionist Tahu. But yea, we barely got story so far. I'm curious.

Onua doesn't use any orange... did you mean black? Slight correction: Lewa and Pohatu use Silver Metallic rather than Titanium Metallic ("gunmetal") for their armor. The only gunmetal parts in those sets are Lewa's axe blades and Pohatu's boomerangs. Gali is actually the only Toa who has Titanium Metallic armor, and she uses it in combination with Silver Metallic — but it's more effective than you might expect. Surprisingly, I have yet to see any photos from anybody who's swapped Onua's Warm Gold armor pieces with Silver Metallic ones. I'd expect that to be one of the first things a person might do to improve his color scheme if they felt it was too busy. I for one am very interested in seeing what that would look like. Sorry, on second note i counted Gold twice (once as orange, once as gold). As to the right metallic colors: i used the Characters page as a quick reference guide (i have seen the reviews though) and the colors are hard to tell apart from a quick glance. So i was just being too quick. Yes, the double metallic (gunmetal boomerangs and axes vs silver armor) is weird on them, IMHO. And i think the gold looks weird on Onua. I would like to see a more coherent use of gunmetal vs silver. Maybe it's just me. I think the Lewa axes should've been silver (in line with the rest of his armor) and the Gali "axes" gunmetal (since her armor is indeed gunmetal. It's hard to see on the pictures). I think Pohatu with silver and Onua with gunmetal would've made a better overall color scheme. To further iterate: The Orange looks good on Lewa, but the yellow/orange on Gali looks horrible (and those red pins. yuck). Pohatu's burnt orange/brown color with the lime green actually looks very good, and i'm happy with it. It's a vast improvement. Tahu looks really cool, but given that he's had...what 5 sets now? the novelty has worn off. it's cool, but we-expected-this cool. BTW: i only found out about the reboot today, when i was looking at Minecraft lego (i love the delicious irony) and clicked, just for curiosity, at the "other brands" page. to finish: i feel like buying all 6 sets and mixing and matching to fit it to my needs. also, for some reason, half the sets are cheaper than the other half....

They seem to be Neo-Turaga, though the story from the Site suggests they're actually matoran of elevated status. They wear a mask of Power that is handed down through the ages. So it makes sense that they'll receive names. Maybe Legal was late with their name list, or Lego wants to be cautious with spilling names before they know the product, you know, actually is successful? If i recall correctly, a name cost $10K to clear through legal. And many old names were not appreciated by the Maori, which is why Mata Nui isn't called that (twice!) Also, source: From: Bionicle.com -> protectors So yea. Also, procreation. There is much "old!canon" to be canonized. E.g. how Toa come to be and the nature of these protectors. I hope the new story team can live up to the reputation of Greg, because he was absolutely a blast. But i for one would like to see some more freshness than just rehashing much that is already known.

Will we get a proper 2015 Bionicle sub-forum? especially since we may expect a new influx of members and it may cause massive confusion? EDIT: i forgot: holy cow i didn't think i'd see a Bionicle Reboot so soon. I'm cautiously optimistic

As someone who is a lot older and wiser now, i can say this: Lego threw us a MASSIVE bone by putting effort into honoring the old fans. They could've put out something only Bionicle in name, but decided to partially recreate that old feeling, while appealing to the new. I like the more varied color schemes. I never was truly a fan of the Hero Factory type build, but i can understand why Lego uses it. The translucency on the Protectors is a very cool feature. Some things i like: *lego has combined various good things. The original story with fresh details, old heroes with new looks, old unique design choices with new means (e.g. the various poses, color combinations in new ways). *respect for the original BIONICLE line. *there is already a sense of who's who and why. If i recall correctly 2001 started with mostly "what is going on here?". 2015 starts off strong, but it obviously misses the extreme depth and richness of the old Bionicle. But the year is young. *A richer colorscheme. This is really something that needs to be said. Especially the Earth and Stone sets -to my memory- suffered perpetually from this.The neon green and the purple look like good additions. Some things i don't like: *Inconsistent Metalcolor. The gold on Tahu and Kopaka looks really, really good and makes them almost polar (heh) opposites. Opposing elements with the "hero" look. But then it breaks down. Onua uses purple *YAY!*, orange *YAY!* and gold and silver (huh?). I would've preferred a slightly more rigid coloring. More on this below. *lack of character for the protectors. I liked the names of the Turaga, but now it's just "protector of X". I would like this explored. *lack of character for the villains. The spiders remind me of the Visorak, but even the Visorak had more character than these spiders. As to colors: As i said, i liked the gold/white and gold/red colors on Kopaka resp. Tahu. Lewa has a cool Green/orange/Gunmetal scheme going on (with some weird silver if i read the review right). These are definitely improvements over the 2001 sets. Onua is a weird mess of colors, and i don't like it. I would've prefered if the Silver was reserved for Earth and Water, and gunmetal for Jungle and Rock. (NOTE: maybe gunmetal for Earth and silver for Rock). So simply put: a more straightforward Color-coding. I feel that the alternate weapon modes are a strong aspect of '15 bionicle, better than the limited abilities of the '01 toa. All in all, the year is off to a strong start. The biggest flaw is the lack of a proper, rich villain. Makuta (sorry Teridax, but your mythical status could never live up to another name) is without a doubt still one of the most iconic villains i know. But in here he's just a background character. The spider is nice, but i felt Bionicle became stronger when the richer villains (or in some cases, just plain opponents) came into play in stead of the Goons.

something i did for Lewa.

i know Kojol isn't entirely covered, but to me it gives a bit of a turaga-esque feel which in turn gives it a bit of an arthaka feel: intelligent, mysterious, powerful. the pinholes can be easily covered though.

Blender is not hard. Blender is complex. dozens of shortcuts, dozens of options and abilities. at best, i can say: -i designed Kojol by using 2x2x2 (standard) cubes. a "ball" piece is a subsurf 1 cube. each "bionicle unit" (a hand socket is 3 units long, 1 thick, 2 wide at it's widest) is one cube lenght. long hip sockets are 7 units long, or 14 blender units. use this for reference all the time, and you will get Bionicle with the right proportion -bionicle is quite blocky. Blender has tools (smooth, subsurf, bevel) that can make softer corners with ease. therefore, it's easier to start blocky and use these tools for smoothing. -make one object per bionicle piece. my Kojol mask was 5 pieces, since i designed it in 5 pieces. BTW Eeko, i made 1 piece the parent of all others, so they would follow regardless. -quite miraculously, pin holes add a Bionicle feel. -holes add Bionicle feel. -try to either: 1: base pieces on existing pieces 2: use aforementioned cubes to set out the size and general shape of the piece, and then simply connect them. in Blender, size does not matter, since you can easily resize. it's proportion. -for rather interesting smooth shapes, take a cube, extrude 2 opposite sides, but make the extruded distance 0. thus, *select face* *E* *0* *Enter* then subsurf.

Eeko have you recieved my mail?

i fiddled with Kojol's material to make it absurdly shiny (everything to it's max). i could reduce it severly to give it a dirtier look. i've done armatures for his arms and legs, the hands in that picture are in a pose, not their natural form. i'll add some more armor and perhaps do a few body pieces different. the head is the same as pirgah's, i just made the eyes and head two different objects, made the eyes transparent and light-emitting.