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Toa Kalina, Toa of The Green.


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Toa Kalina

 

Toa Kalina is a Female Toa of The Green (or Jungle). She was once a Bo-Matoran living on Lenoza, and island south of Artakha. She and her fellow Toa, all native from Lenoza, defend the island.

 

Kalina is a bit insecure about being a Toa, and missed her life as a Matoran, but is very protective of her land and it's people. She is imperative and talks a lot, which often annoyed the other Toa, and can quickly make plans to escape a bad situation, though not all end up saving her.

 

She has a wooden spear which she made using her powers. The spear have a variety of venoms. There's a protosteel spike at the end of the spear, which the Toa of Iron of her team made after she had an encounter with a Makuta and was almost killed. She wears a Kanohi Mahiki, the Great Mask of Illusion. She, like the other Toa, has a Suva with other 9 masks.

 

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So, here it is, Toa Kalina ! I made her because we never had a Toa of such an interesting element. I'm planning to write a little story about one of her adventures later.

 

I tried to mix Green and Blue but I'm still not satisfied with the result. I liked the way her Kanohi came out, but because of it, she has quite that masculine look, I don't know why. I really tried to create new types of armor for her body, but I'm not so creative, and ended up combining different bionicle pieces together. 

 

She looks like a Toa Nuva, but she's not, lol.

 

Anyway, hope you like her !  ^_^  Comments and critiques are welcome.  ^_^

Edited by HoloTheWise
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Nice OC, Holo! ^_^  Plant life/the Green is really underappreciated, IMHO. I love your choice of making her weapon out of wood, it suits her element better than your standard protodermis tools.  However, the spike at the end looks more like a large tooth or claw to me.  A lot of it is related to the color, but the shape may contribute as well—when I think of a “spike” I usually picture something straighter, perhaps slightly curved, but not quite as curved as yours. Of course, artistic license is a thing. 

 

I think your choice of pieces to use as inspiration is fine, they’re recognizable but I can tell they aren’t based off one single build. I can see influence from the Metru, Inika and the Nuva in there.   

 

As far as having a masculine mask goes—a lot of it comes from the large, thick eyebrows and the wide, squared off chin. If you want to make it look more typically feminine, you could always tweak the shape of the mask a bit (I assume you’re referencing the appearance of Matau’s kanohi in Legends of Metru Nui?).  If you make the chin and mask overall narrower and make the eyebrows more thin and curved, that will help a lot.  It’s tricky to capture the look of an existing mask while altering the shape, but if you experiment, you may be able to come up with something you like!

 

Color schemes are tricky to figure sometimes, especially for an element without any sets assigned to it.  I’m guessing that you aren’t entirely happy with her colors because they’re a bit overwhelming—they’re bright and saturated.  Of course, that’s kinda the way Toa armor colors are. In the sets for the main elements, usually you have one main color and then a neutral such as gray or tan—but Plant Life’s official colors are blue and green, so you have a challenge to work with.  Here are a few things you could try, possibly in combination:

 

Desaturate one of the two colors, so that one is brighter and stands out while the other recedes a bit.  

Choose either green or blue as the “main” color and only use the other color for small details. Right now your use of the two colors is pretty even. You already have some gray in there for some areas like the joints, which I’m personally fond of and would keep…so that would mean you would have very little of your secondary color.

Make the green and blue closer in hue.  Right now they are close to “pure” hues. You could make your blue more greenish (like a teal color), or your green more bluish (like some kinds of turquoise).

 

You could easily fiddle with these changes using the Hue/Saturation options in whatever art program you are using. If the blue and green armor aren’t on separate layers, I’d suggest separating them so you can manipulate one or the other.

 

Unrelated to the art, I’m curious about her background—do you know what she did as a Matoran? You mentioned that she misses her old life, so I wonder whether she had a job/task that she was passionate about, or if she just misses the simplicity and not having powers and responsibility.

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I too would suggest desaturating one of the two colours. Working digitally sometimes leads to choosing too bright/radiant colours for everything (a mistake I make waay too often myself, too); so playing with hue/saturatiuon, as Raia mentioned, is a good idea.

 

As for the character herself, I think it's cool that her armour is based on classic Bionicle pieces instead of dropping it all for the sake of femininity (or rather, adding unnecessary things). What you could try, however, to achieve a slightly more feminine look would be using softer, rounder lines. A more streamlined look, but not the whole thing changed, just a few things; maybe slightly alter the shape of the arms or something.

At the moment there are many angular, straight lines, which in combination with the heavy eyebrows and wide shoulders lead to a more masculine appearance than you may have originally intended.

 

I really like the design of the weapon, though. :) As well as the Kanohi itself, it reminds me of the movies, and that's great. I'm also quite fond of her pose and facial expression (as well as the expressionate mask in general); I think they go well with that description of her character.

 

Keep it up! :3

Edited by Fairy Knight
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Thanks for the positive and constructive replies !  :)

 

As far as having a masculine mask goes—a lot of it comes from the large, thick eyebrows and the wide, squared off chin. If you want to make it look more typically feminine, you could always tweak the shape of the mask a bit (I assume you’re referencing the appearance of Matau’s kanohi in Legends of Metru Nui?).  If you make the chin and mask overall narrower and make the eyebrows more thin and curved, that will help a lot.  It’s tricky to capture the look of an existing mask while altering the shape, but if you experiment, you may be able to come up with something you like!

Woah, you're actually right, that eyebrows and chin made her face look very masculine. Thanks for the tips ! I'll make sure I draw them right next time  ;) and by the way, you noticed her mask is in movie form ? I'm glad to hear that ! I thought I had failed(really hard lol) to represent the mask that way.

 

• Desaturate one of the two colors, so that one is brighter and stands out while the other recedes a bit.  
• Choose either green or blue as the “main” color and only use the other color for small details. Right now your use of the two colors is pretty even. You already have some gray in there for some areas like the joints, which I’m personally fond of and would keep…so that would mean you would have very little of your secondary color.
• Make the green and blue closer in hue.  Right now they are close to “pure” hues. You could make your blue more greenish (like a teal color), or your green more bluish (like some kinds of turquoise).

 

Thanks again ! I am actually thinking about doing Teal for the Mask, chest and foot, and blue for the arms and legs, just like the original Toa Mata were. And those joints were heavily inspired by the joints of the Toa Nuva in Bionicle: The Game (reference^_^

 

 

Unrelated to the art, I’m curious about her background—do you know what she did as a Matoran? You mentioned that she misses her old life, so I wonder whether she had a job/task that she was passionate about, or if she just misses the simplicity and not having powers and responsibility.

As a Matoran, she was responsible for maintaining the Botanical garden of the city. Kalina herself made the Botanical garden, and because of this she has a strong bond with the garden. That's what she misses as Toa, because now she doesn't have time to maintain the garden that herself made.

 

 

I too would suggest desaturating one of the two colours. Working digitally sometimes leads to choosing too bright/radiant colours for everything (a mistake I make waay too often myself, too); so playing with hue/saturatiuon, as Raia mentioned, is a good idea.

 

As for the character herself, I think it's cool that her armour is based on classic Bionicle pieces instead of dropping it all for the sake of femininity (or rather, adding unnecessary things). What you could try, however, to achieve a slightly more feminine look would be using softer, rounder lines. A more streamlined look, but not the whole thing changed, just a few things; maybe slightly alter the shape of the arms or something.

At the moment there are many angular, straight lines, which in combination with the heavy eyebrows and wide shoulders lead to a more masculine appearance than you may have originally intended.

 

I really like the design of the weapon, though. :) As well as the Kanohi itself, it reminds me of the movies, and that's great. I'm also quite fond of her pose and facial expression (as well as the expressionate mask in general); I think they go well with that description of her character.

 

Keep it up! :3

Thanks ! I will keep trying !  ^_^

 

I always try to avoid giving gender characteristics to my characters, you know ? Because, at least on my view, they don't differ too much, physically of course. But since physical characteristics are a way of distinguish genders, for us at least, I will try to make female characters more feminine.  :)

 

 

 

 

Edited by HoloTheWise
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[...]

I always try to avoid giving gender characteristics to my characters, you know ? Because, at least on my view, they don't differ too much, physically of course. But since physical characteristics are a way of distinguish genders, for us at least, I will try to make female characters more feminine.  :)

 

 

I actually really like that approach and you shouldn't drop it entirely just to make things "easier" for the viewer. After all, with drawings alone (or any other purely visual media) it's sometimes hard to tell; in movies, for example, the voices would help with the identification.

In your case, subtle changes like a variation of the eyebrow width would probably do the trick, then. :)

Edited by Fairy Knight

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I am slow as molasses at replies, as usual! Anyhoo.

 

Just as a general note, I agree that when drawing a female character, she doesn't always have to be super feminine. Being female and being feminine aren't mutually exclusive, after all!  It's totally okay to have a female character with some typically masculine features, and/or taking a less gendered approach to Bionicle designs especially since they're not, yanno, human.  Designs that don't use boobplates and the like to distinguish the female characters is always really refreshing.  It's also great if you do want to use these suggestions to make her look more feminine in the future, but that doesn't mean you should never have a female character with a squarish face or large eyebrows.  I think your philosophy is admirable! And variety is the spice of, well, everything.  You could always have her still have larger than average eyebrows, if you like, and just make them a little smaller and taper them off a bit.

 

It's no wonder I didn't recognize the joints, I never played that game myself. Bro did but I wasn't particularly observant of the character designs when he played it.:P  It's a cool idea to mix set pieces and design elements from BTG.  I really like that color, too.*_*

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