Ekimu and Protector of Stone's Eye Colour

[Votuko]

Just a quick observation (which I think counts as S&T):

 

In the animations, Ekimu is portrayed as having blue eyes. However, in the set version of him he has yellow/green eyes. Which seems strange, but could be put down as an animation mistake.

 

The thing I noticed is that a similar thing happens with the Protector of Stone. When he is drawn on the comic on the box and instructions, he has yellow/green eyes. Checking the Mask of Creation game, he also has yellow eyes on the "cutscene" images. But the PoS set has blue eyes, which do not match Pohatu's yellow eyes and break the trend of the Protector and Toa sets having matching eyes.

 

So it is almost like the set versions of Ekimu and PoS have had their eyes swapped from the "canon" animation versions. (I assume the animation versions are more "canon" because that way all the Toa and Protector eye colours match. Also some MoCr promo images imply blue eyes behind it, which would only fit Ekimu if the animated version of him is more accurate.)

 

My (somewhat jokey) theory is that the PoS set is actually Ekimu in disguise, having swapped places with the real PoS to help guide the Toa. (But only in the sets mind - the eyes are correct in the animations.)

My other theory is that at some point in production, the pieces for Ekimu and PoS got jumbled up and were rebuilt with the wrong eyestalks in them.

 

But what do you think? Is the "swap" just a coincidence? Why do you think the PoS eyes don't match Pohatu? Are you going to swap the eyes around when you buy Ekimu?

[believe victims]

The reason might be that their mask's translucent color is already that of the eye color proposed. This might make the eyes less visible than having a contrasting color. (Granted, Protector of Ice got away with having a matching mask color and eye color, so I'm not sure that entirely holds water.)

[Xabla]

Uh… Set convience? 

[Prowl Nightwolf]

So are you asking if the Toy's eye color is more canon than the animations? I would think that as a toy company the Set's choices would automatically qualify as cannon more so than other forms of media. You do bring an interesting point up however and a nice eye for detail that you noticed this change. If I may ask if every release of these sets has this running mistake or are you taking your inquiry based off your own copy? Reason I am asking is that it is possible that while most products will have a tagline "Colors may vary from packaging" If it is just your set or a 3rd party posting of said product or the company's stock photos that maybe a few releases of PoS got the wrong piece in its packaging when shipped. It has happened in the past. In fact I am dealing with a similar situation regarding a pack of Lipton green tea I purchased. While I grabbed and bought the regular kind, several of the bottles were diet even though no sign was on the packaging.

 

So do you have reason to believe that every release of PoS (Ekimu is not released yet) has this eye color changed, or maybe just a certain one(s)?

[Votuko]

@Prowl

The eye piece that comes with the Protector of Stone set is always blue - that is how the instructions and box show it. But all the animations show the PoS as having yellow/green eyes, which is why I think that some sort of mistake happened when they were finalising the sets.

 

Granted, Ekimu is not released yet, but his set version has had yellow/green eyes at both of the toy fairs that Mask Maker v Skull Grinder has been photographed at. And as we know, all the animations show him with blue eyes.

 

 

EDIT: I just re-watched Episode 1 on BIONICLE.com to check, and both the current Protector of Stone and the past one who heard the Prophesy from Ekimu are drawn with yellow eyes.

Edited February 19, 2015 by Xelphene

[Prowl Nightwolf]

So it sounds to me, if the directions, the packaging, the set release itself, all show the PoS with Blue eyes... then we can agree he may be suppose to have blue eyes... . The Animations do have some inconsistencies, Onua and the Lord of Skull Spider's sizes just off the top of my head. So I would say that while Pohatu has the yellow eyes and it may have been nice for the PoS to have them to match the pre-suggested idea that the Toa and Protectors should share eye color, I don't think me as a fan would care too much either way. Then again... I do have my moments like when an Onu-Koroian is depicted with an eye color other than green. So it could go wither way. I may not worry too much about it, I mean if Ekimu comes with yellow I could switch them out for display purposes, though I'd first have to get all the sets prior.

[RahiSpeak]

Prowl Nightwolf is right about the inconsistencies, of which I have mentioned some already in another topic. Really, there are several inconsistencies between the sets and the animations concerning color; in the animations, the Protector of Fire has grey hands; in the set, he has trans-orange hands. It has nothing to do with some secret story, which I am sure you understand since you said the proposal was somewhat of a joke, some color-combinations just look better as sets and others look better animated.

[Lyichir]

The answer is most likely that the reversed eye colors were just more appealing. The designers liked them more, and/or the focus testing showed that kids liked them more.

There's pretty much zero chance that the eye colors had any storyline significance. Apart from MAYBE the Piraka and Toa Inika, eye colors have never had any real relevance to the story. Which is probably the main reason we don't see as many eye colors as we used to—when designing a set, changing the eye color hardly changes anything about the character's design, so while switching to another existing eye color might be done based on what looks better, there's no point in introducing a new eye color to be used by only one or two characters.

[dotcom]

In a teaser/trailer/something for the animations that went up a while ago both PoS and Pohatu had blue eyes. Which confuses things even further! But yeah, I don't think it really matters much. I don't know why they changed it, because I don't think it looks better, but it's one of those weird things Lego does sometimes. Bit puzzling but nothing major.

(I'm still gonna get a couple of extra blue eyestalks and replace Pohatu and Ekimu's tho.)

[Nidhiki of the Shadows]

Ekimu SHOULD have had blue eyes. Would look so much better than the green eyes (plus, the Mask of Creation has always been depicted as having blue eyes).

 

-NotS

[Votuko]

So the general consensus is that it is a coincidence that PoS got blue eyes in the set and Ekimu got yellow eyes in the set?

I guess that is most likely, but I still don't see why they would change it from the animation version, which seems generally better thought-out.

 

Blue-eye Ekimu will almost certainly look better than yellow-eye, due to it matching his secondary colour, and the eyes behind the Mask of Creation in other promo material (including the original reveal, I believe) have been blue.

Similarly, I've tried the PoS with both eye colours and neither stands out as looking better, but the blue eyes do clash with Pohatu's yellow eyes when all the other Toa match their Protector...

 

And I agree that eyes don't really have a story role, but does that mean you think that LEGO just don't care enough to make them consistent? By that logic, all the characters would have random contradicting eye colours in the different media. (Perhaps an exaggeration, but you get my point.) Another idea is that maybe the design team got told they weren't allowed to use so many yellow/green eye stalks in the first wave (or they were told specifically that PoS would sell better with blue eyes) so they swapped Ekimu's planned blue eyes for yellow so that fussy people like me can swap them back around when they buy the sets.

[RahiSpeak]

Remember, the sets are made before the animations. Something that you will notice with all of the Protectors and Toa in their set-form (with the exception of Pohatu) is that the eye-color never matches the accompanying transparent color. This is so the eyes do not blend in and stand out amongst the rest of the set. It is pretty important that the eyes stand out because that is crucial in really identifying the set as a character. Now in the animations, the eyes can be distinguished by means other than color like making them glow or expressing emotion. While Ekimu looks cool with blue eyes in the animations, they would not be distinguised enough when surrounded by a golden trans-blue and in a set.

[dotcom]

Remember, the sets are made before the animations. Something that you will notice with all of the Protectors and Toa in their set-form (with the exception of Pohatu) is that the eye-color never matches the accompanying transparent color. This is so the eyes do not blend in and stand out amongst the rest of the set. It is pretty important that the eyes stand out because that is crucial in really identifying the set as a character. Now in the animations, the eyes can be distinguished by means other than color like making them glow or expressing emotion. While Ekimu looks cool with blue eyes in the animations, they would not be distinguised enough when surrounded by a golden trans-blue and in a set.

The Protector of Ice disagrees with that.

[Lyichir]

Remember, the sets are made before the animations. Something that you will notice with all of the Protectors and Toa in their set-form (with the exception of Pohatu) is that the eye-color never matches the accompanying transparent color. This is so the eyes do not blend in and stand out amongst the rest of the set. It is pretty important that the eyes stand out because that is crucial in really identifying the set as a character. Now in the animations, the eyes can be distinguished by means other than color like making them glow or expressing emotion. While Ekimu looks cool with blue eyes in the animations, they would not be distinguised enough when surrounded by a golden trans-blue and in a set.

A good point. Even when wearing a blank expression, the eyes in the animations are much bigger and more vibrant than they appear in the sets themselves (which applied to MOST Bionicle masks in the past as well). A contrasting color is more likely to stand out, which some might consider "clashing" but is preferable to the eyes being indistinguishable from the other parts of the set.

 

Also, while the Protector of Stone's eye color may be more of an enigma, Ekimu greatly benefits from a fluorescent eye color, which ensures that his eyes will almost always glow brighter than the Trans. Light Blue armor shells. I'm still a bit disappointed that the new eye pieces come in Trans. Light Blue rather than Trans. Fluorescent Blue, the eye color used by the original Kopaka which glows under more lighting conditions than being lit directly from above or behind (and unlike many of the Toa Mata eye colors, is still in use in other Lego parts and sets).

[fishers64]

I imagine that the problem is Quite Easily Fixed. If you don't like it, just swap the eyes. Although that might not happen if you only got the Ekimu set, but I imagine those who are fanatical enough to care about eye color probably are fanatical enough to own multiple sets. 

 

As for the animations vs. sets, I think it has to do with set concerns and animation concerns being two different animals. 

 

Of course, all of this is assuming that all of this was intended and not due to human error, either in assembling the sets at Toyfair or in having prototype/exchanged parts in the designs. It's entirely possible that Ekimu is getting a new-color eye and they didn't have it yet, so they gave him yellow eyes instead. 

[Toa Smoke Monster]

My (somewhat jokey) theory is that the PoS set is actually Ekimu in disguise, having swapped places with the real PoS to help guide the Toa.

I almost want this to be canon, since it would give one of the other Protectors besides the Fire Protector a more interesting role in the story.

 

On the whole 'eye color' issue, as long as it looks good on the set or animated figure, it really doesn't bother me. I'm sure Lego had their reasons for choicing the colors they did for the sets and animations, but I don't think it would have any huge impact on the story. (At least, I don't think it would.)

[Votuko]

Remember, the sets are made before the animations. [...] This is so the eyes do not blend in and stand out amongst the rest of the set...

If the sets were made first, and PoS had blue eyes from the start, surely there is no reason for him to have yellow eyes in the animations, which were made to match the sets.

That's why I think PoS's set was originally made with yellow eyes, which were faithfully copied into the animations.

 

My best guess is that later, just before release, the team were told to change PoS's eye colour to blue to stand out better on the box image (as you say, they would blend into the set, but I think more importantly they would blend into the desert backdrop).

Maybe the same happened for Ekimu, but arguably yellow stands out less than blue in set form, because yellow blends with all the gold in him - somewhat defeating the "no blending" argument. What I think happened is that they already had the 2015 piece lists finalised and submitted to the factory or whatnot, so they had to keep the number of eyes of each colour the same, even though they wanted to change the PoS eyes to blue. Luckily, Ekimu had blue eyes which they could swap out, and his set was in a later wave so there was no finalised box art that would have to be altered (as there may be if they had taken the eyes from another Protector).

Edited February 20, 2015 by Xelphene

[RahiSpeak]

Try to imagine the Protector of Stone's eyes being blue in the animations; even though blue looks better in the set, it just does not have the same appeal in the animations. There will always be this disparity between the real world and the virtual one because they simply do not look the same. All is simply artistic license.

 

You will notice that many Protectors only have one arm/leg-segment per side in their set form but have two in their animated form. This also means that any armor on the limbs covers the entire limb in the sets but only half in the animations. Does this mean that there was some sort of mix-up with the pieces? No, that is just the way that the sets were designed and the animators did their job of representing the sets as best they could.

 

Ekimu's eye-color would not blend in too much because, as mentioned in another topic, the trans-neon-yellow glows particularly brightly and that is one of the main reasons the eye-color has been kept over the years. Also, trans-neon-yellow and gold can look very different under the right conditions (like light) whereas the blue eyes compared to the blue armor appear to blend together and since matching, do not stand out from one another.

Edited February 20, 2015 by RahiSpeak

[SPIRIT]

Going by Gen 1 rules, I wouldn't trust eye colours as far as I could throw them.  Many characters have undergone eye colour changes between different media and even between different iterations of their sets.  (See also Teridax and Toa Metru).

 

My money's on coincidence.

[Xabla]

Maybe i'll just switch them.