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Island of Mata Nui and its Size


Toa Komali

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Ah it is nice to find my feet on solid Protodemis again, hey everyone been a long time but I am back. Then again I will always will be for life with the fantastic world brought to me by Denmark, Maori and much much more. Just as a certain other franchise about robots in disguise from a rival company will bring me back or even the morphing grid.

Anyway to kick off the reopening of the forums I thought I would start off with a question for scaling purposes on a project I am currently reviving to a degree, a alternative universe with Teridax not being as quick as he could be and Mata Nui's awakening went unhindered thanks to a brave Toa of Ice. But I shall not get into that here I will in time be posting threads for it and more, so without further ado let's get to the point.

As much as I have been able to convert measurement and currency conversions in many fictional worlds (For example I have a good hand on how much in USD a Wand from the Pottermore franchise would cost converted down from Galleons. Roughly $45.00 so Universal Studios Wizarding World wands are sold at authentic prices) but Bios, Kios and is it Mios? Well they have given me a bit of trouble, being a writer for most of my career has made scale not one of my finer subjects to visualize (I only recently got a grasp of just how massive even the smaller Steam locomotives in the UK  are)

So for scaling purposes can anyone help me figure out how long in Miles, Feet and Inches Mata Nui (The Island) really was? I would wager that it is a bit larger than the Island of Sodor which is Fifty miles wide by I think 30 feet south to north.

While we are at it Toa are roughly 7 feet tall correct? So would my attempt to calculate average Matoran hight being 4.4 feet be close to the mark? I am planing actual physical projects with those in mind but again I will post that in a topic all its own soon enough.

 

Anyway welcome old friends and newcomers alike, Unity, Duty, Destiny treasure these virtues and the Toa will never truly fade. Such is the nature of the Bionicle!

 

Bionicle is amazing.

Legends Never Die!

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BS01 puts it at 486 kilometers in length and 285 kilometers wide. Converted to US units, it would be just short of 302 miles long and 177 miles wide.

As for Matoran height, we never got an official figure for it, and all the sets over the years were on varying scales. 4.4 feet doesn't sound wildly off the mark, but there's really nothing to verify it either. What frame of reference are you using?

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16 hours ago, Constructman said:

BS01 puts it at 486 kilometers in length and 285 kilometers wide. Converted to US units, it would be just short of 302 miles long and 177 miles wide.

As for Matoran height, we never got an official figure for it, and all the sets over the years were on varying scales. 4.4 feet doesn't sound wildly off the mark, but there's really nothing to verify it either. What frame of reference are you using?

Thank you that means it is quite close in size to Great Britain if I recall, that will be a great help my friend thank you.

As for the Matoran scale, I am basing it off the size I recall hearing Tahu was at 7 foot and that Jaller was roughly waist high to him in the Mask of Light. So roughly half as tall as Tahu. I am all for another scale reference but I want to keep the Movie style Matoran as the main factor here, so however tall they would be relative to the Toa in the movies.  Not positive it can be done any more accurately but any help is welcome. ^_^

Bionicle is amazing.

Legends Never Die!

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I remember there was a preliminary animation and size comparison showing the GSR "running" across the surface of the earth, which also had an image of Mata Nui being roughly the same size as Denmark, for obvious reasons. 

:kakama:

Edited by Pohaturon
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:kakama: Stone rocks :kakama:

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2 hours ago, Pohaturon said:

I remember there was a preliminary animation and size comparison showing the GSR "running" across the surface of the earth, which also had an image of Mata Nui being roughly the same size as Denmark, for obvious reasons. 

:kakama:

While that is quite humorous if I recall the GSR is over 40 Million feet tall, that is even longer than the equator which means Mata Nui as the GSR could not stand up on Earth let alone lay on his back in the middle of the ocean. Heck for the project I'm working on that had me ask on this will show that the GSR would have enough mass to make two moons for Spherus Magna and that is factoring in the Red Star too. So while it would be awesome if Mata Nui's Island size was the rough equivalent to Denmark, may we never cease to get inspiration and awesome toys from that great country, it is simply not true.

But heck I did a bit of research and found I was wrong too, Great Britain (Would love to have a way of calling... wait just had a fun idea Great Britain in Matoran "Albion Nui") has a Horizontal Width 437 km (271 miles) With a Vertical Length 967 km (600 miles) which means it is nearly twice as large as Mata Nui. A closer relative size comparison is my home state of Illinois, I am quite sure it is around 300 or so miles tall but I will check it too and edit in if I was right or not. 

Honestly as big as Spherus Magna is is it no wonder life that was native to it developed a bone structure that included metals? (Also I do not get why so many people think having metalic bones means the Agori and Glatorian races are Silicon based, we are carbon based and we have stone for bones and metal in our blood. So why can't carbon based life also be as likely? There is no question Matoran Universe species are not Carbon based after all they are Protodermic based life. :P )

 

Edit: Ok Illinois the State that is almost dead center of the USA is Illinois is 390 miles long and 210 miles wide. So it is very very close but still off by a bit, still gives me a good reference point.

Edited by Toa Komali
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  • 2 weeks later...

If there's one thing you should avoid in Bionicle, it's trying to reason about sizes and distances.

The reason is that GregF, and the story team in general, never got their head around making the stories coherent with the distances characters had to cross. The island of Mata Nui, as someone said, is about 500 x 300 km. However, in MNOG (I and II) and in the 2001-3 storyline in general people seem to move around almost instantaneously. Of course, you could justify this in some way: the Toa could use Masks of Speed, while Takua's and Hahli's travels might actually take days and weeks, with large time lapses between one game frame and the next.

However, things get even worse in the MU and in Bara Magna. In the MU, the most lengthy travels by boat (I will ignore the use of Toa Canisters, since these are apparently far faster) occurred, I think, in Federation of Fear... and the time that it took for Brutaka and team to travel from Stelt to Zakaz and then to Tren Krom's Island and finally Artidax seemed completely random (especially considering the relative position of the isles). A couple of years ago I created a topic (http://www.bzpower.com/board/topic/24651-matoran-universe-map-problems-and-solutions/) where I proposed a modified MU map version that attempted to make sense of at least some of these discrepancies (other people have done the same over the years), but it is a hopeless task to justify everything.

The worst, however, occurs on Bara Magna. For a start, the giant robots were never pictured correctly: they were always shown far smaller than their 40 million feet and 27 million feet of height (why GregF made up that particular figure I will always wonder...); the apex of this is when the Prototype Robot is shown to be barely bigger than the village of Tesara, and the Bara Magnans actually manage to drag its pieces across the sands.

And the travel times are also completely at random. In Raid of Vulcanus Gresh gets from Vulcanus to Tesara (presumably riding a Sand Stalker) and back in what, a day? Yet one would expect the Bara Magna desert to be at least the size of the Prototype Robot (since it contained its pieces), i.e. 27 million feet, which are equivalent to 8300 km. You can see that it is a mess...

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Don't forget that Jaller, Hahli, and Nuparu sailed from Metru Nui to Artidax in just a few days. It's also obvious that the section of Bara Magna we saw in the story must be only a tiny, tiny portion of the planet. Yeah, it's best not to take it too seriously.

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On 09/25/19 at 6:14 PM, Toa of Italy said:

If there's one thing you should avoid in Bionicle, it's trying to reason about sizes and distances.

The reason is that GregF, and the story team in general, never got their head around making the stories coherent with the distances characters had to cross. The island of Mata Nui, as someone said, is about 500 x 300 km. However, in MNOG (I and II) and in the 2001-3 storyline in general people seem to move around almost instantaneously. Of course, you could justify this in some way: the Toa could use Masks of Speed, while Takua's and Hahli's travels might actually take days and weeks, with large time lapses between one game frame and the next.

However, things get even worse in the MU and in Bara Magna. In the MU, the most lengthy travels by boat (I will ignore the use of Toa Canisters, since these are apparently far faster) occurred, I think, in Federation of Fear... and the time that it took for Brutaka and team to travel from Stelt to Zakaz and then to Tren Krom's Island and finally Artidax seemed completely random (especially considering the relative position of the isles). A couple of years ago I created a topic (http://www.bzpower.com/board/topic/24651-matoran-universe-map-problems-and-solutions/) where I proposed a modified MU map version that attempted to make sense of at least some of these discrepancies (other people have done the same over the years), but it is a hopeless task to justify everything.

The worst, however, occurs on Bara Magna. For a start, the giant robots were never pictured correctly: they were always shown far smaller than their 40 million feet and 27 million feet of height (why GregF made up that particular figure I will always wonder...); the apex of this is when the Prototype Robot is shown to be barely bigger than the village of Tesara, and the Bara Magnans actually manage to drag its pieces across the sands.

And the travel times are also completely at random. In Raid of Vulcanus Gresh gets from Vulcanus to Tesara (presumably riding a Sand Stalker) and back in what, a day? Yet one would expect the Bara Magna desert to be at least the size of the Prototype Robot (since it contained its pieces), i.e. 27 million feet, which are equivalent to 8300 km. You can see that it is a mess...

 

On 09/26/19 at 9:05 PM, Planetperson said:

Don't forget that Jaller, Hahli, and Nuparu sailed from Metru Nui to Artidax in just a few days. It's also obvious that the section of Bara Magna we saw in the story must be only a tiny, tiny portion of the planet. Yeah, it's best not to take it too seriously.

Nah nah I'm not trying to do accurate exact replication of scale for Mata Nui or Sphereus Magna, no this is research to grasp the size it could look right on a texture map of a planet not accurate but it makes sense if you look at it.

 

Seeing as my spriting project requires a few orbital shots of Sphereus Magnus and a new body in place of Aqua Magna, Matoraus Magna which is meant to be the body of Mata Nui's GSR form if it were turned from a inside world to a external plant world. The Domes are now truly Islands in the seas of this moon for Sphereus Magna and Mata Nui is the best thing to set a reasonable replica of scale. It can't be accurate to the degree it would need to be if I wear actually mapping the Matoran Universe like a Cartographer.

Bionicle is amazing.

Legends Never Die!

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