Yeah, a lot of the time it's about structure more than proportion.

It's a question of imaginary function vs. appearance. Primus's Heretic clearly isn't gonna be running around with those tiny legs. But it looks good because it's well-defined caricaturism. If the thing was human-shaped except it had legs that were just too short, it would just look weird.

The legs on that COG are way long, but it works because it's a lanky creature and it looks agile. You sort of have to imagine how it would move if it were alive.

At least that's my two cents.

Proportions are overrated.

Just saying.

There's a difference between wrong proportions because they're wrong and proportions which are weird as an artistic choice. The MOCs you showed have bizzare proportions as a design feature. A Toa MOC with huge arms for no clear reason other than laziness/lack of parts is not preferable.

Proportions depend solely on the MOC.

Sometimes character is built through oddity.

If you can't build standard proportions accurately, you won't be able to successfully tweak them to do crazy things. Anyone who says proportions are overrated doesn't know the first thing about design whatsoever.

If you can't build standard proportions accurately, you won't be able to successfully tweak them to do crazy things. Anyone who says proportions are overrated doesn't know the first thing about design whatsoever.

Fair enough. I'm not really saying human proportions look bad, and pretty much any mocist should attempt a standard humanistic design at least once. Though frankly, a lot of these mocs simply repeat old mocist techniques, thus being not much less cookie-cutter than a toamod. Of course that's not always the case, and mocs without proper proportions can look pretty awful. But it all hinges on execution, and if I had to pick from two equally well done mocs, one with a humanistic look and the other with a more whimsical structure, I'd probably like the latter more.

In my opinion, it depends on a variety of variables. For example: If the MOC is, say, a Toa, Matoran, Glatorian, or something similar -- species we know are humanoid -- then it looks much better with humanoid proportions.

The thing is, you can build awesome robots and other, stranger species using odd proportions as long as you handle said proportions correctly. In other words, you can have a humanoid body and humanoid arms and tack on some alien-looking legs; you have to model the whole MOC around that theme.

Those are my two cents.