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Bonkle set thoughts

Trijhak

Entry posted by Trijhak

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Skull Grinder looks good from the front and the back, but the sides... could definitely be improved. Pulls off the skull theme as well as Warrior does while still feeling decently tall. In fact, feels taller than Tahu does, even if they are the same-ish height. Probably due to the skeleton stuff.

 

Ekimu is, as everyone knows, a protector with a gearbox. Specifically, a gold and trans-blue Protector of Fire with a gearbox. Except with lower arms this time. And infinitely nicer to look at. Colours are so nice. Nice shoulder pieces. Shame they seem to be so rare. Would like to see them more, but between the skull armour attachment, the piston attachment, the round HF attachment, the square HF attachment, and that round attachment the SW figures are introducing, it seems like we have a fairly wide variety of attachments now. Have to wonder how Ekimu'd fire that gun-hammer though. Rotating the back half doesn't seem that practical. My guess it's for using the hammer at long ranges and allows for precision shooting of nails.

 

Skull Slicer. Four arms are nice. Gearbox seems lower than other sets to accommodate the four arms. Gear function is fun. Only negative I find is the gunmetal shell on the upper left arm with the spike - seems out of place to me. Everything else fits but I think a smaller gunmetal shell without a spike would work better. Or maybe mirroring the upper right arm's armour - maybe that would add too much transparent orange though.

 

I've really grown to appreciate transparent orange. It's so attention-grabbing and really shines even without much light. Actually, apply that to any set with a large amount of one transparent colour - it would seem transparent colours work best when there's quite a large amount of one transparent colour, as seen on the Skull Skeletons. Otherwise, IMO, they don't really get to shine - the non-transparent colours... 'drown' them out, maybe? I notice that I barely notice Tahu's trans-orange, but on Skull Grinder it's so much more noticeable. Same with Skull Warrior- transparent blue more noticeable than on Kopaka.

 

Really glad the Skeletons don't have 'regular colours'. Hope we see more transparent colours in the future of BIONICLE - I see why the designers have used them in increasing frequency over the past few years.Maybe one day we'll get transparent shell attachments? ...Thinking about it, maybe not. Opaque attachments work on transparent shells, but I doubt it would look quite as good the other way around.

 

One last gripe: the chest armour attachment on all of the skulls (on Warrior, Slicer, and Grinder at least) are way too detailed compared to other pieces, even the chest attachments of the Toa. They 'contradict' the other shells.

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Aanchir

I'm going to guess that the in-story firing mechanism on Ekimu's Hammer of Power is different than it is in the set and more or less automatic. Maybe a magical mental link or a trigger in the handle or something like that. After all, it's not like the Protector of Fire had to reach around to the small of his back to fire his blaster in the webisodes.

I don't know what you mean about Skull Slicer's gearbox being lower than the others — it's higher than it is on most of the Toa, after all, and the same height as Kopaka's or Skull Warrior's.

I could see transparent shell add-ons being cool. One type of piece I've contemplated in the past would be something with a flame-like texture to go on top of an armor piece and make it look as though a character's limbs are wreathed in energy, like NRG Kai's fiery aura in this picture or NRG Jay's lightning aura in this picture. Might be even better if you could co-inject said armor piece like the flame pieces used on so many of the Protectors' weapons.

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Lyichir

One reason the transparent colors on the Skull Villains is because of the contrast with the neutral silvers and the Trans. Fluor. Reddish Orange. On Tahu, the orange was analogous to the red, making the two blend together a bit. That's not a bad thing, necessarily—it definitely gave him an energetic elemental color scheme—but on the Skull Villains there are no solid colors besides neutral colors to distract the eye, and that combined with the contrasting Trans. Fluor. Reddish Orange highlights really makes the other transparent colors "pop".

 

I don't know how effectively transparent shell details would work, unfortunately, because many shell details use a softer plastic than the polycarbonate used for shells and beams. With solid colors, the difference in color is unnoticable, but with transparent colors I fear many designs would wind up looking like Aquagon's translucent, almost opaque swords.

 

I don't have a problem with the heavy detail on the Skull Villains' chest plates. The effect they give is much like exposed clockwork—while it obviously contrasts with the outer shells and solid bones, it doesn't strike me as out of place.

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