NickonAquaMagna

Dangit.

Well, today's news opens up a new void for this story. Guess I'd better get to work.

I guess little kids just don't like constraction anymore. Well, back to developing Nova Orbis. I'm definitely not gonna cancel that, now.

The ending did feel VERY rushed to me. I hope that, at worst, they condensed years two and three into one and may take Bionicle in a new direction with new characters. It feels sort of like they were super eager to just get this story over with.

Maybe. I'll still have to insert a link to the chapter in the opening post of the thread so that people don't have to scroll through all this to find it, though.

Big changes are coming to Nova Orbis. Up until now, I've uploaded chapters in a certain format, which you can see here, in the folders for the first two books. http://nickinamerica.deviantart.com/gallery/47149391/Bionicle-Nova-Orbis I may have to stop this. Reasons why... It's hard for some computers to load. These files are GIGANTIC, and some people may have trouble loading them. Heck, once or twice I've had to shrink a chapter's file because it exceeded DA's limitations. The text is hard to read. That's what several people have told me, anyway. Be it because they have a small screen or some other reason, the "ideal" font size I've used for most of these chapters just makes reading them harder for some people than, say, the text you're reading now. It's time consuming, and I don't have that much time. Yeah, this one is more about me. Writing the chapter down is easy enough. That I can do in, like, a day. Even making the illustrations isn't that huge of a deal. Gluing it all together, though, adds several hours and is reeeeeeeally taxing on my computer. I've stuck with this formula so far because I figured it'd make my work stand out, but... eh. It might not be that smart to keep using this format. So, here's a few changes I'm considering. Illustrations have to be cut down. Sorry guys, but I just don't have time to make, like, ten or so illustrations for each chapter. More like 3 or 4, 5 at most. You should have a pretty good idea of what Miro Nui and its denizens look like by now, and as much as I like drawing dem action scenes... again, there's only so much time in a day. I think I'll upload the images together, as a collage of sorts, to DA, like preview images (might be a little spoilery, but I guess that can't be helped) and make each written chapter a stash file and provide a link to that in the description of the image upload, and in the thread on BZP. If I run out of space and have to keep the text somewhere else, I'll just link to that. One of the great things about this is I could just edit the text if need be without having to click and drag the images around in a giant TIFF file. Anyway.... yeah, I want to continue this story, but I've gotta find a smarter way to go about it, and this may be it. That's all for now, I guess. I hope people are okay with this.

No need, we already have our seventh Toa in the form of Ekimu.I was about to say that as well. Ekimu, while by title is the "Mask Maker" seems to be our Toa of Light, even if he isn't explicitly called that. What color scheme would the Toa of Light have that would differ from Ekimu? Edit: And I adored Takanuva as a kid, so it's not like I have anything against the character. I'd actually love for him to return but Ekimu hits that spot well. Translucent yellow of course, same colors as Lego City sets use for car headlights. Add in white and a splash of white armor along with occasional black ccbs bones and presto a recipe for a G2 Takanuva. This. With each of the Toa having their own trans color, be it in their bones or plates or whatever, trans yellow is the PERFECT color to be associated with him.

I just don't know what to do with it right now,w hat would be... healthy for me.

I'm sorry guys, I can only do so much. Like... okay, here's where I'm at right now. I've been working non stop lately on a book that I want to publish... when not spending time with family, anyway, cause you know, it's summer and that's what you should do during the summer. As for the book, though, as you can imagine, it's not related to this Nova Orbis in any way. It's been sucking up so much of my time, that I haven't even worked on any videos since my review of the summer wave about two months ago. I have a few chapters of the next story written up, but... look, there's no way I can juggle this, and videos, and my own original project. I'd basically have to set aside one of these things and not work on it at all for the rest of the year. In order to finish the next story, I need to not work on videos. In order to finish any videos, I can't give myself time to work on this. It normally wouldn't be that way, but because I've been working on this next big thing all the while, this super secret project I want to publish that IS ultimately much, much more important than either of these other two things.... urgh, it's starting to drive me crazy. I don't know what I'm "supposed" to do, and when people ask me "when's the next review coming out?" or "When's the next chapter of Nova Orbis coming out?" it... well, I wouldn't say it "triggers" me, but it does provoke a reaction, it does make me feel like "Dangit, please stop asking! I'm not your puppet on strings! I can't do all of this at once!" It's become a huge stresser. I'm sorry guys... I'll try to get this underway very soon. If I'm not able to, then I'm not able to. I mean... I guess I could just stop working on my own book for a while, but that wouldn't be right, would it?

I keep hearing stories of people going to wal mart or target and hearing from an employee that the sets are being liquidated nationwide due to exceptionally poor sales (for a lego theme). Nooooo....

Pohatu: Uniter of Stone gets -100 style points for layering trans-neon-green on top of trans-neon-green with nothing else in that area of his body, disgusting and garish and honestly hard to see. I thought I'd hate it but I ended up liking it. Those shells and bones are short enough that together, it just ends up looking like his entire forearms are made of sulfur and he's wearing silver gloves. I tried putting burnt orange and dark beige plates on his forearms instead, and weirdly enough, neither of those colors looked as good. But greebles is what Bionicle is all about!1!1!! It isn't Bionicle if there aren't pistons everywhere!!1! That was the entire heart and soul of geewun!!!111!1!

I dunno, I get kind of a similar vibe from Tahu to the one I just described for Ekimu. He looks sort of like living fire inside a golden mechanical frame. In the case of Pohatu, I ended up warming up to the look pretty quickly, since the burnt orange bits in his arms make it look sort of like those parts are a more natural color for him, and those are the areas most exposed... like the dark beige elements are an extra layer he's wearing over those parts, sort of like a poncho or something. Tahu is a little weirder, I think. I swear, he was designed entirely around his golden mask. Put that on, and he looks amazing. It's like he was meant to wear it all the time.

They swore off doing that a while ago. They don't report on leaks anymore since it hurts lego, and they've come to know several people within the company. On another note... I'm still struggling to figure out why people dislike trans pieces so much. As long as the colors make sense and they're mostly used for bones, it can pretty effectively make it look like entire portions of their bodies are literally MADE out of their element. Trans orange makes Tahu look like his body is actually on fire. Lava Beast pulls this off even better, I think, with the solid black parts looking like coal and the trans-black shoulder bits looking like smoke billowing from a firey body. Kopaka's light trans blue looks like ice. Gali's darker trans blue looks like water. Pohatu's neon green looks like sulfur. Onua's purple looks like some crystaline form of a protodermis-like substance growing around his body. Even Lewa's trans green bits could be seen as solidified tree sap or something like that. And... I love this. I love the way these trans pieces can be used to make it look like the Toa are a personification of their element, it makes them feel like the Element Lords from G1 or something, a more mystical take on the Toa. Sure, if they all looked like Ekimu does right now, okay, that would be overdoing it. I'll except it in his case, though, since his current body looks like someone pried his smaller body open like a flower and stretched it all out to make a sort of empty robot skeleton with a few golden armor bits hanging off here and there, and Ekimu as we know him now is this blue astral essence filling the empty spaces of his stretched out frame. He has a very spiritual vibe that I just find cool, like he's ascended and part of his mind is in some other world we can't see. I think the intent behind the use of trans pieces is important to consider before critiquing any set that uses them.

Anyone having better luck finding Quake Beast?

I cannot, for the life of me, find Quake Beast anywhere in my area, and I haven't even seen him pop up on the lego store. Is this another Breakout Breez, situation?

Huh.... as a horde, the beasts work.

This is too cool.

It may not be a shmuck, though. It looks like an entire Chinese company that just scours the internet for whatever assets they can find to print on t shirts. This is like that time the artist, Doxy, was accused of owning sweatshops because their art was appearing on love pillows, and they had to explain "I do not own a sweatshop. These people have stolen my artwork." It's kinda big.

Here's an interesting find. Some weirdo used one of my Toa Unda drawings to sell t shirts on amazon. http://www.amazon.com/PingAnShu-Crew-Bionicle-Heroes-Shirt/dp/B0191JV5UY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461521077&sr=8-1&keywords=bionicle+t+shirt

Can someone find me a photoshop edit of Gali with, like, 3 times as much orange? I can't find it. Nevermind, found it. Blegh.

Not necessarily, but they are a bit more streamlined and efficient. Ultio basically stole his from some storage facility full of ancient artifacts.

Liiiiittle bit. These are more modern and compact.

She. Also, they only have some elemental weaponry. Freeze gas, electric nets, stuff like that. So far, I've written two chapters of the next story and have started working on the third. It's a complex mystery, but it's coming together.

Rocks.

Introducing Te Veel, the black Venator. Well... more like a dark purplish color. I was thinking the beings beneath the Venator armor could have wildly different skin colors, like Te Veel's complexion could be an intense green, sort of harkening to the eye colors of characters like Onua. Anyway, Te Veel is part of a rare caste of "Super-Caelumians," gifted with insane strength, speed, and spacial awareness. They have virtually no body fat, and despite their bulk, are rather swift and speedy. Seeing one "let loose" in a warzone can be downright mesmerizing. She wears Kanohi Onero, the mask of mental overflow. It triggers the target's brain to fire on all cylinders, boosting their senses unbearably high and firing so many neurons that the afflicted becomes unable to fight and may even suffer a seizure. If used by the weak-minded, this mask can backfire and have this effect on the wearer. Te Veel's will and brainpower is sufficient to command this mask, unsurprisingly. So yeah... yet another very sinister mask-user. Feedback is appreciated.