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chuckschwa

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Everything posted by chuckschwa

  1. I bought both inks from Anthony's Comicbook art store. The inks are quite large and I don't have a scanner big enough yet to properly fit them. Here's an image of the other page
  2. When LOMN was leaked, man, that was the best thing to happen to me in 2018. I waited years to play that game. I had some hope in 2010 when footage of the game was released on Youtube, but most of my leads were dead ends. Major kudos to Beaverhouse and Litestone for finding and restoring the game. The music, the old graphics, seeing Pohatu ride the Kane-Ra, I was transported back to 2001. Looking forward to Bionicle: Masks of Power 2.0!
  3. Turaga Nokama's trident in yellow. Haven't seen anyone else with one of those, really curious where it's actually from. Got it off Bricklink from a German seller. EDIT: Mystery Solved! The yellow trident was a from a knockoff series called Masker. I framed two original ink comic pages. One is an extra page from the foil version of Comic 8. The other is an alternate page from Comic 4 that features a Matoran (Kapura?) in place of Vakama. Been fortunate to have completed my 2001 Kanohi collection. The rarest masks I own are the Brown Komau and the Yellow prototype Huna. Got really lucky with those having acquired them from the a seller after months (years?) of patience and saving. Recently got the SDCC and Inside Tour (Crew Edition) 2015 masks. I wish Gen 2 had put out more alternate colored masks. I also had a Miru custom chromed for my Wairuha figure.
  4. No listing yet, but someone is planning to sell a few highly sought after Kanohi
  5. I remember the old bio for Makuta amused us with the idea that he was a 3 headed monster. I don't know how many 3 headed, mask-wearing characters there are in Bionicle, but if there were: would they be able to wield multiple powered masks at once? Eg. a character who could shield themselves, see in the dark, and move objects with their mind would be pretty terrifying and super OP. Imagine if Makuta did have 3 heads, and got a hold of the masks of Life, Time and Creation. Bionicle version of Marvel's Infinity Gauntlet right there!
  6. This is the cheapest Pakari Nuva I've seen in a while and it's free shipping. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lego-Bionicle-Toa-Nuva-PAKARI-Mask-43611-Rare-Pearl-Silver-Protodermis-Kanohi/203094183775?hash=item2f495b4f5f:g:6vAAAOSwIftfTX9X They also has the Silver Hau Nuva, Akaku Nuva and Miru Nuva. No Pearl Gold Kraahkan though.
  7. Which 3 unproduced 2001 Kanohi masks do you want most? If there's a specific mask or color not listed as a choice, please mention it in the comments.
  8. I do remember the ad in the back of one of the comics. Paul Hardcastle, who did the music for the 2001 promo album (3 tracks, one of which was "The Bionicle Music" featured heavily in MNOG), had a Bionicle themed track pop up on his remix album Zer01. "Obey The Force" features various familiar sounds recycled throughout and the song ends with garbled dialog "Bionicle... obey the force... the legend is born... the Bionicle has begun". It's pretty clear this may have been intended for the album and got scrapped, or Hardcastle reused the sound samples for his own song as a tribute. This might be a stretch, but... IF Rob Zombie, Woven and Cold had already composed music for the cancelled album there's a chance it shows up in some form or another on their later works as a B-sides or reused chords in another song. Again, just optimism talking. I'm not too familiar with their music, but if Hardcastle did it, they may have as well. This was my biggest disappointment. I didn't care for the Nuva masks when they came out. They were too big and just not the personality of the Toa at all (except Tahu). Then the Toa Metru masks followed this format. The final straw was the ugly rubber masks on the glowy "not faces" of the Toa Ignika.
  9. Oh yeah i remember those in the marketing I had forgotten all about them! Never made the connection between them and the Kal. Probably because I had just assumed it was marketing like the Throwbots and Bionicle 2001 with the "evil eyed menace" following the heroes wherever they go. I do really like that idea of the Kal rising from the protodermis vats after the Toa leave. It explains their silver coloring.
  10. I guess I always saw the Nuva as an "accidental transformation" rather than something that was destined or foreseen by the Turaga. Do the Nuva symbols, or the knowledge of them, ever show up in media taking place before their appearance on Mata Nui? Like, do the Toa Metru encounter a Nuva cube or legend while encountering the Bohrok? I know the Rahkshi and kraata do to some extent, which is why the Turaga would know about them from the slug hunting.
  11. I think the Le-Matoran get a bad rap because they are the only group that, for a couple years, we only READ what they said and could not LISTEN to how they spoke. Between the comics & books, MNOG, and the promo animations there was no voice acting or spoken words. Everything was in word bubbles, subtitles, or a VO narrator. Even the GBA game had garbled dialog ("eepa wappa appa wah!"). So when the Miramax movies came along it was kind of a shock to me how they handled Lewa and Matau. Had the LOMN game been released in 2001 as it was planned, we would have heard the garbled techno-elemental hybrid of the Toa and their people and probably would have thought much differently on their portrayals in later media. Because the Turaga and Matoran have been stuck on Mata Nui for a long long time, their past is forgotten and they have secluded to their own regions and developed unique personalities and trope practices over the years. If they had all lived in one place like Metru Nui, working together and mingling, I don't think their accents and practices would have differed as drastically; so no chute-speak in my book. The most secluded tribes are Le-Koro and Ko-Koro. You have to go looking to find them. Once you have, you have to go through hoops to understand them. While the Le-Matoran sing and rhyme and have a colorful dailect, the Ko-Matoran speak very little or not at all. Even the Turaga reflect this practice, as Matau is a singer of stories and Nuju has Matoro translate his words for him. Their unique languages, or lack thereof, is because of this isolation. With that in mind, Lewa should never have spoken tree-speak. Adopted phrases, maybe, but no broken language. He woke up from a canister like the other Toa, and has not been secluded in the jungle for a thousand years. He can still be jovial like Matau and the jungle birds, just as Kopaka is cold and aloof like his region.
  12. Fun fact, they were supposed to be Glow-In-Dark milky white! Besides the teaser video, if you look at the combiner build instructions in the back you can see Onua's brainstalk is not dark-green like it is printed in the rest of the manual. Incidentally, the Lewa prototype had a green axle rod instead of the typical black axle. I guess they weren't translucent enough, or perhaps since the brain stalk is notorious for snapping into the Toa head very securely the material did not meet Lego's standards?
  13. I find it funny that, between the few hours that the Toa transformed into Nuva, someone -- or something -- carved their image into a random cave wall. I also chuckle at the Kal's angsty attitude of graffiting their surname over the Nuva carvings. I understand these panels are meant to act as a "villain tease" but I couldn't help seeing that they goofed using our alphabet characters as opposed to the Matoran text. Unless of course, the Bohrok do indeed use their own unique letters (I doubt it, they don't seem too interested in writing). It's like how Latin characters kind of exist in the Star Wars universe despite having their own "basic" lettering (eg. Aubresh "X" does not make the same shape as the aptly named X-wing fighters; Tractor Beam name tag from ANH changed in special edition, etc.)
  14. rare Brown Komau surfaced again on Bricklink https://store.bricklink.com/AAndersen?itemID=211014636#/shop
  15. Fantastic entry once again, and I also love your original MNOG-styled illustrations included with each article! Looking at the Turaga as village champions instead of exclusively as village elders is a fun outlook. It also encourages play between siblings, with two characters going on adventures together. I had always assumed the Turaga tagged along with the Toa similar to how Yoda piggybacked on Luke Skywalker during the youth's Jedi training in Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back. Despite seeming "old" they could certainly hold their own between the noble masks and their ability to tap into the limited use of the elemental powers of their respective Toa. There is also the fact that the Turaga captured/hunted many Kratta and defended their villages from Rahi long before the Toa showed up. Most of the Maori Tohunga tasks mentioned are also associated with Bionicle's Turaga. If you look into the translations of the Turaga's names and masks they often refer to roles they play, powers/tools they wield, or something exclusive to their region (eg. Onewa is Maori word for "granite/basalt" as well as "a short weapon made of stone"; Rau can mean "to catch fish with a net" in Maori, but also "to enumerate" in Rotuman; Matau is Fijian for "adept" and "an axe used for boat building"). Let me know if you need any help on an essay on Polynesian words used in Bionicle, I have a few sources and translations I posted here you're welcome to use! I think it's interesting that 12 Maori Tohunga roles are mentioned, and there are 12 original Kanohi masks. It could also be the reason there were initially only 12 Tohunga for each village. You could tell all Tohunga in one village apart by just their Kanohi mask, rather than mask and color combination. The masks could also reflect the roles they play in each village (astrologer, artist, builder, defender, navigator, etc.). I always found it somewhat irritating that all the "right hands" of the Turaga wore masks of their respective Toa-- except Maku; And that all 6 of these right hands had one color distinct from their Toa and Turaga-- except Maku. Hahli, funny enough, actually follows this rule (wearing the Kaukau of her patron Toa, and having dark blue as her distinct color). I would love to delve more into the color theory of the Tohunga sometime, but I digress. Also important that you tied this all back to the Bohrok and their parallel nature with the Tohunga-Turaga-Toa evolution. Something I realized after reading this post is how the Bahrag fit into all this. We associate the Bahrag with the Bohrok because they are "the queens of the swarms". However, they are NOT part of the evolution of the Bohrok. If you look at the early concept of the Bahrag "spiders" they are OUTSIDE of this evolution iconography. Although they are responsible for "creating" the Krana, they neither wear Krana nor Kanohi. Interestingly they do share the powers of the Bohrok, which are very similar to the elemental powers of the Toa. Two beings of great power, each with 3 elemental powers, who become more powerful when they stand together. Where have we heard that before? The Toa Kaita. Perhaps the ideas of Papu and Rangi (earth and sky beings), the Kaita, and the Bahrag are all connected. Even the opposing red and blue colors suggest an earth-sky relationship, the same way Akamai and Wairuha are opposites. Perhaps the Bahrag had originally been intended by the writers as gods/titans that had played some part in creating the Bohrok AND the Toa/Tohunga/Turaga. Maybe they also had made the Kanohi masks, since they had mastered making Krana by dipping objects into energized liquid protodermis? Perhaps they were the ones who initially taught/created the Toa in their past life? And now the Toa have come home to overthrow these "Titans" the same way Zeus and his siblings had in greek mythology.
  16. That's crazy no one noticed this earlier! Neat to find out those codes were good for more than just the promo cd and old website! EDIT: @balljoint dog any chance of us seeing some trivia from Bionicle the Game GBA?
  17. There is the possibility that the some of the Tanoka are actually Rock/Granite's Slizer/Throwbots Discs. Perhaps someone scrubbed off the printed illustration to make a quick buck and the process left the discs a little rough. Just a theory. I checked the numbers under my Tan colored slizer discs and the numbers don't seem to have any correlation between the set or pip numbers of each disc. The numbers also don't seem to suggest a sequence of any kind (I have two 01-4 and two 01-8 discs). Incidentally, my Millenia disc (which is Tan with a metallic gold coating) is 01-5.
  18. I kinda wish when the Toa Nuva transformed that their elemental powers were affected as well. Instead of just supercharged, they would tap into another "version" of their power. Tahu = Lightning, Onua = Metal, Lewa = Plantlife, etc.
  19. I had the same kinda vibes. Most prototypes come out of Europe and anyone could scribble autographs on old stuff. I haven't seen many prototypes up close, but these look more rough than any real ones ive seen come out of Lego. EDIT: Description from seller: You can see from the photos, some of the Legos were scratch built by Lego, somewhat translucent/partially painted, and this prototype features a somewhat lumpy surface with texture (NOT found on the toy) Keep a look out, I will also list the Lego Prototype for the mighty "MAKUTA" warrior; it's much larger and I'm still putting it back together. Will include signed goodies with that one as well.
  20. First I've ever seen one of these https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lego-Prototype-Bionicle-Rahkshi-Kurahk-8588-RARE-PROTOTYPE-with-SIGNED-docs-/223975675386
  21. Here is the Questing Oculus deconstructed Here is a door that leads to the Oculus (note the bubbly plant textures on the door match those on the underside of the Suva). You can see the Ga-metru disc icon in the center eye of the door. This door design was used in the movie, I believe, for the Onu-Metru tunnel scene.
  22. Years back, this was the first image I saw related to Legends of Metru Nui. It's concept art by Duane Loose of a 'Toa Suva Questing Oculus". The image first appeared on BZPower as a leak, I believe, as it was cropped to not show the Kopaka stand-in and was old grainy jpeg quality. My memory is a little foggy. But anyway, here is the full image. Kind of reminds me of something out of the MYST games. Does anyone have any ideas on what this did? Was it part of the Toa Suva in the Ga-Metru temple?
  23. It took me years to come to this theory. The tooth-like mouth, cheek holes and eye slits are the same. Perhaps Lego was ready to experiment with blending colors to match Takutanuva's frankenstein-combiner look, but wasn't able to get the mold machines ready until the Metru masks in 2004? At first I thought it was just another way for Makuta to be creepy; having two faces like Voldemort-on-the-back-of-another-dude's-head kind of creepy. There is also that quote from the promo CD: "Some say, he [The Makuta] will have 3 heads. Others say, he will have many forms that change."
  24. It's a real shame too. I corresponded with Gordon Klimes (MNOG animation director) a couple years ago about it and apparently there was a huge server crash on top of office moves, so many digital files from that era were lost. The back-up CDs did not do a very good job backing things up as advertised either. A similar instance happend with Cyan, the company that made the MYST games (which inspired MNOG coincidentally). Cyan had put all their old computers in storage believing that the game files would be preserved. When they took them out of storage years later, most/all of the files had been corrupted or lost. I always preferred the Techno-Funk-Rock-Tribal-Club hybrid of the early years. Paul Hardcastle used a lot of samples between the Powerpack tracks and his own music. I found this one of his a couple years ago on his 2009 album Zer01 (a re-release/mix of his 1985 album Zero One). I believe it may have been cut from the Powerpack, since the lyrics are "Bionicle. Energy. Obey the force. The legend is born. Energy overload. The Bionicle has begun." There's also the track Bionicle Age, that Peri found a couple years ago as well. Peri elaborates on the source here A couple months ago I also found the stock music CD that had music from the Bionicle The Game trailer and the Technic ad on the mini promotional CDs. It's got a similar style to the early music. The album name is Youthquake ATMOS-CD 133. "Up For It" is composed by Billy Conrad & Sam Keaton. "Mental Focus" is composed by Steve Everitt. When the LOMN alpha was found and I listened to the soundtrack for the first time I was ecstatic. I had spent years longing for this game, never thinking it would be found, let alone any music being available. David Q Madden is credited as composing the music for the game. I particularly like the music of Onu-Wahi, Lewa's boss music and Tahu's surf music. It's all very early 2000s with tribal beats. Dave Madden's YouTube and Soundcloud pages 17 Up For It.wav 18 Mental Focus.wav
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