That Matoran with a Vahi

So, I started this waaaaaay back earlier in the year. Stalled on the sketch for ages, finally got it coloured... and the stalled some more when it came to adding the digital background. But I finally got around to finishing that in my end-of-year clean-up; and now that it's done, I wanted to share it on here while it's still (barely!) Bionicle's anniversary year! The final picture is A2 size, so... it's fairly big! I may have taken far longer than necessary picking the characters to include; but I wanted to feature one from EVERY line of small, canister and Titan sets from the ten years of G1's run - thirty-eight lines in total, by my count. I also wanted to make sure that I had a roughly equal amount of characters included per elemental affiliation (each of the key six elements is, in the final picture, represented by three canister-sized characters and two small-sized characters... with the exception of Air which got the extra canister-sized character - Toa Iruini - at the expense of any small ones), and that I didn't repeat any characters or any mask shapes (the Nui-Jaga being the only exception to the latter, due to not wearing its masks as masks), amongst other considerations. Some characters, I chose because they were my favourite of their wave, or have special nostalgic significance to me, (or, in the case of Tahu Star, were the only one of their wave who felt suitably iconic) while others were simply picked to work with the choices I had already made. I'm not gonna list every character who's here... suffice it to say, there's a lot of them, and I hope they're all recognisable for who they are! It was a lot of work, and I don't claim to be that adept with colour pencils, so forgive me if the colouring is a bit unprofessional still. The background (for what little can be seen of it!) was done digitally to differentiate it more clearly from the characters, and, well... It was certainly a challenge, but it was fun! And I'm glad to have got it finished in time, if only barely

Ooh, nice! I had an eye on the Darkflame project a while back... the original Lego Universe came out with absolutely terrible timing for me, when I was just starting university AND entering my 'dark age' at the same time, so I regrettably never got much of anywhere with it back in the day; and by the time I thought to revisit it, it had been shut down. I confess that I'm the kind of person who more keeps to himself in MMO games rather than participating in group activities; but if that's not a problem, I'd love to join in your server in the future, when I have a bit more time to spare ^^

This is an out-of-nowhere random question, so bear with me. I just had a thought while I was out last month. MNOG games are, of course, a staple of Bionicle, and have been ever since the beginning. It's been a long time since we've seen a new one, for obvious reasons; and now, with Flash having become mostly obsolete, it seems even more unlikely that we ever will see a new game in that exact style, even in fan-made circles. After all, how can you create a new Flash game without Flash? Which... is actually my question here, really. In this day and age, where Flash is no longer a seriously viable option, how might one go about building a MNOG-style game? That click-through, explorey, adventurey, interactive kind of thing... Would it even be possible? I'd like to think that Flash wasn't the only means available to construct such a game, just the most suitable for its time, but I quite honestly don't know; are there other programs around at present that could aid in producing a similar kind of experience to the one that so many of us treasure from Bionicle's early days? I dunno that I'm actually committing to anything; I have some vague ideas for experimenting with, but nothing more. But it's one of those things that you just start idly wondering about, and then can't stop, you know?

As far as I'm aware, the comics were the primary source for the first two years KK story. I confess I didn't even know there had been books, but I'm curious now - were they novels, like the Bionicle ones, or were they more like guides to the storyline? I'm not sure how much it helps, but I have screencaps of all the online comics from back when the text was working. They're a bit messy; but if you want, I can tidy them up and upload them somewhere, as they provide a fairly complete overview of the first two years' story on their own. Or I could provide just a written transcript of them to go with the versions you've seen, if that's easier ^^ I don't have anything to offer regarding the third year's story though, I'm afraid. As far as I'm aware, it was never finished... but as I'm learning, there was more story material than I knew of, so I may have just missed it!

Oh cool, I didn't know this was here! I'll have to check those out sometime, too... for nostalgia, but also to find out how much story content of the time never made it into the international versions of the magazines. I suspect there was quite a lot... I'd find it so cool if this was done for the Lego Adventures magazine, too. I could have done it myself, when I was a kid, since I collected every issue; but at the time it didn't even occur to me to preserve them for the future... and since they were UK exclusive, it's very hard to find copies of most of them nowadays. I know brickipedia has a few issues, and there are some more of the comics scanlated from another language publication on brickshelf, but there's still a lot of content - especially from the later issues - missing. When the Trouble for Tahu / Time of the Toa comics, from the last two issues of the magazine's run, were added to Biomedia, I was hopeful that means a whole stash of the magazines had been discovered, and that the rest of their content would follow somewhere in due course, but I haven't seen them turn up. Do you know if there's a complete archive of them anywhere online, too? In any case, this is an amazing resource; thanks!

Matoran, for me. They feel kinda under-appreciated, but they're resourceful little guys, and versatile to most situations... and honestly, they're not as helpless as a lot of canon made them out to be, so I enjoy going against the expectation that they exist only to be rescued, by making them capable in their own right. I've loved the little guys since MNOG, and that carries over into this context too; give me a well-armed Matoran character who can handle her- or himself over a more powerful species, any day! Though that said, I do enjoy experimenting with the more uncommon canon species choices, as well. I had a member of Botar's species in one game; and my Sister Of The Skrall character was shaping up to be a lot of fun when I played her, too ^^ Don't really have any specific elemental preferences; so far, I've always just run with whatever I felt like at the time for any given character!

Kapura just shows up at random on your route, not necessarily always at Ko-Koro. If he isn't there, take a wander around the other villages again, he'll pop up just outside one of them. I've seen him outside the Ga-Koro gates before, or where the beach joins the charred forest in Ta-Wahi ^^ I don't think you would have missed any earlier task; I'm fairly sure you can't get to Ko-Koro in the first place until you've resolved all the other villages' quests - Jala only asks you to join the guard and get the cablecar pass after you've resolved everything else. I think it's just gonna be that the Random Kapura Generator wasn't in your favour this time, is all.

This part is basically what Bionicle means to me nowadays. For myself, I'm neutral on the idea of new official Bionicle stories; I don't think there's much that Lego could do that would excite me, these days... and to be honest, I was already feeling that in G1's last three years. No, I'd much rather be making up my own version that uses canon as a springboard, taps into that well of inspiration and nostalgia, and then has the potential to run with it in wildly different directions... and to see where other people have done that same thing with their own unique takes on the world, too (NickOnAquaMagna's The Toa comic springs to mind as my favourite example). Bionicle's life these days, to me, is the creativity of its fans; and I, personally, think that's GREAT because, like you say, there's so much that fans can do with it that Lego themselves couldn't. That excites me, personally, far more than an official reboot would.

Not counting CMFs or gear... currently sixty-seven. I used to have significantly more - three hundred and some, at the height of my collection - but I sold a lot of them off when I entered my 'dark age' in the early 10s, because I wanted the extra storage space and thought that they would better serve by being enjoyed by other people than just languishing in my boxes. There are a few that I have minor regret over letting go of, but on the whole I'm satisfied with that decision.

Hey look! My first actual Bionicle Theory! This thought was actually inspired by the Korahkazi project's current thread in the board; however it's not actually related to the topic other than in the most basic sense - being about time passing in Bionicle - so rather than derailing that thread, I thought it better to start my own. It was just a thought that absolutely hit me when I saw their thread title, and I wanted to share it. So. For a long time now, there's been this discrepancy between early story material that said the 2001 to 2003 storyline took place over multiple years - most notably a text box early in comic #13 where Makuta himself says "For years the Toa have believed me defeated, banished from the island I once ruled." - and the later fact that the entire story that we see took place in a single year. This has always been regarded as an awkward retcon, but I'd like to posit that it could be Fridge Brillance when you think about it: nowhere, NOWHERE, does it say that time is measured the same way inside the GSR as it is outside. Let me explain. The GSR presumably runs on Spherus Magna time, since that's where it was built. Since the robot was specifically made to travel between various planets, it's likely that it would run on its own internal chronology rather than adapting to that of any world it visited; therefore a Matoran year on Metru Nui, or anywhere else within the robot, is presumably the same as a Spherus Magna year, however long that may be. But. The island of Mata Nui isn't inside the GSR, and therefore doesn't have to be subject to GSR time. It would be entirely reasonable, in fact, for the Turaga to devise a new time system based on Aqua Magna's day / year cycles, which are quite unlikely to be the same as Spherus Magna's - especially given that it used to be part of Spherus Magna that broke away in the Shattering, so would inevitably have fallen into a different orbit to Spherus Magna. If Agua Magna ended up in an orbit that takes it nearer to the system's sun than Spherus Magna, then its years - a planet's year being measured by how long it takes to revolve around it's sun - would be shorter, perhaps significantly so. So what I'm getting at is this: the Makuta was believed defeated for years statement was referring to Aqua Magna Years; i.e. the only reckoning of Bionicle time we knew about when it was written. These potentially being significantly shorter than a Spherus Magna Year - which, given the difference in year lengths between the planets in our own solar system (SOURCE), isn't an unreasonable assumption - it's entirely plausible that one Spherus Magna year takes multiple Aqua Magna years. Therefore yes, Makuta was believed defeated for multiple years: Aqua Magna Years. And also yes, the entire storyline from 01-08 took place in one year: one Spherus Magna Year. Neither statement is incorrect, they're just using different reckonings of time. Thoughts?

That's fair. There's one scene in Tales of the Masks, too, where Pohatu and Kopaka are talking and, just as Kopaka's about to tell him that the entrance to the cave they're looking for is blocked by rocks, Pohatu vanishes and reappears instantly, having Kakama-speed-ed to the cave entrance and back before Kopaka can even finish the word he's currently speaking. Again, no distance is given - though it's suggested to take them a while to make the journey without using the mask power - but your result sounds like it would make that an absolutely possible thing to do. In the same book, Gali is travelling fast enough by Kakama Nuva to vibrate through solid rock, which is implied to be an ability of the Nuva mask that the standard Kakama didn't possess. I don't know how fast you have to be going for that to be possible, but if it's even faster than the classic Kakama allows, that can only be an extraordinarily ridiculous speed! Great work on this, by the way! It's fascinating to see things like mask powers defined in real-world terms

I can kind of see both sides of the coin. On the one hand, I don't often read through the full lore-drops myself (with exceptions for things I'm really curious about like the in-depth analysis of Matoran biology, for example, which I found downright fascinating). But on the other hand, looking at the comments on today's set, and even on previous sets sometimes, non-Bionicle-fan members are voicing genuine appreciation for them. I think many of these people ordinarily wouldn't pick up a Bionicle novel even if it was right in front of them - the site admin, for example, has been famously dismissive of Bionicle in the past, and didn't include them in the Random Set of the Day algorithm at all until people specifically asked, and yet even he's stating his support for the lore drops - so the fact that they're appreciative may be seen as a minor victory in and of itself. I think, in fact, that it's partly because we're already Bionicle fans who know a lot of the given lore already that we can be a bit resistant to such drops; few people want to read through multiple paragraphs of information that they already know, without having a good reason to do so. But for someone who knows nothing and cares nothing about Bionicle, it's probably fun to get such a deep-dive into a miscellaneous piece of lore every now and again. Many traditionalist Lego fans see Bionicle as weird and nonsensical, so letting them see that there's a real coherent story behind it can nudge them gently towards seeing that that isn't the case. I feel like on earlier Bionicle RSotD posts, the lore given was a much more brief and basic overview of any given character, and reactions could often essentially be paraphrased as "haha that sounds dumb". It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if those same people find the more in-depth lore appealing in contrast, that sounds like a good thing to me. Just my two cents, though.

Pretty sure it was 2007. I've never heard of anyone having trouble with Keelerak joints; it was Ehlek who first made them so infamous, if I recall rightly.

Mata brain stalks, by far, I'd say. Those things were so cool, and the *snap* they made clicking together was SO SATISFYING, especially the first time you got one of them in a set (or at least, it was for me!), but they were NOT intended to come apart again afterwards...

I'm on my tenth different name on here so, heh... From my very first starting name - when as a kid I didn't know a thing about forum sites and thought it was just a log-in name, not realising that it was going to be associated with every post I made and should probably have been a little more meaningful than just the literal first Bionicle-related string I thought of - to the several variations of my original character's name(s), I rolled through several usernames back in the day that seemed good at the time, but that I had very little personal attachment to. Even the one I had previously settled on for the longest time - Darth Jaller - was an allusion to a silly project I started working on and didn't get very far with; but by the time I realised I was giving up on that, the name had stuck and I didn't have any other ideas. I was Darth Jaller for probably longer than I've had any other BZP username. And then, in contrast, there's my current name. One that I really stopped and thought that I wanted something that more represented me. After bouncing around several ideas, unsure whether I wanted to tie my identity to a specific Bionicle character or not but still wanting something Bionicle-related nonetheless, given the nature of the site, I eventually settled on the one I have now. Matoran... well, I've long identified with the Matoran characters just as much as, if not more than, the Toa (thanks, MNOG!). That Matoran made me out to be a specific one of them, without specifying who. The Vahi part is representative of the most mysterious aspects of the early years of Bionicle; I remember being enthralled when it first showed up at the end of comic #11, and that sense of mystery, so common at the beginning, is a big part of what makes Bionicle Bionicle to me. And I have a Vahi mask piece, too, so on that count the name is even accurate. But it's also a subtle callback to my original Matoran character who, in one of his many never-written-but-often-imagined stories, was to find the Vahi in the chaos of Ta-Koro's destruction. No-one else will get the reference, but it amuses me to call back to it. So, putting all those elements together, the name feels like something that's representative of 'me' within the Bionicle fandom, or at least of my specific preferences, far more than any of my previous ones did. My avatar bears no relation to this at all. Nor does my sig, really; though the Miramax movie style and some of their quotes, like the elements that make up my username, are essential Bionicle nostalgia to me, so it ties in with my username in at least that sense ^^

According to Downfall, he also had a vision of Matoro's sacrifice when it happened.

Oh WOW this looks fantastic! I love what you've done with the style; and I'm definitely gonna play around with this at some point, it's an incredible resource and I can only imagine the amount of time and effort it took to build all this. The video is wonderfully put-together, too. In addition to being a really cool look at what you've made here, three other things especially stood out to me: the use of classic pieces of Bionicle music at the beginning was superbly nostalgic; the bit where the Matoran puzzled over why he was holding a cup made me laugh; and I'd be remiss not to mention that I especially loved the shot of Macku and Hewkii that you included! Really nice work! Can't wait to see how this gets used in the future

Can I ask what sort of animation you're using? Is it going to be a traditionally-drawn sort of thing, or CGI? ^^

Ooh, those covers are nice! I like how they follow the design language of the official Bionicle books; but also especially the way they use more world-buildy / atmospheric images, as opposed to the 'standard set pictures' that were all over most of the official works. It gives more of a feel to the wide scope of the Bionicle world, and is a really nice touch ^^

That wouldn't be D'Anda's fault, at least not directly; in the comic credits, he was always the line artist and had a separate colourist. Colour errors would come from the colourist in question misinterpreting D'Anda and Elliot's lines, which happened fairly often over the comic's run. Though in this case, I wonder if the two red torsos might have been deliberately chosen to make Akamai appear more symmetrical? While the blue may have been mistaken by the colourist as being part of Gali who - if I rememeber rightly - was in the foreground of that shot.

To me, the anniversary passed several months ago, due to Europe getting the first comic and sets some time before America... but that said, I'm also well aware that I'm in the minority here so I won't make a big deal of that xD Regarding celebrating the anniversary, I've got an A2-size poster project in the works as my contribution. It, evidently, is not going to be ready for the day itself; but I hope to have it finished by the end of the summer at least, and naturally I'll upload it to the art forum here when it's done ^^ I dunno, it's crazy to think that 2001 was so long ago. Time kinda seems to have been on pause, for me, ever since I finished university (a while ago now!), so that doesn't feel like it should be anywhere near so long ago as it is. Either way, though, Bionicle's definitely left its impression on me; most especially on my creative process, since so much of the world-building for my various projects now, in particular, is influenced by the MNOG and other aspects of the early Bionicle story, as I try to capture something of the atmosphere that so enticed me into them as a kid. And who knows if I'd have got so into making stories and such, if I hadn't cut my teeth on writing in BZPower's library forum for several years first? Those works were awful, please don't look for them! But the fact remains that they were an important part of my creative development. Happy Anniversary, my old friend Bionicle! Good to have known you all these years ^^

If they're talking about my old favourite theme, I'm definitely gonna have to catch up on this sometime! I've been thinking of doing so for a little while now, because the history of these old Lego games is an unending curiosity to me; but I think the inclusion of Rock Raiders is the things that's actually going to push me into starting that for real... I just need to actually figure out a time to listen to them that works for me. Never listened to a podcast before so this is going to be an entirely new experience on my part xD

Also, I think another reason '05 is put down more often than most other years is that a lot of people were getting flashback fatigue. 2004 had been a nice little jaunt away from the present to show where the characters had come from; but after a year away, a good chunk of the fandom was itching to get back to the Toa Nuva and find where they went from there. From that perspective, especially since, as Xboxtravis mentioned, we'd already seen the end result of the '05 arc, I remember that people tended, at the time, to regard the second flashback year as unnecessary padding that kept them away from their favourite characters, and that perspective has persisted down through the years. I mean! Personally, I don't think 2005 is the worst, by any means! However I have to admit that a lot of my appreciation for it only came in hindsight: here in the UK, at least, the comics were sporadic at best and we didn't get any of the novels (I only ordered them from overseas in later years), so - apart from two comics and the Mask of Light animations online - I honestly hadn't much idea what was going on, story-wise, until Web of Shadows arrived late in the year and clarified everything for me; I don't know if that was anyone else's experience, but it certainly made it more difficult for me to enjoy the year's story as it was happening. The fact that it was the same year Revenge of the Sith dropped and big-time distracted me didn't exactly help matters either! Speaking of, I think Vakama's turn would have taken significantly less flack, too, if it hadn't come quite so hot on the heels of another hero character's highly-advertised fall to the dark side... - But yeah, in hindsight, I can see a lot to appreciate in '05. Like you say, it was the last year of the 'classic' Bionicle aesthetic, especially noticeable in the packaging art - for the next three years, every set in a given wave shared the same background, rather than the uniquely-coloured ones sported by their predecessors, which robbed them of a certain degree of character. The movie was certainly enticing enough to hook me... honestly, without it I might have fallen out of Bionicle for good around that time, but the trailer drew me back in when I was on the fence, and I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. The titans were absolutely spectacular, especially the villains who felt tall, powerful and very unique compared to previous models: like you say, they were easily the first "greats" of the Titans line and paved the way for later models. And even if they were just a revisit to the Metru design, the Toa Hagah were also highly appealing in their own right as they, too, gave us another glimpse of the wider world beyond Metru Nui. (Though I also completely get what you mean about subjectivity; many of the personal reasons you give for loving '05 are similar to the reasons that, for all its flaws, make '03 one of my own favourites!)

I'm afraid that reference goes quite over my head xD;