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Vrahno

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Posts posted by Vrahno

  1. I'm not sure if any of this is usable, but others have expressed interest in it, so I went ahead and translated the extra bits from the strange Hungarian "extended" edition of Tale of the Toa, and inserted them into the novel. It's a bit of a rush job, so forgive any typos or mangled sentences, but I tried to make it as accurate and readable as possible -- though at certain points I had to resort to guesswork when deciphering the writing (sadly, the translation work on these books was stupidly lazy and full of errors). Text exclusive to the Hungarian book is marked like this. Text found in the English version but not present in the Hungarian one like this.

     

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/9cs0qvud4b0xbfg/Tale%20of%20the%20Toa%20%28Hun%29.doc?dl=0

     

    It's an interesting read, because as it turns out, this was probably how Hapka had originally written the novel, before it went through a major revision for the English release. Not only were about 50 pages removed, a lot of the surviving text had to be altered too because it had so many storyline contradictions. I'm not sure why the foreign release was based on Hapka's faultier original writing instead of the corrected and more up-to-date finalized one; maybe the publishers were in too big of a hurry to wait till the rewrite was done (like if they had a set deadline and the translation had to be done fast), or they just sent the wrong text by mistake. Whatever the case, here's some observations:

    • The Toa often use their Nuva tools. The first chapter even says Tahu's sword is made up of two pieces, and it's called a magma sword throughout. Pohatu has Climbing Claws, Gali has Aqua Axes and Lewa has green Air Katana. Seems Hapka wasn't told that the Mata and Nuva are different toylines, which is odd, since the first half of the book mentions stuff like Gali having hooks and the others having large fingers like the Mata sets.
    • There's a fair amount of foreshadowing in Tahu's visions to later storylines, up to the coming of Takanuva.
    • Unworn masks have colors matching their Toa. These were categorically corrected to being gray.
    • The Toa know of the Manas and the Golden Masks through their dreams, while the revised text says it was the Turaga who told them about these.
    • Almost every scene goes on for longer, Gali's introductory chapter being the most notable example, as it had over half of it deleted for the English release. There's other cut scenes too, like Kopaka fighting a Nui-Jaga and a fair bit of the Toa vs Shadow Toa battle.
    • The Shadow Toa's remains all recede into the tunnels after their defeat, as if they were still alive in some way. All of these sentences were cut.
    • Fist-bumping is a thing, but this too was removed from the finalized text.
    • While there's some nice character moments and lines, there's also annoying amounts of redundancy, exposition, and padding, so I can see why most of these got cut.
    • Upvote 5
  2.  

    I found this.

    The earliest use of the song was a music video on YouTube uploaded by Vrahno on June 22, 2006.

    Found in Know your memes

     

    So we have a clue at least.

     

    That I know of, Vrahno's just some fan. He's done some rather amusing artwork, but I'm fairly certain he just downloaded the video and uploaded to YouTube while it was still on Lego.com.

     

    The full rap was actually discovered on a Toys "R" Us site from Hong Kong that had a bunch of Bionicle-related content on it, as reported in this BZP article from 2006: http://www.bzpower.com/story.php?ID=2703. Though the article doesn't mention the Piraka Rap in specific, I'm fairly certain that's where people (including me) got it from, since Lego's own website didn't have it, and I remember the Hong Kong TRU site being brought up a couple times both here on BZP and on other forums.

     

    That's the farthest I can trace the origins of the Piraka Rap's audio file. The video isn't official though, that was made by me crudely editing the Piraka animations together in plain old Windows Movie Maker.

    • Upvote 6
  3. As far as I know and remember, there were two "variants" of the Visorak: one release had colored canisters and came with the more durable, white rubber bands, and the other had standard black canisters for each Visorak, and these came with the crappier yellow bands. I remember seeing both variants in stores, but I tended to pick the latter ones, because the softer bands allowed their pincers to be activated more easily. Then of course the bands started breaking off, thankfully I had enough bands from the colored-canister variants to replace them.

     

    May be misremembering some details, but I recall seeing the same Visorak sets being sold both in black canisters and in their respective colors.

  4. Dang, I accidentally clicked 'unsure' for the second question and voted. In reality, my answers would be: no, no, and idea. For the same reasons that others who aren't fans of this reveal have already given.

     

    But really, this reveal was just the icing on the cake for me, following the web serials' bombardment of pointless, shock-factor twists and just plain careless, "make it up as I go" storytelling.

  5. I have to admit that I committed some big blunders regarding the framerate. First, I animated about the first fourth or third of the clip on half the normal speed because I accidentally set the animation software to only render every second frame. This resulted in a few oddly paced movements here and there. Second, I didn't know initially how to set the framerate of my video editor, so a lot of my early test renders were either too slow or too fast, and by the end, there was no time left to redo any faulty shots.

     

    I see that the sloppiness of the action is by far the most common complaint. To be honest, I didn't plan on having any "real" action scenes at first, and only added that Kopaka VS Kohrak fight on a whim, without much planning-ahead. Didn't really know how to go about doing it, partly because the Bohrok have such an ungainly design (I did a lot of cheating with the position of their limbs if you look), but mostly because, well, I was basically learning as I went. I had to do a lot of re-animating, because both of the characters had to be in sync -- often when the Bohrok's movements looked okay, Kopaka's were off, so both of them had to be either slowed down or sped up at certain points. I also wanted them to feel like they have some weight and avoid jerky movements as much as possible... in the end, this is what came out of all this. There were some shots I'd have liked to re-render, but as said, I had to resort to using my bro's PC, but he needed it for his stuff.

     

    But if I make a new one, I'll be sure to take these complaints into account and plan out any action scenes beforehand.

     

    Also, these suggestions for raising money are helpful, unfortunately I don't think such a thing would be doable. I have no idea how this works for one, and I don't really have control over my money at this time. So thanks guys, really appreciate the helpfulness, but I have some real-life issues getting in the way, sadly.

     

    But to end this post on a more positive note, I have already started building some more "intricate" models for a potential future project, and I have a pretty good idea about a story too. Can't do any animating yet beyond rough tests, but if this project ever gets done, it'll hopefully result in a more polished animation. ;)

    • Upvote 3
  6. Never thought I'd see this make it to the frontpage, but it's awesome that it got there. Thanks for all the kind words, BZPers -- really feels like a nice payoff after all that grueling work it took to make this.

     

    I'd love to continue making these, and I actually have a few ideas for potential future projects (BIONICLE-related, of course, but I'd also like to do something with the Slizers/Throwbots). But TheSkeletonMan939 is right: these animations take a lot of time and effort to make, even ones that are as crude-looking as mine. It's pretty much the reason why so many fan film projects never got off the ground, in spite of all the talent and enthusiasm behind them. I've already started creating some models for other mini-films, but my PC is sadly not up to the task, and my brother rarely lets me use his -- I actually made most of this animation on his computer, and if mine was equally powerful, it could probably have been finished way-way sooner.

     

    So yeah, it pretty much depends on whether I can get my hands on a better PC (which seems unlikely right now) or if he'll continue to let me use his (which is more likely, but not by much). As things stand, I can't guarantee anything.

     

    I do hope that other fans will keep us entertained in the meantime. So many ambitious and talented artists in this fandom, with far superior technical assets to boot.

    • Upvote 12
  7. This is the route I would take if I had to choose between making a movie or a TV series. Bionicle's way of storytelling could, the way I see it, be easier adapted into a regularly broadcast (if still incredibly long and complicated), serialized format, because there's simply too much story, and a good chunk of it isn't really movie-material. Not to mention how fond the story is of reaching back to random earlier plot points or characters and making them important again, which could all be better implemented into a continuous series.But then, one has to notice how intertwined the Bio story has become, and that adapting all those plots from all those different media would be difficult no matter what the intended format is. Even '01 has so many approaches (Takua's POV, Kopaka's iconic introduction from the comics, the novel's way of switching focus between all of the Toa, and their memorable appearances in MNOG), it would be a real challenge to get it all right without leaving out any important or just simply fun or cool events, but also without making it too confusing and muddled.Still, I like the idea, and it would be definitely thrilling to see all those scenes I've been keeping in my mind for several years played out on television screens. I have also been giving thought to the various intros and animated DVD menus, but, eh... that's a bit too far on the obsessive side, I guess?

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