VBBN

I've been out of MOCing for a while, but now that I'm in my new house with a room dedicated to building, it's time to dive back in. Anyway, here's Gwendolyn, she's unkillable, I think that covers it. Larger photo can be found here

I’ll definitely share pictures of the rest as I get them! Yeah the one issue I ran into with this was that some of the fonts refused to embed, I ended up saving the PDF as images which eventually worked. I was glad to see the pages fit pretty well without any cutoffs or anything as it was!

I really love this initiative. I've wanted to have a nice collection of all Bionicle media, and this was exactly what I was hoping to see created. Something that I had been wanting to do was to have these turned into something tangible for my own collection, so I used the first book as a test, here is the result: I think it turned out real nice! It's a very nice 8.5x11 size and really looks pretty good in hand. Please note that this is of course strictly for my own collection and I am in no way selling or distributing this. Just wanted to showcase how it looks in hand.

I second Synan’s thoughts: an Ender 3 (or Ender 3 pro) is absolutely a fantastic printer. As far as printers go, it’s affordable at under $300. Theres a huge community behind it, and they will help you with troubleshooting, improving prints, etc. Plus, it’s a very customizable machine with a lot of other parts you can buy or print for it. Material wise, you want PLA filament for this as it’s easy to print with. Materials like ABS require temperature enclosures and other setting that a base Ender 3 can’t support. As with any FDM printer, realize that prints are built in layers. You will spend countless hours tweaking your prints and machine, but likely you will still have a “texture” to your finished part because of this. Bionicle masks aren’t too difficult to print and often the supporting structures(which can create ugly surface textures) are hidden on the inside of the mask. I HIGHLY recommend getting yourself XTC-3D, it’s a two-part resin that you can apply to finished printed parts. It glosses the part and fills in the layer lines to smooth out the part. I haven’t dabbled in Resin printers yet, but I suspect they will produce a better looking part from the onset, but are more complicated to use.

I've been wanting to get back into MOCing lately and finally sat down for a bit yesterday and threw something together. (it's also worth noting, I know there are those canon contests going on right now and this character is a future contender, this was not designed with those in mind, this is obviously an artistic take on the character and not at all what I would assume to be canon.)

Well my prompt is very open ended but at the same time is on a topic I’m not familiar with, so looks like I need to get some research done tomorrow

I went ahead and entered. I've been looking to kick myself back into writing and take myself out of my comfort zone, this would be a great way to do so. I look forward to the next steps!

Wanted to show a few items from G2, #167, I just recently sold this one. I wanted someone else to have it, these collectibles are hard to come by and it's always cool to see how many people own them and I'm glad someone else can enjoy owning it now.. I mean yeah it goes for a pretty penny too, but hey the way I see it is one day that'll get me closer to another collectible that I haven't had a chance of owning. A lot of these, no comic con packaging however as they were given out by Lego at a media day event Might finally bust one of these open

Thanks for the frontpaging! We definitely dropped a wacky contest on a wacky day- but unlike other crazy things you see on April Fools day, this competition is definitely real, and so are the prizes up for grabs. We just changed the ruling on that today- people can enter the competition even if they were not Eurobricks members before the contest was launched. You can still sign up and enter if you would like- we'd love to see what you create!

BZP is a city compared to Mask of Destiny which is somehow still barely existing, so there's that

Interesting to see Lego's employee totals over the past few years- essentially, but laying off 1400 people, they are backing themselves up one year. 2017: 18,200 est, 16,800 after layoffs 2016: 16,836 2015: 13,974 2014: 12,582 2013: 11,755 2012: 10,400 To me it seems like a short term solution to make their numbers look pretty for the end of the year, but I assume there are more underlying problems here, given that the cash flow from operating activities has increased yet net profits are going down. I mean it's not at all uncommon for a company to have maybe a 3-5% drop after continuous years of sale. I do think it's a mistake to cut the workforce as such before they even hit the holiday season. From what I've learned in researching companies, the more effective strategy is never to offload a mass amount of workers, but rather to keep a more stringent eye on how many you load in the future. So, in this case, instead of dropping 1400 people, the key here may be to not continue with the 1000-1300 person jump each year, and instead try to focus on utilizing that same 18200 person figure for 2018 and beyond more effectively. Obviously i don't know the specifics of the situation here and I'm sure Lego has people who already thought of such a solution, but just my own thoughts here.

I will go with the "2015 was better" boat- to me, though, 2015 was the perfect balance of CCBS and the classic Bionicle style. 2016 ruined that by introducing too many textures, and the sets were a complete mess as a result. Additionally, I found the color schemes to be a jumbled mess of too much metallic and trans colors and hardly any actual base color, the designs of the characters were less interesting. Also the beasts weren't my favorite, the action features were cool but the overall design of them and The Destroyer weren't really my favorite and just didn't pull me in at all. Umarak who was the only really awesome part of 2016 for me- and he himself reminded me more of the 2015 sets. To be fair, I didn't care for 2015 villains either, for me Umarak was really the only high point in that regard. Edit: oh right, The big Ekimu, now that set I liked. He was the other strong point of 2016 for me.

Oh man, my favorite memories- there are so many. I think some of my favorite moments came from 2006-2007. It helps that those were some of my favorite years of Bionicle, outside of 2001-2003. I remember waking up one morning over my summer break, sitting down at my computer, and seeing "New York Toy Fair 2006" pop up on my screen. I was overjoyed to get to see the new stuff that was revealed, and in turn to discuss it on the forums. I loved every time a new review would come up, because it was always before i'd get a set, and this was the only site that posted reviews of that caliber. When leak discussion was allowed, I can remember all of the great fun I had in speculating and analyzing those leaks with my fellow members, and in turn being proven wrong when real images were released. Oh here's another memory- Danska's Bionicle Builder. I remember putting those finely crafted pixels together and...well for no real purpose really, it was just fun. I think I'll go and do that again! Another fond memory comes from more recent times with the return of Bionicle. I had the privilege to join Andrew, Pat, & others in some discussions on the BZP Youtube channel when we had new 2015 and 2016 Bionicle/Star wars sets in hand. Above that, I had the opportunity to co-found the battle For the Gold Mask competition with Andrew & others and received some great chances to talk with members of the Lego team. It's been a great journey so far, I can't wait to see what comes next!

These are really awesome. To begin, printed items can always have their faults but these all look like they came out really well quality wise. What I love about these masks is not only do they look cool and are fitting for each respective Toa, but they match very well with the two toa we have had officially developed. Well done and I love that you built these in the style of the 05 sets (with a few slight upgrades.)

I'm hoping we see some cool D2C sets for Creator this year. Another addition to the VW Bus/Beetle/Mini/Ferrari scale lineup. I know the Ferrari isn't in that same "Family" but it fits nonetheless and I would love some more sets in that scale. Since we've had a camping theme with the Bus, Picnic with the Mini and Beach with the Beetle, I'd like to see something come out with a Snowboard/Ski theme.

The more you use of something, the less unique it becomes- in the case of G2, I think trans colors were a bit overused.

It's clear that transparent colors are here to stay as a sub-dominant color in most Bionicle sets, I would like to see the transparent color range expanded greatly. I know that eye colors were simplified down to only fluorescent colors (though that trend was broken with trans light blue eyes) but I feel for actual bones/shells colors like trans dark green and trans red would work quite well, as the trans purple on Onua looks great in it's use as armor. Since the colors are being used in ways other than for eyes, I feel many of those colors could be brought back successfully. EDIT: Oh, hey, Hapori is my new spinny. 10 years, wow!

So has his price actually been confirmed? VBBN said Umarak is a $20 set, which would be awesome because I assumed he would be $30. He has the same sized box as Tahu and Onua, and I believe initial leak rumors listed him at $20, which is where i am basing my guess off of. It's definitely not a final confirmation though, I also left EUR and GBP prices blank from the review as those are always wild as well. And great review! I'm realizing now I hardly ever bent his knees, certainly changes his overall posture when you do.

That was the perfect time for my internet to go civil war against me, apologies for the extreme lag I had throughout most of it. With that said it was a fun stream and while it was quite negative overall opinion wise on the Toa, I do look forward to working on making Kaita and whatnot with these sets. As a TL;DW to the video, my basic opinion of the sets is that Umarak is an improvement over 2015's villains, the creatures are better than protectors, and Toa are less stellar than the previous incarnations.

Fair enough, I personally don't mind the gunmetal all too much, although I'm not a big fan of the use of the armor add-ons used to make it. 9I like the piece, I just don't know how I feel about it's application on Vader. I'm talking about the square vented piece.) Also I have noticed a lot of people wishing for Vader to have used the new shoulder pad piece in silver/black/pearl dark gray (not necessarily here, just in general), however as I mentioned elsewhere that is impossible with Vader's current build, because the placement of the shoulders is too low and putting those pieces on would have restricted movement, and the only way to fix that is to remove the armor add-ons near his neck, which then makes his upper body more hollow.

This I don't understand. It's hard to see in many pictures, but in clear pictures where you can see it, he actually does have a layer of lighter color up in the neck and shoulder area. I see it the other way around, the gunmetal is too dark. Vader's upper shoulder dressing is silver, and that's supposed to tie into the silver that is on his chestplate but they tied it in with the pearl dark gray instead.

I didn't mind the torso build itself, but I really don't like the final appearance of it. I agree that it looks like two torsos that weren't meant to be together were put together and the only thing to tie them together is the awkward control panel. And the placement of the cape bothers me to no end. I get they did it for the length, but it makes a lot of sacrifices to get there.

Galley It's been 1,000 years since the last Toa was killed. No one could have been prepared for the force that followed Makuta's reign. Known only as the Storm, it quickly spread throughout the galaxy like a plague, invading planets, enslaving their inhabitants, and growing in size. Those who didn’t join the Storm or become one of its slaves now live in a state of poverty. No matter their species, they all live under the collective name “Nomads.” Some of the Nomads have begun to rise to fight back, and the force began with Kuito. As their leader, Kuito’s sole purpose is to take down The Storm, even if it requires sacrificing himself to destroy its colossal leader, Kronos. Kuito himself is bigger, stronger, and far more powerful than any Toa, but he will need the aid of the other Nomads if he is going to take down the Storm. My entry for this month’s BZP Flickr contest. *Title should be Kuito not Kuita

I've got the Tumbler itself (Absolutely fantastic set), this looks like a must have to compliment it. I'll definitely be hunting down the parts to make this!