emily

It was included in the larger (I think Nui-Jaga and up) Rahi sets too.

SWFRIP can take stuff out of SWF files, like Templar's BIONICLE stuff is largely made up of. I use Flash CS6 for animating, I don't know how well/if other programs would be able to use what SWFRIP pulls out. Glad you liked the animation, thanks for registering just to say so!

1. Akida 2. Uxar 3. Ikir 4. Ketar 5. Terak 6. Melum we need more fish with machine guns

Thanks again SPIRIT! The background in video game animation definitely read in the series' visual style - the most obvious example for me was actually the 'shadow spawn' - they stand in what I could only describe as an idle animation.

Thanks everyone so much for the feedback! Glad you all like it and I look forward to making more stuff in the future. They're from Templar's stuff, so I should hope so! The concept has been floating in my head since I first heard the music, and at some point over the past 6 months I penciled down different ideas for reference. The bulk of the animation was done over about a week and a half of heavy work during my spring break. I didn't do this initially because of the poor sound compression Flash has. Apparently, though, that's just by default and easily remedied. So! HIGH QUALITY SWF VERSION NOW AVAILABLE HERE

Ha, that's pretty funny. It's not entirely wrong, either - sure, comparatively there was much, much more stuff going on at the time, but Bionicle then and Bionicle now are totally different beasts. For someone coming off of the marketing peak that was summer 2003 and Mask of Light, I can totally get 2004 looking comparatively quiet. And its true that there was something of a dropoff in enthusiasm through 2004 (beginning with the theme's sudden and radical tonal shift) and reaching a peak in the frequently disparaged 2005. The 2006 reboot and concurrent marketing blitz were what it took to boost the community on BZP into the bustling "city" many of us remember. Personally I'm no fan of negativity for the sake of negativity, but I feel that it is legitimate and fair to criticize the line where criticisms come up, even if it means being a little hard on it sometimes. Not everything is going to be perfect, and I don't think we should pretend it is. I was a huge fan of the direction 2015 took and I've been rather disillusioned by what I feel to be a turn for the worse with 2016's handling. Is it not okay for me to express that opinion?

As far as I know they streamlined the process for all the later ones and only made the no-language versions. At least, I never got any with English text in my sets - excluding the Toa Metru one the BS01 has scans of. It was printed in French and English for NA, I dunno how they handled it for Europe (or if the comics were even included there).

Nono, this booklet in particular doesn't have any comic in it. Its basically like any other medium set pack-in catalog of the period (example), the key difference being that it was thinner and advertised only related themes (Technic, Mindstorms, etc - I don't remember specifically what all it had and I don't have any of mine on-hand either). Interesting that this was packed with Roboriders, though. Must be unique to however many were produced in 2001 (or even just summer 2001). Maybe you're thinking of these sorts of things, Nescent? They started up in 2002. EDIT: Found it!

Ha, that's great. Paolo sounds like a great guy and it was gratifying to hear his enthusiasm for the interview. Thanks for reaching out to all these people for interviews - I'm looking forward to the ones to come.

Yeah there are definitely some weaknesses with Vakama's conversion (and all the issues inherent with Roodaka are a whole 'nother ball of wax) but Web of Shadows is the most ambitious thing ever to come out of BIONICLE as a character piece and as a film. And I've really got to respect it for that, warts and all, just like the two movies before it. 2005 gets a lot of flak for being 'the year they didn't bring us back to the Toa Nuva like they said they would' and I think it's really too bad that that whole mentality rubs off on the movie and the whole 'Vakama turning evil' thing. Like, I get it, the actual idea of doing what they did in 2005 wasn't probably the greatest, but what happened happened and I'd like to appreciate it for what it is as much as I lament for what might have been.

It'd be fun to hear Jordan's rendition of Makuta's first monologue. Or maybe just the meat of it:

A big part of why it was cancelled was that it was behind schedule. If that bug was literally the only problem with the game, it would've been really silly of them to cancel it. It isn't apparent in DeepBrick's videos (because they've been edited) but he was actually working around a lot of other bugs just playing through the level. One thing I specifically recall was that backing into a door you just came through would crash the game. There also seems like there's a lot of trouble with the ledge-grabbing mechanic (though it could be that DeepBrick was just really bad at that).

Lewa just got his final mask and is a little eager to show his collection off. But is he a bad enough dude to kick all those Rama butts?? Story here is that I really liked Jonathan Kaplan (Lewa11)'s compositions for a scene in his defunct BIONICLE: Quest of the Toa fan film that had to do with Lewa fighting a swarm of Nui-Rama. He never provided visuals for the scene he had planned, but this is what I imagined based on the music he put up. The idea is that this leads into the Le-Koro chapter in MNOG. HIGH QUALITY SWF VERSION NOW AVAILABLE HERE

I don't think that shot is even from the movie, which makes it even stranger. If you look at the scene it'd be from, the background appears to be different and the Toa are never in the precise positions seen in that shot. Also, on the far left of that image the background appears to just... end. I think it's a 2D thing set up behind the Toa and the floor that doesn't stretch to fill the whole screen. In conclusion: what the heck

I'd like to hear in general what sort of information LEGO provided them regarding the IP going into the project. An idea of how much time they had to make it would be neat, too. And of course, it has to be asked even if they won't be able to answer: can we expect more in 2017?

I pretty strongly agree with your assessment, and this quoted part especially. Last year's webisodes had less than half the time of Journey to One and yet they established all six of the Toa as fun characters that bounced off each other in interesting ways that I really wanted to see more of. They also managed to build up a sense of conflict and suspense (though the first half struggled with that to be fair). Watching them made me excited for the new story and eager for this Netflix series because I was invested in the characters. But the new author just doesn't seem to have cared to carry over their characterizations, opting instead for his own interpretations that are far less interesting and much less distinct from each other. There's no friction between Kopaka and Tahu. Tahu is a carefree dude flying around for fun and wasting time while Lewa is suddenly dedicated to the goal and wiser than the others. Pohatu's tough guy demeanor is flattened out and made really unconvincing (which might've been interesting if it was put to any actual narrative use). And there's no trace of that jealous, human (in the character sense) Makuta. He's back to shadowy-world-domination-plan-man, which I thought we had finally escaped. 2015 made me feel like it was 2004 again - An interesting story with some compelling points that had the potential to lead to great things in future years. 2016 makes me feel like we've slid backward into 2008. Journey to One is not bad, its just really bland and that's disappointing to me as someone that wants to see BIONICLE at its best.

Really, really impressive stuff there. Nice work and thanks for sharing.

So when it came out Mask of Light was a big freaking deal. It was BIONICLE stepping up to one of the most revered mediums of our time and asserting its place there, just as important as any other thing to get a movie of its own. It was such a landmark event for me that I convinced my mother to take me to Walmart first thing in the morning to get it. Literally just get it - there wasn't enough time for me to watch it before school. But I absolutely had to be a part of that event as soon as I physically could. I woke up and went straight to my parent's room to get her up, but to my surprise she drowsily gestured to the nightstand where a copy of the hallowed DVD was resting. Apparently she had had a restless night for some forgotten reason and decided to get the trip out of the way in the first hours of the morning. So I looked at the DVD menu before school - just the menu. Because I needed to absorb as much of the experience as soon as possible. LEGO and the people making Mask of Light took it seriously too. There were trailers and ad campaigns ramping up to the release. The story and production were handled, with direct input from the BIONICLE story team, to create as theatrical a movie as possible. Mask of Light, for all its warts, absolutely swings above its class; it was out there, after all, to prove to everyone that BIONICLE had a stake in the yet higher world of theatrical productions (a dream that, as we know, ultimately fell short anyway). It was a labor of care and love. I'm not saying Mask of Light is great. I'm not saying its good, even. But is something that is the product of people who have a clear idea of what they are doing and are committed to doing it successfully. I cannot say that Journey to One is any of those things. Its a 'series,' but with four 22-minute episodes, it clocks in at a total run that is feature length - it's basically a movie hiding behind the 'series' moniker so as to hold itself to a lower bar for quality. It also conveniently allows the production team to release only half the 'film' today, saving the rest for July. Times have changed since Mask of Light came out. LEGO film and TV is a plurality. Just this weekend we see A new episode in the 20-part Nexo Knights series A new Mixels special A new two-part Elves special All in addition to the launch of this series. And that's far from the extent of the programming LEGO has on offer now. Animated LEGO features are, by definition, not special now. Not remarkable. Only the theatrical films still hold the gravitas that Mask of Light was once privileged to. So even though the terms on which Journey to One saw release are in many ways the modern-day equivalent of Mask of Light, I was never excited for it. It had hardly any advertising. Because, lets be clear here, its not something that's really meant to be advertised. It is itself an advertisement. Mask of Light is the story of Takua and Jaller, two Matoran with little to no marketing value at all. That's a problem from a marketing perspective. But you know what? It was important to them that the story was about those characters so the set designers went ahead and made 8595 and 8594. Story was given precedence over sets, because LEGO knew that a good story would inspire people to buy products. Journey to One has no protagonist. There is no interpersonal conflict. When you look at the 2003 BIONICLE sets, there is a classic quest narrative - the heroes (Toa Nuva and Takua and Jaller) must search for their goal (Seventh Toa) with the aid of a McGuffin (Mask of Light) to complete their quest to restore peace (awaken Mata Nui) and are challenged by an enemy (the Rahkshi). That's fine. Quests like that are a cornerstone of BIONICLE. But they're just one piece, they aren't enough to make a good story. So in Mask of Light we have the drama of Takua's fear of responsibility, and how it leads him to put his friends in danger. He has to overcome his self-doubt and step up to be the hero the island needs. When the emotional conflict is resolved, the 'quest' narrative is too (turns out Takua is the Seventh Toa). Journey to One is just the quest. This happened to Kopaka. Then this happened to Onua. The character's lines are very close to interchangeable. Even the very basic building blocks of character development that were introduced in the webisodes last year are tossed disinterestedly aside to make room for uninteresting one-liners. Every set is featured equally to sell products and as a result there is no time do give a darn about any of them. Actually, you know, hold the phone. There is an interpersonal conflict in Journey to One. Pohatu doesn't want to unite with his creature because he hates scorpions, but learns that he needs to when the bad guy takes advantage of his stubbornness to steal the creature and get the McGuffin. I had forgotten because it exists solely to forward the quest narrative. It's also a really badly written arc in general. It ends in a hamfisted team gang-up on Pohatu telling him how important UNITY is (hey guys UNITY just like the UNITERS sets wow maybe this is all about UNITY). The animation is okay. I could complain about it (weird Mask of Light style aside, its much more competently animated, and its over 10 years old) but I know this was probably done really quickly and there probably wasn't much time to do better. There's nothing that is interesting or fun to look at. Its just there. The colors felt dulled and washed-out. I wish I could say I'm disappointed, but I don't think I can really. This is just par for the course now, isn't it? There are certain things that could be done better (I know that is true because the Elves specials are directly comparable and they are miles better), but LEGO today just doesn't have time for narrative integrity. It's all about getting something out in a matter of months concept-to-end-product that pushes a line of products. And I guess that's what they're supposed to do? But MNOG sure as heck did a poopy job of product placement and in 2002 it was getting 600,000 visits per month. Can you guess what year BIONICLE's sales peaked in? I don't have stats for Journey to One obviously, but the first webisode from last year has less than 350,000 views altogether on YouTube. It's almost as if MNOG did something really freaking good that LEGO should be trying to emulate instead of moving further away from. I'm sure the VOLTA team worked hard on this show. Really, I am. And I know its not my place to tell them how they could have done better. But I can with certainty say that better has been done.

That is strange! For reference, I dug up some images that match my copy's case and bonus features menu. Nothing to do with storyboards!

Not on mine, at least. Mask of Light has a comparable feature where you could toggle between something like this and a final/prerender comparison for the scene where Gali meets the Rahkshi.

I just chanced across this. Haven't seen it brought up before, so I thought I'd drop a link here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoHu3CJii_4

...and the second designer video is up on the main LEGO videos page.

Biomedia Project downloads are safe, the trojan that gets detected in some of their games is a false flag. But if you're uncomfortable with/aren't sure how to get your anitivirus software to ignore it, you could just play their online version of the game.

Unfortunately this isn't something I can help you with too much, but if you don't have any luck finding support here you may want try posting a topic on Rock Raiders United - tech support for old LEGO games is sort of one of their things (though I'm not sure if anyone there is going to be able to help with this game in particular).

The first designer video of the year and a new "Kids Video" are up on the BIONICLE site!