Akaku: Master of Flight

That's really neat! You did a great job pulling parts from all sorts of different eras and forming a cohesive whole out of them, love the creativity using those palm tree leaves and red bits for the eyes. It has a nice clean feel to it, I'd buy this if it were a set. Nice work 

--Akaku: Master of Flight

7 hours ago, Taria Pakari said:

There is no escaping BZP. Don't forget, you're here forever.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave~

3 hours ago, confused piraka said:

imagine in like 100 years there people with a 125 year spinning mask

My vote is a Hordika Minifig for the next one

--Akaku: Master of Flight

6 hours ago, Taria Pakari said:

Providing a jpeg sprite sheet is also very 2004.

It felt the only appropriate thing to do keeping in true spirit with this comic

--Akaku: Master of Flight

I am in awe. You must be a time traveller, because this series feels like it has been ripped straight out of 2004. You've captured the true essence and soul of this forum, reading this has been an absolute pleasure.

Are you still taking guest stars? Here's my sheet if you are, would love to be a part of this. Looking forward to seeing more either way.

--Akaku: Master of Flight

On 1/28/2024 at 6:55 PM, Voltex said:

i, for one, would love to see more

i like the rough, sketchy edges everything has (that's my deep art analysis from being a total art professional /s)

 

On 1/30/2024 at 6:49 AM, That Matoran with a Vahi said:

Oh wow, I love the drawing style! It captures a sense of atmosphere for the scene very nicely.

Definitely curious to see where this is going if you do continue it ^^

Thank you both! I'm glad y'all like my art style  Admittedly this stuff is a bit rougher than my usual work these days, but it's about the only way I can get this done in a timely manner

In any case: thanks to the positive reception, not unlike a car that has several missed payments I seem to have been repossessed. Here's page 2! Akaku calls upon his most trusted allies for aid... It goes about as well as he could hope for.

Many thanks to B6 for featuring this topic on the front page! I really appreciate it. Me as a kid would've been so stoked. Honestly, still pretty stoked  

Expect more to come soon

--Akaku: Master of Flight

4 minutes ago, confused piraka said:

this is great! welcome back!

Hey, thanks! I Appreciate it

--Akaku: Master of Flight

I'm not sure what possessed me to make this, but uh, here we are!

Comic 1 Comic 2

Stay tuned to see if it possesses me to draw some more 

EDIT 2/2/2024: Added another page! Thinking of making this a weekly release, possibly more often if the mood strikes me.

--Akaku: Master of Flight

On 5/11/2023 at 6:16 PM, Taria Pakari said:

I believe the new forum software has something to do with that. Like how the rank images no longer show except on profiles, the protodermis bar is probably just not visible, but the system still seems to be in place at least. You and others still have the OBC rank. Unless of course that's just a carry over from the old forum. Someone more familiar with the workings of the forum would have to confirm.

I could definitely be mistaken but I think the OBC title and Proto system was all manual changes staff made to users profiles, I don't think they were connected with any sort of automatic system. Way back when I first became a premier member, I remember having to talk to someone about getting my proto/rank changes associated with it.

IIRC submitting news that ended up on the front page and I think winning some contests was the most common way to gain proto, though I think I also got a boost from reporting someone way back in the day that I found out was causing shenanigans pretending to be two separate people   

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Hmm, I recently located all my old Lego/Bionicle part bins, this might be the first BZP contest I end up participating in in over a decade, lol. Regardless, looking forward to see what people come up with!

--Akaku: Master of Flight

These are absolutely dope! I'm also really digging the Bohrok pendant, might have to pick one of these up at some point.

EDIT: Oh, just realized this topic is like three years old, and only recently revived lol. OP, if you ever return to this thread, I hope you give us an update if you've been doing anymore work like this!

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Absolutely splendid artwork Taka! I really ought to check up on here more often, makes me want to put up another art topic here myself

I really like the Nokama one! It has a very digital feel to it, which I'm biased towards  was the whole thing done digitally, or just the colours? Either way I'd love to see it completed!

The sketches of the protector helmets are very nice too I have to say, got a good giggle out of the A-Tak-Nid as well. I think the 'query - ruins' piece is my favourite out of the bunch though, just has a really good atmosphere to it, great use of the medium.

Hope to see more of your artwork here soon! 

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Bionicle was always just Bionicle to me for most of it's initial run, other then a few small things like missing the cool Rahi designs/mask packs of 2001, or the Toa Metru body designs of 2004.

I think 2009 was when I started to really feel nostalgic for the earlier days overall, I wasn't a fan of the vast majority of things concerning Glatorians at the time, although I've learned to appreciate them years later. Several different factors, such as G1 ending, The Dataclysm/mass exodus of users, Hero factory's lack of appeal and getting bullied on BZP for my awful art at the time all kinda led me to loose most (but not all) of my interest in Bionicle for a few years, when I left BZP to go on a massive Transformers binge...

It wasn't until a year or so before G2 arrived that I came back to BZP and really started to feel Nostalgic for Bionicle as a whole. after G2 came around my interest in it really bounced back, and I've maintained a fairly consistent love and interest for the series, although at this point I'm Nostalgic about nearly everything from my later childhood/teenage years... Who else misses Bungie-era Halo? 

--Akaku: Master of Flight

@Master Inika Thanks man! I appreciate that  I vaguely recall their being a BBC contest many years ago where folks had to MOC Tohu, not sure if there was one for drawing him, though. I mainly pulled colors and elements from the top of BZP's home page for inspiration

--Akaku: Master of Flight

@Valendale Thank you! Yeah, that's the idea I was going for. I'm glad it came across well 

@Taka Nuvia Thanks! I based it off the glowy blue energy around his fist in his Avatar. And good eye noticing the moving gears! I was worried that they didn't really come off as such

Many thanks to you guys, and all the kind words on the BZP discord! I really appreciate it!

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Hello everyone!

I guess I'll be the one to kick off the revival of the General Art forum

To celebrate the return of BZPower's forums and show my appreciation for the man at the helm, I've decided to draw something!

(It's a thumbnail. Click it for the whole picture!)

 
Thanks Andrew, for keeping Hapori's ol' gears turning all these years. I would've never expected BZP to still be running after all this time, hats off to you and the rest of the staff for keeping things going for so long! 

(Credit goes to Schizo Kaita for several elements of B6's design, namingly the head, hands, and color palette. Unfortunately I couldn't find the full picture B6 got his avvie from, so I worked with what I had )

Full Resolution of the Image can be found Here.

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Uhhhh unless I'm mistaken, it looks like everyone who has ever been banned has been unbanned? That can't be good...

Other not so serious things of note:

- Signing in now requires your current username, rather then your first/original one. I used to have to type in 'taladar of fire' to login, but now 'Akaku: Master of Flight' is what signs me in. A lot of members who just used auto-complete information may be confused to find it not letting them in if they ever had a name change.

- Reply box is a little buggy, trying to scroll through what I'm typing using arrow keys doesn't always want to work

- Proto bars?

- No 'Members' directory that I can find, where you could scroll through and search for profiles, such as to find old friends you're looking to add to your followers list (upon further inspection, this is possible through the advanced search settings)

Should I edit this post, or make additional ones if I find more bugs n such?

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Woohoo! Lookin' Fancy! :D

Something about the new setup actually reminds me a little more of the OG board then the previous one did. I like it! :)

To anyone else having trouble logging in, it uses your current username now, not your first/original one. No longer do I have to type in 'Taldar of Fire' to login :p

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Interesting to see Blizzard partnering with Lego while their other half Activision has been partnered with Mega Bloks for the Destiny IP for some time. Here's hoping maybe the overwatch line will be successful enough that they'll tell their buddies and we get Destiny bricks someday? Because I'd really like some build able Destiny stuff where the parts reliably fit together. Wouldn't be the first time an IP has switched from one to the other either, seeing the Mega Bloks Spiderman sets that were around when i was a kid vs. the Lego ones out much more recently.

--Ak

Hey there Sam, I believe I bought several Kanohi from you just over a year ago

Looking to buy some more!
 
PM Sent.

--Akaku: Master of Flight

I remember that, back in 03/04, the Official Bionicle Website had a few links to prominent fansites on one of its pages. It's not something I'd ever seen on any Lego website, before or since, so some years back I was convinced that I'd imagined it altogether, until someone else on BZP mentioned seeing those same links.

 

In any case, I was curious and wanting more of a fix for my Bionicle obsession, so I clicked one of the links and began poking around. At first, I think, I wasn't certain; but then I saw a couple of threads on the hot topics list on the front page that caught my interest; and, after seeking my parents' opinion first (I was only twelve at the time, and new to actually interacting with people on the internet), I joined right up. Of those threads, the one that I remember most standing out to me was the review topic for Galigee's old Makuta Island epic, which I spent many enjoyable hours reading before I began venturing into the rest of the forums. Where, you know, I was generally your typical annoying newbie before I started to learn the ropes xD;;

Huh, that was the same with me! Late march 2004 is when I first joined BZP, thanks to seeing an ad for BZPower about it on Bionicle.com. I remember what got me hooked was The Editorialist/T-E's comics, and comedies like Litoru's "Mata Nui Bakery", if memory serves. Unfortunately (though maybe for the best considering how much of a Noob I would've been), I believe that account was temporarily banned at the time because my first and only post was "Tahu Sucks" ... I was not a smart kid. I assumed the account was gone for good, and started lurking.

(One of my earliest memories after that was seeing it turned to "Vahki Power". I was on a computer in the lobby of a hospital, waiting to get stitches above my eyebrow, for in true Canadian fashion I got it sliced by a piece of ice going head-first on a toboggan down a snowy hill. )

Any case, the site kept people from having multiple accounts on the same IP, so it wasn't until my parents switched internet providers in 2008 that I was finally able to create this account here that I've used to this day.

--Akaku: Master of Flight

As long as that B6 or whoever's paying the bills keeps the servers going and there's at least one person to look at them, BZPower isn't dead in my eyes. I wont argue at all though that activity here has dramatically declined to a snail's pace at best ... Here's some ways I can see to increase activity in the forums, at the very least with those who still lurk and are active here:

• Less Subforums: Back in the day, having so many were great, because activity was so incredibly high it was hard to keep all a day's content on a single page, sometimes even on two. Nowadays, it's making BZP as a whole feel a mile wide and an inch deep. Sticking some of the subforums back together like they were in the real early days (where General art, fan created Media and Comics were all just a single art subforum for example, if I'm not mistaken) would let us see what others have to offer without having to sail nearly as far to other corners of the map, so to speak. Not to mention it would create the illusion of more content and activity, a tactic which has been known to often lead to an actual increase in more content and activity, as people would see there being more things and would be more compelled to be a part of it. Look at it this way: think of hosting a party with ten people in your home. Pretty fun and packed, right? Now picture hosting that same party in a large gymnasium, still only with ten people. Suddenly the party isn't going to feel nearly as big, people are going to feel less compelled to speak and socialize with one another unless their family or good friends, since they don't have to stand nearly so close to each other.

   

• Give people more time: Most of us have grown up, have college, university, work, families, etc. etc. People are much more busy now and for the most part see interest in bionicles as just a hobby rather then their sole love and passion, so we view and create things about it fairly less. Now, there's a small, seemingly trivial detail, that seeing topics where they no longer have their title in bold with that faint blue backdrop from inactivity after just a month, almost certainly gives people the impression that the topic is dead. People see a topic that looks dead, they're not going to be interested in it, because they think nobody else was interested in it either. If it's a story, a comic, a library or an art topic, they'll think the author has abandoned the project since it's greyed out and therefore also isn't worth looking into, even if the author was just taking their time. and with all of that not looking interesting to the average viewer, what's left? Just a few of the most recent things posted, making the place look like a wasteland because of the decrease in activity, and then you've lost the viewer to another site that has content available a little quicker. Few weeks or months later the content makers come back, get demotivated that hardly anyone has commented or looked at their work, and decide to abandon the project they were working on completely, or take it elsewhere, and then there's even less content for viewers to find or get inspired to make their own by. I guess my point is that since things are slower and take longer for people to make and see it, means it shouldn't be put out of the spotlight as quickly as back when everything was moving fast as lightning (And to my understanding, that was only done in the first place as another way to keep pages less cluttered back when the site was so popular). I wouldn't say remove the effect completely, but extending it to two, three, maybe even four or five more months would help.

Any thoughts on this? Do you guys agree, disagree, or think I'm on to something, but there's just a better way to do it?

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Hello everyone. Sorry for the double-post, but I feel that this is something that warrants its own message so it doesn't get missed.

As I'm sure any of our regular viewers are well aware, an active Co-Author of ours, Ghidora131, was recently banned from BZPower; its come to the attention of myself why this happened, and the reputation the user had. I just want it to be clear, and that I think I can speak for all the rest of the authors here when I say this, that we at TC do not tolerate or stand for such behavior as this user demonstrated, We're here to make people smile and give them a laugh, not put discriminate and put others down.

As should go without saying, I'm effective immediately removing this co-author and all of his associated works from the main page, and they should no longer be considered a part of the TC series either.

That's all for now; I'll leave you guys with a one panel meme I made about a week ago, here. As said before, I will update the main page soon, and more proper comics should be on the way with it.

(Also, I'll remind everyone now that discussing banned members is against the BZPower rules and Guidelines the last time I checked, so I encourage discussion to be about moving forward rather then about the particular user.)

--Akaku: Master of Flight

Hey guys... So it may be almost 5AM over here, but... That's never stopped me from drawing before Page 15 is up, in all it's explosive glory!

@Ghidora: It does? I'll keep that in mind; Thanks!

@Dallior: Thank you, Dallior! Glad to hear it!

--Akaku: Master of Flight
 

Huh, I should reeaaaally update the front page ^^;; I'll get around to doing that soon, very soon

--Akaku: Master of Flight

XD I'll see about finding a good way to do that while still having the half-res soon; maybe i'll just post the full res in my update posts, since the problem is that they zoom in an awful lot, enough that it may make it difficult for some to read the page easily

Anyways, speaking of pages... Page 14 is UP!

--Akaku: Master of Flight