Early concept documents for Bionicle ignition trilogy Revealed!

[masterchirox580]

 

The video is nearly an hour so get comfy. 

Edited October 10 by masterchirox580

[Nato G]

It's great getting all of these insights into the development of sets and story. I've already seen a few of the talented 3D-modellers in the community replicating some of these prototype parts. 

[Taria Pakari]

Never thought I'd see the day where we got a clear version of that one prototype with the kit-bashed Kraahkan.

[Hephastothegreat]

Wow! I am so excited to see it. Lego world is so impressive.

[Lenny7092]

Hail Duckbricks for being our hero who digs out archived Bionicle stuff! This is neat stuff!

[Master Inika]

It's pretty funny that, both in and out of universe, Tren Krom was supposed to be a bigger deal but got shunted out of the spotlight because his creators wanted to replace him with something better.

This video was awesome. It's so neat and nostalgic even though it's so weird and different. BIONICLE had a certain aesthetic and way it formed words, looking at these BTS pages, even the ones he clicked through quickly without context, feels like getting the new LEGO Magazine in the mail and just being in awe of what was in store for the year.

It's surprising that they were trying to make romance with Hahli a thing as late as 2005. Personally, I always though she just seemed kind of there in the books and comics we did get, not really doing much. It seems probable to be that getting rid of the romance might have been a last-minute choice and that was all they had for her character. The transition of Matoran to Toa Inika as being like becoming teenagers is neat and some of it (like their beach gym/hideout) I feel like could have worked. But, maybe after the whole "yo yo piraka" thing was maybe not received as well as LEGO hoped, they toned the more urban/real-life influences down.

"young Matoran who's destined to rescue the world from destruction" That sounds quite a bit like Matoro, and I feel like Greg also might have drawn from this unrealized character in writing the unnamed builder of the Toa Canisters.

[Nato G]

He's put out a video for the Glatorian era as well: 

 

 

[Lenny7092]

On 10/21/2024 at 7:40 AM, Nato G said:

He's put out a video for the Glatorian era as well: 

 

 

Whoa. The concept for the 2009-2011 stuff was beautiful. They could have been better than what we got in reality. I wish could have thought about using the 2010 and 2011 ideas more rather than giving us the Stars story arc in 2010 and those two unfinished serials. Duckbricks has done a miracle for us. 

On the side note, we need at least Bionicle: The Legend Reborn’s soundtrack, score, the Hero Factory TV show’s soundtrack, score, and concept art (not much we have now).

[Master Inika]

It's unintentionally funny to me how a lot of the new video is "we can't go into this, it's too sensitive. Here's something I can talk about!" and the file he can talk about is just "Thornax spiky ball."

That Legend Reborn concept video was pretty trippy, from the reused animation of the Ignika falling into the sand to live-actions clips from Gladiator. It also made me see the 2009 story as somewhat analogous to the Moses/Exodus story.

This video also made me realize Gresh and Tarduk's spiky shoulder armor was supposed to represent cactus spikes.

Does anyone else think it's possible that the Mata Nui protoype (seen around 24:57) could have originally been the Element Lord of Sand? Aside from the Ignika, ofc. I mean, that model might have at an earleir point been the EE of Sand. Like the other protoypes (he already points out Gresh and Kiina look grander and more elemental), this MN looks like he's made of sand/desert (which, canonically, Mata Nui was, which might be why they kept more of those aspects, like the shoulder armor).

At 29:28, the way those hip pieces are attached for Mata Nui would have needed pliers to remove. I can see why they replaced then with the Bohrok pin pieces behind the leg instead on the final model.

29:55: On that prototype Skrall, the sword has pins attached to it that don't appear to do anything. I wonder if there was going to be some later-dropped feature, like storing the weapons on the character's backs.

31:22: Tarix's two blades were supposed to be held in one hand and partly overlap. With the final piece, that would have put pressure on them, I think. Maybe the original was supposed to be more flexibe?

35:42: Ackar being so old and depressed that he wants Mata Nui to put him out of his misery is not something I was expecting. It's weird how the preliminary story ideas are either too dark or too goofy.

I know we see what the Baterra set probably would have looked like in the Papercutz graphic novel. I wonder if he reference to Baterra shapeshifting to match their environment meant we would have gotten six environment-specific Baterra sets. I always thought the one we saw looked canister-sized and what the other canister sets would be. I theorize the one we saw in the graphic novel was Ice Baterra, with the others being Volcano, Jungle, Cave, Oasis and Desert (just to speculate).

Ngl, the sentence "a new chapter in the legend is about to begin" made me emotional to read. It's insane to actually read how all the hints set up in TLR were going to be followed up and just seeing how much better Journey's End reads when it's properly paced. BIONICLE ended with a bittersweet note and it's so interesting to read a version of the story where it ends optimistic for what comes next.

From the proposed taglines for the Glatorian Legends at the 42-minute mark, these were my favorites:

"Tough as rock" (Stronius)

"Feel the heat" (Ackar)

"Quick as a serpent" (Vastus) ("Wild and paralyzing" was also good)

"Born bold" (Kiina) (none of them really appealed to me)

"Cool courage" (Gelu)

"Guardian of life" (Mata Nui)

Some of them were pretty hit or miss (I didn't like any of Mata Nui's really) but I miss the era when each individual canister set really got attention and its own "feel." The Piraka nicknames and percentages were a good example of that.

42:53: Did anyone else catch "Proto Slugs"? Now that sounds scary. I wonder if there would have been some influence from Dune's sandworms.

Also, a little bit before that, the idea for Praetoa/Pretoa was pretty interesting, as was the idea of a redeemed Skrall.

I also want to talk about "Twin village.doc". I know DB seemed to think he shouldn't, but it wasn't about sales figures or anything else he was told not to talk about. It's really neat because it talks about the environmental message, like it seems rebuilding the prototype robot allow Tajun's Hot Springs to release mist into the air to form clouds (another Dune-like plot point) and even a biblical allusion to moving mountains. They also talked about how it would have saved animation money to have the Agori just watch in awe instead of actually pulling the robot together themselves, which I thought was funny.

I think the Metus snake was a fitting punishment, although I personally always interpreted the scene as Mata Nui intentionally touching Metus to the Ignika without knowing for sure what the mask would do to him. He just knew it would be something poetic and trusted the mask to do its thing.

[Nato G]

1 hour ago, Master Inika said:

31:22: Tarix's two blades were supposed to be held in one hand and partly overlap. With the final piece, that would have put pressure on them, I think. Maybe the original was supposed to be more flexibe?

There's a thread here on BZP where the set designer talks about the original intention for Tarix. The blades were supposed to be a "stingray shield", and were actually designed to be held together in one hand. Somewhere along the way someone didn't get the memo and made the blades separate weapons, but the pieces can still fit together in the one hand as intended, as there's a slight, deliberate curve in the way the lower parts of the weapons are designed. 

Edited October 23 by Nato G

[Nato G]

Unfortunately, it appears Lego has asked for most of this content to be removed. 

[Toa of Mirrors]

I have a job with late hours, so even though I knew about the videos and documents, I didn't have time to look at them. And now I never will. I just figured I'd wait until the weekend, the only days I actually have any time, to watch and download them, but I can't now. Can anyone please just give me the gist of what was in those videos and documents that were taken down?

[Master Inika]

Is LEGO just allergic to making money? Do they not realize how profitable it would be to publish all this stuff in hardcover? "BIONICLE: Alternate Futures." There's even an awesome name concept right there. I didn't want to write this before when the videos were public, but honest I found DB's commentary kind of superfluous; I really just wanted the images and text documents themselves. It's a shame it had to go down like this. Hopefully someone saved the videos somehow. Otherwise, it's weird to think that this might be lost media forever.

5 hours ago, Toa of Mirrors said:

I have a job with late hours, so even though I knew about the videos and documents, I didn't have time to look at them. And now I never will. I just figured I'd wait until the weekend, the only days I actually have any time, to watch and download them, but I can't now. Can anyone please just give me the gist of what was in those videos and documents that were taken down?

There was so much in them. I couldn't possibly recount it all. Personally, I planned on watching them both again and really paying attention to/taking screenshots of whatever I thought was extra important (that would have been a great idea two days ago). There is no "gist" of them, it was just various largely unrelated early concepts for sets/story. A lot of prototype BIONICLE pieces were made by physically fusing existing elements together. For instance, Vorox's prototype helmet was made by sticking Lehvak-Kal's shield pinchers onto a Rahkshi faceplate.

As for the plot, there were various aspects of the Ignition trilogy that were dropped or changed. The Piraka were originally supposed to be more pirate-like, there was originally going to be a new Matoran character introduced to bear the Ignika (later fused it seems with Matoro), and Hahli's femininity was going to be more central to her character, with the other Toa all competing to impress her. The concept art for Karda Nui looked more industrial than the final product did. It reminded me of a car engine. It seems the Swamp of Secrets was a later addition.

The full 2010 and 2011 plans were probably the most interesting part. If you're read the BIONICLE 5 treatment already published with LEGO's permission by Greg, you'll know a lot of what 2010 was supposed to be. 2011 was the real doozy. It involved some aspects Greg repurposed into the serials (which were also unfinished), like a tribe of technology-hating plant Agori and biomechanical dinosaurs.

[masterchirox580]

8 hours ago, Toa of Mirrors said:

I have a job with late hours, so even though I knew about the videos and documents, I didn't have time to look at them. And now I never will. I just figured I'd wait until the weekend, the only days I actually have any time, to watch and download them, but I can't now. Can anyone please just give me the gist of what was in those videos and documents that were taken down?

The most interesting part to me was the very early plans for 2006. Originally they were proposing going back to Mata Nui island and to return to the original toa team with "beefed up Toa Nuva". The idea was originally to have two stories. The first concerned a storm created by Trem Krom that would damage Mata Nui and the Toa had to stop it (kind of reminiscent of the morbuzak story). The second was where the real story began with a team of sort of anti-Toa called the Toa Rana, brought to the island by three titans called "Torays". They intended to steal these masks from the Toa for their own benefit. I honestly like this idea. The Toray were described as "manta-ray/amphibian in appearance". 2008 was also proposed to take place in "the city of the brotherhood of Makuta" which sounded like a real cool idea. A sort of evil Metru Nui which would likely have been called Makuta-Nui (that name wasn't in the documents but it's kind of obvious). 2009 wasn't as interesting because the story didn't change all that much in development. 2006 is by far the most interesting. 

[TahnokTrapper]

17 hours ago, Toa of Mirrors said:

I have a job with late hours, so even though I knew about the videos and documents, I didn't have time to look at them. And now I never will. I just figured I'd wait until the weekend, the only days I actually have any time, to watch and download them, but I can't now. Can anyone please just give me the gist of what was in those videos and documents that were taken down?

Regarding the 2010-2011 continuation: it mostly was just like the Bionicle 5 treatise, except it was very condensed, especially the part that was in the aforementioned treatise (no mention of Oris, Buckethead, Likus and Tera or even the other characters beside Mata Nui, just a short summary of the journey through the maze). The interesting part was what happened after Mata Nui crash-landed on Bota Magna after triggering the volcano in the heart of the maze. IIRC the prototype robot would've been found there and Mata Nui would pilot it thanks to the weird plant technology of the Bota Magnan tribes. He would use the same technology in his fight with Teridax and then in restoring Spherus Magna (not in the sense of reforming the three planets but basically just restoring the plantlife of Bara Mana itself). I like that idea because it acknowledges the "Biological" part of "Biological Chronicle" and I kinda wish more of it would've seeped into what became of 2010.

[Turaga onewa]

I got the audio for the videos in text, but none of the pictures.

 

 

[Lenny7092]

Guys, we have a problem. The videos about the 2006-2011 story arcs are deleted because Lego looks at them as unauthorized. Sorry for being the bearer of bad news, but yes.

[Master Inika]

6 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

Guys, we have a problem. The videos about the 2006-2011 story arcs are deleted because Lego looks at them as unauthorized. Sorry for being the bearer of bad news, but yes.

The news was already borne last week, but thank you.

[Lenny7092]

It is sad that the stuff has been taken down. All that glorious treasure, including the prototype sets, gone. I wish Lego will consider bringing these things back up. What I want the most is concept art, soundtrack, and music score of Bionicle: The Legend Reborn and the Hero Factory TV show, and music score of Bionicle: The Journey to One. It’s not too much to ask. 
 

Anyway, I wrote down some ideas before the videos were taken down: 

 

Edited November 11 by Lenny7092
Grammar check.