Bionicle 2015 Discussion

[DraikNova]

I meant a placeholder for the version that will be released.

[Tazakk]

Looks a lot to me like the artist is the same as the one from the Find/Get the Mask! comics. Not really feeling the art or the writing for this one so far.

[Dorek]

The artistic group behind the graphic novels is Caravan Studio, whose website lists LEGO as a client but doesn't give us anything new =P.

I personally really like the artstyle; in fact, I think I like it BETTER than the cover implied. The lineart is a lot smoother, and there's no craggy textures that make the Toa seem unnecessarily beaten up and edgy (maybe they'll get there eventually, but you know). It's all very comic book-y in the best way.

[Aanchir]

The artistic group behind the graphic novels is Caravan Studio, whose website lists LEGO as a client but doesn't give us anything new =P.

I personally really like the artstyle; in fact, I think I like it BETTER than the cover implied. The lineart is a lot smoother, and there's no craggy textures that make the Toa seem unnecessarily beaten up and edgy (maybe they'll get there eventually, but you know). It's all very comic book-y in the best way.

I couldn't care less about whether the characters have "battle damage" textures or not. That has nothing to do with why I think the cover art is better than what's inside. The reason I prefer the look of the cover art to the look of the inside art is that the Toa on the cover actually look like the characters they're supposed to be, which can't be said for Korgot in the second to last panel of this preview. That particular depiction isn't even consistent with how she's drawn on the previous page. It just looks sloppy. The Toa on the cover look more like the artist was actually looking at the toys as he drew them. They're more "finished".

Edited December 23, 2015 by Aanchir

[Dorek]

I couldn't care less about whether the characters have "battle damage" textures or not. That has nothing to do with why I think the cover art is better than what's inside. The reason I prefer the look of the cover art to the look of the inside art is that the Toa on the cover actually look like the characters they're supposed to be, which can't be said for Korgot in the second to last panel of this preview. That particular depiction isn't even consistent with how she's drawn on the previous page. It just looks sloppy. The Toa on the cover look more like the artist was actually looking at the toys as he drew them. They're more "finished".

Wasn't actually making any sort of judgment on what you said, but I guess I can see how you would have thought that.

Admittedly I'm not a huge reader of comics, but this is sort of what I come to expect from when anything has a sort of artistic medium; that there will be variations (which are different than inconsistencies, a common misconception) in the way characters will be portrayed between takes. That doesn't necessarily excuse inconsistencies (Korgot looks different because she's missing two armor pieces in her second appearance, so yeah), but at the same time you still recognize the characters, and the slight changes are hardly immersion breaking. Maybe I'm just less nitpicky about those kinds of things, who knows, I'm no artist =P.

Some people just prefer the more hyper-realism as opposed to stylism. I generally like a solid blend of both, and this works for that.

[Kalta the Noble Mind]

the comic art looks...phoned in. it does its job at being sequential art there isn't much life or soul for lack of better terms. the individual villagers look too generic like they were all made from a template and the protectors while having unique and varied designs also come off as being taken off of specific templates. no real character or personality to them.

and going by the stylization it looks like they worked off the animations rather than the toys themselves which could explain why they look so template-y: the initial character designs that gave those plastic figures life were just rotely duplicated rather than have the artist work from the source material and breathe their own life into them if i make sense.

also the blocky torsos and spindly limbs remind me of those zombie matoran from karzahni http://biosector01.com/wiki/images/4/42/Blue_Pickaxe_Karzahni_Matoran.PNG

i loved the comics from Carlos D'Anda and Stuart Sayger since they seemed to go the extra mile and but flair and style where they could.

D'Anda kept the details and shapes of the toa but played with the proportions and rendering to make those jumbled hunks of plastic look like plausible beings capable of movement and expression such as thickening their abdomens so they look like they were segmented and moving the the joints to the middle of the limbs so they could support the bodies and plausibly flex. and where he couldn't mess with the design too much he employed artistic license to get the image he wanted.

like to get the rigid and iconic kanohi masks to emote he would tilt them foreshort them shade them and perform other rendering techniques that would let him Fudge the expression he wanted. like in one panel he would have Kopaka 's head hang down a bit so the sharply cut 'eyebrow" of his Akaku could angled in a way to make the squinting of a glare and in the next panel would be a closeup that employed a slight fisheye distortion that would warp the same eyebrow into a rounded curve reminiscent of eyes widening in surprise. and in one panel he would cock lewa's head in such a way that emphasized the big grin in his miru further and then give us a worm's eye view curving all those up pointed curves downward turning the gleeful grin into a worried gasp.

and he didn't just stop with the characters but the environments too utilizing similar shape and design language in both the natural terrain and artificial constructs of the matoran villages making the characters look like they are part of this universe. the same cuts and bevels seen on the toa's masks and tools were seen in the Kini nui and the suvas and any peg and peg hole seen had the same stylized conical shape reminiscent of the original toa canisters. heck thinking about it now i think he treated the toa matoran and such like any other fictional character, building them from the inside out starting from primitive shapes to more complex shapes to final detail building them from the ground up which is why they felt so functional and realistic. it was like lego made toys of D'Anda's art instead of the other way around.

and sayger did all that and more as he not only embellished existing toys he built media only characters from scratch such as the nameless voya-matoran and the odd non descript rahi. and like a proper artist he played to his strengths for the best result rather than force himself to do something he couldn't. so where d"anda integrated the characters into the world with super solid structure and aesthetic Sayger emphasized raw style and implication of detail with his integration. his "sloppy" grimdark edgy style was detailed enough to have the actual characters be recognized as their toy counterparts but was vague and minimalistic enough to fudge more original creations and still make it look like they not only belonged but could actually be actual toys. your brain filled in the missing detail automatically integrating the official lego toys with the purely fictional comic elements. and where D'Anda went to great trouble articulating the rigid kanohi masks to get life and character Sayger embraced the staticness treating them as archetypical icons whose character was inferred by composition and context rather than deliberate rendering.

the first matoran we see were original designs meant to look sad and decrepit so the Matoran resistance team's inherent rigid and stoic designs look heroic in contrast, while the Piraka had ugly demonic/trollish maws stick in permanent gritted teeth to emphasize their monstrous demeanor while the Toa inika's more "traditional" looking organic kanohi while still oddly organic and alien were treated like power ranger helmets or so emphasizing their heroic nature.

both these artists were real artists using the medium to tell the story in the most efficient yet entertaining way while presenting the fictional world as a plausible reality. i get none of this from this comic.

outside of the coloring i feel no integration of the characters and environment. it doesn't look like these biomechanical beings live in this village with huts they built with their own hands they look like aliens who invaded a human village. and the only thing that makes them "alien" is how they are blatantly fictional entities with no detail presenting them as sufficiently advanced robots or armored lifeforms or the canonical middle ground of biomechanical beings. they are just humanoid shapes that have mass and volume and nothing else. and that is just the concerns of their incidental nature! the designs are too static and rigid to give life like D'Anda and they are too generic and blatantly reproduced to have the archetypical iconography like Sayger had done. they are devoid of character!

Aanchir was right on the cover art having more character than the interior art. while a tad derivative the artist took the transformers approach of treating their nature as big bulky mecha heroes ready to take on the bad guys. and they employed compositional techniques like shape contrasts to denote character. tahu has a more barrel chested build typical of superheroes while gali if not deliberately meant to be feminine has a more lithe athletic build to compliment Tahu's "muscles" and Onua was made to be the big bulky mighty glacier to compliment his companions' more proportional builds. and while unsure if they align with said characters' personalities they have some character informed by their stances: tahu swings his sword like an RPG knight vanquishing a foe gali poises her trident like a martial artist poising a staff and onua is either bracing for impact or getting ready for clobbering time. at a glance you can tell these characters are both real in terms of physical substance and construction as well as personality and demeanor. none of that is present in the comic.

i just hope the Netflix show exercises more imagination and doesn't just transplant the toys into a CG world but take effort and ingenuity to make the island of okoto teaming with biomechanical inhabitance with a culture that told about heroes bringing peace to the land after a great cataclysm hit famous legends.

[MakutaOfWar]

So if the Skull Spiders are afraid of fire, why do they attack the Fire village?

[Voxovan]

So if the Skull Spiders are afraid of fire, why do they attack the Fire village?

Fire village was attacked by a different breed of Skull Spiders, maybe that's why...

[Onepu the Protector]

I'm not a fan of this comic... The Mask of Time on the last page stands out like a sore thumb and the interesting architecture from PoJ's boxart has been reduced to African huts.

[Logan McOwen]

Merry Christmas everyone!

[Toa of Gallifrey]

I got Island of Lost Masks today as a present. I really enjoyed it, certainly moreso than the animations. I wonder how Revenge of the Skull Spiders will tie in, will it be a prequel, an interquel or a sequel?

[Dorek]

I got Island of Lost Masks today as a present. I really enjoyed it, certainly moreso than the animations. I wonder how Revenge of the Skull Spiders will tie in, will it be a prequel, an interquel or a sequel?

That certainly is a good question. Given the previews people have posted, I'd guess an interquel of some kind? Since Vizuna witnesses the battle of the bridge, maybe they encounter LOSS after that and we can get some closure.

It looks like the first GN is retreading the events of the animation too, so I'm also interested if the second GN is then an adaptation of the second book, or if it will barrel right ahead to 2016 (and then be an adaptation of Journey to One =P).

[Aanchir]

Welp, I just found out on Tumblr that one of the stories in the new Bionicle graphic novel involves

Pohatu making friends with little animals!

...All is forgiven. Occasionally inconsistent art? Weird placeholder graphics? No matter. Bionicle needs more of these kinds of stories. :)

Hope to pick up this book later today!

[TheDesuComplex]

Welp, I just found out on Tumblr that one of the stories in the new Bionicle graphic novel involves

Pohatu making friends with little animals!

...All is forgiven. Occasionally inconsistent art? Weird placeholder graphics? No matter. Bionicle needs more of these kinds of stories. :)

Hope to pick up this book later today!

Well, it certainly helps show that he isn't entirely rough-and-tumble fourth-wall-seeing Austrailian Batman, and could perhaps give a glimpse of a bit of heart.

[Aanchir]

I went out and got the new graphic novel this evening! It's a fairly quick read, but still a lot of fun. It's way better than the preview pages led me to expect. The artwork is pretty nice throughout most of the pages (it's just a few of those early ones that are kinda rough), and the colors are bright. The masks sometimes look off-model, but not to the point that you can't recognize the characters.

There are definitely still a number of errors of the sort we've come to expect from Bionicle comics by now — masks colored incorrectly, speech bubbles pointing to the wrong characters, etc. But I'd say the quality of the stories makes up for it. Great characterization, and lots of heartwarming and humorous moments. Very much looking forward to Battle of the Mask Makers!

Other than the bits about the Mask of Time which I believe have already been shared, there's not a whole lot of new information in "The Okoto Protectors' Guide". The only info from that section which we haven't seen previously is the stuff about the Temple of Time and the Mask of Time. There is what appears to be concept art for the Temple of Time, which looks different than it did in the webisodes. Instead of having a giant pendulum, it's an hourglass-shaped tower. Interesting.

[Takanuinuva]

I went and bought Revenge of the Skull Spiders and here are my thoughts and a brief synopsis

So the Protector kinda lied to the Toa when they said they couldn't accompany them. They all meet up after Vizuna witnesses the Toa beat Loss. The Protectors make there way into the ancient city via a bridge built by another Jungle Villager who was an archaeologist and her name was Harvali. They fight some Skull Spiders and the bridge is destroyed.

They make there way through a tunnel beneath the city and find carvings depicting Ekimu using the mask of time to forsee the events that take place in 2015's story. We also see what kind of animals the Creatures are. They come across a Skull Spider possessed giant armored snake and Nilkuu frees and befriends it. The snake carries the Protectors through the cave to LOSS's lair as its the only way to the city.

Meanwhile several Skull Spiders come across the unconscious body of LOSS and wrap LOSS in web to carry it back to the lair in hopes of reviving it. All the Spiders on the island converge at the lair and the Protectors manage to fight there way through and collapse the cave burying LOSS and the Skull Spiders. They finally enter the ancient city and come across and beat some Skull Warriors. They find Ekimu's tomb and the crushed Skull Scorpios.

After finding Ekimu's tomb empty they hear a noise coming from the forge and make there way there. There they find both Skull Basher and Skull Grinder unconscious and maskless. Inside the forge they see the knocked out and maskless Toa and see Ekimu fixing there masks, After the Protectors help Ekimu give the golden masks back to the Toa. Ekimu brings out an old firework. Once its set off the Toa use there masks to make it shine brighter and to tell all the villagers that they can return to the ancient city. After the bridge is rebuilt. The book ends with Ekimu wondering when his brother Makuta will strike again.

Overall I enjoyed the book and it was a lot more detailed than the first as it is it's own original story and not weighed down by the animations.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Takanuinuva

[Dorek]

It's way better than the preview pages led me to expect.

And so continues the legend... of BIONICLE.

I'm looking forward to picking them all up, sounds like a solid amount of worldbuilding going on. The chapter book, especially, told from a perspective other than the Toa will be refreshing.

[DraikNova]

That actually sounds pretty good. Too bad I won't be able to get it.

[Bbrink1996]

I went and bought Revenge of the Skull Spiders and here are my thoughts and a brief synopsis

So the Protector kinda lied to the Toa when they said they couldn't accompany them. They all meet up after Vizuna witnesses the Toa beat Loss. The Protectors make there way into the ancient city via a bridge built by another Jungle Villager who was an archaeologist and her name was Harvali. They fight some Skull Spiders and the bridge is destroyed.

They make there way through a tunnel beneath the city and find carvings depicting Ekimu using the mask of time to forsee the events that take place in 2015's story. We also see what kind of animals the Creatures are. They come across a Skull Spider possessed giant armored snake and Nilkuu frees and befriends it. The snake carries the Protectors through the cave to LOSS's lair as its the only way to the city.

Meanwhile several Skull Spiders come across the unconscious body of LOSS and wrap LOSS in web to carry it back to the lair in hopes of reviving it. All the Spiders on the island converge at the lair and the Protectors manage to fight there way through and collapse the cave burying LOSS and the Skull Spiders. They finally enter the ancient city and come across and beat some Skull Warriors. They find Ekimu's tomb and the crushed Skull Scorpios.

After finding Ekimu's tomb empty they hear a noise coming from the forge and make there way there. There they find both Skull Basher and Skull Grinder unconscious and maskless. Inside the forge they see the knocked out and maskless Toa and see Ekimu fixing there masks, After the Protectors help Ekimu give the golden masks back to the Toa. Ekimu brings out an old firework. Once its set off the Toa use there masks to make it shine brighter and to tell all the villagers that they can return to the ancient city. After the bridge is rebuilt. The book ends with Ekimu wondering when his brother Makuta will strike again.

Overall I enjoyed the book and it was a lot more detailed than the first as it is it's own original story and not weighed down by the animations.

That sounds really cool. I didn't pick up Island of the Lost Masks because it followed the animations so closely but I will get this one and the graphic novel.

[Logan McOwen]

So I picked up a second copy of LoSS yesterday as he was on offer. I'm still not keen on the set as a figure, but as a parts pack it's pretty great.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Logan McOwen

[arc]

So I picked up a second copy of LoSS yesterday as he was on offer. I'm still not keen on the set as a figure, but as a parts pack it's pretty great.

I kinda like LoSS for what it is, but definitely not the best set. It certainly does have a good selection of parts. (The newer y joints in particular I like)

On a different note, at the beginning of the year I said I'd pick a just a couple for nostalgias sake. Onua, tahu, a villain, and maybe a protector or two. I kinda ended up buying the entire years selection. Whoops.

[Logan McOwen]

I know the feeling. I was originally going to skip Kopaka and most of the Protectors, but instead ended up getting every 2015 set - some multiple times.

[Lyichir]

I know the feeling. I was originally going to skip Kopaka and most of the Protectors, but instead ended up getting every 2015 set - some multiple times.

You were originally going to skip Kopaka? I'm honestly surprised, since you typically seem to love the big, burly figures, and 2015 Kopaka definitely fits that mold.

[Logan McOwen]

I was gonna skip him as I didn't really want any more white or gold CCBS at the time. I of course changed my mind.

[Junior Shark]

FWIW, anyone who's interested in the Mask of Creation can buy it directly from Lego through the Bricks & Pieces service. Part #20477