You know whoever though to replace these awesome designs for villains and creatures with what we got, will be banished to the shadow realm, especially the person who changed the design of Ketar.
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Again, I think they merged designs, which I thought was cool.
BZP provided two links, with the second being the HD pdf. The point is moot anyway because the dropbox link doesn’t work anymore due to too much traffic.
Spinning Saw, Bayblade much.
Also that Hammer attack reminds me of this:
http://i.imgur.com/TM56L.gif
To toy or not to toy, that is the question.
I knew Gali was evil, but not Legion of Doom Evil.
PS: here is the link (@Crunchy plz)
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Kinda reminds me of the Nexo Knights 2017 villains aesthetic…
Speaking of what could’ve been in 2017, look at this pic of the Shadow Realm…?
Look at the red face on that stone slab…
Was Overlord Makuta gonna be a thing? 
In what way does corporate Lego contribute and/or have an influence on the artistic direction of the sets and storytelling? Aren’t they just in charge of the sales, advertising, and budgeting? The only true say they have is to halt something that is too violent
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They influence the storytelling a lot more than you think. The story of a theme is made to SELL the toys. The wish to stay away from depth and complexity wouldn’t have been the story team’s vision, it would have to be mutually exclusive to corporate LEGO. Comments from Christian Faber this year also seemed to suggest the same thing happened to Hero Factory, and its why so many plot threads just kind of disappeared after their arc on a cliffhanger.
Is that a weird bubble portal, or does Tahu have a Kanohi Hau?
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But most of the unused concepts just look cool and intricate design-wise, and don’t seem to require much depth story-wise to allow them to exist…did corporate Lego just walk around the development team’s office and arbitrarily said no to whatever they deemed too edgy and cluttery?
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I don’t think we’re on the same page here. You’re talking about set/character designs. I’m not talking about that at all. I’m talking about the fact that the various scenarios and atmosphere take themselves seriously in the concept art. There’s a sense of urgency. All of this art gives the viewer the feeling that they’re seeing into a unique world similar to our own. One where tragedy is around the corner, and all that’s there to stop them are these mysterious heroes, and they all look like they’re about to do something about it. I guess I’d say that it all looks… “legit” to me. When I talk about depth, I’m not talking about convolution. I’m talking about something you just… feel. Like, Fallout New Vegas has a certain depth to its characters and environment that you can feel compared to Fallout 4. Avatar the Last Airbender has a certain depth to its characters and environment that you can feel compared to say, BIONICLE G2. When I take in a story, I want the story itself to feel… right. I want to feel a sense of urgency, and I want it to have this “epic” cinematic feel to it while having a story full of meaning.
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Corporate Lego does have influence in how things go in storytelling and sets. The bionicle team basically pitches the ideas to them and corporate Lego says yes we will make them and sell them, but we want a few changes here and there. What those changes are can be small or big depending on what they want and think will sell.
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That’s awesome.
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Commenting on the question of why some of the Creature/Toa designs weren’t used, it’s also important to note that many of those designs would have been scrapped for cost reasons. The amount of new molds that would be needed for them would pose a problem for some, while for others, the amount of parts needed to make the function work would be an additional issue. The difference between art and actuality is very obvious when looking at the sets, and that makes sense–art allows the designer to go as far as they wish with their ideas, while actually building a functional set requires taking those ideas and reducing them down. It’s less awesome to look at, yes, but it better serves the company and the customer…
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It’s not that they don’t like it personally. It’s more that LEGO has a sort of newly reformed brand identity after the success of the LEGO Movie. That identity in and of itself focuses greately on lighthearted media and the emphasis of your own imagination. It’s a direction that seems to also affect new story themes. Like, I loved G2 for what it was, I truly did, but G1 still took its world building and characters a lot more seriously. I don’t think LEGO plans to make a constraction line with that type of growth and substance for a long time.
I’m not saying I don’t like the identity and ideologies LEGO has. I’m just saying that if I want that kind of stuff, I go to system themes. Constraction was always what I went to for something rich and interesting that I just couldn’t get from system themes. That said, this concept art fulfills what I wanted from G2, so I am content.
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I have to say, the style of the art is just very unique even if it seems like it takes inspiration from a lot of references. Especially with Matt Betteker’s art, it just has a certain feeling to it, a feeling I’ve gotten used to allocating to Bionicle as a whole. With artistic freedom, the artists just went nuts and I love it.
There’s so much more to the second generation that I want to explore, and I feel that this artbook helped not only provide some insight of what this world could be, but also allows a fan to mix and match and make their own second generation in a way. It’s kind of like a parallel universe: Maybe the Toa are monster hunters, maybe Makuta is silver and purple, maybe there’s more than one creature. There’s just so much here that not only shows how much imagination and thought the artists put into Bionicle, but allows a fan to create their own world, which I feel is Bionicle’s ultimate goal with both generations: To have someone make their own world with these characters or even their own.
This artbook is the best thing to happen in G2 in my opinion because it shows the team not only cared about Bionicle, they were fans. They had so much they wanted to do and wanted to build the best world possible for the second generation. That, and the art style is just impeccable, I will never get sick of staring at the same picture of Tahu fighting a fire drake or Umarak with the MoC’s huge tusks.
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That’s amazing- I cant wait to see all of the mocs people make based of of the art book.
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Brb, Okoto. Gotta grind that G rank “Silver Makuta” subspecies to get that Silver Makuta Plate so I can finally finish my armor set.
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A wild Ice Rhino appeared! Go, Hellfire!
Kopaka: “What makes you the leader?”
Tahu: “Because-”
“-I’m the one with the cape.”
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Why couldn’t we get this for Tahu uniter. 
Seriously though, if they had had the budget to create sets like this it would have been amazing.
Note: Apology for only uploading a link, my computer is having technical difficulties.
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Still can’t get over how they called the form “Monster Hunter”. It’s just so funny to me, especially when they have a fancy, painted version of a medieval manuscript of Dark Souls Tahu fighting a fire dragon.
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Check out this video (not mine. Mecra Makuta’s).
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