I have an important question to ask, are gifs allowed for entries that have a gear function? The reasons im asking is mainly that 1) it would bring to life a particular characteristic of the character or ability and 2) Its one of the main things i do in the community.
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The OP requires at least 4 photos from different angles and with an action shot. It doesn’t say you can’t include more files to show off what it does if you feel the need to do so.
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okay thank you, just making sure
I have a question regarding rule 8b/8c
How does this apply to a piece like G2 Onua’s chest piece? It of course has a Lego sticker on it so I’d assume that’s fine to use on that specific piece, but can I take it off, and/or put other Lego stickers on it?
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Is artwork explicitly meant for after the MOC contest, or no? I’m asking on behalf of some friends, and I’d like to give them a clear answer, even though I’m certain what the answer will be. I presume artwork will only be allowed as supplements to MOCs that are entered, and will not be allowed by themselves as a sole entry.
Will MOCs based on designs or drawings by someone else be allowed, or will they be prohibited? For example, if X were to make a MOC heavily based on one of BionicleChicken’s drawings, and have obtained his permission, would be it allowed for the moc contest?
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Mask rules are not strict at all. The art contests overriding any mask used in the MoC, but only when it comes to Artakha, Helryx, and Tuyet. For all other characters, you just use whatever mask you like. If you want to build Bomonga with a G2 Onua mask, you can, and if it wins then that will become his canon mask. Hero Factory helmets are also fine per Greg’s approval.
That is totally cool!
Thanks for the prelude; I totally hear you! For what it’s worth, I appreciate your cadence and attitude. 
I see why you would think that, but for clarity’s sake, Greg’s review and approval of the character list came in tandem with his review and approval of the contest as a whole based on the completed poll results. In regards to feedback, the 400+ posts in the poll topic, dozens of comments on our YouTube videos, plethora of conversations across BIONICLE community discord servers, feedback on Reddit and other social media sites, and our own personal dialogue with community heads across the spectrum of BIONICLE’s internet presence provided more than enough feedback to digest and discuss. In regards to characters who would be selected for contests, that isn’t really something that we ever intended to hold a community-wide poll on, so I do apologize if we ever implied that would be the route things would go.
When this whole thing started and the idea of canon contests cropped up, there’s a very immediate pool of characters who first jump into your minds. The big-ticket, significant characters who played a role in BIONICLE’s later years. Tuyet, Helryx, Artakha. The Hagah. The story serial characters. Those were, to us, no-brainers, as we are not interested in adding to BIONICLE’s canon with new story or characters “approved by Greg” or any such notions like that. The whole idea behind these contests begins and ends with getting visualizations for important, story only characters with speaking lines. That limits the pool to a significant degree, so in our minds, the only thing worth doing was asking Greg if he would be okay with having these characters be given appearances, hence us pitching the list. Community feedback regarding rules, part allowances, and methods were what we sought (and what we are still seeking, reading, observing, and acting on even now; these rules aren’t necessarily finite, they can be added to or expanded on); community opinions on which characters should or should not receive appearances was never really on our radar.
I do understand the list of contests being somewhat daunting when viewed in bulk, but rest assured, these are intended to be held over long stretches of time. We don’t want to overwhelm or burn out the community; the only reason we publicly posted the list at all is to serve as a “heads-up” notice for builders looking to begin constructing their creations early so as to deliver the best possible product. Characters such as Artakha, which you are right in saying will be difficult to build, are at the height of priority in our minds; the challenge inherent in his construction, coupled with his extreme importance in the story, made him one of the three centerpieces for this entire concept, so the thought of discounting him based on a limited number of pieces never once crossed our minds. The allowance of CCBS and system pieces and the lack of a “G1 to alternative LEGO” ratio should help serve to make him more viable to be constructed, as there’s a plethora of other sand green pieces out there to augment Zaktan’s, including size 3 CCBS shells, which are among the most versatile pieces possible for shaping. There’s also nothing that says he must be ONLY gray-green. Only that he has gray-green armor. Limitations such as these only increase the challenge and therefore the interest in holding a contest for him.
Basically, in summary; the conversation with these contests has not closed down. We welcome feedback, critique, and concerns, and we’ll do our part to continue having that conversation with you. That being said, we have spent the last month discussing with the community and absorbing the mountain of conflicting opinions and ideals represented in the aforementioned places, and have worked hard to craft this contest infrastructure as a framework for compromise. In simpler terms… it won’t please everybody, but we want to make as many people happy as we can.
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Honestly, I’m just really happy this is a thing. The flame hasn’t died yet!
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Well, I voted against this and tbh I’m still kinda apprehensive for various reasons but hey, it’s happening regardless so might as well get excited!
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My Body is Ready.
I totally agree with this. Can’t wait to start building. 
I have to say, most of these rules sound quite reasonable, and I can tell a decent amount of thought and community input went into them. However, that is a lot of contests to commit to at this point. I’m interested to see where this goes and hope to participate if I have time (which sadly is unlikely).
Yeah, I strongly echo these concerns. Did you consider my idea of having a separate poll to evaluate the quality of the winning entry and determine whether it was good enough to submit to Greg? I think the contest format is still sorely lacking in quality control, which would be a substantial improvement over the canon contests that were held in the past and would really alleviate my concerns about holding these new contests.
Another question (forgive me if it’s been asked and answered, as I didn’t have time to read the whole thread) – will entrants be allowed to submit prose with their entries explaining their design choices and how they relate to the lore? For example, could I submit a Toa Helryx MOC that uses a Toa Mata build, accompanied by a piece of text that justifies that design by saying that she was designed at the same time as the Toa Mata? Or, could I submit Toa Hagah MOCs with descriptions identifying which heroes their masks are honoring? And would those descriptions themselves then be considered canon lore?
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I’m really excited for these contests. I’ve followed Bionicle from the start but was never really active in the fan community (I actually think this is my first post on ttv) so the opportunity to participate and just maybe contribute something to canon is really exiting. If the goal here is primarily to engage the community than for me you have already succeeded.
While I don’t entirely agree with all the rules laid out it’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into reaching as fair a compromise as possible in regards to custom pieces and I love the idea of secondary art contests. If I were to suggest an amendment it would be that Varian, the Hahga and Mangai be Metru scale Mocs instead of Inika/Glatorian size.
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I’m really Excited!
My only problem is that I think the Toa Hagah shouldn’t be included Because We already know that they look like the Toa Norik and iruni Sets but in different colors!
I think the only necessary Thing to do with the hagah is to do kanohi Contests sense thats the only thing we don’t know!
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Well, it didn’t come as a surprise, but we’re here!
I’m mainly commenting to ask for clarification, but I would still like to commend you guys on putting together such a nice set of rules: kudos. Now, as I can see, we basically have all of this time from now to June 1st to start making the models we want, after which the collecting of entries and the eventual voting on a winner will begin. My question is if we’ll also be getting M.O.C.-ing time inbetween the contests for each character (for example, after the Helryx contest winner has been chosen, we’ll get ____ amount of time to begin making our entry for the next contest before the 3-week period to submit entries will officially begin), or are we going to go rapid fire and move on from character-contest to character-contest with the 3 week period counting as the time to make the entry?
Once again, thank you.
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Would the use of exclusive parts be allowed, like for example the trans-green skull Scorpio mask from SDCC?
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(First of all, I want to make it clear that I am in support of this, it’s why I actually registered for a TTV account and am excited to see everyone’s entries. I am about to ask a bunch of questions and comments that might come across as negative, but they are not intended to be criticism or anything - they are genuine questions and I can see a lot of work has gone into making these contests fair. 
)
But with no further ado,
My Thoughts and Questions:
So, If I am understanding correctly, all the art contests will be just Kanohi, and everything else is MoC? Nowhere in the topic post does it actually explicitly say what sort of contests these are. It would be kind of a shame if there are no full-character art contests (ala-Nikila), but it’s not a deal-breaker if they’re all MoC’s either. Just as long as it’s clearly communicated.
Is there an upper limit to how many images we can enter? For a MoC this is kind of a stupid question, but with artwork I can see a few different angles being drawn being a helpful thing (especially with masks).
Regarding MoC’s, is photoshop allowed? Obviously I’m not talking about editing the actual build of the model or anything, but for example, if I were MoC’ing Artakha and did an in-situ of him with like a red-hot glow on his forge hammer or something, would that be ok given that he also has the required four pictures (specifically the front-back-side) uploaded in a non-edited way?
Will there be any delay between each contest or will it be just wham-wham-wham cannon? Because I feel like it would be wise to have at least short periods of delay between some of the contests so we’re not just inundated with always having some competition on the go.
(But at the same time, leaving it too long might damage the idea of it being a revitalizing community event, which I understand is part of the initiative here, so there’s some debate to be had here).
The “no dupe accounts” thing seems to suggest that there’s a one-entry per-person per-contest limit (which is fair and necessary) - but that’s not actually explicitly stated anywhere in the rules? Might want to amend that, aha
I can see awkwardness on the horizon with the Hagah contest - let’s say John Doe makes a set of four Hagah that everyone just adores, and then Richard Roe comes along and decides “Y’know what, let’s just make Pouks. But rlly well.” And then Richard Roe wins Pouks and John Doe wins the other three and it’s kind of weird because then Pouks just looks super different from his team.
To add to the Marendar debate, I would like to point out that Marendar never actually appears in the story. We see the after-effects of him breaking out of the vault, but at no stage if you were to adapt the G1 Bionicle saga to a visual format would Marendar ever appear. That and that alone makes me think it shouldn’t have a contest.
I also have a much smaller question mark over Toa Nidhiki, simply we practically know what he looks like already and if you google his appearance you get a bunch of very very similar MoC’s all made by different people.
And finally, I know this has been said by a bunch of people already, but Triglax and Kojol definitely should be getting contests if Marendar is (and even if it doesn’t).
Thanks for reading! This turned out to be a massive text wall and your patience is appreciated. (And sorry if any of these have been addressed somewhere other than the topic post and I missed them).
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Ohh boy I can’t wait this is my first time posting here. Made my own basic Toa Hagah team moc I’ll definitely be trying to enter those
We considered it, but we felt it was a bit redundant to hold another poll after what may end up being two or three polls, all of which are already aiming to accomplish the goal of determining which one is the best to send to Greg.
These are not lore contests. Any lore you include will not be forwarded on to Greg. Additionally, something to keep in mind: Helryx was made before the Mata, and was made by the Great Beings. The Mata were made by Artakha.
We’re likely going to put a lot of emphasis going forward on certain word choices we’ve made. For instance, in that rule, we encourage MOCs to stick within that size. But it isn’t a rule so much as a guideline. So while we won’t disqualify entries that breach it, we encourage people not to go higher than that.
We have no idea what the rest of the Hagah look like. The team was assembled from completely different places. Only reason the ones we know of look how they do is for meta reasons. As far as any potential Toa contests that would take place in the future, the only one that is guaranteed to look like a Metru build would be Toa Dume.
Yes. After a contest wraps up, there will be a three week break before the next.
Yes.
Since there is such a massive info dump in this topic, we wanted to hold off on the specifics of the individual contests. Most of them will be MOC contests, however there will be MOC and art contests at the same time. For characters with unknown masks, however, they will be MOC contests first, then art contests for the mask and the MOC wearing the mask.
Scratch that, I had forgotten something that Meso reminded me of. Contests will be held as MOC first, with an art contest held afterwards for character art and/or a unique mask design, such as in the case of Helryx, Artakha, etc.
For MOCs, a minimum of four. For art, you’ll likely need one character shot and then an illustration of the mask itself.
As long as the other images are unedited, then you can include whatever other image that shows off the MOC.
Three week break between contests.
Thank you, we’ll do that.
If people made assumptions, that’s on them. There is no guarantee that Nidhiki looks like a Toa Metru build.
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I’m pretty sure that this design is already accepted as Toa Nidhiki’s canonical appearance:
But then again, I don’t know that it’s ever been explicitly confirmed. 
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You would be wrong. Whether or not people accept this as their version of Nidhiki, it has not been signed off on as the official appearance of Nidhiki by Greg, and as such is not considered canon.
Fun fact: Toa Nidhiki had a green Volitak, not a silver one.
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