K. Good.
So I’m not ignorant. 
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Let me grab a book here…
“For Faber, the inspiration for this new, illustrated narrative come from his recently diagnosed brain tumor. The tumor was benign, but it would spread if he didn’t take a daily injection of medication. Reflecting on the illness that fired his imagination that fired his imagination, Faber “Had that thought that when I took these injections, I was sending a little group of soldiers into my body, fighting on my behalf to rebuild my system. Then in all just came together.”
Faber imagined the today canisters as vials of medicine drifting toward the head of a giant, comatose robot that was infected with a virus…”
- Brick by Brick, chapter 6, pages 153-154.
From this, it has made it sound that the robot was Faber’s concept.
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Funny, I was just sifting through that chapter myself.
The book also credits Faber with the names of the Toa Mata, which contradicts Swinnerton.
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There’s about three possibilities here;
- Faber was providing faulty info
- Swinnerton is providing faulty info
- There was miscommunication during the interview with Faber
EDIT:
Actually I’m seeing that credited to Bob Tompson.
EDIT #2:
Of course, it’s also using a picture of the Pakari Nuva and saying it’s the mask of Life… I’m starting to think there’s some confusion from the author mixed in here which has lead to these contradictions.
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Very interesting. Its kinda funny that the fan favorites Pohatu and Kopaka weren’t thought of until later.
I doubt he had the original idea for the GSR. He describes it as an “evacuation robot” so maybe that’s what he wanted it to be and not the world-rebuilder it became.
I’m happy his validity was confirmed.
Hours ago I was going to say: but then got distracted.
I feel more inclined to believe him.
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we really need to get faber(or maybe greg) to give a statement on this,
otherwise it won’t really go anywhere.
GG Alastair
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While I don’t doubt Swinnerton’s involvement with BIONICLE’s creation (we were aware of him prior to this), I can’t help but feel like he greatly embellished the facts to oversell his actual contributions to the line.
Sure, I believe him when he says he thought up a lot of the ideas that went into BIONICLE- such as the eastern island/maori influence, the names, and a few other concepts. But he’s written this page as though that’s where those ideas stopped, as if LEGO simply copied them word for word and no one else added to them.
BIONICLE wasn’t created by a single person, it was a group effort. A conglomerate of ideas thrown in from a team of people; to think that Swinnerton came up with every single idea while Faber, Thompson, Anderson, and Kaae sat there twiddling their thumbs is ludicrous.
He clarifies later down in the comments that he wasn’t trying to undermine the work of everyone else- but that’s exactly how this reads.
He practically makes claim to everything but the title “BIONICLE” (which we know came from Faber and his concept of a biological Mata-Nui, an expansion of Swinnerton’s evacuation premise, which he neglected to mention).
I understand how frustrating it could be seeing your work go on without credit (especially since Swinnerton seems to be the least “remembered” out of everyone), but it would have been nice to get a bit more insight into how Swinnerton’s ideas actually formed from a group setting and contributed to the overarching theme in conjunction with everyone else’s efforts. Or at the very least some clarification on what the others actually did if not throw in ideas of their own.
Perhaps I’m wrong (I wasn’t there after all), but as it stands this entry just seems a little too self-gratifying.
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The comment about them being distracting and playing with the prototypes in the back while he pitched the idea did kind of give that tone :P.
That is what lead me to feel hesitant to believe some of it and not take it all as fact first glance.
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ok, am I the only one who gives faber and greg more credit than this?
I’m seriously doubting his claims.
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Now I really want someone to draw this, kinda like in the style vrahno used for his Jurassic park strip.
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I have to side with @IllustriousVar on this one. Something felt wrong with some of the stuff Swinnerton said. As Eljay pointed out, some of the stuff was contradictory to what we were told in “Brick by Brick.”
And I doubt Thompson and Faber were sitting there doing nothing. After all, Thompson helped with the creation of the first BIONICLE film, and Faber provided many concepts and story ideas.
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Hey how come Eljay is getting the credit here? I’m the guy who brought up the quote. 
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It seems to me from this quote that Faber had just created the idea of Bionicle working out just like a human. It says he came up with the canisters and how it all functions like medicine, but it doesn’t specifically say he came up with the giant robot.
See here, it just says he imagined the canisters as his medication moving towards the head of a robot, never specifically stating he came up with the robot. It seems to me Faber just came up with the whole concept of the Biological chronicle.
Ofcourse I don’t doubt Swindler was claiming more than he actualy did, but I think the part about the MNR was accurate. It could very well be that he just came up with the idea of MN being a crashed spaceship, and Faber turned it into the MNR.
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what?
it seems to me the concept of the gsr and canisters are directly connected, making faber the creator of both.
why would the gsr be a giant robot if not for fabers medicine idea.
there’s no reason.
I did state later on in the post that it could be the concept was originally a spaceship, then Faber made it a giant robot and that Swinnerton was stretching it. Also, there are several reasons for the Mata Nui being a giant robot without Fabers medicine idea. It could be that Faber just came up with the Toa being medications, and that the story team had an idea of the inhabitants of Mata Nui acting like the insides of a human, with the Toa being quite out of place untill Fabers idea of the medication. Or perhaps the story team thought it’d be a nice plot twist, and Faber realised a way it could all make sense, making the idea better.
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I mean, why would you not believe that? It’s only his word over Faber’s, and while I don’t think that Faber has been intentionally dishonest, it’s been seventeen or eighteen years since the decision would have been made.
That’s the thing, though. If, in fact, he did desire a greater level of credit for the contributions that he claims to have made, then his relative lack of fame would make total sense. For the record, I’ve been aware of his role in creating G1 for a while, but I totally get that not everyone has heard his name. And yeah, I did see that Eljay shined some light on him earlier in this thread; just thought that I’d add my two cents and play devil’s advocate.
No, for sure; the odds that his colleagues were allegedly “playing with prototypes at [sic] the back” while he was “pitching big execs” are incredibly slim; that said, as you go on to say, none of us were there; there are plenty of possible ways that said statement was intended to hold a different connotation. After all, Faber and Co. were designing a toyline.
The overarching thing to remember here is that people are likely to have unintentionally exaggerated some aspects of an origin story, especially when it took place over a decade and a half ago. That said, I agree that taking everything that he says at face value is probably unwise.
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So , it makes sense for him to be basically unknown if he really wanted attention? What?
Please explain the thought process on that one.