Hello everyone!
The last time I posted a MOC on this site was about… (checks notes) a freaking eternity ago, so it’s, like, time to fix this or something, I guess…
And I’m going to do exactly that by posting eight MOCs at once. In one topic, naturally, because I don’t want to clog up the timeline and these are best viewed as a group.
(My background is really struggling to contain all of them, I even had to resort to magical editing trickery)
This is a series of G2 set revamps I built about two years ago.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the sets from the first half of 2016. On one hand, they had great designs, interesting new pieces, they were complex enough not to be boring to build. On the other hand, the proportions of the characters were absolutely atrocious, with most of them having limbs too short for their bodies and either weirdly placed or excessively wide shoulders. And that’s not talking about some really strange colour schemes and colour choices that didn’t work at all.
Despite all the problems of the sets, they still had a special place in my heart (for some bizarre reason that I don’t really want to get into), which is the main reason why I decided to revamp them in the first place, creating definitive versions of each character, exactly the way I want to see them.
As you can see, these builds don’t follow my current MOCing style whatsoever. This is because the main rule I gave myself while building them was to stay as close to the original colour schemes and designs as possible, while fully reworking the builds and improving them in every way I could. Well, that and also the fact that building 8 fully fledged MOCs in my current style would put a galaxy sized dent in my part collection and sanity.
Let’s start with the Toa I mean Uniters I mean Toa I mean Uniters I mean-
TAHU, UNITER OF FIAAAAAHHHHH
The most complex build in the series, mainly because of me wanting to attach the golden shoulder pads at an adequate angle (with is impossible without employing some bizarre geometry in the internal structure).
Other changes worth mentioning are the increased amount of blue in the colour scheme, considerably narrower shoulders and a more natural neck position
KOPAKA, UNITER OF I didn’t slip
The main challenge with this one was trying to balance out the colour scheme of the original and making it work and make sense. For that I got rid of the two cringe golden pieces and increased the amount of dark blue by a margin
GALI, UNITER OF M O I S T U R E
Set original, reference for
Gali received the most substantial visual update out of the entire lineup. I think that the original set is one of the worst Bionicle sets in existence, rivalling the likes of Solek and the Bohrok Kal, with its absolutely atrocious proportions (short legs, short arms, looong torso, zero neck - pretty much an artist’s worst nightmare) and shaping, basically looking like a selection of random parts thrown together at the very last minute before the deadline by an overworked, tired Lego employee (as you can probably tell, I don’t like Gali 2016), so making her not look like a mutated abomination of the Pit was the main priority for me.
I think I did a decent job with the parts I had to work with, but if not for the serious restrictions said parts had given me, it would have been better.
I did this quick edit to illustrate what I mean:
I’m the photoshop god
If we lived in a perfect world, 1) I would be a famous and talented artist, 2) Bionicle G2 would be a very successful theme and would still be running to this day and 3) my Gali revamp would look like this:
The real build is on the right, while the edited one is on the left.
If Lego made an exclusive chestplate piece with feminine shaping for just one Star Wars CCBS figure, why couldn’t have they made one for Bionicle?
I also changed the colour of the translucent CCBS bones from Kopaka’s blue to Gali’s dark blue (I don’t understand why Lego couldn’t have done this themselves) and the colour of the blade to a shade different from Kopaka’s. I really wish all those things were real and not some crude editing 
If only we lived in a perfect world 
LEEEWAHHHH, UNITER OF AIR… or maybe PLANTLIFE, if you insist hard enough (no Lego, there’s no way I’m calling it ““““““JuNgLe””””””)
The set looked fairly nice, but had a pretty severe stubby limbs problem, so that was the main thing I wanted to fix. I also added green “vines” to some of Lewa’s armour parts to make him look more tied to the forest environment.
Also, one thing that I think should be addressed is that I got rid of the torso pieces with the pelvic gear function on the three smaller/leaner Toa (Gali, Lewa and Pohatu) and replaced them with shorter torso pieces from the SW CCBS sets, which allowed me to make their legs longer, drastically improving the proportions, while keeping all their heights the same as in the sets, and gave me a lot more flexibility in choosing head and arm attachment points.
ONUA, UNITER OF i didn’t come up with a joke for this one
The only character in the group, whose proportions I kept exactly the same as in the set. The main priority in this revamp was to add bulk to everything and improve the shaping, because the original set looked very skeletal, which is the complete opposite of what G2 Onua is supposed to be.
POTATO, MASTER OF SCORPION HATE
The revamp I put the least effort in. Honestly, 2016 Pohatu was such a boring set, that making it interesting would require me to redesign it from scratch, completely changing the build, the colour scheme and the weapon, which goes against the rules I established for these revamps. So, boring Pohatu it is.
Pretty much the only more or less inspired thing about this MOC is the revered weapon. While keeping the general concept the same, I turned it from a copy of Gali’s spear with a rock awkwardly attached to it into a more or less conventional flail (though, according to some medieval weapons experts on YouTube, flail is not a conventional weapon at all, but what do I know?)
Also, I think it should be obvious by now, but I’ll say it regardless: there’s no way to attach the totem creatures to these because I’m not a fan of the original totem creature system, I think it should be fully reworked. Which is again, completely against the rules I had given myself.
So these were the six Toa, now its time for
EKIMU, UNITER OF UNITERS
I’ve already been writhing this for long enough (fun fact: I’ve been writing this post bit by bit for the past two weeks), so just take everything I said about my design process for the 6 Toa, combine it together, and you’ll get Ekimu
UMARAK, THE HUNTER (no joke here because Umarak is based)
Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for (woooo yeah baby, that’s what it’s all about and all that)
Ahhh Umarak the Hunter, the best G2 set. It’s so good, in fact, that it almost balances out the awfulness of the 2016 Gali (almost).
This revamp is basically the main reason why this topic exists at the first place. It’s quite unique compared to the other ones as well, because unlike the Toa and Ekimu, whom I reworked from ground up, this one is still the original set at its core, to which I just added a bunch of stuff (yeah, the set is that good)
My goal was to make Umarak more monstrous and cryptid-like, so I added a lot more spikes, more dark red and more dark reddish brown to the colour scheme to make him look more like the evil spirit of the forest he is supposed to be, I think (I’m not all that adept at G2 lore)
Dang, this topic was a mouthful… I promise I’ll never to it again or maybe I will
So, this was my incorrect summary of the funny Bionicle G2 lore featuring sussy imposters.
This has been NOTaHFfan, thanks for viewing, tell me what you think and have a good day
