Hi Carol! I’m Eljay’s partner in running this contest, and I helped create our rules and guidelines. I can do my best to explain the situation and provide some clarity.
First and foremost, your son deserves nothing but praise and encouragement for doing what he’s done. I completely understand the struggles of dealing with daily life during the COVID-19 lockdown, let alone having fun and pursuing creative projects like your son has done. You’ve done an exemplary job guiding him towards building a wonderful submission with some clever modifications to the winning creation, alongside some excellent custom weapons and a very creative mask. I’d like to apologize for any confusion that has resulted from the rules and I don’t want to let it discourage your son (or you, for that matter) from continuing on and participating in these contests with us.
In truth, I think the source of the confusion lies with the Stud.io program. Back on June 22nd, your son posted his initial submission of his own unique MoC for this contest. That stage of the contest, where he was tasked with creating his own version of the Helryx character, was the only stage where the Stud.io program can be used. Creating artwork based on the winning entry cannot be done in Stud.io, and as such, that’s the primary reason why this entry has to unfortunately be disqualified. Additionally, the piece he uses to extend the neck of the figure, the gray pieces used on the shoulder, and the choice of gray tubing used on his model constitute significant structural alterations from the design of the winning entry, and as such, contribute to the issues.
Using Stud.io to create original characters and enter the MoC portion of the contests that we hold is encouraged, and your son is welcome to continue to do that as he did before on June 22nd for all future characters! We love to see his creativity and self expression. However, if we wishes to enter artwork based on the winning entry of a MoC contest, that must be either artwork drawn as a physical sketch in real life, digital artwork drawn in an art program, or an entirely custom 3D model similar to how he modeled his mask and weapons.
An example of this would be this model, created by a user on these message boards named Galva. In this model, while the design of the winning MoC is used as a template, it is an entirely custom piece of artwork that was 3D modeled entirely from scratch. It isn’t the winning entry replicated in Stud.io with the custom pieces attached, but rather a piece of artwork that stylizes and adapts the appearance of the winning entry into a unique form. If your son wishes to fully 3D rmodel and render the entire character, with some visual changes to the pieces similar to what Galva has done in order to change the appearance without changing the design, he is more than welcome to do that in the future!
Once again I’d like to apologize for the confusion, and I’d like to say that just because your son’s entry doesn’t follow the rules of the contest, that doesn’t mean it’s not really fantastic in its own right. To @DSS-ForgeMasterCreations, I want to tell you that this is really cool, and I love how you were able to adapt Double’s build into Stud.io and add in your own custom pieces. It’s really awesome, and the creativity that you’ve put into your mask and weapons is exactly what the spirit of this contest is all about. I know it must be disappointing that this entry can’t be submitted, but please don’t stop creating, because your spirit is helping to keep BIONICLE alive. I look forward to seeing your entries in our next contests! 