Bionicle Dark Hunter MODs - No illegal connections

The canon Dark Hunter models as submitted by fan designers are notoriously unstable and have a lot of illegal connections that stress the pieces over time. In this topic I attempt to recreate all of them in Stud.io as closely as possible to their canonical appearance but replace all of their illegal connections by legal ones.

First up is Gladiator. His feet probably need modification for it not to fall over but for now this is as close as it can get to the current instructions and picture.

The beams on his back were very crooked on the original submission but they now point straight up while still being mounted at an angle, slightly pointing backwards, when viewed from the top.

Next up is Ancient. He was fairly well-built to begin with.

The strange assemblies on his lower legs have been changed. They just barely fit now, while emulating the original look.

More of these will be released in the future.

14 Likes

look rlly cool

2 Likes

Ooh nice
Glad you were able to fix those illegal connections!

2 Likes

I concur, these look really good

4 Likes

A few more to add to the collection. The next one is Vengeance. In addition to making the model only utilize legal connections I also removed some of the limb pieces in the arms and the shoulder-mounted disk launcher to make the proportions better while making him resemble the original model as much as possible.

Imgur

The feet were rotated 180 degrees but the Bohrok shields were attached in the usual manner. Kanoka disks were added to the Vakama launchers to make them appear more functional. Some of the random colors were kept to make him still appear somewhat cobbled together, but the white and tan in the original forearms is gone as that was a bit too much. The spear is also slightly more streamlined and he is now not holding it upside-down.

Imgur

I also added my rebuild for Minion from another topic as I will be posting all of the MODs here.

Imgur

Imgur

Digital file / “instructions” for Minion are at: rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-105708/Jek_Porkchops/bionicle-da…

4 Likes

The modifications to Airwatcher are here. From now on I will also link to the free instructions when a model is added here.

Imgur

The MOD removes all illegal building techniques except for the use of the Bionicle hand pieces to attach the eyes, which create Airwatcher’s distinctive face shape. Other modifications are:

  • Sides of the torso are cleaned up by omitting the random dark blue technic beam and Kanoka launcher. Two white Technic beams are still there to serve as feathery decoration.
  • An extra staff of light has been added to the blue pin on one of the arms, to act as extra feather detailing, where in the canon picture one was presumably missing.
  • Bohrok neck pieces that were randomly dangling on the legs on the original model have now been integrated with the feet, giving more friction to the lower knees to better support the model.
  • Feet are more stable.
  • Airwatcher is now able to have the staff be attached to his hand rather than loosely hold it with his fingers.

Imgur

Digital file / “instructions” for Airwatcher at: rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-106011/Jek_Porkchops/bionicle-da…

4 Likes

Is this one still illegal?

1 Like

Technically. But I kept it as an axle going through there is completely normal, the grey Technic bush might strain the inside of the ball joint a bit but not too much.

1 Like

ah ok.

You could easily make this legal by simply replacing the bushings in the sockets with 1/2 bushings.

2 Likes

Wouldn’t the hand pieces and thus the eyes then start flopping around?

1 Like

Not if you slide the half-bushing until it’s “pinching” one of the arms of the socket between itself and the other pieces.

However, I’ve also come up with an even better solution. Replace the bushings with these:

ineedthis|nullxnull

It’s the exact same as the full bushing, except it’s literally designed to fit in a socket. The only downside is that it’s not period-accurate, if that’s one of your criteria.

3 Likes