Honestly, while I typically don’t care for the “it’s not mentioned” argument, I think it can be applied here. Her armor color isn’t noted as abnormally colored in The Yesterday Quest.
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Ultimately, the meta reason is that set designers created designs and then characters were applied to them. In this instance, it’s almost entirely centralized to Hahli with her Inika and Mahri forms, though Hewkii Inika is certainly notable.
Aside from that, the argument could be made that Hahli is an exception due to her extraordinary and unusual means of transformations, with one being lightning, and the other being the Ignika.
I don’t believe I’m forgetting any odd characters, but I certainly could be.
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Last thing before I go for the night, Onua seems to shut this down as the story states:
“CHIARA had a reputation as a loner, unusual in a Toa of Lightning. But she didn’t really need a team.”
Since Onua hadn’t met any Toa of Lightning in the GSR, this implies that they’ve either heard about them or met them. Either way he would’ve pointed out the difference in armor color, like Willess12 said:
White and blue may be the main Vo-Matoran colours but are we assuming they are the only colours they naturally wear?
The official Onu-Matoran colours are black and grey but they have also been depicted wearing purple, orange, blue, tan and never been called out for being unusual in any way. An array of tertiary colours is nothing new or unusual for matoran (or toa).
Basically I’m saying I don’t see any reason to mandate any specific colour scheme for Chiara beyond ‘includes white and/or blue’
Plus I really want to enter a white and red Chiara.
With all that said I expect a traditional W/B model to win anyway.
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I just want to be able to enter my pink and green Chiara moc, is that too much to ask?
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Because ultimately, these characters will be used further as canon baselines for their elements. Right now, Chiara could have red in her color scheme, but if canonized, it then branches out into all Toa, Matoran, Turaga, etc of Lightning have red in their color scheme without any other basis than “Well, she could’ve.”
All other elements have additional colors from LEGO media, be it sets, MNOG, or otherwise. In this instance, we have a specific framework to deal with - Blue primary, white secondary. It’s too early to shut down the idea, but it needs some really strong arguments before it’d be allowed.
This argument actually bleeds into a discussion that hasn’t taken place yet - weapons. We don’t have any idea or description regarding weapons for those three. That would be another important question for Greg.
I’d like to encourage people to inquire with Greg about these questions. He still answers questions on the Boards, and it may be best for everyone to pitch their thoughts and suggestions for him to take a look at. It may not result in anything (see our post on this subject here), but it’s better than waiting.
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Fair enough. I agree with you for the most part but I just want to add;
I chose red specifically because it does have some, admittedly very loose backing in canon in the form of Tahnok-Kal.
Still, your right about this being something that should be brought to Greg first. I’ll post in the ask Greg topic when I have a chance. Fingers crossed he sees it.
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For the characters without explicitely stated weapons, I guess there are two possibilities: the final art has it, or the final art doesn’t.
I think that, if the final art excludes the weapon, that could be fine…while we had explicit equipment names for non-yesterday-quest toa, we are working with i think nothing in their case. I think it’d be acceptable to just conviniently exclude them.
if the art DOES include the weapon, well…that’s kind of a debate that’s out of our hands a bit, isn’t it? The art would go beyond canonizing appearance, and would actually canonize the equipment of the character, which is something I’m sure greg would have intended originally to do himself. If Chiara is depicted with an axe, for example, then that character canonically wields an ax from now on.
I’d actually be curious what his specific take on us as a community choosing their equipment would be. That is a conversation that would bleed into their mask powers, by the way, assuming the final art for the non-specific-kanohi toa takes the form of a recognizable mask. Which, you know…it doesn’t have to…
I don’t have a strong argument, but I think that the only toa of the 3 who might have one is Orde. We know two of his colors concretely thanks to the greg quote, but he is so old and his origin so atypical that I’d think most things we’d normally take for granted for other toa we absolutely cannot for him. A weird 3rd color in his color scheme could have some standing.
I understand the concerns about Chiara and Zaria being baselines for their elements, but with Orde, we already know he’s a huge, huge outlier. He isn’t even really a baseline in the story.
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He is an outlier in one respect. BIONICLE has a long-standing habit of using characters to base on other characters. For instance, Tahu is based in some respects on Ackar. Helryx is the first Toa of Water, and all others are blue as well.
The argument doesn’t have any more or less weight to suggest additional colors than the one about Chiara does.
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There’s a Greg Quote saying that Lightning colours are primary blue and secondary white. In contrast, there’s actually no such source explicitly stating the colours of any of the original six Elements (or at least none that I could find, anyways). As such, as much as they are used as examples, lime-Hahli, white-Hahli, or random-coloured-Onu-Matoran actually don’t necessarily break any standards, because the standards for those Elements are unknown to us.
How? Weapons are part of a character’s appearance, are they not? And if they aren’t, then why have they been included in all contests so far?
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Hmm I’m not really sure I follow the logic behind the further baselines argument.
I don’t see how singular Toa with tertiary colors in addition to their standard colors would retroactively change what we already know. We already have Greg quotes confirming the basic color schemes and the fact that they can have additional color of armor. I don’t think them having a tertiary color would make it retroactively conflated into the standard color scheme of the respected elements.
In my mind though if I am interpreting Greg correctly then that’d mean that only the outermost top ‘armor’ could be the nonstandard color, as to indicate that is the wearable armor
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I still think that, if an argument exists for any of the three, it’d exist the strongest for orde, but this is a good point. Occam’s razor, psionics matoran had their colors copied from orde. Makes sense. Also:
I’m sorry, what? This isn’t relevent to the contests, but what’s the source on that? That’s an unbelievably cool piece of canon I can’t believe I’ve never heard until now if that’s a thing.
Oh, I agree. I think they should have their weapons depicted, and it’s definitely part of their appearance. But, to be fair, it’s a bit different this time.
As an example, Chiara being depicted with a spear would be dramatically different than Bomonga with a spear: for Bomonga, we’re just visually depicting a spear that we already knew was there. For Chiara, we are establishing that she carries a spear. Categorically different.
I agree that there is a difference between the two, I just don’t think it’s enough to need special rules for those Toa’s weapons.
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Speaking of colors, I’d like to discuss alternative colors.
As you know, we really have a limited number of gold.
Is it possible to replace it with another similar color?
For example, if we can change gold to keetonrange
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The only things we have to base elemental color schemes on are canon sources (media, Greg, etc) and visuals, assuming nothing is contradicted or doubt is sown by extraneous circumstances. Our sources for Lightning is Greg and the visual media of Nikila.
Adding a new color/s to Chiara would be adding a new color to visual media, since what isn’t being canonized is whether or not Chiara is an exception. That’s additional canon that is outside the scope of the contest in question that would need Greg to comment on it. At best, it would bring into question whether Chiara or Nikila is the exception.
Ultimately, these are similar arguments which are worth hashing out. Personally speaking, I’m totally fine with canonizing what tools the unknown Toa have. But not everyone would be. So it’s worth determining.
Since Keetorange is used in place of gold for a canonically gold Mata Nui, that’d be fine. It would just need to be understandably gold in the canon artwork.
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I’m not gonna drag this out further too much as Eljay have spoken but here is the logistics of what I proposed:
The proposal was never to restrict any build or parts usage. It was only a proposal to regulate height. Which for all intent and purposes doesn’t really prevent the most creative in any meanigful way, that stops them from creating a cool and creative figure.
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Here are few of my takes:
1) The colors - I agree that the primary and main colors on Chiara should be blue and white as that is the color scheme of Lightning element. But primary and secondary colors dictate what colors are predominant in the color schemes of elemental characters, they do not say that those are the only ones that could be present. Once the Chiara contest rolles around she should be enforced to be primarily blue and white, yes. However moderate inclusion of other color as an accent color should not be prohibited.
To back this up we have many examples in canon of elemental characters having many different colors in addition to those which are dominant and often considered primary.
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Fire usually has various shades of red and orange, but many characters are also black, yellow, gold or even tan.
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Earth is black and dark grey, but there is also tan, orange and purple (which makes for a color scheme of Gravity actually)
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Ice sometimes has an otherwise uncharacteristic dark grey
Also, we have already allowed such color additions in the Helryx contest. There were some MOCs which inlcuded (and even to a large degree) tyrquoise, various shades of orange, black, gold and lime (again) even though none of those colors are considered to be representative of water element color scheme. Had any of those MOCs win, those colors would have become canon.
Again, I am not saying we shouldn’t mandate the dominant colors to be blue and white, but a few accent colors shouldn’t be outright hard banned either.
2) Weapons for unspecified Toa - Let the moccist decide the weapon of their choice. As others have mentioned, those are also the part of character’s appearance and them not being specified allows for more creativity.
This has kind of been expected in the beginnings of the contest (although this expectation might have been muffled over time and difficulties). We are already deciding the masks for those characters anyway, so the tools are no different in that regard.
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On elemental colors, I think it’s important to bring up the quotes that were found earlier this year which confirm that contrary to accepted belief, Greg doesn’t believe the colors for Sonics and Magnetism should be assumed from Krakua and Jovan’s models, respectively.
Sonics Quote | Magnetism Quote 1 | Magnetism Quote 2
Even in February 2010, when he knew there would never be a Magnetism set released that could contradict Jovan’s colors, he still didn’t indicate they were standard for the element.
While there’s quotes that say Zaria’s colors are burnt orange and metallic gray (but not silver), NOGLB states Varian has both azure and gold armor, and Nidhiki’s colors have been thoroughly discussed, I don’t think there are any canon materials that would indicate what color any of the other Toa on the list are, but I could be wrong. Interestingly, this means for each Toa on the list with unknown colors, there’s a Toa with a canon (or soon to be canon) appearance that are the standard colors. Chiara has Nikila, Orde has Varian, Tuyet has lots. I don’t think any doubt would be cast on what the standard colors for lightning would be if Chiara had different colors because the canon colors for lightning precede the Nikila contest.
Given all of this I don’t think there’s a good reason to mandate colors for any of the Toa without confirmed colors. I think voters will naturally tend towards standard colors anyway and anything too outlandish (red and green Tuyet, etc) can be dealt with the same way an outlandish build would be.
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I sometimes feel like this topic is the “how can we cheat canon the easiest topic”
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I know right? How is it that everyone else is so wrong because they don’t see it exactly the way I imagined it?
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