BIONICLE G1 Canon Contests Discussion & Questions

LEGO BIONICLE
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I’m really excited for these contests. I’ve followed Bionicle from the start but was never really active in the fan community (I actually think this is my first post on ttv) so the opportunity to participate and just maybe contribute something to canon is really exiting. If the goal here is primarily to engage the community than for me you have already succeeded.

While I don’t entirely agree with all the rules laid out it’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into reaching as fair a compromise as possible in regards to custom pieces and I love the idea of secondary art contests. If I were to suggest an amendment it would be that Varian, the Hahga and Mangai be Metru scale Mocs instead of Inika/Glatorian size.

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I’m really Excited!
My only problem is that I think the Toa Hagah shouldn’t be included Because We already know that they look like the Toa Norik and iruni Sets but in different colors!
I think the only necessary Thing to do with the hagah is to do kanohi Contests sense thats the only thing we don’t know!

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Well, it didn’t come as a surprise, but we’re here!

I’m mainly commenting to ask for clarification, but I would still like to commend you guys on putting together such a nice set of rules: kudos. Now, as I can see, we basically have all of this time from now to June 1st to start making the models we want, after which the collecting of entries and the eventual voting on a winner will begin. My question is if we’ll also be getting M.O.C.-ing time inbetween the contests for each character (for example, after the Helryx contest winner has been chosen, we’ll get ____ amount of time to begin making our entry for the next contest before the 3-week period to submit entries will officially begin), or are we going to go rapid fire and move on from character-contest to character-contest with the 3 week period counting as the time to make the entry?

Once again, thank you.

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Would the use of exclusive parts be allowed, like for example the trans-green skull Scorpio mask from SDCC?

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(First of all, I want to make it clear that I am in support of this, it’s why I actually registered for a TTV account and am excited to see everyone’s entries. I am about to ask a bunch of questions and comments that might come across as negative, but they are not intended to be criticism or anything - they are genuine questions and I can see a lot of work has gone into making these contests fair. :wink: )
But with no further ado,

My Thoughts and Questions:

So, If I am understanding correctly, all the art contests will be just Kanohi, and everything else is MoC? Nowhere in the topic post does it actually explicitly say what sort of contests these are. It would be kind of a shame if there are no full-character art contests (ala-Nikila), but it’s not a deal-breaker if they’re all MoC’s either. Just as long as it’s clearly communicated.

Is there an upper limit to how many images we can enter? For a MoC this is kind of a stupid question, but with artwork I can see a few different angles being drawn being a helpful thing (especially with masks).

Regarding MoC’s, is photoshop allowed? Obviously I’m not talking about editing the actual build of the model or anything, but for example, if I were MoC’ing Artakha and did an in-situ of him with like a red-hot glow on his forge hammer or something, would that be ok given that he also has the required four pictures (specifically the front-back-side) uploaded in a non-edited way?

Will there be any delay between each contest or will it be just wham-wham-wham cannon? Because I feel like it would be wise to have at least short periods of delay between some of the contests so we’re not just inundated with always having some competition on the go.
(But at the same time, leaving it too long might damage the idea of it being a revitalizing community event, which I understand is part of the initiative here, so there’s some debate to be had here).

The “no dupe accounts” thing seems to suggest that there’s a one-entry per-person per-contest limit (which is fair and necessary) - but that’s not actually explicitly stated anywhere in the rules? Might want to amend that, aha

I can see awkwardness on the horizon with the Hagah contest - let’s say John Doe makes a set of four Hagah that everyone just adores, and then Richard Roe comes along and decides “Y’know what, let’s just make Pouks. But rlly well.” And then Richard Roe wins Pouks and John Doe wins the other three and it’s kind of weird because then Pouks just looks super different from his team.

To add to the Marendar debate, I would like to point out that Marendar never actually appears in the story. We see the after-effects of him breaking out of the vault, but at no stage if you were to adapt the G1 Bionicle saga to a visual format would Marendar ever appear. That and that alone makes me think it shouldn’t have a contest.

I also have a much smaller question mark over Toa Nidhiki, simply we practically know what he looks like already and if you google his appearance you get a bunch of very very similar MoC’s all made by different people.

And finally, I know this has been said by a bunch of people already, but Triglax and Kojol definitely should be getting contests if Marendar is (and even if it doesn’t).

Thanks for reading! This turned out to be a massive text wall and your patience is appreciated. (And sorry if any of these have been addressed somewhere other than the topic post and I missed them). :wink:

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Ohh boy I can’t wait this is my first time posting here. Made my own basic Toa Hagah team moc I’ll definitely be trying to enter those

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We considered it, but we felt it was a bit redundant to hold another poll after what may end up being two or three polls, all of which are already aiming to accomplish the goal of determining which one is the best to send to Greg.

These are not lore contests. Any lore you include will not be forwarded on to Greg. Additionally, something to keep in mind: Helryx was made before the Mata, and was made by the Great Beings. The Mata were made by Artakha.

We’re likely going to put a lot of emphasis going forward on certain word choices we’ve made. For instance, in that rule, we encourage MOCs to stick within that size. But it isn’t a rule so much as a guideline. So while we won’t disqualify entries that breach it, we encourage people not to go higher than that.

We have no idea what the rest of the Hagah look like. The team was assembled from completely different places. Only reason the ones we know of look how they do is for meta reasons. As far as any potential Toa contests that would take place in the future, the only one that is guaranteed to look like a Metru build would be Toa Dume.

Yes. After a contest wraps up, there will be a three week break before the next.

Yes.

Since there is such a massive info dump in this topic, we wanted to hold off on the specifics of the individual contests. Most of them will be MOC contests, however there will be MOC and art contests at the same time. For characters with unknown masks, however, they will be MOC contests first, then art contests for the mask and the MOC wearing the mask.

Scratch that, I had forgotten something that Meso reminded me of. Contests will be held as MOC first, with an art contest held afterwards for character art and/or a unique mask design, such as in the case of Helryx, Artakha, etc.

For MOCs, a minimum of four. For art, you’ll likely need one character shot and then an illustration of the mask itself.

As long as the other images are unedited, then you can include whatever other image that shows off the MOC.

Three week break between contests.

Thank you, we’ll do that.

If people made assumptions, that’s on them. There is no guarantee that Nidhiki looks like a Toa Metru build.

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I’m pretty sure that this design is already accepted as Toa Nidhiki’s canonical appearance:

But then again, I don’t know that it’s ever been explicitly confirmed. :gregf:

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You would be wrong. Whether or not people accept this as their version of Nidhiki, it has not been signed off on as the official appearance of Nidhiki by Greg, and as such is not considered canon.

Fun fact: Toa Nidhiki had a green Volitak, not a silver one.

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First off, regarding Artakha, I had forgotten about the Ben 10 and CCBS parts, so thank you @Racie02 and @Mesonak for pointing those out. That eases my concern.

As for my other point, community consensus, thank you for correcting me about when Greg approved things. I’m glad you let the community have its say before speaking with him. However I do find an aspect of your latest comments concerning. I want to compare two quotes, one from the top post of the original topic, and one from your latest response.

I understand the danger of taking quotes out of context. Meso, and others reading this, please digest them both in context before reading on, and do tell me if you think I’m misrepresenting them. I’m certainly not trying to. With that said, I don’t see how these are compatible positions. If you care about what the community wants, then certainly you should care about which contests the community wants. And if you don’t care about what the community wants, then by your own reasoning you’re disrespecting Greg.

From what I’ve seen, I believe you respect the community’s desires. You could have announced these contests with no warning and asked for no feedback, but you didn’t. And as you said, some characters are no-brainers! I suspect most of the people who voted yes did so expecting a Helryx contest. Other picks are clearly more controversial. Take Marendar for example: people debated it at length in the old topic, and it’s already come up in this one too. Based on one of Eljay’s earlier posts, the Marendar contest is even controversial among the TTV staff. I, a community member who has tried to follow along, don’t know what the community wants.

So seeing as, again, you seem to care about doing this right, I don’t understand why you’re willing to push through clearly controversial contests without taking the time to gauge community consensus. I find it concerning. If you were in my shoes, I think you’d find it concerning too.

Thanks for reading my walls of text, and for taking everything in the spirit in which it’s intended. I think our discussion so far has already been productive, so thank you! I hope it continues to be. Others with thoughts on this, please weigh in too.

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Uh, yeah…that’s kind of the reason why I expressed doubt that it was officially confirmed.

But there are plenty of MOCs on the Internet, many of which resemble this picture. And besides, Lego never molded a Volitak in green; only in gray/grey/however you spell it. So a gray one is all people can really use. But of course…

This might just solve the problem.

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I can hopefully clarify your concerns about the two separate quotes very succinctly; quote #1 refers to “the notion” of these contests, AKA the very idea of holding them altogether, something that Greg himself stated he only would be willing to entertain if the community wished for them. The “concept” of the matter, if you will.

Quote #2 refers to the idea of having… 15 or so separate polls to allow a community vote on whether they want to see a contest for [INSERT CHARACTER HERE]. We elected to, instead, draft an initial blanket of names for characters that were eligible, by our criteria, to receive appearances and present them to Greg to get his approval on whether he’d want them to. At the end of the day, Greg made the choice; not us.

The core philosophy behind the idea for the contests, our development of the contests, the poll regarding the contests, was always as follows: Does the community want to see contests to depict important G1 characters who lack official visuals? It was very general, and that was intentional. The idea was what we sought to gather feedback on, because as far as we are concerned, any logic that applies to Artakha applies equally to Orde and to Lariska. Working around limitations such as a lack of sand green pieces, size restrictions, or a lack of concrete details (though make no mistake, I would love if Greg provided us with some guideline for Marendar), to me, is part of the fun factor of these contests and it’s what will inspire the best builds. They are all significant characters who lack visuals, which is the only defining criteria for eligibility.

There are a million reasons why people may not want a particular character to have a canon visual appearance. One person may not want Artakha to have one because he’s very important and mysterious. Somebody may not want the Hagah to have them because they’ve grown really attached to the community’s fanon interpretations of them, or because they’d “just be Metru builds.” Somebody may not want Marendar to have one because he has no concrete visual traits from the text, Varian because we know the general appearance already, etc. etc. There’s an argument that could be made against literally everyone, and by extension, the contest idea itself, as was demonstrated in the last poll. However, the results spoke for themselves; as far as we are concerned, all characters fall under the same umbrella of inclusion except for those whose appearance adds to their mystique or the character is too minor to be deemed important, and unless Greg states otherwise, that’s the philosophy that we will continue to go by. Nothing will be done without his express approval.

Hey man, I respect your walls of text. As a fellow text waller myself I know the struggle. :sunglasses:

Thank you for posting, we really appreciate it.

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Sorry, just to clarify - does that mean that for characters without a unique mask design, they will be typically held as MOC first, followed by an art contest depicting that MOC?

Because that’s how it reads, and that would be really really cool. :stuck_out_tongue:

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in regards to toa haga is a custom built haga shield ok or no, just wondering if i will have to order parts

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Eventually, the entry in question will need to be represented with the proper Hagah shield piece, so you’re welcome to MOC your own in the meantime. But the final artwork will need to show it.

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another question i have is in regards to cbbs as i do not have many g1 pieces, for example say a toa haga moc is created of the 4 but it is very different from the traditional toa haga, say someone could just duplicate the other toa haga piece for piece in different colors with different mask wouldn’t that make it really easy or will designs that comply with the rules yet are not very traditional be still looked at for there merits even if they do not comply with traditional g1 style.

thank you

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Thank you. I understand your perspective better now. However you haven’t quite dislodged this thorn from your side. :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you for explaining your logic. By that reasoning, yes, I understand why you feel comfortable hosting all of these contests at the moment.

However, that is not Greg’s logic. Here is what Greg said to start it all:

(context)

You haven’t shown that the community is okay with canonizing the appearances of these 15 characters. Therefore, even if he’s approved the characters, you can’t host these contests yet. I don’t see how someone reading Greg’s quote in good faith can see it any other way.

Your poll is clear evidence that the community wants contests. (I want them!) There’s also evidence that the community doesn’t want all of these contests. A quick scan of the original topic shows that many community members disagree with TTV and don’t feel that, say, Helryx and Marendar are equally deserving. If you ran a poll, maybe you’d find that most people want a Marendar contest. But there’s been enough argument that we can’t reasonably conclude anything from the feedback so far. We need more data.

There are a few ways forward to quell my concerns. It’s clear others share them; my original post is the most-liked reply to this topic. So these suggestions will help a lot of the community, not just me.

  1. As others have suggested, host a poll so people can vote yes/no for each contest at once. Even just the clearly controversial ones like Marendar. We have a month and a half before the first contest, so there’s time. As Greg said, his approval is conditional on community approval. The poll wouldn’t be redundant because it’d provide missing evidence that the community wants each contest. And again, the community wanting a specific contest is very different from the community wanting contests in general.

  2. If you feel comfortable, publicly post your correspondence with Greg. (No need to include his side of the conservation. You haven’t gotten his consent.) That would clarify what he knows and what he expects from TTV and the community.

Thanks for digesting this all. I believe these requests are reasonable given the circumstances, and I think the contests will be better off as a result.

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Would like to pick this up since it might have been buried.

Given all the time since G1 and the fact that a lot of people have been influenced by others’ creations over time in how they picture a character, I’d personally find it unfair - if not impossible - to ban entries directly or indirectly influenced by others’ work, regardless of if the original creators give consent/are even still active. In fact, entries influenced by popular non-canon depictions might even find better and quicker acceptance. Though mark that I’m saying influenced not copied.

But what’s TTV’s stance on this?

Also another question/proposition:

At the beginning of each contest (or preferably even before that), could you post a list with all the canon information available about the character in question? That way we can all avoid gray and green Artakha and blue and green Lariska, for example. They’re canonically gray-green (sand green) and blue-green (teal), respectively, as far as I’m aware. Same with Nidhiki’s mask colour and who knows what else.

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i have a quistion is a winner of the prefius entry allowed to enter again becouse that seems unfair that a person can have two desighns canonized

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Yes.

I’m leaning toward no, since you get into murky waters. If you’ve got the go-ahead from the creator and can prove it, then things should be fine. However, outright examples of plagiarism will be handled on a case-by-case basis

Yes, we will be doing that. It will be part of a guidelines section so people know what they’ll need to keep in mind.

You’re welcome to use whatever pieces you’d like. Just know that the only people whose opinion you’d need to sway will be the people voting for the MOCs themselves.

Winners of previous contests will be allowed to enter additional contests. People have gotten multiple creations into the Rahi and Dark Hunter guides, we see this as being no different.

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