As 2021 comes to a close, I return to these boards to present my next MOC for my personal version of the Toa Cordak! My second built from scratch from MOC here, and as always I am looking for constructive criticism from more experienced MOC makers as I am a rookie and am always looking to improve. Prior to this, I showed off my MOC’s for a more complicated Toa Lesovikk and my interpretation of the team’s Toa of Iron.
But now let me introduce member number 3 of the Toa Cordak, the team’s Scout AND Sharpshooter, the once teacher now student of all things spiritual, Toa Gamako!
To start off the explanation, if any of you have seen my initial post about the team and asking for opinions about the masks, you’ll notice I actually changed Gamako’s Great Iden from a lighter blue to a darker blue. This was mainly because a lot of things I wanted blue didn’t actually exist in that lighter blue color. Also, one more thing about the colors, her armor is mainly suppose to be that of a grey or silver, but some of the pieces kind of come off as more white, which was not my intention.
Speaking of Gamako’s armor, I was attempting to design her with a severe lack of it. As previously stated, she’s one of the team’s sharpshooters, and along with her personality, she doesn’t get into many physical fights, preferring to stay far away from the action and shoot away with her weapon of choice, a Bow.
To compliment this idea, I tried to make her rather lanky, similar to how I handled Lesovikk. Also to briefly say something about that, from working on Gamako alone I can already tell that at some point I really want to go back and do a Lesovikk Version 3 now that I am more familiar with MOC building.
Despite these ideas though, I did remain true to what I said about in my Cordak post with Fedalu, using 1 of the 2 Torso types and similar building methods for the limbs in order to keep all 8 members of the Toa Cordak looking somewhat consistent and like a team. I also decided for the Torso’s that half would use the Metru Torso to stay aligned with my Lesovikk MOC, and the other half would use similarly built Custom Torso’s in the style of WholesomeGadunka’s Nikila MOC, which I adore the look of.
Touching on the Mask again, it is a custom Inorganic version of the Mask of Spirits, the Great Iden, made by KhingK. Which ties into both Gamako’s personality and her very strange duel role on the team.
As stated, Gamako is both the team’s Scout and one of their Sharpshooters. Now if you know what either of those two words mean you’ll notice they kind of contradict each other. A Scout’s role is meant to run ahead of the group and get an idea of what is coming up, and possibly running into dangers alone, while a Sharpshooter’s role would mainly have them hang back away from a majority of enemies and dangers to attack from a distance. Hence, her Great Iden. As shown in canon, the Mask’s ability allows the user to separate their spirit from their body and travel some distance away.
The main strategy the team used Gamako for is for her to separate from her body, have her spirit scout the area ahead without the worry of harm while the team hangs back to protect her body, then returning to inform her team, then either staying in that area or being far behind to fulfill her role as a Sharpshooter/Sniper.
Next is Gamako’s weapon of choice, the Bow. I knew from the get go that I wanted at least one member of the team to have a Bow, as it is my personal favorite weapon to use in fantasy settings in video games and such. I…just didn’t really know how to properly build a bow out of Lego’s and make it look cool without flat out copying someone else, which I don’t like doing. Plus I didn’t actually know if I wanted to bow to have a firing gimmick or some sort. I think what I have works perfectly fine, though at some point I may or may not come back to this and try make a new version.
FINALLY, her actual character. Calm, collected, though prone to getting overly excited about specific things, Gamako was a teacher before becoming a Toa, though she specifically loved to learn about and teach others about the interworking’s of the residents of the Great Spirit, whether it be Rahi, Matoran, Toa, or really anything that lived there that she could examine. She had a real fascination with learning how things ticked, and this carried over when she was chosen to become a Toa. Sure, she still wanted to protect her home, it’s people, and work with her team, but her primary focus was still learning. Her Mask of Spirits and it’s powers raising her curiosity even more since now she could examine others and even herself without fear of being harmed. Her precise eye especially helped with her Sniper duties, even if she slacked off in training and interacting with her team to go off somewhere and investigate something. Though some might call her a loner, she did get along well with two other Toa on her team despite the major differences in personality, that of her loud and not always proud fellow scout, Toa Hukal, the Toa of Sonics, and overly passionate fellow sharpshooter, Toa Tarui, the Toa of Fire. Because of Gamako’s role in the group, she spent a majority of her time outside of studying something with these two, and her own calm and spiritual outlook helped the other two remain calm in stressful situations, but at the same time she could also match their loud and bombastic personalities when needed.
However, like everyone else on the team except for Lesovikk, Gamako perished. Her death came when she tried to find a way of escape from the terrible situation her team was in using her Spirit form, but this rash decision led to her physical body being easily destroyed, along with her spirit.
And that’s all for Gamako! If you have any questions about her or other members of the team, feel free to ask and I’ll try my best to answer. I also hope people like my attempt at this MOC despite me still being a rookie, and I hope you’ll check out more of what I do as I release them. ESPECIALLY since I am now beginning the process of actually trying to build these guys, even starting to get some of their Masks in physical form.
Now I leave you with the rest of pictures of Toa Gamako, and telling you that the next member that I’ll be working on is Toa Tarui, Toa Cordak of Fire!
Have a great day everyone! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
