A few months ago I made the Help with a "Bionicle Prototypes" Iceberg image topic (more about that later). I said that I was going to split the many mask prototypes into their own iceberg image, so that’s what I’m doing.
Just like last time, any of these you don’t know, you can ask me. Entries are still liable to be added, removed, and changed in placement. If anything is inaccurate, tell me.
(note: special thanks to toakebaka for creating the Rare Kanohi research topic, it was a fantastic resource and a great inspiration for both icebergs!)
Hi @Crumm ! I have few thoughts about this, which may or may not be of interest to you…
You have red Ruru both in tier 2 and 3
“Infected Hau are hand-painted” do we have a source for this? I heard of it before, but I could never find evidence for this. It seems highly impractical for such a mass produced piece to be hand-painted, and also the red brush strokes always seemed quite consistent. I suspect this was done using some automated process that mimicked brush strokes, but I’m not sure. I believe only the prototypes of infected Hau were genuinely hand-painted. I’m not saying it can’t be true, but I would do some heavy duty fact-checking before including this detail.
“Early powerless Kanohi Nuva used in comic art” - could explain this one please?
“Trans lime green Miru price skyrocketing” - is it actually? I’m not keeping up with the prices, so I’m just curious.
“Tan Kraahkan” - maybe consider including green movie Kraahkan here too?
Here are some suggestions to add:
the third element colors - some of the predicted (and found) masks and their element IDs suggest that there were supposed to be more Tohunga released, likely with new element specific colors.
never used mask designs - even more mask designs that never saw production can be viewed in the 2000 story bible or here
Death Crown - one of the original names for the Mask of Ultimate Power
Aquatic Ruru in MNOG - when Gali frees the Tarakava from its infected Ruru and holds it to the camera, you can see it is an aquatic design (gill-like mouth)
That’s it for now, keep up the good work!
I’ve also heard of the price of that mask going up. I heard from I think Ben Cossy that because it was so easy to get the price was more or less the same as every other mask, maybe a slight bit more, but around the covid era the price went up because everyone was getting into new hobbies. BrickLink doesn’t keep sale records for that long so I have no way of confirming this.
As for the stuff @Crumm posted in the iceberg image, it all looks pretty good.
If you can’t confirm the trans-lime green Miru price thing, maybe just talk about its history. Actually pretty interesting stuff that I think you can find on an episode of Ben Cossy’s BIS.
Now, for an interesting one. A few months ago I found a translated version of the Hungarian edition of Tale of the Toa. This version includes some stuff that is not found in the English version, including the fact that the 2001 Kanohi the Toa have to find are all colored originally and not silver. That means that instead of finding colorless Kanohi every Toa could wear, each Toa would have to find a Kanohi that matched his own color. I have no clue if this is just translation error or if it’s a prototype detail that was cut at the last minute but failed to make it to the Hungarian version.
Here’s the Hungarian version in case you want to read it.
The last part is not really an early concept, but rather a result of Cathy Hapka’s unfamiliarity with certain details. It is not hard to imagine that if she was given only the chart of all masks, that is a very easy conclusion to make.
There are few other mistakes in that version as well, like Toa having their Nuva tools already.
Me. I own one, and it’s definitely hand-painted. I bought it from a fellow TTV board member, and the two copies he had not only had different patterns, but were also colored using paint, not printing or dual-molding. You can tell because the brown spots have noticeable difference in texture from the black plastic.
As you can see, it has more of a brown wash than just brown brushstrokes. I don’t think a machine would leave faint brown areas on the forehead, rather it would go for a dot gradient to simulate a faded look (like how Clone Army Customs or other custom part makers do color gradients). The way the painting is done here looks like how many hobbyists paint miniatures for Warhammer.
Thank all of you for your help and thoughts, i will be taking everything into account. I havent been able to reply much because 1. life is happening, and 2. the duckbricks copyright situation.
1: Good eye, i didn’t catch that.
2. this one got naturally sorted by the thread
3. The powerless nuva masks in the comics are not flat silver, but instead the same with some silver in the middle. IIRC these are based on prototype mask designs
4. I did get this from the Ben Cossy video, and i’m now looking further into it to confirm/deny
5. There’s a green movie kraahkan? :0
As for your suggestions, i like them! the only one giving me pause is the “aquatic ruru”. It’s possible for it to be an aquatic variant, but could this be chalked up to early MNOG art being really janky? maybe its both
