So with the announcement of the end of the canon contests I figured I’d post my other serious contest MOC (besides Chiara, which I’ve shown off here) that I’ve been building on and off for the better part of 2 years.
Thus, I present Marendar: Alien Nightmare Terminator.
This is by far the most complex MOC I’ve ever made, including around 500 pieces and standing at roughly double the height of a metru-build toa.
The description of Marendar as “humanoid” and “biomechanical” leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Since the vast majority of Bionicle sets are technically biomechanical, I wanted to take that one step further here.
I’ve always thought No-Face from Spirited Away had a gloriously creepy design, with the blank-faced mask above a gaping maw, and I drew a lot of inspiration from that here. I wanted it to have a bipedal silhouette, but to look utterly alien up close.
I tried to evoke the feeling of a nightmare creature that had been captured and experimented on to remove all weakness - forced into a metal shell, making it stronger, faster, more deadly. To that end I built with a clear visual divide between the organic and mechanical parts of the creature.
The Barraki glow-in-the-dark pieces are probably the most organic-looking out of any Bionicle set. I also used white for the teeth and the ‘face’ (which I envisaged as a bone growth that just happens to look like a mask), and a splash of Mata red inside the torso-mouth. There’s also a purple brain visible behind a shield on the back of its head.
To contrast with the colours I limited myself to dull, metallic shades for the inorganic parts of the MOC.
The only other coloured pieces are the trans-red ‘sensors’ on its head and gun arm, which augment its already sharp senses and help it zero in on whatever Toa it’s tracking.
I gave it a rapid-fire energy weapon on its left arm (the stud launcher is fully functional!) for ranged engagements, and a massive, crushing claw on the other, capable of picking up a toa by the torso or head.
As well as being almost impervious to elemental energy, it can also channel toa powers itself by consuming all or part of a toa (what else did you think that massive mouth was for?).
The build is a little top-heavy, but with care it has a surprising amount of posing flexibility. I added as much articulation as I could, including 4 points in each leg, ‘shoulder blades’ that serve to support the arms as well as looking like muscles, and waist movement supported by the two actuators on the back of the MOC.
If the contest was going ahead I’d want to refine the central section in the legs, as well as the rear of the head, as these areas are a little sparse compared to the rest of the MOC.
Let me know if you’ve got any comments or feedback, I’d love to hear them!
(Bonus night-view):
And yeah it would have been a nightmare to do breakdown photos… I actually spent several hours reconstructing it in 
- it probably took me a year to pick up all the extra Takadox heads… There weren’t many on Bricklink in my region. Worth it in the end though)
and that’s something I hadn’t considered… I could certainly try out a custom waist piece - I wonder if that would need a reshaped torso to go with it. The head and torso currently have a similar tapered/triangular silhouette, and I think it adds to that slightly unnatural, alien feel.