Mesonak, The Shadow Lord

Hey there TTV folks,

Here’s a picture I said a few days ago I would draw for an old friend of mine on here, @Mesonak. The last time I drew him his character was nearly ten years ago, so I was quite overdue to draw him an up to date version =P

So, without further adieu, here it is!
https://orig00.deviantart.net/14de/f/2018/092/f/d/fan_art___mesonak_by_akakumasterofflight-dc7pwg5.png

(Direct Link to the Image here)

Was a lot of fun doing this piece! The legs were a real pain to get right and I’m not 100% happy with my coloring job, but its the best I could do for now, and I think it turned out alright. Hope you like it, Meso!

EDIT: New here, I no format post good. Fixed, I think =p

–Akaku: Master of Flight

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lolepicwin Ak, not using the traditional Piraka head was a nice touch

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MY GOD

Gimme a sec I’m gonna try to formulate my thoughts into words adequate enough to conve-no screw it

http://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Jeremy-Renner.gif

That’s phenomenal. I haven’t really kept up with your artwork since our BZP days but WOW you have elevated your work up by a notch or 10.

I adore everything about this. No exaggeration. I’m sure there are flaws as nothing is perfect, but for the life of me I can’t come up with any. Of particular note is the detailing and contours in the torso section and the leg armor. The BIONICLE influences are clear, but I feel like the patterns and designs give it a distinct identity that most interpretations of me lack.

I think this might be the only drawing/MoC of me that’s got the “Skeleton in a suit of armor” thing down to a science. Perfect color layering.

THE WINGS AND HORNS ARE SO COOOOOOOOL

The skull, it’s just… it’s just so good because it’s not a traditional Piraka skull and it looks like an actual skull but it still hits the design elements to make it recognizable and i love it and wish it were an actual piece and aaaaaghsh breathes

AND THE SWORD, ITS THE SWORD I ALWAYS DREAMED OF BUT COULD NEVER HAVE

Thanks so much man. Welcome to the boards XD

-Mesonak

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That’s downright terrifying.

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My god above you broke Mesonak.

As always, amazing artwork my friend. Your new colouring process is leaps and bounds ahead of the old and just gives so much more life to the art that stuff from even a month ago looks ages behind your new stuff.

It’s great. I love it. But then I might be biased cause you drew my Av, who knows.

Some say you’re the hero this Board deserves,
Some say you drew a Bionicle in a Destiny Comic and it didn’t look out of place,
Some say there’s a giant Dragon right behind you.

All we know is that you’ve broken Mesonak

And on that bombshell! Goodnight!

~Hawkeye

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the freakin skull, kini

the skuuuuuuuuuuuuull

i’m crying tears of joy

-Mesonak

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This is amazingly well done

Also, @Kini_Hawkeye, nice Top Gear references

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XD Haha, I’m glad you like it so much, meso! =D

Happy to know I got the color layering down right, I was worried that I may have used too much gold!

I probably could’ve gone a little further with making him look even more Skeleton-ish with lots of hollow spaces and just bones showing inbetween the armour plating, but I was afraid of taking it too far in that direction incase that wasn’t what you were hoping for ^^;

And I’m glad you like the horns and wings! I was going to draw them just like regular pieces at first, but then I remembered what kini mentioned about you wanting his horns to be shadowy and the sort, and thus I went with the matte black, spooky finish =P

The skull and the sword I have to admit I think turned out pretty awesome myself! The skull was one of the main reasons why I asked about if he was more Piraka or Toa like, really wanted to make sure the look of his face matched how he was meant to look!

Your quite welcome, Meso. Thank you! =)

–Akaku: Master of Flight

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There’s more gold than I personally use on MoC versions of me, but I think it works very well in this interpretation. The layering is excellent when it comes to the black and the white in ways that LEGO parts can’t convey, which helps prevent the gold from swallowing everything.

Oh man the bone thing would’ve been awesome too ._. That would’ve been totally cool with me just as an FYI; I like it when artists or MoCists or whatever put their own unique spin on the concept of my character. I wouldn’t be annoyed either way.

: 'D

-Mesonak

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This turned out amazing. It has a great balance of ornate and decrepit detail. No part in particular stands out as too organic or too robotic. Aside from the hands, feet, and head there is really not much looking like a casual bones connected by invisible joints. It all looks very connected and solid. Lastly, that skull head is nice in how it looks decayed, but also like a mask/helmet at the same time. I’m curious for what the backstory for this guy might be.

-Oonie

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Looks pretty sweet! Definitely a good representation (as evidenced above… :stuck_out_tongue: ).

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@Mesonak Looks to me like it’s story time my friend.

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@Mesonak: I agree! and thanks for the FYI. Honestly, I’m kinda curious now how the skull mask/face would look as a Technic piece … If I ever get a hold of a 3-D printer, we may someday find out =p

@TenebraeInvictus: Thank you! I like the Piraka skull, especially for Meso’s use of it in mocs of him, but there aint much sense drawing him like a Skakdi if he aint one, I say =P

@Leoxander: Having a skull for a face tends to have that effect XD

@Kini_Hawkeye: Thanks bud. Its amazing how much I’ve learned continuing classes in me graphic novel program, and I always seem to have a considerable jump in quality in my work whenever I take life drawing courses =P

@BioKnight: Thanks!

@Oonie: Thank you! It’s all based on some mocs I was shown of Meso’s character, I’ll leave it to him to explain the backstory of his OC if he wishes to do so =P

@ReeseEH: Thank you! It’s definitely getting a lot more praise then I was expecting! =)

Thank you everybody for the comments! =D

–Akaku: Master of Flight

Darn that is one price of fan art of @Mesonak you done here, good job and can you do fan art of the Mod Squad 2.0?

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Dayum dude

too good

now I gotta design a head that conveys that level of detail in pieces ^^;

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oh god

well i won’t hijack the topic entirely but I will give a consolidated version of the most contrived and convoluted origin story ever. i was going to write a story for this but i never got around to it so some of the details are very underdeveloped

Essentially Mesonak was a dead guy from a far-off planet and some of his friends wanted to resurrect him, either for sentimental reasons or because Mesonak had some important knowledge that they still needed. They used some dark energy source and the BIONICLE equivalent of a Skyrim Soul Gem to try to revive the “spirit” of Mesonak. It worked, but he was a confused freaked out amnesiac husk whose self preservation instincts caused him to turn on his friends, who he perceived as enemies. After slaughtering them, he escaped the station they were in (cause they were in space to locate this energy source) by way of an escape shuttle. and made his way across the cosmos before a dimensional rift caused him to crash on a planet and… well there was a bunch of strange phenomena with that, essentially causing Meso to be split into two beings along with his magical sword Death Whisper that he picked up in the spaceship (another artifact the friends had collected for revival purposes, it acted as the aforementioned soul gem and was able to store numerous beings within it, including a crazy demon creature who Mesonak would later learn to utilize as a weapon) and one half of Meso kinda wandered across the planet looking for anything, eventually he discovered he had the ability to “possess” things by taking control of bodies and the like; he chose a random skeleton he found out of a sense of morbid comedy. The black “horns” are really just shadowy smoke which drifts out of the open ear holes on the sides of the skull, which is a fun fact I doubt many know.

basically Meso went on many adventures across the cosmos, keeping the Skeleton body because of his twisted sense of humor and the belief that he was still “technically dead” as he lacked a sense of self, memory, or being to call his own. Ergo, he felt it to be appropriate. He picked up some armor along the way obv because just a skeleton body would be very impractical

The golden armor stemmed from this whole subplot where the dark energy used to resurrect him began to negatively impact his mental state and cause dark impulses to fester (think Great Devourer venom from Ninjago or this whole Oni/Dragon schtick they’re doing), and the shadowy energy source used to create him was starting to run rampant. The “golden armor” acted essentially as chains on him, restricting and dampening the shadow power. Technically it makes him weaker but it’s one of the only ways he can maintain sanity and achieve some clarity and peace of mind. Eventually it’s abandoned because he finds other ways to mitigate it, but for the duration of Mesonak’s storyline the dark/light juxtaposition is central to him. He’s a very unstable character, and the mysteries of his original species, purpose, resurrection methods, and the relics that his friends located to achieve their goals would act as the driving forces for his story.

@Oonie

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Very cool

is that canon

have you tamed the Muaka

sure

-Mesonak

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@Spiderus_Prime: Provided real life obligations don’t get in the way, I’ll definitely consider it!

I would need descriptions or reference pics (be it mocs or other drawings of them) of each member’s character to get started though.

The more information on their appearance, the closer I can make them to how you all envision your characters =)

Toa are my specialty, though as demonstrated with my pic for Meso the thread we’re in is all about, I’m not at all limited to them!

@DarkTakanuva: Thank you! Best of luck to you, if you have a go at it.

@Mesonak: Cool story bro! And I don’t mean that sarcastically =P Definitely should’ve made him more skeleton-y, ah well XD I might end up making some adjustments to the picture in the future just to see how it looks; I also just realized I still have several concept drawings laying around I did for this sketch, I can link them if you’re interested!

–Akaku: Master of Flight

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yes please

-Mesonak

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