Yeah, the grip strength on solid balls is notoriously variable. The ones actually produced when Bionicle was around have remarkably loose axle connections, and should never really be used to hold up any weight, whereas the later ones hold up just fine and have even sturdier connections than the hollow ones.
Luckily, coloured balls only really started appearing after Bionicle’s end, but I know for a fact that red, lime and old light grey balls were produced earlier.
A good way to tell the old loose ones from the newer sturdy ones is the finish: old balls were produced with a matte finish that generally matched the texture of all masks from 2003 onwards, while the later ones are noticeably shinier and more closely match the texture of regular bricks.
I intend to use dark blue ones, which only came out in 2021, so I should be good.
I’m still a little concerned about the fact that the axle won’t be going fully into one of the balls, but it at least sounds like my test wasn’t just a fluke.
The issue that stumped me on this design for so long is the fact that the ball, as well as the thin 3L and 4L liftarms, could rotate about the medium blue Technic connector. To prevent this, the lime liftarm must connect to the socket piece. However, the connection must also be completely flush; I can’t just use a 2L axle as shown below:
My current solution that I devised months ago, and that was used in my Tuyet MOC that I shared here, is to use a 2L rigid 3mm tube, since it can pass through the “barrier” between the axle holes in the socket:
However, the flexibility of the part, as well as the small number available on BrickLink, make me hesitant to use this solution in a Canon Contest entry if there is a better way.
Today, I might have thought of that batter way: the relatively new minifigure wand piece:
And that brings me to the point of this post: would this wand solution actually work? I don’t have access to my parts right now to test it myself, nor do I even have any wands.
My greatest concern is that the “ball” of the wand might not form a stable enough connection with the axle hole of the lime liftarm, or that it might have a tiny amount of wiggle. Are these concerns legitimate, or does the solution work?
No clue about the wand, but irl, the flextube connection would not only be incredbily difficult to construct, but would likely ruin the flextube forever after.
I’m trying to make a frame for Chibi’s that can pack in as much detail as possible in Stud.io. (I’m addicted to Chibi’s…) any tips? @Gringat would be welcome, seeing as how he made about 50,000 Chibi’s.
(It’s called exaggeration)
None of my chibis have the same frame, lol
they’re bundles of random parts based on whatever weird seed part I find most interesting
I’m afraid I can’t help too much with a standardised frame for them
Hiya everyone
as we all know the canon contests have met their end. yet i still want to show my mocs and headcanon models, i intend to enter this into Ducbricks’es contests
however i am running into a problem concerning my chiara model and that is
As far as leg designs, I’m not sure how to help you without directly giving you something to copy, and that’s no fun, defeats the whole point of the creative process.
My suggestion would be to find a seed piece, one that’s elongated. Not necessarily super long, just find a way to add a balljoint to one end and a socket to the other.
If it’s edited out, it’s both a rather bad and absolutely masterful edit. You can see a small sliver of the tube remaining on the side of the mask, and if it was edited out, it would have eliminated the far side of the left shoulder’s socket; it would have to be entirely recreated since the right shoulder’s socket is positioned differently, keeping the far side hidden behind the ball.
As for the moc itself, the forearms definitely seem too short, but it may be the whole arm is a bit too short.