I don't really care if a set that's female has defining features or not, unless it's overly sexualized. I.e nuva boobs or huge butts.
That's when Punished "Venom" Looch awakens.
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I don't see Gali's 2016 mask as less feminine. Really they only brought the sides of the head closer in and rounded out the top.
Also, the thigh armor is placed sideways, thus making her thighs look slimmer than her 2015 version. If I get the 2016 Gali, I'm going to rearrange her armor to give her those larger thighs.
I feel if they just had a better body design then it could work well. Rey from the Star Wars line honestly has the main body structure that fits for a sleek feminine design. Not overly hourglass designed, but slightly thinner near the middle and wider at the hips. It does so without being too overly sexualised handling it respectfully. Just good proportions would solve the issues here, wouldn't even require new pieces, just for them to be used effectively.
Characters do not necessarily need to be overly sexualised such as Roodaka, however we should really be able to tell the gender of a character (if gender is going to be given to that character) Korgot remains one of the more 'iffy' situations where I'm almost certain that they didn't intend the character to be female originally and simply claimed they were female when fans started asking which one was the female small set this time around. Especially given the place where the gender was revealed made light of recent jokes and discussions in the Bionicle community, implying it was written after the sets had been released for quite a while.
I don't want a character to be overly sexualised, though i don't like the neutral approach they are going for with all the characters. I also don't particularly like the in-joke with Korgot that Onua (representing the fanbase) could not tell the character was female based off the set design alone. While its intended as a joke about the community not realising the set was female, their really wasn't much to go off unless you take the chest canon in a more sexualised sense and then the joke just becomes creepy.
Basically;
- Give us better proportions
- Don't use a copy-paste design for the exterior of the body, the body is important also.
- Avoid overly sexualised stuff
We should really know a gender by the set, rather than the gender by the lore. Some sets may be exempt from this (can understand the creatures not being obviously shown as male or female) however i feel not having aspects to define the gender on the sets weakens them a little. 'Show don't tell' - show us sets that look female, don't tell us they are female after the fact.
This didn't happen in the set... and honestly wouldn't have helped much in my view because the silhouette of a character is what people tend to focus on and just making her have a larger upper chest would be awkward.
Personally i don't find either of them feminine - as per the original discussion this stemmed from. Gali 2015 is about as sleek/smooth as any other CCBS set and despite a few different sized CCBS pieces, the aspects alone don't make her feel feminine. Possibly because she is not supposed to as she is more of a masculine female warrior (think Imperator Furiosa)
Sadly their is no correlation currently in G2 that i can see between the design of sets and the gender of a character.
To me, what defines a traditionally feminine build is the proportions of the torso to leg length, size of thighs/hips to lower legs/shoulders, and possible smaller ribcage section. In 2015, Gali, along with all of the other Toa (keeping in line with later bionicle G1) has super short torsos compared to their legs. However, her large upper torso (ribcage area) is a more masculine trait, furthered by the overly masculine pectoral armor addon into a traditionally masculine downwards pointing triangle shape. Her legs are not very different from the average build of the other 2015 Toa, and her thighs are by virtue of the shell they use, no thicker than other Toa, not at all giving off any semblance of wider hips (as wider hips aren't possible with current torso pieces, and tbh bionicle waists look strange on a standard size figure if you increase hip size even a half unit).
I feel 2016 Gali fixed some of these problems but not all by far. For one, her torso shape went from overtly triangular to more neutral boxy, which I prefer. the skrall addon on her leg gives the impression of larger thighs and definitely is a good look IMO (gaps aside). However, her torso size got longer in relation to her legs, and the shoulders look more scrunched and in a permanent shrug than anything, not to mention her previously noted short legs give her this distorted silhouette, similar to what happened with 2015 Gali, except instead of being a top heavy triangle, shes a stretched out rectangle.
I feel lego could easily make a more traditionally feminine looking figure with pieces used in the wave on other characters (as seen with Rey) but instead opt for a more neutral/masculine look because while Rey is canonically female and a human character and is bound by human proportions, robot toys like Bionicle are primarily bought by parents for their male children, so Lego decides to not make any of them too "girly" to keep them marketable to the primary demographic. If they could get away with making Rey a more masculine figure, id wager they would. While I disagree heavily with gendered toys being enforced on children and would rather have "girls toys" and "boys" toys also be more inclusive to draw in more children of either gender, Id wager the majority of the money Lego makes on Bionicle is from the checkbooks of parents who still agree with a separation of boys and girls toys. Lego is a company, afterall, so it makes sense why they still follow these trends.
TLDR I don't think we are gonna see better "female" proportions in any male oriented Lego theme for a long time, but It is definitely possible and Lego probably just avoids it for marketability.
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It's not like the LEGO designers don't know how to make feminine looking figures. They know exactly how to but that's not the point. These sets are aimed at 8-14 year old boys. Of course LEGO will ever release an explicitly female set. The closest they've ever gotten is Roodaka and even that doesn't really look female.
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I think that if you want to design toa to have a feminine female, you need to start from scratch. Female is different from a male mainly in body features, i wouldn't rely on face/mask looks to define a female toa. A woman has a different pelvis from a man, which also creates a difference in their bottom. Whether anyone likes it or not, a woman also has a different bust, though i don't think it should be the only thing that creates the design, it should be noticed. Women have an hourglass shape to their torso, but it's not like a man has a straight up V and then the thighs are just sort of there without any flow with the torso, a man also has a body that gets slimmer from shoulders towards the belly and wider to the hips, so if we are talking about making feminine women, i think we should notice the men too and try to make them more accurate. This goes to making a new design for a revamp or something of course, i feel like toa are fine with the designs they got since they are for children.
Blue = lady. Done.
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You calling Krekka, Brutaka, Vezok, Takadox, Vamprah and Tarix a girl?
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the most beautiful.
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Pretty much.
What about other masks? I've always seen the Kakama and the Faxon as looking fairly feminine. The only female MOCs I've ever made and was satisfied with used those Masks.
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Lesovikk looks very masculine with the Faxxon, and Pohatu looks very nice with the Kakama. I always thought the noble Huna could be used as both very masculine and very feminine.
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Interesting. I guess it's more subjective than I inititially thought. I can definitely see the Huna as feminine. I feel the Iden and the Adaptive Miru Nuva (Phantoka version) can work as well.
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Definitely.
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Sorry, I meant to write Matoro Mahri's Tryna. The Iden..I don't know. That is a very weird Kanohi, I think it can go either way.
I would also add the noble Shelek and the Calix.
If you let go of some prejudices most Kanohi are pretty androgynous. Only a few look outright masculine, I think.
Yeah, I was thinking of the Tyra when I read it too. But yeah, I guess if the body is made right they all can look female or male.
I make sure that my female MOCs have different body types. Most have at least two signs of a female character. I use wider hips on most. I do have one nuva chested MOC, but also master and uniter torsos. I think the feet for the first Hero Factory sets work. If you don't use just one type, I say good job.
Uhh, this topic is about official sets design, not the community including yourself.
Try asking here next time:
I thought MOCs counted becaue of Solaris.
Wait, that would make Pohatu the most feminine proportions wise. Look at those hips!