If anyone could remember from 2004, the Toa Metru had some of the most complete and solid constructions of basically any set up to that time. The gear function was mostly hidden and the they achieved the biomechanical look extremely well. However, there were some things that bothered me about them. One of them was their mostly clonish design, which made the Toa kind of bland amongst each other. Another problem was that they lacked shoulder articulation, which I felt could have been easily fixed. One more problem, particularly with Vakama, Even though the gear function was a really beneficial function for them, it was superfluous with Vakama due to his disk launcher being a projectile based weapon. There had to be some way of locking the gears together. I still wanted to keep the gears though for play features; in case someone wanted him to be armed with a sword or other melee weapon. This was more of a MOC for fun and nostalgia.
For posing, I decided to lock the gears using a large Toa Mata back gear that connected an axle to the front armor. For storage purposes, I decided to connect the default axle to his foot.
Now I wish I had the red disk. The arms are attached to ball joints to finally add shoulder articulation. He also has some waist articulation as well and better looking hands.
Torso’s abit too elongated-looking and doesn’t match, with the metru torso and the lower body not going good together… maybe you could’ve stuck to a nice custom torso?
Otherwise he’s alright. Maybe remove the leg armor on the rahkshi leg, doesn’t give off the vibe the metru have, but your design and my honest opninion
@ JMP Yeah I kind of wanted to keep the gear function and the play features with this one. This is why Whenua is going to be a challenge to customize due to his short posture of a Toa of Earth. So glad I don’t have the parts… yet.
To be completely honest with you. I agree that simple can be a good thing, but this MOC isn’t necessarily proving the point for me. The MOC looks gappy in the stomach, the addition of the Inika feet to the shins doesn’t look good from most ankles, and, revamp of a standard set aside, the color scheme and design of the MOC look uninspired - and I consider an inspired MOC with a design that isn’t seen often and executed well to be the definition of “good” for a MOC. The Metru system inclusion is the only notable thing about this MOC, although I do find the combination of both gears and balljoint shoulders on the Metru system quite interesting. I’ve seen you do more interesting stuff before, I don’t see why you tried to implement it into this MOC to prove your point.
Sorry if this comes off as a bit harsh. For some reason I’m ticked off at the use of “Simple can be a good thing” paired with a MOC that really does nothing to show me how that is so.
Should replace the gray with keet-orange, all of those parts minus the friction adder come in that color, it will give more of that fire feel to him i think. (plus I really dislike how dark the metro’s colors were)
Ok, so I shortened down the torso down by getting rid of the jointed pelvis in favor of a standard Toa Metru pelvis. (the waist articulation was superfluous anyways). Honestly, this is still a WIP for now. The Toa Metru build is so solid that it doesn’t really need much of change at all. Just small, minute changes that make him look more “proportional” and humanlike. I really want to make a more powerful “elemental” looking transformation for him, but for now, let’s just say that this is his “base form”. I’ll post the picture in the next topic since it doesn’t really look like a MOC anymore.
