Seeing as these are canon contests, it seems counterproductive to expect them to ignore canon in favour of creativity.
If you want to see cool MOCs with good presentation, there are plenty of options out there, but it’s unreasonable to expect canon contests to have the same priorities.
Welcome back & Thank you Eljay! 
I personally love Double’s work, so I’m sad for his ban, but except it, honestly, I’m a little glas to ban a persons who too rude and grabing the ankles of this contest and try to drag it down forever.
honestly, really honestly, I was tired to see a riot like it.
Yes. Realy thank you for your coming back!
Welcome back Eljay! glad to see you’re alright! My theory on why people are annoyed about these contests: all of these characters, see, they’ve never had a canon appearance, so everyone could make their own, unique interpretation. but with you guys making these contests, their will be canon appearances, so no more unique appearances. i, for one, am very happy that these are continuing. i look forward to seeing all the lovely stuff that this wonderful community makes for the upcoming contests!
Glad to hear you guys are cracking down on the toxicity.
I’m sick of seeing it in every community and fandom.
Perhaps I did come off as a bit anti-canon just then, lemme rephrase.
Canon designs and good designs aren’t mutually exclusive. The creative interpretation of the rules at hand is what we should be striving towards, as the canon descriptions are often stingy with how they describe appearance of certain characters, sometimes even making it hard to distinguish one character from another (Dwellers in Darkness come to mind, where botar’s replacement was described solely as a Warrior in golden armor). Canon descriptions are purposefully vague to make room for creative freedom and while there’s nothing wrong with taking the descriptions at face value, I feel like there should be a balance between canon approach and creative one.
Additionally, I would love to point out that canon often contradicts with either itself or, supposedly, the most concrete medium we have in terms of character appearences - the sets, with examples that more readily come to mind being the fact that every toa canonically is the same height (they most definitely aren’t even in the scope of a single setwave, much less across the entire run), Jaller Inika has two fire swords, and Annona flip-flopping with her pronouns.
I am both shocked to hear how bad things apparently got over the last months and glad that things will change from now on. I am just wondering how have I missed all of this drama. I have not posted in years but I visit this forum everyday… look at the cool stuff people post, sometimes I put a nice encouraging comment under it and move on. I knew the bonkle-fanbase was devided when it came to the contests… but I did not know it was that bad.
Great to see this zero tolerance rule in place now. The world is toxic enough, we don’t need more of it.
Zero tolerance indeed since voot just got suspended lol
Definitely interested in assisting, but just so Im sure I understand this task completely before trying to apply: So assistants would basicaly take entries, go through the rules to check them for any violations and then forward a list of anything they find to Meso and you? is that about right or would that work differently?
That’s about right.
Keep in mind that Gregs official wording was that they all were about the same rough height so things like Onua and Pohatu being shorter than the rest can still be canon and probably is. What we don’t know is which of the Inika or Mata is the canon scale. Or if we should even use the toys to measure scale at all?
With that being said I do feel like overlooking the toys mainly because they have weird scaling is silly (Not to be disrespectful, I have a pretty good rational here so please hear me out.).
While the scaling of the sets are of the scales(I’ll stop, sorry) the proportions aren’t I think its important to make the destinction that while most Bionicle are humanoid they are not humans , they are an alien race built in the image of another alien race and because of that features it own range of proportions. Note: not all species have the same proportions but cases like the toa have unified proportions through out with minor exceptions for one or two contest winners even though proper scale is not present. Something I clearly don’t want is a Brutaka sized toa figure to be canon because we don’t need to mess with the scale more than the toys already have, I don’t necessarily think it needs to be enforced however.
Either way as a tip to everyone I do encourage visually analyzing the sets for inspiration because it will certainly help you hit that golden spot of looking like it belongs in G1. There are subtle things designers constantly do while designing products for a brand, like including repeating patterns or design elements between their products. Look at Apple for example, while not sharing the base shape their macbook has more incommon in design with the Ipad and Iphone than you may realize at first glance.
So since Bionicle was a sub brand of LEGO and Technic there is bound to be similarities in the design of sets as well as in parts to find.
I feel like I’ve gone on for long enough now, also have a tedtalk about visual literacy that I find really interesting. By all means let the creative juices flow.
Also once again I definately don’t have anything against what you said @ToaMagna just wanted to share some stuff to consider. I don’t think any of it should necessarily be considered for the rules but I think it should be in the back mind of creators at least.
First off, I want to express that I hope you and Meso feel better. I don’t see eye-to-eye with you or the pro-contest crowd, but as someone with mental health problems myself, I don’t want anybody to be struggling with that particular never-ending battle. I also earnestly believe that you should take all the time you need to deal with health issues and bigger commitments.
Yes. Both.
2001-2003 sets are in scale with each other. 2004-2005 sets are in scale with each other. 2006-2009 are in scale with each other. 2010 is not due to parts limitations.
We can reasonably assume that Tahu, Vakama, and Jaller are the average roughly-two-metre height for a Toa, based on commonality of their proportions among the group, and use them as measuring sticks for the rest of the characters. So a character that’s the same height as Jaller Mahri in 06-09 scale would be the same height as Tahu in 01-03 scale. Meanwhile, Steltian Nobles and Vortixx, who stand significantly taller than Vakama, would be even bigger if scaled-up to the size of a Mahri. And Teridax’s winged titan form, which was more than twice the height of Vakama, would be absolutely gargantuan if blown up to full scale.
With regards to the contests, the question then becomes which scale the winning models fit into. With the contests that ran during Bionicle’s run, it was easy to assume that they scaled with whatever the current set scale was. But now, with the toyline long-dead and scale being something people have fluid opinions on, with a lot of fans believing that all the sets scale with each other, that the Toa Inika were freakishly tall for their species, and the Toa Mata were canonically manlets, it’s much hazier.
Like we can probably assume that Artakha is in 2006-2009 scale, because that’s the area that most of Connor’s MOCs fit into, he’s a character who made his first physical appearance during 2009 (or was it 2010?), and he’s very large. But some have depicted him building the Toa Mata sets.
The Hagah quite clearly go into Metru scale, that was the entire point, no questions there, but then there’s Helryx. For the sake of generosity, I’m going to assume that Double was aiming for Mata scale, that she’s meant to go with the 2001-2003 builds, because if she’s 06 scale like the rest of the Order agents, she’s going to be even tinier in Mata scale.
(Though in full honesty I’ve already replaced the MOC with Bukkey’s version for art accuracy and just generally being better)
More seriously, and on the main topic at hand, I would like to know where the line is drawn between negativity and toxicity, because those are very different things, and I worry about the potential of a “No bummers” attitude because even when that starts with the best of intentions and a relaxed attitude it can go badly wrong, until any and all dissent is met with suspension.
Am I gonna get kicked for expressing dissatisfaction, in the event that something like Helryx happens again? I don’t generally have that opinion on the Hagah, the results are fairly satisfactory, my questioning of Bomonga was less about not liking the model (it was my third choice) and more about the possibility of a bad precedent being set.
If I sit here and go “I think it’s a mistake to do Tuyet next because we just had four Toa, with forced Metru builds, and Tuyet is a Toa who has been depicted as a Metru build by a massive portion of the fanbase for about 13 years now”, am I gonna get suspended for that?
I agree, I feel that this needs clarification. I don’t think that this:
Is a suspendable offense by the “no disrespect” rule, but I’ve seen quite a few people around that are concerned that criticism was just outlawed. Giving examples of what is and isn’t criticism vs harassment would go a long way.
Here, I can give a few quick examples.
Non-ban worthy remarks (critique, criticism):
Ban-worthy remarks (Toward staff):
I believe you are being told to step off, sir, and not make this unnecessarily difficult.
And I’m upset because Eljay, upon being told to either shove off with a minor issue literally nobody else, original moccist included, thought was a problem or be more consistent with his moderation, gave (Other member) a warning on the grounds of “behavioral rules”.
Coward.
Do these make it a little more clear?
Crystal.
Thank you.
This research suggests that 2004-09 are one scale:
glad to see you guys are getting help with contests and hopefully y’alls mental health can improve. don’t worry about how fast the contests get done as long as they are done right. hopefully you guys can find some good dedicated checkers who truly care about the community and these contests
I could see that working, the only outliers I’d say are the Toa themselves, I can’t really see the Inika and the Metru being the same scale as each other. Though in all honesty I would make the Inika shorter rather than the Metru taller.
(Honestly I wish Toa had never gotten taller than the Metru, for a variety of reasons)
Glad that you guys have an update post. It’s good to finally see a reply after a long while of silence, and I can respect the reasons for it.
On the subject of help, you guys are clearly swamped with the large amount of stuff to do for the contests, so I’d like to do something, but my life is busy and there’s no guarantee that I would be an advantage or not.
I haven’t kept up with those contests that much, so pardon me If I am a bit ignorant, but what exactly has TheUnderscoredDouble done that has resulted him in not being to participate any further? I haven’t seen him do much here on the boards besides just posting his entries.
Got it. I mean is it really that difficult for people to know the difference between constructive criticism and being a Butt? There is just no need for it.