In the interest of actually learning how to MOC, I’ve decided to start by making revamps of the most well-known characters in Bionicle, starting with the big man himself: Tofu, the Toe Meaty of Fur, or whatever his name is. You know, the red one.
I reasoned this was a good place to start, since I don’t have to juggle drawing a totally new character from the aether while I cobble together a MOC. This is actually the latest of several attempts to render the Toa Mata, but it’s the only one so far with something resembling polish. In the interest of improving both my skills and this design, I’ve opted to actually post this here for once, seeing as this is the closest thing to a passable revamp I’ve cobbled together in my many lousy attempts thus far.
Other angles
(note: I realized his skirt thing is too shiny, so I decided that in future renders, it’ll be rubber black to look more like cloth)
So, as I fish for feedback, I want to provide some of the goals I had in mind while approaching this.
Goals
- Challenge myself: Most of this build is custom, the only exception being the torso, which is a derived Metru build based on @WholesomeGadunka’s Toa of Psionics whose name I can’t be ■■■■■■■ bothered to remember. I only did this to add some waist articulation to give the build a bit more expression. All the custom bits are made less with the intent of “custom for custom’s sake” and more as an attempt to learn how to make custom stuff that works, especially where shape language is concerned.
- Re-invent the Tahu-shaped wheel: I wanted this to be obviously Tahu, but more than that, I wanted a bit of personality in this, something clone sets just can’t provide. For his anatomy, I wanted him to read as being muscular, with “heroic” body proportions. I wanted to convey the “He-Man” or “Conan the Barbarian” physique, an idealized but theoretically attainable fighter’s body, most people’s idea of a “prime specimen” in terms of fitness and capability. This heroic appearance is meant to fit within most conceptions of Tahu while exaggerating what we already think about him.
- Character design: The aforementioned body style is supposed to convey physical strength as well as give a sense of “manly toughness,” as well as evoke other characters we’re familiar with (again, He-Man, Conan, etc.). The color blocking, with the black skirt obscuring his red body, is also meant to evoke that “shirtless barbarian” look, which fits the hot climate he lives in. I also imagined the skirt as being some sort of cultural thing, like a piece of clothing that signifies who’s the “man of the house,” kind of like how the Turaga wear robes in the movies. Lhikan’s Hau is used in place of the standard Hau to fit with his super-detailed design, as well as stand out from regular Haus to emphasize his mask as being special and unique without being too derived from the original mask, as opposed to the Hau Nuva (yuck). And, lastly, his hands, which use custom parts from Megawillbot and are meant to evoke the original Mata “hands,” as well as the characters’ hands in BtG.
- Plausibility: Not really my main goal, but still one I wanted to keep in mind, I wanted this to be a somewhat functional model that could exist IRL. There aren’t any illegal connections (that I noticed) and the model retains some good articulation, the only iffy bit being the shoulders. The only bit I’m not sure about is the gearbox; I’m not certain if there’s room for gears under the chestpiece, and the gear in the back is currently just decoration, but this is more a matter of me not having the motivation or willpower to actually figure that out.
- Set an example: Tahu is the leader of his team and the mascot of Bionicle itself, so he’s usually the first one people see. As such, it was important for him to look like a believable “default” Toa while still retaining the character traits I was going for. That meant he couldn’t be excessively bulky (i.e. Onua), but not too thin (which I plan for Lewa to be). He had to look like he had idealized, but not cartoonish, humanoid proportions so as to give a baseline for the other Toa to play off of.
Like I said, this is a WIP and I’m only posting it here to get a feel for where it is now and where it needs to go as I look forward to the rest of the team.
