It is time! I return once more to present the next member of my take of the Toa Cordak. Last time was the teams Sharpshooter AND Scout Gamako, this time however we shall be meeting one of the team members closest to her. The team’s pure Sharpshooter, despite how much he hates that fact, Toa Tarui!
Before beginning, as always, I would like to remind everyone that while yes, I am taking opinions and criticism to help improve my skills as I am still a rookie MOC builder, it should be Constructive. Provide ideas of what should or shouldn’t be changed to the MOC to make it better, not just say, “that looks good” or “that looks bad” and be done. Alright?
That constructive criticism is especially important here as I went for a pretty different design this time around, and that’s saying something after I made the lanky lass herself Gamako. That being said, this different design style and somewhat weird proportions is on purpose this time, and I will get to why in a bit.
Starting with the build, it may be a bit hard to tell at first but I did use the Metru Torso like last time, meaning that moving forward only one more of my Cordak team will use this type and the rest will have customs. Though, with the designs I typically like trying to build, the Metru Torso does limit some thing juuuuuuuust a bit, mainly in how the midsection can look in comparison to the rest of the body. May have to work on that a bit deeper…if I make another version of Tarui it will mainly be just to fix that issue.
Keeping with talking about the build but also considering the proportions, you may have noticed the oddity in the fact that his arms are rather skinny while his legs are rather bulky. Again, this was actually on purpose to demonstrate one of Tarui’s interesting character flaws, in that he’s a tad narcissistic about his looks, while also being kind of dumb about them. This actually plays into his backstory and rest of his personality, but we will get to that momentarily. His overall look, and this will sound weird at first but roll with it until I get to backstory, is that he almost has a baggy pants type of look with his legs being much bulkier then the rest. Yes I know how weird that sounds out loud.
One more thing before backstory! His arsenal. As the team’s pure sharpshooter, he of course has a long range weapon, that being two wrist mounted launchers that work in tandem with his Great Sanok, the Mask of Accuracy, which is the Inorganic design made by KhingK. However, he actually has a second weapon that he sneaks around with despite the team leader Lesovikk being against it for multiple factors, that being a fire sword that works as a sword like you’d expect, but he is also able to launch small fire balls from it.
And now for the big thing that will hopefully explain all the weird stuff with Tarui’s design, personality and BACKSTORY!
As a Matoran, similar to other heroes that would come after him, Tarui looked up to what Toa that existed at the time and the entire idea of being a hero. Throughout the many years of watching the Toa in action, he gained many personal ideas of what it meant to be a hero and what would should do. So when Tarui actually achieved that dream of becoming a Toa, he almost immediately set out to become what he believed to be was a hero. He started by changing a lot of his appearance from when he was first transformed into a Toa, replacing or adding armor that he thought looked “cool” or “heroic” without much thought as to how effective these new parts actually were in terms of battle and aesthetic, he basically only knew how to make the colors look right(hence the “baggy pants” comparison that was made as some think of that style of clothing as only trying to be cool). Though his entire team disapproved, they couldn’t really do much to change that part of Tarui. Along with that, Tarui’s idea of an “ideal hero” is that of a singular Toa being the hero, as before the team that he was apart of, there was no known teams of Toa. This idea had Tarui basically ignore his team for a good chunk of time. Maybe he would interact with them on a basic level, maybe even become friends, but he’d always ignore the idea of being an actual team with them and even ignored a lot of Lesovikk’s orders at first. His Mask meant he was great at long range, so Lesovikk positioned him as the team’s pure Sharpshooter along with Gamako, but Tarui has always seen Toa right in the action, and combined with the hot-headed nature a Toa of Fire typically has, he would always bring around a custom fire sword and just rush into battle. This never went well as despite his overzealousness, his own vain idea of always needing to make his armor look heroic and the fact that he was just not a good swordfighter would usually equal to him nearly being killed…a lot. This whole aspect of Tarui would only start to change as he began to interact more with Gamako and fellow loud mouth Toa Hukal, as their combined nature’s were able to either calm or match Tarui’s overexcitement, and actually reason with him to the point where he would stay behind with Gamako on certain missions.
However, despite this change, Tarui still met his end with the majority of his team. Being killed when his overzealousness showed again, but in an attempt to save Gamako…
Now, normally this is where I would end the post. Usually say thank you for reading, hope you look forward to more, ask for questions from the people reading, give more pictures of the featured MOC and tease the next part. But not this time!!! Well I actually I AM still saying all of those things, but there’s a Bonus this time around!!
Along with the additional pictures of Tarui, at the very end I am also leaving images of the 3D printed masks of Fedalu, Gamako, and Tarui! Basically saying that I am indeed wanting to make physical versions of these guys, and that they’ll probably be half 3D printed, half actual Lego, because I don’t got a lot of money to spend on 300+ pieces on BrickLink, plus I’ve never bought Lego from there before.
But also, the MAIN REASON I NEED SOME CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. As you may have noticed if you’ve been following my posts, Fedalu’s mask looks a tad different. As stated in Fedalu’s post, I went with the dual color idea for his mask, both silver and orange to match the rest of him. But, I am conflicted as to if I should I do this with the whole team. Personally I think it would be a great way to tie all these various designs back together if they all had two colored masks with cool designs on them, kind of like with Nikila if you look at her official design. Fedalu already follows that idea, but I am unsure if I should. Should I make the rest one solid color each? If I do secondary colors, should they be simple or complex? Simple would be kind of similar to Fedalu, with various parts of the mask just changed in color, and complex would be actually drawing/painting designs on the masks? Of the three masks shown, you can already see Fedalu’s two colors, but Gamako’s would be blue and grey, and Tarui’s would be red and black. Could really use some advice on this part in particular!!!
Thanks for reading! Enjoy the pictures! Next up will be the team’s dedicated Scout, Toa of Sonics, Toa Hukal! See ya next time!
