3rdeye88, while it seems that you are giving very nice advice, you’re being quite rude and overall making the atmosphere of these message boards a lot more negative than it was before. If you could turn down the attitude to make things just a bit more positive, that’d be great. I hope I didn’t annoy you.
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Pretty nice MoCs! This is probably one incarnation of Eljay I could compliment without my mouth feeling dirty! Each one has their own special touches, they’re quite full of personality.
Now, then. Of course Venom could improve but as he mentioned, he had been taking apart and remaking his creations until he was happy with them. I guess you need to be a special kind of picky to allow yourself to be locked into a perpetual cycle of building and rebuilding, never taking a moment to compromise and display what you’ve proudly worked on so far.
As for ‘femininity’ and all those points, that’s all well and dandy if you’re trying to make a less mechanical figure, otherwise I think there’s some leniency allowed - I’m not sure toa, matoran and so on are equipped with the organs or biological functions that merit grotesque hips, mammaries or the like. Fair enough, impressing human features onto a model can help with promoting a gender but it’s not completely necessary in this context, I feel.
One interesting way I’ve noticed femininity being tackled in Bionicle media was with the Legends of Metru Nui movie. The toa (less so the matoran,) in LoMN definitely seemed based off of their rather gender-neutral sets, though it was left to things like posture and voice to enforce a female persona:
So sure, there were some phenotypic nuances on the chest and hips but there were other devices employed too. Viper’s rather risque ‘French girl’ pose in the title picture makes it seem pretty evident to me that the MoC is intended to be female, along with the petite height.
Finally, a general word to all. I realise discussion doesn’t always progress well when there’s a ‘hugbox’ atmosphere… but sprinkling a few grains of tact on your… eh… ‘constructive’ criticism seems like normal conduct to me. Believe it or not, having an opinion doesn’t give you the right to be dismissive or treat people with derision. When you post something on a public forum, you’re inviting criticism as well as offering it. I sincerely hope certain members WON’T be mad (or arrogant enough to brush people off because of ‘muh opinion heh’,) when they’re informed of how their behaviour is received by others. It’s pretty irritating when a person talking to you has stuffed cucumbers into their ears.
but that’s like, just what i think and stuff :^), y’ know??
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That has got to be one of the most pretentious responses from a MOCer I’ve seen a while. You really need to learn how to take criticism from other MOCers, in fact that seems to be a bit of an issue around here.
Okay, see here’s the thing… It’s not pretentious to say that I’m satisfied with how my work turned out and that I don’t find it all too necessary to go back and redo them. I understand how to take constructive criticism. I’m an artist in other mediums. I don’t need a special course from you on such.
You never really explained what exactly needed to be redone. I’m not sure how constructive your criticism was if that’s all you had to say.
Now, I do in fact appreciate your second post, in which you go more in depth on your critique. Though I choose not to change these MOCs any further (Knowing myself, I probably will again in the future so meh) I will consider what you’ve suggested for whatever I work on in the future.
I’ve observed anatomy quite a bit the past few years. Don’t worry, I graduated high school a long time ago. And I’m aware that the Viper MOC is no where near the pinnacle of a feminine appearance. (She’s probably the one out of them all I would end up changing just because of that. =P ) But I personally enjoy how her build turned out, though it’s imperfect and clearly not feminine. Viper herself really liked how it turned out, and it’s one I can atleast say I’ll settle for in the time being. And much like Dar said above, I feel that trying to capture femininity in the build of this particular MOC is not all too necessary, so I didn’t push for it too much.
Before I sit down to build a MOC I think about what color I’m going to use. To do so I look through my collection(all my bionicle and technic are sorted, some of my system is but a large portion of it isn’t) and if I want to use Dark Green for example, I go pull out all of my dark Green.
Believe it or not, that’s actually exactly how I go about making MOCs nowadays. I had to do this especially when making these MOCs because the cast all gave me a specific color scheme to work with. Viper wanted metru green and sand blue, so I pulled out all the metru green and sand blue parts I had. (I really wish I had picked up cragger ;_; )
Another really helpful tip is to embrace your limitations and be willing to work around them.
Well that’s pretty much what I do already. =P I appreciate what you had to say about connector pieces, since that IS something I’ll admit I try to avoid for the sake of color schemes. But if you notice in… Pretty much all of the MOCs, the “third” color is there. Kahi’s got dark gray, Meso’s got it, Eljay’s got black here and there, Kini’s is the “worst offender”, etc etc. But what you’ve said has given me a better idea of how to approach my next MOCs.
Yes, I can always improve my MOCs, and like I stated above, I probably can’t stop myself from making more attempts in the future to possibly improve these. The thing is, at this moment in time, I don’t really feel that it’s necessary to directly go into redoing these particular MOCs. I’m satisfied with how they turned out, and the people that these MOCs are based on are as well, and that’s honestly been the main goal. To represent TTV as MOCs in not only my own style of MOCing, but in the way the people they’re based on want to be represented. I’m sorry if any part of that statement comes off to you in a pretentious manner, since that’s really Kahi’s forte.
I appreciate your C&C, and now that I know what exactly you think should’ve been done differently about these MOCs (or redone I suppose), I will probably apply your suggestions to my works in the future. And knowing myself, who knows? Maybe at some point in time, somehow, my inner perfectionist will take control and remake the Viper MOC into the sexy feminine figurine she’s destined to become.
I guess you need to be a special kind of picky to allow yourself to be locked into a perpetual cycle of building and rebuilding, never taking a moment to compromise and display what you’ve proudly worked on so far.
That’s probably the best way to describe it, honestly. =P
-V-
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Inspired me to redo a lot of my TTV MOCs. Which of course meant I spent a few hours trying to find a way for Viper’s head to both stay on and look proportional. Augghh…
I have nothing to add to anything.
Except Oh my god I feel like I’m either a deformed freak cause of the asymmetry or I’m like, a Hunter.
On a random note I thing this might actually be the first I’ve seen of these particular incarnations of the Crew, but my god they’re gorgeous. I’ve said it before Ven, you got yourself some serious skills, I won’t be surprised if you ended up doing some kind of miniature/model work for movies and the like. If I wasn’t away from home ATM I’d actually be kind of tempted to make a MoC of my own right now.
Again, grate work Vaynum, 10/10 would look again.
Then I apologize. Because the way that came off, it seemed as though when I said the ones I mentioned could be improved you basically said “I can’t possibly think of how I could improve them” meaning you thought they were incapable of being improved upon. And that kind of mentality is indeed pretentious. As satisfied with my MOCs as I am in the cases of Matteo and a few others, I know I could always improve them some way if I was dead set on it. Matteo’s color scheme needs to be balanced, Ryakk’s shoulders and hips aren’t as strong as I’d like them. Hell, I tore down my most popular MOC because I knew in order to improve him It’d just be better to start over. And another thing, to say your satisfied with the results is a lie, one we tell ourselves. Its more like "I’m done F**ing with these things for now there be like that for a while" * sticks on shelf If you know you’re going to go back and work on them later then no you’re not satisfied with them. We just tell ourselves that as justification to stick em on a shelf and leave em be for a while.
Well, that’s why its there. Receiving criticism I find always works best later on when some of the ego has worn off and the hindsight has set in. The first thing I do when I decide to go back to a MOC is look at the comments posted on it already and keep mental notes on what was said, what worked, what didn’t. But of course its still our decision what works or doesn’t. I remember I got a Critique from Mike Nieves on my Rhotuka tiger. The guy wrote me a book on it and like not even half of what he said was even relevant because he didn’t seem to grasp the concept that it wasn’t his Bengal Tiger, and that it was green for crying out loud.
What other mediums? Is your stuff posted? Well yeah Dar mentioned the voice and pose. Well unless you’re animating these MOCs sometime soon and Viper will be applying her voice then that point is moot. And I would say the posing wasn’t really effective in portraying a feminine characteristic either. But that’s just me. The only telling characteristic was her left hand and I just thought that was a perspective thing. It wasn’t till I looked at it again that I realized that its actually on her hip. Again I’ll post up some examples of my own in this matter.
One thing I think instantly sells a feminine pose is crossed legs. Women cross their legs more because…its more comfortable for them than it is us.
In both these pictures Volvex and Isra aren’t doing anything in particular they’re just sitting there, but they’ve both got crossed legs. And I have to disagree with Cupake’s stance. If we want to convey feminine MOCs then we’re going to have to do something to their proportions to signify they’re female. That’s just how our brains are wired. He’s right about the tricks they used in LoMN but if Nokama was just standing there and we had no familiarity with her, she’d look completely androgynous. And that’s fine if you want that look, but if one wants a distinctly feminine looking MOC then typical female proportions should be applied. Sure they don’t need mammaries per say but a curvier wider hipped MOC will definitely help visually sell your point there. How many times did we have to tell our parents “no that one’s a girl” with those early sets. But no one had trouble distinguishing Roodoka as female now did they?
That’s good. Ironically, I find this method works best with with colors of large quantities rather than small. its easy to remember that all the sand blue one might have is the sockets from Vezok. But to know what Gold or Gunmetal is available, that’s harder since its more abundant. Its also useful for know what aesthetic theme to go with. If you want more Hero Factory or Bionicle or as systemy blend like I’ll do sometimes. Like the vehicle I posted above. I decided White would be the best choice to work with since I’ve barely touched my White. I was trying to get a nice even blend but I found out as I was MOCing that the best look for that MOC was the system rout with what ever Bionicle, Technic, and HF I could sprinkle on. If I hadn’t pulled most of my White system I probably wouldn’t have thought to use it in some of those situations. Which would have made a significantly different MOC because system worked best overall.
Also Cragger was Meh as a set, his neck looked really weird and the olive bones are like the white ones in Breeze, totally random and kinda useless since they didn’t give us anymore. I felt the same way about the azure parts in Thornraxx until this year. I say BL the dark green HF bits and skip the rest.
Well its understandable. Like I said, using these colors is sometimes unavoidable. To not use Dark or Light Gray somewhere you either have to use white or black. And that still makes it much more difficult to work around because some parts like hordika necks only come in dark grey. Working with the first point about pulling your resources, figuring out what connectors you have in which colors help here. And if you’ve got to break from say a black color scheme to use a Hordika neck, hiding it or burying it in the MOC helps to, if you’re that conscious about color. I typically am not. I work with the mentality of try to use the structural color where applicable but if I simply can’t its not the end of the world.
Again that’s a lie we tell ourselves. You’re just done messing with them for now. Which is fine. Its best to let ideas percolate through your Mind and let the creative juices build back up. I do that during builds. I’ll work on it like two days in a row, take a day off and not even go in my MOC room then come back the next day or two and have at it again.
No it doesn’t now, but how you phrased that the first time did. Just a misunderstanding, and we’re past it now. I’m still not very familiar with everyone, so I’ll have to take your word on that. 
I still didn’t mention exactly what I think could be improved, but what I mentioned is the basic rundown. The simple limbs I think is a problem that effects the majority of them though. Limbs seem to be one of the hardest things for MOCers to customize for some reason. I guess its the lack of space to work in. That just means using smaller parts to form the larger whole, a trick I myself learned after joining the online community and seeing others do it.
Exactly though, your inner self knows your not satisfied and will take control at some point. It happens to all of us serious MOCers.
Special kind of picky, yeah but posting your progress so far knowing and convenying that you’ll work on it more when you can helps to. I always stop to display what I’ve got so far when I’m done messing with it for the time being.
-Dave.
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vipers position is great
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This is amazing!
It was made by Ven on their channel.
3/10 Lack of shredder claws.
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So wait, how did you make Eljay if he he’s a soulless, faceless creature? How does the mask connect?
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Hey for the benefit of a new viewer such as I, could you list who the MOCs are of from left to right?
They’re names are in the gallery link.
The Black and White one is Varderan. The Green one with the Gold mask is Eljay. The Dark Blue and Silver one is Venom, the Dark Green one on the ground is Viper. The Black and Gold one with the Skull for a face is Mesonak, the one with the Dark Red and black Antroz Mask is Invictus, the White and Red one is Kahi, and the one with the painted Takanuva mask is Kini.
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Thank you so much!
Eljay is like a Toa Inika. It just kinda slips on.
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and knowing is half the battle!
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So, oddly enough, after building an MOC, I come on here and notice she has an uncanny resemblance to Viper…Funny how stuff like that happens.
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Are you going to make MOCs for the new members?