Let’s be fair, Terry never needed bodyguards in the first place. These guys exist purely because someone at Lego nixed Toa Nidhiki and Dume for silly reasons, and have brought pretty much nothing good to the canon. Mask shapes not mattering, Makuta having bodyguards, Nidhiki not wearing the mask literally designed to look like his head, all net negatives.
Anyway, I say art-only for this. They have to be Metru builds, that’s kinda the entire point, and Metru builds do not lend themselves to an exciting contest. It’s basically “Pick your favourite combination of mask, shins, armour, and spearhead” and that’s so boring.
It’s also going to turn away the Flickr crowd, which on the one hand means fewer artsy statues that explode if you sneeze in their general vicinity, but also means generally less entrants, and TBH even if I don’t vote for the Flickr Titans (Because it’s a canon contest, not a general MOC contest), I at least appreciate their takes and the spice of variety they bring to the table.
Let’s just skip the MOC phase this time. We already know the basic vibe of what they look like, and we know how they’re built. It’s the art that’s gonna go on the wiki anyway, and since they’re Metru builds anyone that wants to make them isn’t going to struggle. No need to clog the MOC topics up with 27 mostly identical iterations of Pouks.
I feel like the super artsy flickr people would be good for this contest; they can create higher-quality models than most, that can then be simplified down in the art so that custom masks, chestplates and spears can be modeled in 3D based off of the dense part design
Not particularly fond of the wording for the art only option in the poll. I think an Art Only contest would be better not due to the limitations of the Metru build as much as their being an easy base template. I think a MOC portion would be fine, but redundant. That said, Art VS MOCs sounds like fantastic chaos and would be fascinating to witness.
I should preface this by saying I have not read the document yet, and will do so as soon as possible, and this is based purely off of the poll options/minor elaborations in the OP, as well as the posts that’ve already been posted.
The Three Options
Not gonna lie, any of those three could work if executed properly. I voted for the second two, though, because I feel like those have the least chance of running into the problems of the previous contests.
I feel like having it the same as before would work under correct circumstances, but it would be somewhat futile - we’ll end up with the same art either way.
A free for all sounds interesting to me, but it might have the problem of different Toa having drastically different canon appearances based on art or building style.
Overall I think the best option is art only, because any contest that includes MOCs will generally just boil down to, as @ToaArcan said,
Contest Specific Rules
As far as Kanohi are concerned, I’ve seen a -whole- lot of extremely nuanced, nitpicky arguments over what boils down to (for lack of a better word, and I know people on the board like to throw it around a lot) semantics. We should just take the canon information and build a set of rules that allow entrants to be as creative and unlimited as possible. The masks are in the shapes of past heroes’? We should just allow any mask people want and say that there were once heroes that wore that mask.
As far as Metru Builds as concerned, I think the only restriction should be that the build should have a metru torso piece and more or less conform to Toa Metru proportions. That’s what makes a MOC instantly recognizable as a metru build for me personally.
naturally I’m just a random idiot on his laptop and I don’t claim that my opinion is really valid at all
The reason I voted the way I did is that I feel that making Mocs of the Hagah will be hard for many people, because there are six whole members you have to make, and the Metru build is very limited with creativity. Though, there have been some Mocs posted of the Hagah that look great, even with the limits of the Metru build. I also want to get to the lariska contest sooner, so having art and Mocs at the same time is my choice.
“Metru build” qualifies as Toa Metru proportions to me
anything that anyone builds can be simplified down to that pretty easily
whether it’s high-detail with a large part count or straight up an actual Metru assembly; as long as the proportions are adhered to
The solution to that, should we go art-only, is to have art which represents something that can be built, and for it to be obvious how to build that Hagah.
Yeah, but they will still look different enough to look cool.
A metru-build is, in 9/10 cases, ■■■■■■■ boring. You really want your future canon to look like a regular metru with a slightly unique mask and chest armor?
Tbf fewer “statue” mocs means more figures that doesn’t break the bank to build I think to piece together Artahka used I would have to pay around 200-250 usd in parts not including every piece on top of that custom printed mask while simuntaneously learning how to mix a convincing LEGO color to paint it. Now I see your point in limiting creativity even though I don’t agree nor do I think art only is the better option as people undoubtably will want to build these figures. I’ve been pretty much against Biocup level mocs for these contest since the start so I might be biased here but the bionicle universe was never about over the top designs for its figures in that sense most well trained moccists make them today.