So, highly specific question that won’t be relevant but for a few people, including me.
I managed to recreate my Pouks in Stud.io with a few corrections.
I intended to use the gunmetal Kalmah foot for the chest but had to substitute it for a hordika one. Assuming it wins, would it be acceptable for the artist to “fix” the chest since that was the original intent?
(I’m also assuming slapping brown on the shoulders is fine since the shoulder pads are metallic)
I think it’d probably be fine, as it wouldn’t be all that big of a change. The artist wouldn’t be obligated to change it though.
And I feel like thats awfully discriminatory and holds no base merit. Assuming someone is bad because of one aspect is honestly a little bit concerning. They could be wearing the mask for any numbers of reasons. Mutation, a necessary replacement, the mask was simply forced upon them due to some unfortunate circumstance, it was simply the mask the had been stuck with since a matoran, they are perhaps not of the matoran species-thats always been their mask and to them it is not seen as ‘immoral’, etc.
To me it feels like you’re confusing the cause with the effect, as in any individual wearing such mask has to be bad/not worthy of honor.
Just feels like my message is either intentionally being disregarded or maybe I’m struggling to state it
Meso spoke on this prior, however the poll was not a binding poll. It was to visually gauge at a glance where the winds were blowing. What mattered more was the discourse below.
Please allow us to respond to these questions, before misinformation is generated and spread unchecked. I’ve already had people come to me privately believing incorrect statements about the contest that I’ve had to correct.
1: The artist would need to adapt the MOC as it is presented, thought the mask aspect is currently being debated.
2: You’d need to make the shoulder armor gunmetal as well.
I know I said I was done, but I do want to be clear: I’m not trying to disregard your point. In fact, I think the misunderstanding comes from the fact we’re arguing two different things.
You argue that there could be many reasons why a hero might have an immoral mask, and that wouldn’t stop Toa from honoring them. On that, I agree.
I apologize if it seemed like I was misrepresenting your point.
Would removing the metru armor piece resolve the issue as well? Due to the nuva shoulders, Norik only had his upper shoulders covered.
Yeah, that could work as well.
Honestly speaking, I’d love to. Maybe not as a PART of this contest, but shortly after it, in close proximity to it, or in parallel to other contests. Problem is, I don’t know if a lot of people would be interested in seeing that, if Greg would be interested in canonizing those, or what kind of process would even be involved in figuring out those powers. Quite frankly, it’s a bit outside of my depth, and our current infrastructure really only allows for stuff like visual appearances. I’d be curious to hear peoples’ thoughts on this.
I get the logic behind the concern; ultimately, it’s not really something I feel comfortable placing specific design restrictions on. They strike me as the kind of thing that’s easily moddable and swappable if people want to maintain coherence in designs, and like @Toa-of-Snow said, the MoCs ultimately aren’t the canon representation anyway, just a design inspiration. That being said, I understand why it’s an unpopular prospect for some; it’s just the kind of thing I feel like is best left up to the voters in regards to choosing whether or not they want stuff like that.
For the sake of saving yourself typing time, probably best to just wait until the topic goes live. We’re going to make it go live whenever we hear back from Greg on the matters we’ve emailed him about so we can have a “Update AND final topic of discussion” kind of roundtable.
First of all, you’re more than welcome, and it makes me happy that you’re happy and getting something out of these contests. As for Bomonga, the placement of the gold armor isn’t necessarily the problem so much as the Skrall armor. Both of those pieces count as shoulder armor, so they would both need to be gold.
Yeah, for what it’s worth, I read up on the discussion in full. Even though we have opposite perspectives, you’re totally respectable in the way you talk about it. You’re entitled to your view, and for the record, I know there’s plenty of people who aren’t happy with the contests. Our goal is to make as many people as happy as possible, but we can’t please everybody all the time, especially when a lot of the goals of community members often directly conflict with each other. I appreciate you weighing in with your takes and opinions no matter what they are. 
Nope! You can enter as few as one or as many as all four.
…So here’s the thing. I really like the concept, I do. I think your design is really cool and I have no issue with double-ended spears personally. However, I see it being easily abused. Already, I can imagine scenarios where people put like two giant Tuma swords on either end of a long spear and have them hold it in two hands. At that point, it basically becomes the equivalent of a Rahkshi staff, not a spear. As such, at this stage I don’t really see any other way to handle it except to mandate only a single spear tip rather than multiples. Your design is really cool, though! I like it, and I’m sorry about the difficulties.
Thanks a ton for your in-depth, very very very very thorough breakdown. Eljay and I had a very intensive discussion about your points and we reasoned out our thoughts on the matters. As such, this post will serve both as a response to your points and also an… elaboration as to where our headspace was at when designing these rules to start with.
Digitally recoloring parts: Our logic behind this, as stated before, was to keep things grounded. We wanted to maintain consistency and authenticity with real LEGO, allowing for things such as painted parts which have inherent replicability. We didn’t want a scenario where people could just apply an Instagram filter or a saturation boost to a MoC and alter the colors to something that doesn’t even resemble LEGO pieces.
HOWEVER!
Your example picture there… made a really good case for allowing this. Our main concern was maintaining parity with official LEGO colors and not straying from the official palette. The example picture you showed does an excellent job at showing that a high degree of parity can be achieved when pieces are directly recolored with official LEGO shades. As such, we don’t really see a problem with changing our stance and allowing this within these parameters, as you put them very well:
“The best compromise I can think of would be to allow it, but only to recolour parts to colours that exist within Lego’s palette - or further - are already present elsewhere on the moc.”
Specifically, for us, it would be the latter point. Parts can only be edited to match an official LEGO shade that already exists on the model. I stress that point because that’s the extent of the compromise; there has to be exact parity to official LEGO shades when it comes to these photoshopped colors. What that means to anybody who’s reading this is that this standard, as shared by iBunny, is what you will need to reach to have this be allowed. This level of parity with the existing LEGO shade featured on the MoC must be achieved; any less than this, any obvious disparity in shade, and the MoC will be given 3 days to make adequate changes or face disqualification.
That’s the crux of the point, but if people are okay with that, we’re open to making that our new official stance on the matter.
ON THE MATTER OF CUTTING TUBES: Honestly, I don’t really have a lot to say here. You make good points about the principle of the matter and about having clear-set rules to set a standard. Honestly, the reason that approach was taken is because of the grey area of the issue and because… honestly, how many times will it come up and be an issue realistically? In all likelihood, not often.
That being said, you speak truth, so we’re going to officially ban the cutting of flex tubes. What you’ve gotta understand, though, is it’s very difficult to enforce that. We don’t have an encyclopedia of tube sizes, and honestly, it’s possible we could make mistakes. We will, of course, do our best from our side, and we hope that if tubes are ever called into question, people will keep an eye out and comment about it publicly.
In regards to the painting of masks: I fully acknowledge the intentions behind that rule and the application of it were not handled perfectly, and I sincerely apologize for that, as I’ve done to Gerou publicly and to anybody else who may have been perturbed from it. Unfortunately, because of the Ben 10 pieces, his MoC would have been disqualified regardless, because even though those parts are technically stickers, they were applied during manufacturing at the factory and are deeply fused on. I spent about 5 minutes trying my hardest to peel it away, with my fingers, with a pocketknife, with anything, and no dice. At that point, the distinction between stickers and printing becomes null and void.
Regardless, though, the mask situation made it a more complicated issue. I want to elaborate briefly on the idea behind the rule; it was not applied strictly to masks, but rather to parts in general. The idea was that we want a degree of replicability in these contests, and the more freedom you allow people to apply paint in copious amounts without restriction, the more you risk the line blurring between MoCs and art, both in terms of the spirit of the concept and also the nature of replicability.
For instance… let me paint you a picture. Say you have a piece like the Hulk CCBS torso, or a big flat technic panel. What would stop people from doing something like this:
On it? Using multiple shades of paint, you can paint elaborate designs with multiple contrasting colors, intricate decals, things that are not only very difficult to replicate but also not in keeping with the spirit of the contest; working within limitations is one thing. Having such creative freedom to essentially draw elaborate designs on pieces without restriction could be undesirable. Imagine somebody taking like… an Inika torso armor, dividing it up into 10 different chunks, and painting each one a different color, creating the illusion that it would be comprised of numerous different pieces and therefore a more complex build than it actually is.
The same is true with masks. Modalt Masks is one of my favorite sources of custom paint jobs in the community, and I have IMMENSE respect for the skill in their craft. I love their stuff TO DEATH, so just because I’m using it as an example in this context doesn’t mean I dislike the designs, quite the contrary. That being said, a lot of their mask designs serve as good examples the reasoning behind this decision. I’ll link a few choice ones:
Masks like these, as awesome as they are, represent the kind of stuff that we wanted to discourage in these contests, not just with masks but also with other pieces. Things that could potentially be incredibly specialized, incredibly difficult to replicate, things that could be stylistically inconsistent with G1, things that could potentially be memed or weaponized by people, things that could go against the nature of the MoC contest.
However, I’ll fully admit that our upholding of the rules, how they were written, and how that idea was communicated could have been handled better. The specific instances you point out about allowing single shades of selective paint over a default base color, contradictions of that sort… they weren’t our original vision, merely technicalities that were proposed to us that we weren’t fully prepared for. Our desire to keep paint jobs “monochromatic” essentially served to bind the pieces to tangible recolors of existing pieces. Custom, 3D printed masks like Gerou’s that had their primary color essentially be “chosen” with another layer of paint overlayed was another one of these edge cases that seemed to serve as a contradiction, and we tried to handle it as best we could.
In the end, here’s what I’ll say: there are holes in the way it’s been upheld thus far, as you’ve pointed out. Discrepancies, edge cases, etc. I’m willing to toss the rule as it’s been written so far and rewrite it with other words. Something along the lines of “No elaborate, unique patterns” on pieces, wording that conveys an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT set of guidelines and meaning but is more in keeping with the actual spirit of the original rule. This would allow for “traditional” albeit uncommon designs such as marbling or blends of two colors in a natural way as demonstrated by existing BIONICLE pieces, without allowing for the intricate details, designs, and decals as presented in the pictures above. There’s an inherent subjectivity in that verbage, which I don’t necessarily see a way around. If there’s an alternative way to word it, I’m open to hearing it.
Finally, on the dying of pieces: We don’t want to sanction permanent damages to LEGO pieces. Dying is permanent, cutting is permanent; custom masks and creations are, inherently, your own to do what you want with, and paint can be removed if you really try. That’s our POV on that, plain and simple. We won’t be compromising on that point.
PHEW! Another mega-post down. We won’t be updating the rules with these new guidelines just yet, because we want to keep the discourse going about proper wording for a bit.
Though I certainly hope the entire business about Matoro’s Tryna as justification for Immoral Kanohi shapes on the Hagah is over with, I’d like to offer something of a(n admittedly tenuous) counter-argument. even if one is not needed and has not been needed for hours 
We know that the Hagah’s masks are shaped in honor of heroes of the past, but it is also notable that canonically, a third of the Mahri’s masks are the same as the ones worn by great failures of the past. Nidhiki wore a Volitak, and we all know of his treachery. Lesovikk… well, was Lesovikk. It is not much of a stretch to extrapolate that perhaps, a Tryna was worn by a Toa of Air on the distant past, and acted with good intentions at heart, but cost himself and others greatly.
It is, of course, a bit more of a stretch (and certainly not canon) to suppose that a Garai and a Zatth were one worn by yet another two failures, although it isn’t hard to imagine a well-meaning Le-Toa or two accidentally misusing the two very potent Kanohi abilities. As for the Arthron, I uh, don’t know. I guess there’s a lot of air in the universe, and just as many gasbags to wield it.
In conclusion- the Mahri were (probably) given masks of past failures, because all the odds were stacked against them- but despite everything, they would succeed where no-one else could.
Circling back to the Hagah, I reiterate that their choice of Kanohi had nothing to do with them beating any odds or braving impossible obstacles, but were instead predicated, as everyone has made it abundantly clear, upon the Kanohi worn by a past hero. Granted, at the end of the day, it’s up to the discretion of contest entrants to decide what shape the Kanohi of the Hagah will take. Them, and the Council- err, the voters! Yes, the voters.
And, since I’m just in time for another lovely Meso mega-post, I must say that these changes to rulings are absolutely 
excellent. While I haven’t been following affairs as closely as some others among us, I think I speak for many when I say that the updates and addendums to rules giving us specifics on certain very hot topics is massively appreciated.
Thanks! If anything I’m sorry all my posts end up being so massive and wordy, my own inability to be concise is coupled with my only being able to reply late at night and also my need to play 4D chess and anticipate as many potential variables as possible to create these Frankenstein mega posts, lol. If it all works out positively it’ll be worth it
I’ll take any new lore I can get. If everyone involved is okay with expanding the contests/doing a sub-contest, I’m all for it. (Though it’s not that big of a deal, and I won’t complain if you decide not to)
I personally have no inherent issue with this, as long as the restriction on official-Lego-colours-only applies singularly to photoshop/image editing. I don’t want to see it creep over too far - an art piece, for example, should be able to be whatever colour it wants. I don’t actually know if painting pieces is something allowed to infringe this palette or not (because I don’t tend to paint pieces myself) but I wouldn’t want to see that rule change one way or the other as a result of allowing photoshop in Lego-only palette.
Also, regarding canonizing masks, I’m pretty indifferent. I don’t care if a new mask design gets added and doesn’t have a known power, but I’m also not opposed to a contest for them either, and would happily participate in such a contest. I’m completely cool with either outcome.
I’d like to do this, but it gets complicated with edge-case Kanohi powers:
– Fear: needs clarification on if it is immoral. The quote also implies other emotion-based masks are possible, like Anger, Courage & Peace. (1)
– Density Control: gets kind of close to Intangibility, which may need clarification. (1) (The Mask of Intangibility did exist at the time, as well. (2) )
– Weather Control: (1) (2) (3)
– Laser/Heat Vision: needs to be clarified if intended as two seperate masks or as one and the same. (1)
– Poison: immoral. (1)
– Stasis Fields: (1)
All of these could probably be verified in a side-ask to Greg, and then we’d know better what Kanohi powers do (hypothetically) exist in our knowledge.
It’s also worth taking into consideration if the masks represented with the Hagah would be Great or Noble masks.
I’d also like to determine the mask powers of Orde and Zaria beforehand, but same complications. Alt. it can be done afterwards if they end up with new masks.
Understood 
I would most certainly want to see something like that - it is always good to have new mask powers. I don’t think it would be that difficult to organize either, for each such item, a proposal could be made by people and voting would occur.
If something like this would be a prospect for the near future, I would extend this idea in the light of current contest, that is potentially deciding the abilities of Hagah spears and Rhotuka. I know there are people (including myself) who have been discussing and brainstorming this in anticipation of Hagah contests.
Like you said, maybe after the visuals are finalized and Greg would be ok with it, we could have a quick idea contest for this…
@Wolk while making some clarifications is good, I want people to get creative with this, not rely on an existing pool of redundant ideas.
What is the difference between painted and dyed pieces?
Yes, Hydraxon’s faceplate is allowed. I was not sure how I felt about that at first. On one hand, I wanted to use it because there are only a very limited number of official LEGO silver mask parts. On the other hand however, I thought it should be banned because it is not a Kanohi. So I made extensive research to see if the canon would allow a Kanohi to be shaped in the likeness of Hydraxon’s face. Turns out it is possible. I have written a whole post about it if you’re interested: Could Hydraxon's face piece be a mask? - #21 by b6i6o6
Why would we make new powers when we have a large pool of powers of which we don’t know the shapes for? (And also, besides the Density Control which I adressed, how are they redundant?)
For perspective, we have all of these, when it comes to great (and far more when it comes to nobles):
Certainly I think it’d be worth leaving Kanohi-specific contests until after character contests that involve yet-to-be-visualised masks (Tuyet, Dume, possibly TYQ Toa, etc).
That comes from a personal preference of filling in existing holes before creating Moar Stuffs.
This seems a bit off topic for the Hagah, so I want to keep this brief, but I’m all for asking Greg to confirm these. The only thing I’m hesitant on is the Jutlin. I’m sure you’re aware of what I’ve wrote here which shows that Weaken and the Jutlin are ultimately different, and having them be the same (if Greg does choose to go that route) could cause problems. If this were asked to Greg, all this information should be present with it.
Well first off, the point of the question was to give powers to new unknown shapes, not giving shapes to unknown-shaped powers.
It is the matter of “Hey, there is a new Kanohi Mask. Let’s come up with a power for it!”
What you are implying is narrowing the scope of all this just to fill up a list.
Of course there could be some overlap in this and some new shapes may become the already existing powers, if there will be some consensus over it.
But saying any new shape can only be one these poers is unreasonable.
Additionally, the powers you listed will either be decided in the upcomming contests (Intangibility, probably Great Kiril in 2nd list of chracters), or cannot be used here in Hagah (Clairvoyance, Growth, Rahi Control) - maybe later down the line, yes, but not here.
The others are just extreme edge-cases of either masks which we already have shape for, and you are only asking for another shape (all Makuta masks+they are immoral for most of the characters on the list), or purely hypothetical masks, which are only canon to the point of Greg saying “I cannot rule out their existence” (Increase weight, freeze weather control, fear, elemental masks, etc.)
What we were actually discussing - coming up with powers for new masks - also results in greater variety.
And it’s not like I wouldn’t want to know what masks you mentioned look like, but we can have an art/3d modelling contest for that in the future as a part of Canon visulization contests.
I don’t mean to speak for him, but Planet didn’t say new powers, he only said powers?
This isn’t entirely true - Gaaki for instance can have a MoGrowth-shape.
So was the Mask of Healing before being assigned to a Toa Mangai many years later.
As for Incease Weight, Freeze, etc. those powers do DEFINITELY exist for Kanohi, by extention of that the Kanoka exist. That is how Kanoka work, and how they have always worked. If one exists, the other exists by extention. The only uncertainty is if any was ever forged.
But why not now? And why rule them out from being able to be used for the Hagah, or Orde/Zaria?
I definitely agree with this point. To be clear though, I’m not 100% against allowing for new powers, I’d just rather not expand the list of powers with even more trivial masks that we know barely anything about.
Definitely agree with this as well.
