Toa Hagah WIPs


Well, better late than never;- here are the renders of my WIP Toa Hagah (please ignore the fact that in most if not all of the renders Pouks’s kanohi is shaped like its regular design,- I had done most if not all of these renders before the current discussions of the upcoming contest had taken place, and I now understand that in-story it looked like a different kanohi, and as-of such, I will find a different mask shape to use for him) (please also note that so far, I’ve mainly made progress on 3/4 of the four remaining members of the Hagah, so these renders will not largely involve Gaaki).

Now, without further ado:


An early group shot I’d made of the three team-members.

As can be seen in this close-up of Bomonga, I based the design highly on @Kodiak’s amazing MOC of the character, attempting to capture its aesthetic and bulk despite the more simplified design I was using:


A close-up of the early iteration of Pouks, with a pose inspired by a MOC I saw online:


A close-up of the early iteration of Kualus, also with a pose inspired by a MOC I saw online (my choice of Kanohi shape for Kualus is not final):

Group-Shot of a later iteration of these MOCs, now no-longer using Rahkshi weapons, and the weapons they have now being the same colors as their respective armor colors:

And here we have Pic 1 again, with Pouks and Kualus having swapped metallic colors with each other in order to have the Earthshock Drill shoulder armor come in more than just one color (might swap 'em back later, though):

A few notes on the design philosophy I’ve been implementing:
I’ve been attempting to make these designs so that all six Hagah have an equally-proportioned number of leg/arm shapes, shoulder armor shapes, chest armor shapes, and metallic colors spread throughout the whole team.
The way I’ve proportioned these ratios out in the current version is as follows:


With this chart, :arrow_up: I’ve played a sudoku game of sorts where an item can only appear once in each column and only twice in each row.
Below are some renders of my current chart in a more visual format, which also include what I currently have for each Hagah’s respective eye-color and staff head (yes, I realize that the staff head I currently have for Gaaki is a rahkshi weapon in these renders, and it is not my final choice):


Notes for future iterations (besides the changing of Pouks’s kanohi):

  1. I’ll probably want to make all of their spear-tips be '01-'03 accessories

  2. To add more variety, I might want to make it so that two of the four have the waists being the element of their builds that are black.

And finally:
A Question To You, Fearless Reader:*

Should I?
  • Keep Whenua’s Earthshock Drills as Bomonga’s & Kualus’s shoulder armor
  • Keep Whenua’s Earthshock Drills as Bomonga’s shoulder armor, but have Kualus trade his shoulder armor with Pouks or Gaaki
  • Change Bomonga’s & Kualus’s shoulder armor to the Kanohi Sanok as in @Kodiak’s MOC
  • Change Bomonga’s & Kualus’s shoulder armor to the Kanohi Sanok as in @Kodiak’s MOC and then have Kualus trade his shoulder armor with Pouks or Gaaki
0 voters

Disclaimer:
This is a survey for suggestion feedback purposes only, and does not necessarily guarantee that the winning suggestion will be implemented in further iterations of these MOCs.

*And also, here’s a Bionicle meme for your time, along with the format used to make it:

21 Likes

I don’t really like the Sanok or earth shock drills as shoulder armor. So I will chose nothing here. Otherwise besides some weird lower arm choices they look pretty good

3 Likes

Thanks for the compliment. :slightly_smiling_face: :+1:
You’ve piqued my curiosity with your response to the shoulder armor question;- which piece would you have used?

Probably a custom shoulder that do a good job at covering the shoulder.

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Interesting. :slightly_smiling_face:
Thanks for the feedback! :+1:

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I’ll admit, I’m not really a fan of you taking ‘direct inspiration’ from other people’s mocs on what will be a moc competition, it feels a little less than genuine of an attempt. Almost borderline design theft if you didn’t ask the OG mocists their opinions on dang near copying their designs. Maybe I’m reading into it too deep, but thats how it strikes me.

2 Likes

although to be fair, once you use the same mask it’s only a hop skip and a jump away from an identical MOC, especially given the hagah situation.

3 Likes

I think the tusks look great on Bomonga and the Sanok shoulders would do wonders but do what you want. Good luck!

2 Likes

The Whenua shoulders are so unique and have so much charm that it’s hard to really say no to them.

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Ah, I see I’m not the only one planning on using Whenua’s weapons for shoulder armour.

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Now I realize I have yet to post these, but I noticed you used two of my weapon designs, And you were one of the only people I showed these designs to, is this you just liking the designs?
Anyway, Awesome Job on the MOCs! I really like the designs, Once again, Awesome Job!

2 Likes

Surprisingly, no (although great minds think alike, it indeed seems :wink:); I’d basically laid out a bunch of parts in Stud.io and tried to pick out the ones that looked like they’d make the best spearheads.:slightly_smiling_face:

Looking forward to seeing what you do for the contest, man.:+1:

Okay, so barring the random Google Images standout, these are my favorite Toa Hagah thus far. I was surprised by the Earthshock drills as armor, but then fell in love with them. They look so good! And Bomonga’s mask looks like the early renders for Toa Nuparu’s mask. Was that intentional?

These all look silvery, but then I realized that you used gunmetal on some of them. I think it meshes well with Bomonga, but makes Pouks look a little drab. I would strongly suggest silver for him. Kualus spear is a little wimpy too, I’d like a more substantial spearhead there. But boy do I love Pouks’ halberd!

As a personal note, I saw a moc that used silver Avohkii for Pouks shoulder armor and it looks near-perfect. The side designs give the armor a rocky feel. Have you considered using those for any of these toa?

Last note: The gold and blue will make Gaaki look like a toa of Psionics. Idk how big of an issue that could cause, but that gold-on-blue is going to look really nice. I think it would be worth the potential canon confusion.

TL;DR really great mocs. Probably my favorite Hagah concepts I’ve seen.

2 Likes

Wow, quite the compliments indeed. :slightly_smiling_face:
Thanks so much, @TheChronicler! :+1:

As for Bomonga’s mask, @Kodiak was the one who first came up with the idea to use the Nuparu prototype for it, as seen in his awesome MOC,- and after seeing it, I wanted the canon version of Bomonga to look like that amazingly-built design, and thus, even though I’ve been making these Hagah MOCs in a slightly more simplistic style closer to that of the Norik & Iruini sets, I’ve still tried to incorporate enough elements from Kodiak’s build that Bomonga maintains that same overall aesthetic. :slightly_smiling_face:

Also in these MOCs, I’ve taken pointers such as the Earthshock Drill Pauldrons and the Hordika Foot Chest-Armor from these amazing MOCs:

As for the subject of Gaaki having gold armor, while it would wind-up giving her the color-scheme of a Toa of Psionics, we do have precedent in canon of characters having the color-schemes of elements they are not affiliated with, such as Onu-Matoran Taipu sharing Po-Matoran Hafu’s color-scheme to the point of the two of them being mistaken for each other, and Toa Mahri Hahli having the color-scheme of a Toa of The Green.
As I’ve thought it through, it seems that swapping Gaaki’s color-scheme with a different Hagah would mean that either:

  1. Pouks would get gold armor, and I’m not imagining that going with his aesthetic as well as a grey metallic color does.
  2. Bomonga would get the gold armor, which, while I do believe it could work with his color-scheme, would make the overall look of the MOC less like what I was going for (which is the main reason I’m using gumetal for some of the Hagah’s armor in the first place).
    or
  3. Kualus would have gold in his color-scheme, which would copy the color-scheme of a Toa of Light, and, given that the only Toa of Light in the MU is very “chosen-one-y”, I feel less comfortable about that element’s color-scheme being misplaced than I do about that of Psionics, which was a much-more commonplace element for a Toa to have in the MU.

Thanks again for the compliments, and for all the input (including the info about the Avohkii Pauldrons,- I’ll have to take a look at those).:slightly_smiling_face::+1:

1 Like

I like the shoulder amour idea never would have thought of that.

@Takutanuva That’s just the risk people take when posting a moc or anything online. Especially before a contest. But honestly there is going to be a lot of mocs that are pretty much the same for this contest. Only so much possible amour combinations out there.

Do not double post. -Eljay

Yeah but theres a difference between convergence and copying