I am particularly fond of the 2006 Toa sets and I was quite disappointed to see the lack of MOVs on their Inika forms and chose to take matters into my own hands… but rather than revamping my favorite character(s), I chose to revamp them all.
Each Toa includes a baseplate which has the Toa Nuva elemental symbol to it (And I know some people very invested into Bionicle will pop a blood vessel that I dare did Nuva symbols for Inika MOVs but in my defense, this was too good of an idea to pass up, and I have no intentions of making MOVs of the Nuva, ha ha). The baseplates are capable of connecting to each other using pins and pinhole connections (See photos below).
Matoro, his baseplate, and his weapon:
I was inspired from some medieval and Scandinavian history when building him. His cape and mask are custom made, the mask (along with the other 5 Toa’s) was created by KhingK.
Nuparu, his baseplate, and his weapons:
Nuparu had his own character lore inspire me. His Inika mask is ironically, the mask of flight- so I gave him a single wing on his left shoulder to symbolize that. He was given a drill weapon as his sword in the original set seemed modeled after a drill. I gave him a “spider drone” as well since he was an engineer as a Matoran and I wanted to somehow demonstrate that as a Toa, he is still creating new things to aide him and his friends!
Kongu, his baseplate, and his weapons:
Kongu’s design was inspired by fantasy rogues and samurai. The axes are a change from his original set weapon being a crossbow but seeing as he has crossbows on his wrists that I was refusing to part with, I found it a bit excessive to include a giant crossbow on top of his two wrist ones. I still tried to stay true to his character though given that the Bionicle Heroes promo art shows him wielding an axe.
Hewkii, his baseplate, his weapons:
Hewkii being an athlete as a Matoran and a Toa of Stone inspired me to give him a berserker look. I originally wanted to use the chains on the axes on his body as well, but due to their rarity, the price was too much to order a lot of the chains, so I stuck with system chains along with having a few of the ones like on his set on his axes.
Jaller, his baseplate, his weapon:
Jaller was inspired from some roman and greek era designs. He was particularly hard to find the right pieces in the right colors for, turns out pearl gold and metru red are harder to come by than one might think!
Hahli, her baseplate, her weapon:
Hahli was probably the most difficult to come up with ideas for, I made her last because I was having trouble thinking about how I was going to make her. I ultimately settled on giving her a oceanic-creature vibe, as I found it fitting that a Toa of Water would have some oceanic vibes to her. I believe her sword in her original set was a spear gun, I traded it out for a staff because it looked and “felt” right on this MOV. Plus it could make for a good water-based weapon.
The baseplates as mentioned before, can connect in any order using pin and pinhole connections. Here is the Toa Inika display when fully assembled (it is around 45 inches long):
In the center of the display is the main thing the Inika are after: The mask of life!
This mask was spray painted gold, and the mask stand created for this project, it connects with pinholes directly into the baseplates as well.
And an example of the baseplates connecting:
As you can see, this was a bit of a passion project of mine and I enjoyed it greatly! I have many more photos (about 80), but I did not want this post getting too long. However, if you guys would like to see more photos of these Inika and them posing or at different angles, etc.- you can check out my Toa Inika Flickr Album..
On that note, I will end my post off with this quick Photoshop job I did replicating the Toa Inika set promo art:
- UPDATE EDIT -
I went a bit crazy and decided to do further Photoshopping on these guys. I figure people would enjoy the work I did on each of these, here’s the preview:
Below are the individual photos:
. You’re probably right, I’m sure there is an easy way to implement the connection points on them though! I very much appreciate your comment and kind words!