Build Technique Opinions

[Nick Wolfe]

So I've recently started working on some Bionicle MOCs for the first time in a while and I've been building some characters with the original masks from 2001 (Toa Mata and Turaga) with the single stud connection.

So my question is: When you build with these masks what heads do you tend to use? The original '01 heads with the axle hole connection or the '04 metru heads with the ball joint connection or another more creative solution I haven't thought of. I feel like the older masks look awkward on the metru heads because they don't wrap around far enough but the original heads are harder to get a natural looking joint attachment.

I'm experimenting to figure out what works best and I'd like to see anyone else's efforts.

[Mitch Henry]

On 12/3/2018 at 10:53 PM, Nick Wolfe said:

So I've recently started working on some Bionicle MOCs for the first time in a while and I've been building some characters with the original masks from 2001 (Toa Mata and Turaga) with the single stud connection.

So my question is: When you build with these masks what heads do you tend to use? The original '01 heads with the axle hole connection or the '04 metru heads with the ball joint connection or another more creative solution I haven't thought of. I feel like the older masks look awkward on the metru heads because they don't wrap around far enough but the original heads are harder to get a natural looking joint attachment.

I'm experimenting to figure out what works best and I'd like to see anyone else's efforts.

Generally, people who build bonko mocs with masks prefer to use the metru heads. they're a bit more versatile, more common, and it uses fewer pieces than a mata head

[Steven the toa of flight]

What sucks is I have a metru ear but no mask and I use ccbs.

[The Librarian]

I've actually found that I prefer using the original Mata heads with a technic ball joint and a hero-factory short arm:

Gali by Librarian-Bot, on Flickr

It gives a pretty decent range of motion and it can hold on the older masks, which are the ones I prefer. Plus, I find the long light skull on the Metru version gets in the way a lot.

[Nick Wolfe]

Oh that looks really good! The whole MOC does actually, and it's pretty close to the style I've been building with recently. Does having the ball joint there put stress on the head or is there enough space with the axle hole in the back to let it sit comfortably? Or does the stress actually hod it together better? I was considering the newer ball joint piece with one of the axles with the flat stopper end but if this is strong it looks like it would definitely have better mobility.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Leewan
Removed quoted picture

[The Librarian]

1 hour ago, Nick Wolfe said:

Oh that looks really good! The whole MOC does actually, and it's pretty close to the style I've been building with recently. Does having the ball joint there put stress on the head or is there enough space with the axle hole in the back to let it sit comfortably? Or does the stress actually hod it together better? I was considering the newer ball joint piece with one of the axles with the flat stopper end but if this is strong it looks like it would definitely have better mobility.

Thanks! I was actually pretty surprised about how well it works. The ball joint, once you have it on, fits snuggly within the horizontal axle hole and pushes the eyepiece back juuust to the edge of its naturally wobble within the sockets. It's not really under stress that I've noticed, though it does take a little stress to snap it in (if you use the newer open-ended ball joint and push the axle up through that, that won't even be an issue). Holds in place solidly, though there's no room to rotate side-to-side around that joint, so it becomes just an x/y axis rotator, with the z-axis covered by the hero-factory arm.