bidiminished

In 2015, all the toa apart from Pohatu and maybe Lewa had legs that were exaggeratedly long compared to their bodies, especially Tahu. An extra two or three modules of torso height would make them a bit more proportionate even if the legs have an odd upper to lower leg ratio. Also, the added torso height would mean that the toa's hands (imagining they are not clenched) would reach mid-thigh rather than at or past their knees.

I think the plastic itself has something to do with the lighting effectiveness, along with the questionable eyestalk. I was surprised by the poor performance of the 2015 eyestalk + mask combination, as the poor glow should have been noticed and fixed before the designs were finalised, but I don't think 2016 will really fix this issue. In fact, it might be worse because the blue eyes are dimmer than the yellow ones. So I hope we don't get any more fake vents on the masks (Tahu, Lewa, Pohatu 2015), for me it's enough to drag a mask from 9/10 to 6/10. I still don't understand why LEGO could only get real vents for half of the 2015 masks.

Haha, it was "dreadful" from the beginning. Shoulders shifted 2M back (biggest problem for me, not a problem at all for some others) Exposed balljoints and inner workings look ugly The back armour sticks out a module too much Having the shoulder armour rotate was messy and made posing more annoying You can change the shoulder height, but the actual figure height is the same because the head is in the same place The ridges that stop the gears from falling out reduce versatility. The minimum shoulder width is 9M, which is quite broad. But in comparison, the gearbox design on the 2016 SW figures seems to fix almost every problem with the 2015 gearbox.

I'm glad that Onua has a more regular physique, because his 2015 one was a really generic way to signify strength, and it relied on using a massive chest piece rather more complex construction. Overall, I like this wave more because the toa no longer use the dreadful 2015 gearbox. Hopefully the arms are in line with the rest of the build, and the new torso seems taller, meaning that the legs and arms will be more proportionate. Some of the mask designs seem great, like Onua's, but others like Gali have a worse design or a design that is ruined by the silver "hair". It would be a lot nicer if all the masks were monochromatic. It's incredible how the ugly HF Type 2 foot is still being used and we still don't have a red 4L shell.

How about Witch Doctor? This best CCBS titan by far, and he will possibly be the best CCBS titan ever unless LEGO decides to make another fully-fledged titan. Takanuva (2008) may have been the first humanoid titan to have no loose limb issues, but I think he is too bland to rival sets like Brutaka or even Sidorak. This is because of the cheap chest design which has poor shaping and leaves his shoulders bare and thin, a poor hand design, and the dead-straight Slizer pieces which make his legs look very bland and boring. Despite Sidorak's flaws, I think he has one of the most distinctive bionicle looks mainly due to his shoulders, and his colour scheme is more interesting than Roodaka's.

Wouldn't technic pinholes be more versatile than a CCBS socket? At the cost of rotating the torso shell, you would be able to shift it up or down a module, and you wouldn't face the connection mismatch issue on the 2015 sets that caused Skull Grinder's chest and the toa's back armour to stick out a module too much. I don't have a problem with a bit of greebling, but I don't like how LEGO has been alternating between soft and hard details/lines for each new piece. It'd be good if LEGO comes up with a design language that matches CCBS and sticks with it. The shaping of the new torso seems pretty good though - much nicer than the older HF one used on Tahu and Lewa.

Onua and Kopaka look decent, but with the others I don't think the colours work well together. Maybe they'd look better if you omitted silver/grey from the colour scheme, like the glatorian. I guess the main problem is that each toa is a mix of previous toa sets, which creates a disharmonic look.

All the 2015 toa apart from Pohatu have torsos that are too short for the legs and arms, so if anything it would make the 2016 sets more proportionally accurate.

Chirox looks great. Did you use the grey sockets to replace cracked ones, or did you actually want to use that colour?

With that MOC in particular, the gears never skip and the sides stay in position (thanks to the unmodified 3M axle with stud). This is with a very short arm and a lightweight weapon, but it even works fine with Tahu's arm/arms and his big silver swords.. The only way to make it skip is by turning the back knob while holding the arm in place. These 12 tooth gears have more backlash than the standard knob gears, which is a bit annoying. The geared arm tends to slide off the gearbox more than the regular setups, but that's because I went for 7M shoulder width while still using the broad chest piece and the knob gears have slightly more friction than the 12 tooth ones.

I think this might be one of your older designs, or someone from here. I've just changed it to make the arms are in line with the rest of the build. It also uses the "3L axle with stud" where the stud has been cut off. For regular torso frames, the arm section needs to be completely cut off.

I found it easier to build custom torsos when I saw Voxovan's awesome MOCs and realised that I didn't need to make a 'pure' technic frame that imitates the inika torso. I generally build by starting with the 'skeleton' where I get the connection points for the legs, arms and head in place, and then I fill in the rest of the build and improve it over the next few months. Alternatively, you could start with a central piece or idea and use it as the starting point for the torso, like how Kiina uses a Vahki leg piece. It's much easier to build when you know how the MOC should look, so it might help to roughly plan the general body shape and know what details and designs (e.g. chest) you want to include first. How you want the body shaped is obviously up to you, so you could go for something looking like a slimmer version official design, or something more proportionally human i.e. more noticeably female. Dangerously anorexic MOCs tend to not look appealing though. I tend to use a lot of G1 'hand pieces' as they have a lot of connection points and you can slot a technic axle or pin through the socket holes, even if it slightly damages the piece. System bars are very useful for getting more angles, so this could help to get the shaping right.

This is definitely a long shot, but do you have the original Hau in black? I think the Hau could look good for female MOCs. The Inika shoulder armour shouldn't be too hard to implement because it has connection points on both axes, but it's hard to know for your MOC because we don't have pictures. You could also try using the 2015 piston add-on in gold. The waist joint could easily reduce stability, so you might want to reinforce it with flex axles, Mahri tubes, a friction extender or something else if it bothers you. If you need or want to redo the torso, here are three narrow and stable shoulder techniques. The third one uses "4L axle with stud" but the stud itself has been cut off.

This really reminds me of Hero Factory.

I hope that we don't get an abundance of printed shells as I find them too specialised to be useful. LEGO also has a penchant for printing parts or making stickers to imitate 3D details such as chains or vents, which always looks tacky. It would be useful to get a CCBS shell with a technic pin connection, because a lot of the time the sets need shells connected to technic beams. The current method for doing this is by using this piece, which makes the shell stick out a module and screams "CCBS is a fundamentally flawed system, lets admit defeat". I must be the only person on the forum who doesn't like trans parts. As cool as that would be, the mask would cover the face making the idea nearly pointless. Character expression has always been with the mask or helmet anyway. We all know how stingy LEGO is, although their cost cutting is completely reasonable of course..

Toa: I don't like any of them, but Gali for the awesome mask design. Protector: Korgot Villain: LoSS (the best 2015 bionicle set)

As someone who doesn't follow Star Wars, this set really confuses me. Is he supposed to have such a gappy, uncovered appearance? Are the leg shells supposed to stick out that much? Is grey used to make the set easier to build, or should it actually be part of the colour scheme? If LEGO made a character of their own like this then I'd rate it 1/10, but I'm not sure what to think of Grievous. What are some good reference pictures to compare him with?

I think 2008 was the best year for parts, bar the brittle sockets. We got over 20 unique masks, and the makuta looked good although the swamp ones were severely overpriced (back then they were 20 AUD for only 40,51 and 54 pieces)

The number one thing I want for next year's sets is a new gearbox/torso design. I really don't like how the current one pushes the arms two modules back.

Maybe it's a huge or repeating watermark, covering most of the image.

Why do the masks of Tahu, Lewa and Pohatu have a fake vent on the top opposed to a real one? Wouldn't a real vent be better for looks, functionality (eyestalk light exposure) and cost?

Well, it's not like LEGO would drop all the small, cheap sets for for a couple of big ones. I definitely wouldn't mind vehicles, playsets or battle sets (MM vs SG) to be replaced with big titans like Witch Doctor. The small sets of 2015 only cost around 2-3 AUD less than the toa Mahri with inflation, so entry level isn't that cheap anyway.

If Tahu's torso was made proportionate to his legs and arms, he would be much taller than the rest of the toa. LEGO messed up the proportions with the 2015 toa, and this is mostly due to the lazy/cost-effective torso being too short and broad shouldered for the limbs.

Mismatching textures wasn't that much of an issue with G1 Bionicle or HF sets themselves, but it's very apparent with the G2 toa and the SW figures. I don't think that textural contrast is necessarily bad, though. CCBS and the G1 Bionicle "System" can be used to create good titan sets, but unfortunately CCBS only has 2 or 3 proper titans and some pseudo-titans such as Fire Lord, Black Phantom and Tahu. It'd be great to see another set like Witch Doctor. I think CCBS would be almost unanimously better than any of the G1 "systems" if it didn't use balljoints to connect armour. The CCBS shells require the bones to have balljoints, so you can only put the shell on that specific part of the limb. If you want to move the shell up or down a module, you'll run into problems as it can't connect to the technic pinholes. The 2015 Toa and Skull Grinder exemplify this problem where the back armour of the toa protrudes out by 1 module too much and Skull Grinder's ribcage and chest armour stick out by a module which creates a very apparent gap when viewed from the side. The use of balljoints also lead to the shells not hugging the bone pieces. As a result, the CCBS shells look okay when seen DIRECTLY from the front or sides, but at any other angle the gaps exposing the bones are very obvious, which is rarely a flattering look that isn't particularly organic or mechanical. This is evident with pretty much every CCBS set and made worse by how LEGO is very fond of using black and grey bones that are often not part of the colour scheme. The balljoints on the limbs also affects the usability of the limb's technic pinholes because of it's slight protrusion. With regular technic beams, you can be almost sure that you can properly attach part x onto it, but with CCBS it's often an illegal or unstable connection. So why did LEGO decide to use this connection type for the shells? It offers less versatility than the Barraki armour and I can't really see any advantages that it has over pin/axle connections. Did LEGO think that younger builders struggle to use the small technic pieces? (just like how young builders apparently can't handle character names, differentiate CCBS limbs, or connect a piece to the right pinhole without a guiding pin)

When using Bricklink, how can you be sure that you're getting the sockets from Keelerak and not another Hahli? I've got a Hahli Mahri revamp WIP, but I'm waiting for my BL order to arrive to complete it . I'm replacing lime green with Br. Blue.