dviddy
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Battle For The Golden Mask Competition: Entry Thread
dviddy replied to VBBN's topic in LEGO Action Figures
Lily, Princess of the Dark: And a gallery link for when I have more photos. -
The orange one is definitely more rare. Anything offered through actual broad retail channels like the gold one is going to be easier to come by than store-specific promotions.
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To add to the review thing real fast, when the first three Toa sets were reviewed, those were the ONLY sets that had been given out by TLG. I am adding a brief photo of powered-up Tahu in my PoF review, but there was no way to do it in my Tahu review.
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The Toa in the original media were legendary, nearly god-like beings. Sure, this got retconned, but the size disparity there made sense. It also fit the children-> adult-> elder role well. The Toa were often seen as not quite fitting in the spaces, because they weren't designed for beings that size. Adding in characters another double to even larger than them stretches my suspension of disbelief. The world we have been given has never seemed designed for those sort if characters. Especially considering we know now that the original story took place in a contained, closed system with finite space. As for "common trope", not really? There is a reason giants are used very infrequently even in fantasy media. It breaks the boundaries of the world-building. There is a reason the term "titans" started being used- originally it was used to SOLELY describe the three larger sets in 2005. Their battle was the Clash of the Titans. The fans unfortunately latched on to the term as a being descriptor and it stuck. But the term was meant to define something as special, legendary, powerful. But it became generic in a world that was never built for that size to be generic. Sorry that seems weird to you- I'm a fan on consistent, well written storytelling and purposeful design, and the large sets like Taka08 are not those things. I'm hoping anything we get like that is more consistent with the world-building and storytelling this time. Not having "make it up as I go" Greg on the team is a great start.
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I think it breaks the bounds of what I'm willing to believe. My suspension of disbelief runs deep, but when all the media from location art to films show things being built as if set to a specific height, characters like 08 Takanuva break the story for me. They just don't fit. Sauron, by the way, has, outside of the eye, never been shown as double the average height- he is big, but not unbelievably so. (I'm also a huge TF nerd and the massive size differences there make slightly more sense considering the altmodes, plus their worlds and ships are scaled to them, whereas it never felt that way for larger humanoid characters in prior constraction materials.)
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Honestly I would rather not see something at that scale again. The extra large figures are just weird next to the other sets. Vehicles at that size make sense- they are vehicles after all. But I would rather the characters stay somewhat in scale. Takanuva08, Toa Mata Nui, Witch Doctor, all of these looked awkward next to their wave counterparts.
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The chest prints remind me of this neat tribal cyberpunk fusion aesthetic. Like where the original BIONICLE run was pistons, gears, mechanical, visually robotic technologies, meshed especially with Polynesian islander flair, the new BIONICLE's aesthetic seems very computer, cyber, Meso-American tribal. I think the designers attempted to bring out the original style designs, with the pistons and ribbed joint parts on the new armour-add-on, but I think they also attempted, very deliberately, to evoke a slightly different "technology in a tribal setting" aesthetic, and the new chest plates go a long way towards helping that, in my opinion.
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I felt the same way when I first saw the design for Lewa's mask back in August. But having it in hand, I very strongly disagree. I don't think it resembles the original Miru much either, and I agree that's a shame. But I like the way the new one is featured- Lewa has this super trickstery grin and the combination of the new eye shape strikes me as a very spritely design, even with the more mechanical overlapping panels look. I think it's one of the new masks with the most character. It's yards better than the new Onua mask, in my opinion, which I think is the worst of the new designs by far. I like the axes. I don't have him in hand, but when I was playing with him and looking at him at NYCC, I felt good things about his design. I can't say he's one of my favorites, but like you said, these are all great and it's hard to find the one that is less great than the others. I think in the end it may be Pohatu, for me, even though the original kakama is my favorite mask (and is tattooed on my shoulder!) The new kakama just misses the mark for me and the rest of the design, as neat as it actually looks, strikes me as more boring than the other five.
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I don't know, at the level of the LOSS I don't think it would be a problem, but my spider guy with the preview 2015 parts is loaded up with friction joints and even built at slight angles to provide more stability, and it still has problems standing sometimes. The problem with posing six legs is a real one- BUT I don't think a set as small as LOSS would have that issue.
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I would. I imported the set and don't regret it at all. You're not interested in the white parts, but the white feet are exclusive so far to that set.
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Yes, the masks does stay in place. They clip very strongly and sturdily to y-joints.
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Yeah, instead of back armour I'd really have preferred elbows. The arms on the PoF are miserable. I can't get over how bad they look in person.
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I think they have merit as a supplement to a real review. But as the entire review, well, I'd rather not, and am only making them because Andrew insists and I'd like to keep getting preview sets to review and photograph. It's selfish but that's real life and I know it. It doesn't mean I'm not going to try my hardest to make them- this was my first one and several things went wrong with it after. I've got a new lighting setup and whatnot I'm going to try for the fire protector, and hopefully that helps. I tried to approach my Tahu video review as a supplement to the review I spent much, much, much longer on, and it's a little frustrating to see reactions to nothing but the video. I know it's a bad video. I don't care for it either. I bought the camera the day before I made it. I felt super weird filming it. Talking to no one about the set just feels weird. But using the video as a supplement to point out the things that work better in video (like the gears, or the way Tahu's arms start to slide out when you use the gears too much, the mask function, etc) just got me a bunch of complaints about how I didn't build the set in the video or show off the parts. Of course I didn't- I did that in the written and photo review. As far as I was aware at the time, the three segments were meant to work with each other. Apparently this was wrong, and I'll do the PoFire review accordingly. But I'm still grumpy about it.
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My digital camera cost $1400USD- my video camera was $100. I hate video reviews and refused to make them until this lineup of sets. Andrew has a more expensive setup we did a kickstarter on BZP in order to buy for conventions and set reviews. I'm not spending hundreds of dollars to make a video review I find inferior to text and photo reviews. Let me know when you find a BIONICLE or CCBS reviewer who has photos on par with mine.
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Battle For The Golden Mask Competition: Discussion Thread
dviddy replied to VBBN's topic in LEGO Action Figures
This isn't an EB contest, though. It's a contest run and sponsored by LEGO, but farmed out to multiple sites. TLG made the rules and they didn't see a problem (this time) with people registering just to enter on a site. What harm does it do? You can only win on one site, and if anything, it nets sites another user who may just decide to stay and hang out. -
Interesting. So you're the guy who kept leaking the secret contest information on 4chan. I am working on my Protector of Fire review. Not a huge fan, to be honest.
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They were very edited. I shoot on a blue backdrop which allows for easy background removal. Otherwise, a little colour correction, a solid background gradient. Each photo is like five or six layers before merging. Luckily I shoot them all on the same settings and same focal distance so I can apply the same corrections to all of the photos. That at least makes it go faster. I might send Andrew a nicer version of the video, since my own edits to it were clearly better than what I was expecting. Apparently there was a misunderstanding about what "I'll edit it for you" meant lol.
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I sent Andrew the raw file because he was supposed to edit it for me- that was part of the deal. I literally bought the camera for this review. The brief edit I did with the software removed the fisheye and the extended background was dropped so the whole frame was white. Andrew and I have the same camera, I assumed he'd make the same adjustments I did. :/
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Not much to really say on this one. I saw a bad "lolita" MOC on Flickr, and it reminded me how much fun building Hahli Husky was, what-with the whole anime-ish look. So I was inspired to do a more stylized magical girl MOC. She's supposed to have sort of a darker look, even with the bright colours. The new Gali mask lends itself very well to bangs! I named her after Julie from LEGO, as she's the person who added me to the NYCC stuff and sent me all these amazing parts. Julie is awesome!
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The shine you are seeing is because the masks are made from a more solid plastic than later BIONICLE masks. Think 2001 kanohi versus 20008 kanohi. The latter were a softer plastic, but CCBS shells and the new masks are made from a similar or the same plastic as the original masks. Remember too that TLG uses more than a dozen plastic blends in their products.
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Skeleball is a dumb term from an annoying fantroll who is doing all they can to derail the conversation so they can post about how kiddy they think the new line is. I think we should stick to official terms.
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It was literally the most mature TF story since BM, on par with Beast Wars. You let the animation turn you away from one of the best cartoons this past decade. The idea that any of this new BIONICLE stuff might be "too kiddy" drives me crazy. It is a toy line for kids. Come on.
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Everything I've been told from LEGO employees in Denmark is that Hero Factory is done, at least for now.
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I'm not having this problem with the mask or head. I tried a variety of different masks on heads (and also my review set), and the masks stay on pretty securely unless I purposefully knock them off.
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When you say "mess like 2003", remember that was the year sales -peaked- for the line. Not having hero characters available was certainly poor marketing, but sales didn't slump until the next year.