Aanchir
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Would Ninjago be succesful without Lego.
Aanchir replied to Takanuinuva's topic in LEGO Action and Adventure Themes
Well, it's difficult to say. Even if the TV show could arguably work just as well without the LEGO brand, I think the fact that it is a LEGO building toy is definitely a big part of why the toys sell so well. And these days, a lot of TV networks and media distributors tend to make decisions about programming based on how much tie-in merchandise it's able to sell. Just picking an example, it's widely held that the reason Green Lantern: The Animated Series got cancelled is that retailers didn't want to stock Green Lantern toys after the movie and its merchandise had such disappointing performance. If LEGO Ninjago couldn't achieve the toy sales it has, then there's no telling whether Cartoon Network or whatever hypothetical toy company you put in charge would be willing to invest so heavily in the TV show. Creating a successful merchandise-driven series usually demands that the toys have to support the media and vice-versa. If either side of the franchise fails, it can easily drag the other side down with it. -
Well, the Anacondrai in particular never got much focus in 2012, since in that story arc Pythor was the only one alive. I'm guessing that with the amount of emphasis they're getting in the 2015 lineup something's going to happen to change that. Or perhaps they'll merely go from dead to UNdead... we've had skeletons and snakes, but never skeleton snakes! I wonder if we'll see any parts like the Snake Staffs that were associated with the Serpentine. It'd be great to get an official Anacondrai Staff to go with the other four! I also wonder how many Anacondrai minifigures we'll see. Hoping for at least three (a scout, a soldier, and a warrior) in addition to the inevitable new Pythor minifigure.
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I think the 2005 setting could have been better if it had been more varied and had been explored more extensively. In BIONICLE: Web of Shadows I found it VERY visually interesting, but most of the sets' packaging felt like the same settings from 2004, just with generic green webbing and murky green fog pasted over top of everything. And the comic settings often felt like generic ruins (though to be fair, the comics were never all that good at making the settings feel as rich and iconic as they were in animations and promotional art).
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I can definitely see why people prefer Mata Nui to the later settings, but at the same time, I feel like there needed to be some change in setting. After three years, the island of Mata Nui was starting to feel repetitive — the comics, animations, and games featured the same types of island scenery every year, and the only time that the Toa ever really saw anything new was when they went underground at the end of every year, which by 2003 was practically a running joke. And unfortunately, the island of Mata Nui was so extensive, so well-explored, and full of so many different biomes that just traveling to another pristine tropical island wouldn't have provided the sort of variety the theme needed so desperately. Thus, in 2004 we were introduced to Metru Nui's urban, post-industrialized environments — perhaps the most effective way to create a setting that contrasted sufficiently with Mata Nui's rural, pre-industrialized environments. Now, going to a new location isn't the only way to create variety in a story's setting. Another way is to introduce major and transformative changes to the setting. 2005 demonstrated this method when the bustling city of Metru Nui was reduced to a desolate, overgrown ruin. However, I don't think this would have been all that effective for the island of Mata Nui. It would be heartbreaking to see the thriving Matoran villages and natural beauty of the island reduced to post-apocalyptic ruin while the Matoran were still living there. A setting can also be changed via creation rather than destruction (cf: Ninjago City's transformation into New Ninjago City between seasons two and three of that theme's TV series), but that usually requires a time skip, and it's hard to tell whether people would have responded to that any more favorably than they did to the introduction of a new setting. It might have been more controversial, for all we know. If the new BIONICLE goes on long enough, it will probably be faced with the same sort of dilemma. Even LEGO City, which doesn't have any driving story, has to shift to new settings and scenery every now and then to maintain a sense of freshness. A tropical island setting is great, but any setting starts to get tiresome if you stay there year after year, and Mata Nui was no exception.
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Wow! That's fantastic! I'll have to keep an eye out for that! EDIT: This page has more information including a track list!
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Even if he is no longer working with BIONICLE in the capacity he used to, he is fully aware of the new BIONICLE. He NEEDS to be as part of his role as a writer and editor for the LEGO Magazine. And he's explained in depth why he cannot discuss the new BIONICLE or any new 2015 themes — because even if the truth of the new BIONICLE is proven without a shadow of a doubt, it has not been officially announced and as such he cannot discuss it without losing his job.
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But keep in mind that the best voice actors can actually act. They're not just a familiar voice — they can become the character so effectively that for a moment you forget who they are. When I was watching Toy Story as a kid (or Toy Story 3 as a young adult), not for one moment did I think "Hey, Buzz Lightyear is just Tim from Home Improvement." Nor when watching The LEGO Movie did I start to think "Isn't Wyldstyle just Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games?" or "Vitruvius sounds eerily like Lucius Fox from Batman Begins." When the voices are well-acted, you tend to pay attention to the actual portrayal of the characters, not to who's portraying them.
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I find Po-Koro most and Po-Wahi similar to Egypt, myself. Some of their most distinctive features are a bazaar (a form of open-air market popular in the middle east) and a bunch of painstakingly carved monuments.
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"Not luck. It's what you do that makes you a hero." Anyway this is great news! I'll send a PM with my contact details. I will do my best to provide some quality reporting!
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I've never understood why people had a problem with Lewa's voice in Mask of Light. Sure, it wasn't what most of us were expecting. But I don't see any reason that it doesn't fit the character. Of course, I don't see why people get so up in arms about voice acting in general. It's especially bothersome when people declare certain voices annoying for perfectly arbitrary reasons (I've heard people criticize Applejack from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because they "can't stand Southern accents", which seems like as stupid a prejudice to have about fictional characters as it would be to have about people in real life). There's nothing wrong with disliking a character's portrayal in terms of how they're actually acted (like how the "quiet and wise" Onua became loud and boisterous in BIONICLE: Mask of Light), but disliking something as simple as an accent seems paltry.
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Only in the sense that producing one piece (a transparent head) is cheaper than producing two pieces (an opaque head and a separate transparent eyestalk). I don't think there's any meaningful difference in the material costs of the individual pieces.
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A Turaga from 2001 would look just as out-of-place next to a Toa Mahri from 2007, so I honestly think this is the least of the LEGO Group's concerns. I have doubts in a continuation being the right option as well, but the sets have little to do with that.
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I think this is unlikely. Greg himself has said in the LEGO Message Boards Q&A that he thinks a continuation would be extremely likely to alienate new fans. And the new BIONICLE theme simply cannot afford to do that. Here's the exact post: No idea. If it were up to me, BIONICLE would not come back by picking up the old story, but as something new (a reboot or something else like that). As someone else pointed out in one of the threads, the original BIONICLE audience is mostly in high school and college now, and to succeed, the line is going to have to appeal to today's 8 and 9 and 10 and 11 year olds, who know nothing about it. So picking up old story and forcing them to have to go back and do all that research to know what is going on probably wouldn't be a good strategy.
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Personally I think dark villains make perfect sense, and designing the theme's imagery to be counterintuitive just for the sake of novelty would probably be a poor business decision. But of course it's entirely possible for a villain can be dark-looking AND use gold extensively. Just look at the OverLord in the Battle for Ninjago City set. In this case, gold still carries its traditional meaning of ancient and mystical power, but by offsetting it with a lot of black, red, and purple (along with skeletal motifs), the evilness of the figure that wields that power is still unambiguous. No, but it seems quite likely in my opinion. A continuation could possibly work, but it would carry a great risk in exchange for a meager reward.
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This is phenomenal. It's a shame the head has to be attached separately, though. It would be incredible if the head folded out from the torso like it does with many actual transformers, but I understand that a model this size doesn't have enough interior space to work with in that respect.
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Would it really need to be on par with those to be important, though? For all we know it might be a "Mask of Unity" that the Toa need in order to become Toa Kaita. Or a "Mask of Liberation" that frees people who have been mind-controlled by the Skull Spiders. Or a "Mask of Dominion" that would grant either the good guys or the bad guys power over their homeland, kind of like the Crystal Heart from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. There are countless ways to create a reason for the good guys and bad guys to want a mask without focusing on one-upping the most powerful masks of the original BIONICLE storyline.
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No. It does not really support or discredit either possibility. Honestly, the only thing it really tells us is how we can expect the masks to look in the new BIONICLE. And of course that this particular mask is probably something special or significant.
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Anyone got any use for the mouseover animation for that product page image? Like, if anybody knows how to convert it into an animated GIF that'd be pretty sweet.
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Keep in mind that even if the new story DOES use Artakha or the Mask of Creation, there's no reason the writers or designers would be obligated to keep that mask's appearance faithful to a vague description given in the storyline. Karzahni was originally described as black and gold, and look what happened to him. In any case, though, this mask could be anything at this point, and if the new BIONICLE is in fact a reboot then searching old story snippets for clues isn't necessarily going to tell us anything, because it might have no relation to the old story whatsoever.
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There's a big difference between things posted to the actual LEGO site that are publicly viewable to anybody who can guess the URL and things that are not available to the public without breaking a non-disclosure agreement. Perhaps neither is meant to be seen, but only one of the two is actually illegal.
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Keep in mind that some people don't have the luxury of quality renders. I have never been able to use anything other than the default LDD screengrab, because I use a Mac and advanced rendering software for LDD doesn't exist for Mac. I haven't submitted any LEGO Ideas projects either, of course, and my inability to make quality renders is a part of that. But that's less because I think that a regular LDD screenshot looks awful (with maximum graphics settings, it's more than sufficient if all you're doing is illustrating a concept) and more because I know that OTHER users tend to prefer real photos or high-quality renders, so a default screenshot would nerf my creations' already-small chances of reaching review. I definitely can vouch for LDD builders not being lazy. I have done LOTS of LEGO design on LDD, especially when I was at college and didn't have access to most of my collection. Besides that, sometimes you aren't in a situation where you have suitable lighting conditions or camera equipment for taking quality photographs. I'll take a render with less-than-perfect shading over a dark, blurry photo with distorted colors any day. All that said, any projects I support on LEGO Ideas are due to the quality of the concept and how much I like it — not the quality of the presentation. As long as I can tell what the concept is and can tell that I would like to buy such a set, I support it without hesitation.
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This issue of Brickjournal has lots of amazing interviews, including two interviews about Space Police III and one interview about all sorts of past space themes (with Jens Nygaard Knudsen, the designer who created both LEGO Space and the LEGO minifigure)!
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I think Dorek's point was that if the LEGO Group had wanted four individual Matoran sets, they could have dropped Sarda and Idris from the Karzahni set and sold them individually in place of the Hydruka (they're the same colors and everything), but they consciously chose not to. Also, the fact that non-set characters existed in the storyline is irrelevant. New characters for the sets are decided before new characters for the storyline, not the other way around. They don't write the storyline and see how they can work the characters into the sets — rather, they create the sets and then write them into the storyline. Who's to say that Gar and Kyrehx were even conceived as characters when the sets were being planned? They might have been invented purely for the storyline after the sets had already been decided, the same way Lariska was in 2005 or Dezalk and Jovan were in 2006. And in that case, it makes no more sense to complain about Gar and Kyrehx not being sets in 2007 than it does to complain about Dezalk and Turaga Jovan not being sets in 2006.
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I think the rubber material the LEGO Group uses for things like the spines on Ehlek or the Piraka is actually more expensive than their typical plastics, but at the same time, I don't think the amount in 2007 would have had a huge impact on the budget for the year as a whole. After all, materials cost is negligible compared to other factors like the cost of new molds.
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I don't think the number of large sets in 2007 was all that unusual. There were basically the same number of large sets that there had been in 2006 — the only difference is that two of the 2006 ones (Irnakk and Kardas Dragon) had been combi models of other sets. And personally, I saw the reduced story focus on some of the sets like Lesovikk and Karzahni as a good thing. The 2006 story had been fast-paced and bloated, with the Toa Inika running a veritable gauntlet from battle to battle to battle as they tried to reach the Mask of Life. The latter end of the storyline ended up feeling like a video game composed of nothing but boss battles. The 2007 storyline fixed this by introducing the story serials, which relieved some of the pressure to include each and every retail set in the main storyline. Thus, more time could be spent on actually establishing the characters and their relationships with one another, something that the fast-paced "boss rush" of the 2006 storyline didn't really allow for the Toa Inika. I should also mention that the Barraki didn't really have any unique colors — what they had was unique color combinations. Carapar, for instance, used a blend of Flame Yellowish Orange ("Keetorange") and Transparent Brown (a color that had last appeared in BIONICLE as the color of Onua's Kanohi Kaukau) to create a mottled brownish color that simulated a crab's chitinous shell. Barraki Takadox, Morak, Nocturn, and Gadunka all used a blend of Phosphorescent Green (the current glow-in-the-dark color, and the same one used in some of the 2006–2007 playsets) and Transparent Blue. And Ehlek used a blend of Transparent Green (yes, the same one used for Lewa's Kanohi Kaukau and the eye colors of Onua, Whenua, and Pahrak) and Bright Yellow.