Aanchir
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Everything posted by Aanchir
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That's cool. Those are sort of the prices I was expecting. While I would have loved if the defenders could be available at a lower price like $5, and the Toa between $10 and $15, I recognize that this might not be realistic, especially if you want the defenders to have any real variety. As long as the piece counts are high enough to justify these prices I'll be happy.
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There was somebody on deviantART who did that for part of one of the black and white images, but I wouldn't call that image "famous". In any case, that particular image is not the one most people are referring to, since it doesn't show every set — in fact, it doesn't show ANY of the packaging, just the key visual with Tahu and the mystery mask.
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If anybody wants a detailed look at 70162 Infearno Interception and the many new parts it offers, check out my review that was just posted to The New Elementary!
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Post about Cartoons and Anime you like
Aanchir replied to Peppermint_M's topic in Culture & Multimedia
I just watched the Korra book 3 finale myself, and.... daaaaaaaang. It was incredible. I have high expectations for Book 4 — here's hoping Nickelodeon doesn't stupidly decide to axe the series before it reaches its conclusion. If anybody's fallen behind on Korra, all of Book 3 is viewable on nick.com, and there's an ad saying the entire series (of what's been released, anyway) will be viewable there next Friday. Great opportunity to catch up. I can't wait until we get a release date is announced for Book 4! A couple weeks ago there was also a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic marathon on the Hub, where they aired every single episode. I didn't get to watch everything, of course — I couldn't exactly call dibs on my family's TV for an entire week, nor could I bear staring at the TV screen for ten hours a day for five days even for a show I enjoyed. But I did get to catch many of my favorite episodes. I'm excited for season five of that show as well as the My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks movie which is coming out in a month or so. -
Personally, the way I feel about sequels is different. I don't think they have to measure up to the original necessarily — they just have to be good in their own right. And when your first installment is as spectacular as The LEGO Movie was, there's PLENTY of room for a sequel to fall short of that while still being a good movie.
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I don't think there were any heroes or villains planned for Breakout that we didn't end up getting, and I didn't really perceive any lack of effort in the set designs in the later years of Hero Factory. 2013 had more generic humanoid designs, but also saw Technic being used more extensively for weapons and action features. And 2014 has had a tremendous diversity of designs among the various beasts and machines. There was less investment in some media for 2013 and 2014 than previous years, certainly (just one 22-minute TV episode each year, for instance, and less story info available online, and fewer comics), but I wouldn't attribute this to a lack of effort by any means. It's just as likely that the marketing division decided the theme didn't need as much media support in those areas, or that the media support they had been getting wasn't helping the theme enough to be worth the extra cost anyway.
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Very awesome. The shoulders look a bit awkward in that first pic but I don't know what can be done about that. And it's not like they're particularly bony compared to most BIONICLE shoulders — just moreso than I'd expect given how thoroughly you were able to flesh out most of the other parts of the build. I also like how her hands, thighs, and chin feel fairly smooth compared to other parts of the build, as it helps reinforce that she is a human character in armor and not a robot. It makes me realize just how useful it could be to have more Hero Factory shells in Brick Yellow (tan), Reddish Brown, and other human skin colors! Good color blocking, especially with the black joints which add visual interest. Her sword is a very nice design as well! She doesn't look quite so good from the back. Her legs are fine, but the color blocking and textures on her torso are less consistent than they are from the front. Also, the back of her head feels... unfinished. I think there should be a little bit more of a bulge there. As it is it almost feels like the back of her head was chopped right off. Top-notch work, as we've come to expect from you! I won't be at all surprised if this gets blogged by The Brothers Brick like some of your other creations have been in the past!
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High quality versions of the 1HY package illustrations on Matt Betteker's Coroflot portfolio. So now we know who to thank for this awesome artwork! On a related note, Christoph Röttjer has added the Chima constraction sets, the Super Heroes Constraction sets, the Hero Factory theme, the BIONICLE sets he worked on, and the CCBS to his portfolio. The last of those would be good to link to whenever someone asks you "what does CCBS stand for?"
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I thought I'd mention here that if you don't want to (or can't) get the Frax Polybag, Frax is also available as the bonus minifigure in this activity book coming out in October. Furthermore, this version of Frax has the same ornate armor piece as Fluminox in 70146 rather than the generic 2013 armor he has in the polybag (which is much more common).
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I also think it looks great. I was not sure whether to get it... as it is, I probably won't because I have the Visual Dictionary pre-ordered and can make Min-Droid with my spare Nindroids and the extra Lloyd Garmadon I got in the Rattlecopter (I already had one from the Fangpyre Wrecking Ball). I haven't bought any new Ninjago sets since early this year when I got the Nindroid MechDragon and the Ninjacopter! It's very frustrating. For a few years I saved all my big purchases for the Brickfair Virginia LEGO store sales, then they stopped doing those last year and now it seems like I never know when or where to get a lot of the sets I want. I'll probably end up ordering them sometime when LEGOshop.com is offering double VIP points or some other interesting promotion.
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"Lord of Skull Spiders" is the one name least likely to be a mistranslation, since it was the one name that was given in English when the name list was leaked on exoforce.ru (the other names were provided in Russian). I think the Skull Spiders are quite possibly supposed to play a role similar to the infected Kanohi or Krana in 2001–2002: a corrupt force that can take the place of a character's mask to control them. Certainly we know the Skull Spiders' torsos are designed to function as masks, since one without legs appears as the bonus gold mask in the Lord of Skull Spiders set. With that in mind, it's possible we might see Rahi controlled by Skull Spiders in the second wave. There's a perfectly good excuse for that. Neither was really designed in a way that could be effectively realized as a small or medium set (or even a $20 titan set), and by the time both robots had entered the story the theme was on its way out. People might not have really liked the BIONICLE Stars, but frankly expecting we would have gotten two $30 or more titan sets instead of or in addition to a series of $8 sets which could reach a far more wider audience is pushing it.
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Morbuzakh is also an example of something I hope NOT to see in the new BIONICLE, though — a villain that not only fails to appear in sets, but isn't designed to be buildable using LEGO. Sure, you CAN arguably build a LEGO Morbuzakh (since you can arguably build ANYTHING from LEGO), but such an intent was not obvious from its design. I had the same frustrations with the amorphous enemies of the Throwbots and Roboriders. Ideally, major foes in BIONICLE should not only look moderately buildable using LEGO, but also buildable using typical constraction building styles. Role-playing with the sets is much less fun if you have to completely imagine the enemy, or settle for a blocky and unconvincing facsimile. Sentient Rahi could maybe work for BIONICLE, but let's not forget how people complained about the way Hero Factory characters like Raw-Jaw, Waspix, and Scorpio had spoken lines in "Savage Planet". There is a sort of awkward dissonance when characters that basically look like beasts or monsters are every bit as articulate as other heroes and villains. Also keep in mind something I brought up in a topic on BZPower — the first year of the new BIONICLE will basically set the tone for all years to come. Unless intelligent Rahi with well-defined personalities are the norm in the new BIONICLE rather than the exception, it would be a bit misleading to have the majority of Rahi in the first year of sets fall into that category.
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From a character standpoint, enemies with real personalities would be a nice change of pace, but at the same time, I'd probably prefer creatures just from a building standpoint. Lord of Skull Spiders is pretty much the only non-humanoid set for the first wave, so another wave of humanoid characters would feel redundant. With that in mind, I dion't think shadow toa would be the way to go. In Hero Factory, of course, some of the more creative villain designs still had unique personalities — Toxic Reapa, Jawblade, Thornraxx, XT4, etc, while many of the "creature" enemies that people seem so bored of had fairly generic humanoid builds (including many of the Brain Attack villains). But would sentient, non-humanoid villains work as well for BIONICLE? It's hard to say. Hero Factory had an advantage over BIONICLE in some respects because it rarely had to deal with the idea of "species" — most of the villains were robots, and not even specific TYPES of robots necessarily. It was easier to work in completely unique villain designs with completely unique powers and abilities without having to establish just why they were the way they were. Not sure whether the story would go this route, but if they decided to make the Makuta (or villains like them) a part of the new, rebooted BIONICLE storyline, that could work quite nicely. Despite sharing a species, as shapeshifters they could have all kinds of variety in their designs. And they could effectively serve as a "bigger bad" behind the Skull Spiders.
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Which titans specifically? Because honestly, Hero Factory has had its share of complex titans. Witch Doctor is the obvious example (comparable in size and price to one of my favorite BIONICLE titan sets, Takanuva, and arguably even more complex), but Evo XL Machine is no slouch either (with the same piece count as Brutaka and a custom torso design that includes a gear function). And I think Dragon Bolt has a design and function every bit as interesting as the Gukko, which has a similar price and piece count when you subtract the $4, 25 piece rider. If you look past sets, the sky's the limit — this MOC is a design I'm particularly fond of, using between 200 and 250 parts. I imagine it might cost $40 or $50 at retail — more than most humanoid BIONICLE titan sets, but much less than some BIONICLE vehicles and Rahi. All of the above examples use Technic, it's true, but that's another point people can tend to overlook — integrating Technic with the CCBS is not difficult, especially with larger sets. A 7M leg beam has as many Technic pin holes as a Toa Metru lower leg beam, and you can add three additional Technic connection points to any 5M or larger Hero Factory leg beam in an instant just by attaching a Y-joint to the center ball. I don't do this a lot in my own MOCs because Technic building is not my forte, but I think it's an ability too few MOCists take advantage of. The basic Y-joint also has not gone away, meaning building legs with the same complexity as those of Takanuva or Toa Mata Nui is not out of the question, either. So is a set as Technic-based as those BIONICLE titan sets of old likely? Not really, but it's far from impossible. A year ago, I would not have imagined seeing an extremely Technic-intensive Hero Factory set at less than a $20 price point, but then we got Breez Flea Machine and Bulk Drill Machine, both of which are nearly 50% Technic. I can definitely agree that there have also been some duds. I have little love for CHI Sir Fangar or CHI Fluminox, which have pitiful piece counts and incredibly mundane builds for their price point. But I'm hoping we don't see sets like that in the new BIONICLE. Certainly the CCBS is capable of so much more.
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Sounds plausible. I'll wait for it to be corroborated by another source before taking it as fact, though.
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A higher budget is likely since it's effectively a brand-new theme, but I'm hoping that doesn't add to the price too much. We don't yet know what the prices are going to be, but I'm a bit worried about them judging from the recommended age ranges and the fact that most of the Toa seem to be basic humanoid designs. I wouldn't say it's a bigger budget than Hero Factory ever had, though. I think the budget for Hero Factory 2011 must have been pretty huge since it introduced a whole new building system that required lots and lots of new parts in lots and lots of colors. Just look at the year summary on Bricklink: 84 new parts in 2011, more than twice what there was in 2011 (Bricklink isn't a perfect yardstick since it treats parts with new decorations or blended parts with new color combinations as new parts, but a difference that huge is no fluke). Other than masks, weapons, and a few shells, we haven't seen a whole lot of new molds in the new BIONICLE, and even though I'm sure there are ones we're not seeing, I can't imagine it being nearly as many as we saw in the CCBS's debut year. And new molds tend to be some of the biggest expenses in the design budget for any theme.
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I dunno, I interpreted it the way a nature documentary might describe the actions of "the tiger shark" or "the trapdoor spider" when only referring to an individual. It does raise the question of whether they're all female, though.
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I'd say each name refers to a particular type of beast, not an individual. After all, the Jumpers page says "Two jumpers can even combine and turn into the mighty Splitter Beast." That doesn't seem like something they'd say if there was only one Splitter Beast...
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Hard to say. Combi models are definitely easy with the CCBS, but on the other hand, I've never been able to put two or three humanoid characters into a character with the same towering design that characterized the classic Toa Kaita. So if we did see Toa Kaita, they would probably look a lot different from their traditional look. Though I should mention — despite none of the HF combi models from this year appearing in dedicated story media, the summer beast combi model (Scorpion Beast) was recently added to the Invasion from Below mobile game as (I guess) a bonus boss. I thought that was pretty cool.
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Interesting detail about the beasts for this summer... they're all female. Certainly a pleasant surprise, since the last year of sets with two female villains was 2002, with Cahdok & Gahdok. Sadly the bios for the beasts from the first half of the year didn't establish any genders. Like the LEGO Shop descriptions, they just referred to them as "it".
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Actually the Chima constraction sets this year tend to use Tr. Fluore. Reddish-Orange, not Tr. Bright Orange. Tr. Bright Orange is the color used for Toa Inika Jaller's leg beams and the eyes of Vahki Bordakh, while Tr. Fluore. Reddish-Orange is the color used for the eyes of Pohatu and Gahlok in 2001–2002 BIONICLE.
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Possibly, but I'm honestly hoping for Matoran just for nostalgia's sake.
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Well, it's possible that his shoulders aren't actually wider and Leewan is right about the chest plate being farther forward. At that angle, that would mean the right shoulder would appear to be behind the chest plate and the left shoulder would seem to stick out a good distance from the chest plate. That seems consistent with both of Pohatu's shoulders in the picture. Personally, I will not be too happy if this torso build is what the Toa use. The exposed crotch is just... ugh. On XL heroes it's passable, just because they are the exception rather than the rule and it would be silly to introduce a new torso shell just for them. For all six of the main sets of a wave I think a better-fitting armor solution is called for.
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Those are the Nixels. I'll let the official site explain them. They're basically mischievous enemies of the Mixels, who tend to attack in swarms in order to steal the Cubits that Mixels use to combine. One Mixel from each tribe includes a Nixel. So far, Nixels appear in 41501 Vulk from the Infernites, 41503 Krader from the Cragsters, 41506 Teslo from the Electroids, 41509 Slumbo from the Frosticons, 41512 Chomly from the Fang Gang, 41517 Balk from the Flexers, 41519 Glurt from the Glorp Corp, 41523 Hoogi from the Spikels, and 41525 Magnifo from the Wiztastics. Even though there are nine sets that include Nixels, there are only three Nixel designs which each appear in three sets. In the cartoon shorts there is also a Nixel general, but he hasn't appeared in any sets.
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The packages on the display stand we've seen say "Defender of Wind" and "Lewa, Master of Wind". And according to some people, air has always been called jungle in Russian BIONICLE promotional material (Russian being the language our list of set names came from). So while the display stand image could be preliminary, I think it's most likely that he will keep the air/wind element and the "Jungle" set names were just a localization quirk. Believe me, I realize that, but at the same time its colors are the least connected with the element's physical appearance out of the six main elements — something that made the controversy over the stone element's colors changing from a shade of orange and a tone of yellow to a lighter shade of orange or a purer tone of yellow kind of ridiculous.