Lure

 

This is my entry for Bio-Cup 2026, round 3, theme: Sleight of Hand. The theme description went as follows: Trickery, illusion, fool us if you can! This round's theme is all about deception, trickery, and mischief! Show us what tricks are up your sleeve! This theme isn't about wizards and dragons, but how it's all just smoke and mirrors. The performance, the drama, the illusions that make the unreal seem real.

I'm still not sure how this fits. I found the category very difficult. Are the tricks and illusions about the MOC or its presentation? My first idea was to make an infinite scene using two mirrors. The subject would have been Bohrok swarm, that is, an endless row of one, redesigned Bohrok, in some nest-cell like vignette. But I felt that Bohrok, or anything else in such endless scene, would have had nothing to do with trickery per se. Furthermore, I felt that in such model the main thing would have had nothing to do with Lego and Bionicle pieces: the trick could have been achieved with any medium, two mirrors, and a camera. I wanted to build the trick.

 But I didn't want to make super high-concept out-there MOC, especially as I had only few days to build - I am leaving for a week-long hike on Saturday, and that takes a plenty of preparations. Instead, I wanted to focus on the strenghts of Bionicle building - creatures and characters. What kind of creatures use trickery? Building a magician would have been dull, and too close to the theme 1 which was about magic and mysticism. I wanted to make something really anti-magic, which means, I suppose, not humans. I looked for deception in the animal world and was drawn to anglerfish that use bioluminescence to lure prey. Is it a sleight of hand? Probably not, but if Bio-Cup limits itself to creatures with hands, then damned it is. It's trickery, at least.

 I build the scariest anglerfish I could with the limited parts and time I had. The lure is the trans-neon-yellow Kaukau, which surely will lure some Bionicle fans. It was also nicely connected to the 2001 Bionicle theme with the Rahi beasts having removable masks around their bodies. To underline this, I added a swimming matoran who is after the mask - if it is a mask in the first place.

Photographing this was tricky. I held the matoran by its chain of air bubbles. I could not be behind the camera framing the shot, so I used 12 second shutter delay and watched the camera screen using a mirror. It worked pretty well, and, amusingly, added the mirror aspect to the MOC - although that is not apparent in the final shots.

-Eero.

Ps. I won each three category of Summer Joust I participated in, plus the main prize and the best scoring model prize. So far, the contest season is looking successful, no matter how Bio-Cuo goes.

 

Vembu Batch 1

 Vembu (from Old Steltial vembulum, to bear, carry, convey; ride) is a vehicle. In this case, they are usually relatively fast builds, with one well-defined idea, modest size, and a goal of letting go of the unnecessary pressure and stress to make super good and professional MOCs. There are dozens of them, made during the last six months or so, and I'm posting them on few batches. Most of them, anyway. The thing is, they're a part of collaborative project where some other folks have come up with the names and the lore. I'm mostly focusing on the building process, leaving most of the madness shrouded.

 Umbra's Endomothopter

 I was building Umbra's parasitoid wasp flyer, so Endomothopter is close enough. The tail wing uses Umbra's sword and the cool Technic mudguards had a yellow print that fit Umbra's colours perfectly. The whole model grew around those mudguard pieces and the bubble cockpit than integrates into it beautifully. The model is obviously inspired by the ornithopters in Dune, but I took a more playful route and went full insect mode. Gorast's wings are beautiful pieces. I like how a brown leather seat gives a real-life vibe to contrast with the weird scifi around it.

Gaggu Walger

This, too, is very close what I intended: a walker for Gaggulabio, who is a warlord and a baker. The working title was Gaggu-koma to refer to machikomas built during Marchikoma. This was probably built in March but I'm not sure. Nonetheless, I was in love with those petal/tongue windscreen pieces from the tulips bouquet set, and purple was perfect for Gaggulabio. Again, there's a normal-looking leather seat, a motif I seem to enjoy. The "head" with the worn cake print is consciously simplistic, but I probably should have added some greeble below the mech chest piece.

Selecius-Moped 2000-X

"[Character]'s Moped" is the Platonic idea of a vembu. This was obviously going to be Tawa's motorbike, again inspired by the tulip windscreens. Furthermore, it is inspired by the countless huge Ninjago motorbikes, and parodises them a bit. It has no steering, the wheels are big... I like the round shapes of this one. It's a simple model, but sometimes building things like this helps to keep the hobby fresh.

Barraki Carapar #8918 Assault Wagon / Megatronius

Here, I was building a neutral tank fitting for any side of the Mysterys Nui conflict. It is inspired by French Renault FT, the light tank from World War I that revolutionised tank design. I'm not much into war history, but I have a soft spot for WWI tanks. Most of them are somehow humorous, and none of them were that efficient human killing machines. Renault FT could be from some Miyazaki movie. This, of course, is not a faithful replica - the turret especially is very different, ans I discovered a neat combo with the pirate cannon piece and the definitely-not-scuba-helmet pieces from Dreamzzz ("cauldrons halves"). The tank rolls and the turret rotates. And shoots 1x1 round bricks, of course. 

Warlord Carcinisation

 

Most of the Six Sovereigns were sickened with the effect that the dark waters had on them, but the King of the Southern Titans was plainly pleased with his new supernatural strenght. Now, he was able to squeeze matorans into jelly with one hand only, and no-one required him to use fork and knife while eating. The water resistance made his siege ballista lamentably inefficient, but he's working on it.

This is my entry to round 2 of Bio-Cup. The theme is Metamorphosis. I had a couple of tries with other ideas that I didn't want to procceed with before settling on Carapar. I really like Carapar. That's partly because he's a yellow set (sort of), and partly because the cool marbled parts with unique colour. But it's mostly because his head piece that has tons of character and is quite cute: no surprise they released it in three colours.

This is not just another Bionicle set re-imagined, though, as I wanted to capture the in-between transformation from a handsome warlord to a human-crab monster. Now, this is a very... typical of Bionicle: the main set/product design team clearly just designed a set of six underwater monster villains, and Greg F likely independently decided that they are actually old übermensch sovereigns who were put into a prison, escaped from the prison, and accidently turned into crabs and such. There's nothing referring to that in the sets. Furthermore, in Greg's thinking, Toa Mahri have lungs and the tubes are just... cosmetic additions. The product design had a simple scenario of divers vs. sea monsters, but that would have been too simple for Greg... Now, honestly, the six hot & strong warlords is pretty interesting actually, and it initially created this model, so I am not complaining.

 Back to the model. I began with the head and was consent, especially with the two-colour eyes. T-bar is a gift that keeps giving. It worked very nicely with the 1998 Technic wheel, which is a concurring piece in my Bio-Cup MOCs. Furthermore, the Bohrok-Kal head shells defined the body shape. I originally wanted to have two Tahnok-Kal ones, as the red insignia fitted the ancient warlord vibe I was looking for - especially with the textile part. I spend some time looking for one. There were two locals vendors selling Tahnok-Kals for 7 or 10 €, but I didn't get myself to buy one. Mostly because I have another Tahnok-Kal waiting at my parent's home, and getting a third felt too much... Ultimately, I think Pahrak-Kal's brown emblem works very well positioned near the crab arm.

The limbs were the difficult parts. The pincer had to be made of two different pieces connected with hidden small pieces. It took many tried, but the longer pincer "finger" stayed the same from the beginning. I really like how the dark tan horn pieces work here. The lower legs and the knees were another source of countless reworkings and frustration. It feels like there are millions of silver Bionicle etc. pieces, but only a handful of them flows beautifully!

The crossbow was part of the idea from the beginning. Barraki's squid launcers look like crossbows despite not having any reason to. Furthermore, a heavy crossbow that takes a lot of strenght to load felt fitting for this character that has plenty of raw force and experiences on invasion campaigns.

-Eero.