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.