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.