#Mata-Nui Online Game

[mask-of-prime]

BIONICLE: Ta-Wahi Travel Poster - [PROTOTYPE]

In a graphic design course dedicated to Adobe Illustrator, we were tasked to make vacation spot posters in the style of the ones from the 1950's. Our professor said it could be fictional, or even a real place we're fond of. Part of the assignment was to use the Symbol Sprayer, repetition of shapes, and the Warp Tool.

First thing that came to mind for me was a location in Bionicle, such as Ta-Wahi Beach, the first place you wake up to as Takua in Mata-Nui Online Game.

I wouldn't be surprised if the assets of MNOG were made in Illustrator and/or Flash (which I think the latter once belonged to MacroMedia at the time if we really wanna talk about feeling old).

Will I make other posters for the other Koro's/Wahi's? Um... it sounds like having them all together would be really cool, but if I do, I kinda wanna revise this current one and learn to have an easier time making them and/or possibly make them a little more straightforward and easy to make out. Definitely should go for the classic TradeMarker font if I do (since this isn't an assignment anymore, let alone one being monitored/graded by a professor who also teaches typography :p)

Made in 2022.

[makutaservaela]

A Remake of a comic I made a long time ago.

For context, in the Mata Nui Online Game 2, you can buy Kolhii balls from the Po-Koro Shop for 1 widget each, and sell them to the Ta-Koro Shop for 2 widgets. It becomes a pretty quick Widget hack.

Vohon hates every one of you who did this to him.

[ashilean]

Speed

Bonus piece I did for Marn a little while back.

[risingshards]

I replay MNOG every Christmas Eve and I want to draw attention to the Le Koro band going hard and Taipu dancing his lil heartlight out

[alastheswarmleaderhasescaped]

Got bored at work today so I claimed the celesta room and screwed around with some BIONICLE music

So here I’m playing around a little with The Old Fusa Path from MNOG :3

It’s a crappy celesta and my phone mic couldn’t really handle it rip

[bionicle-baby]

Lies (featuring Onua and Pohatu in the MNOG art style)

It took a while to draw this is it good?

[starryknight-dragonarts]

The average village characters are often an overlooked part of any fantasy story, who cares about what the Basket weaver is doing I want to see the cool things the Heroes are up to! That's not the case in Bionicle, the Matoran villagers that the Toa protect are just as interesting as the Toa themselves and this is explored heavily in the early series point-and click adventure game MNOG (Mata Nui Online Game) You view the Vast Island of Mata Nui as a Wandering Matoran named Takua who travels from village to village helping other Matoran with their problems and occasionally running into the Toa and getting to see them doing something cool and Heroic, also despite being a Browser based game from the early 2000's meant to sell Legos it's also one of the best pieces of interactive media! You are immersed in this world learning about lore and mysteries from this franchize and the Matoran villagers who make this world feel alive and lived in so you are just as invested in protecting the Island from the Evils of The Makuta as the Toa Heroes!

One of the Memorable characters is a little Matoran from the Air Village Le-Koro named Tamaru. When Tamaru is introduced the Le-Matoran are hiding because their home in the treetops of the jungle have been attacked by Giant Wasp Monsters called Nui Rama who have kidnapped other villagers! By playing a little tune on a flute you notify the village that it's safe to come out now. Kongu the Heroic Bird Rider swings down to meet you by swinging down a vine!...Followed by Tamaru who proceeds to fall and faceplant behind him.

Tamaru is not just a comic relief character, part of the appeal is that they do not fit in among the other Le-Matoran and some of these details though never explicitly stated have lead fans to the widely accepted headcanon that Tamaru is a Trans-Girl Le-Matoran.

A little bit of weird Bionicle worldbuilding is that all of the elements among Matoran, Toa, and Turaga are gendered. This was actually a sort of clever work around on the creators of Bionicle part because of some really stupid rules when it comes to marketing children's toys...as much as I wish decisions could purley be made for the benefit of telling a good story, Bionicle was made to sell Toys because Lego was going Bankrupt in the Early 2000s and needed an original action based franchise that could compete with Star Wars as their best seller before Bionicle were Lego Star Wars sets which means Lego had to pay royalties back to Lucas Films. Basically the reason Toys are so heavily split between Boys and Girls is because corporations want in that way, they split demographics so they are not competing with themselves for Toy sales. Bionicle was Marketed to appeal to boys, so usually with other kids media they would have all Male Hero characters, and a girl on the side who isn't as cool as the heros. By gendering the Elements they made sure that there would always be a girl member of the team who is an Equal member to the dudes. Just as Strong, just as Cool, and just as heroic as her male counterparts. 

I wish they had at least made the team equally split between Male and Female characters, of the 6 original elements only 1 of the tribes is Female, the Ga-Matorans (Water). I guess I gotta take what I can get...but then there is Tamaru. 

Most Le-Matoran are very agile and graceful living up in the trees, leaping from branches, swinging on vines, riding giant birds. Makes sense for a village with Air as their element. This does not come naturally to Tamaru though, Tamaru is scared of heights and gets dizzy looking down at a long fall, but Tamaru has something that the other Le-Matoran don't...She can Swim. Le-Matoran typically don't like water and don't like swimming, it just feels wrong to them for some reason, however Tamaru has no such problem with Water and is more comfortable in the water than she is in the air almost like she has the coding of a Ga-matoran not a Le-Matoran!

Despite being different from the other Le-Matoran, Tamaru is still Heroic. She joins the Chronicler's party and helps defend the Temple Kini Nui from being destroyed by The Makuta's possessed beasts and ensures the Toas safe return to the surface because sometimes Heroes need a Hero too.

This is why Tamaru is very special to me and many other Bionicle Fans.

[danalysis]

Kopaka!!

New bonkle anim!! Been a while

[edward18]

Takutanuva was a character I was never quite satisfied with in his varied looks across the Bionicle franchise, so the other night at work I found myself doodling ideas for what he might look like if he ever showed up when I did Bionicle stuff =)

Also did a review of Bionicle if anyone wants to watch that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slpHB4OLWTA

More stuff's in my gallery: https://www.deviantart.com/warahi/gallery

Discord's over here if anyone wants to hang out and chat or anything: https://discord.gg/zxCJbHz

Patreon's here: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=49390038

Always open for commissions ^_^

[nickpeppermint]

Scariest part of Mata Nui Online Game

[wjbs-bonkle-au]

I haven't played much of MNOG II, but it really does suck that one of the first "puzzles" is literally just a fairly difficult skill-check that you have to attempt multiple times (you have to throw stuff to dislodge a water-wheel or something in order to progress, and it does an accuracy check every time, and I swear last time I tried playing it took like 5 tries).

[mimicry-works]

Hahli for my little sketch tonight.

[makutaservaela]

Girl, you better open this door.

[ashilean]

MARN, toa Mangai of earth (8/11)

Adventurous toa of earth, Marn delves deep into the uncharted tunnels beneath Metru Nui in search of strange rahi, natural resources, and new paths between the city's districts. Leaving behind distinctive marks chiseled into the stone, finding one of her trail blazes is said to be good luck amongst matoran spelunkers.

Marn wears the great Kakama and wields a Folding Pick--it's sharp point helping to climb through the winding caves while the blunt head is used to put chisel to stone.

After the dragon was defeated, Marn developed a love of helping the people of Onu-Metru, but was never able to build up her social skills. She took to exploring and mapping the subterranean city so she could provide guidance to her people despite her discomforts.

[risingshards]

Something I really like in Rebuild the Galaxy (the fun new lil Lego Star Wars miniseries) is how it echoes (probably not intentionally) Templar Games' Bionicle Mata Nui Online Game in the theme of building vs. destroying, taking an aspect of Lego play and putting it into the story.

In MNOG, Gordon Klimes from Templar described how they made Makuta the embodiment of destruction:

“'The void' above Makuta is indeed a swirling mass of lego pieces, though it's not supposed to be representative of his true form. Makuta is chaos and nihilism, Mata Nui is order and creativity.”

“For me Makuta represents the destructive aspect of playing with Lego. You would build something and then destroy it in order to build something new. Makuta is a maelstrom of swirling pieces, he represents the pile on the floor that all lego creations come from and will eventually return to.”

“Good and evil just wasn’t good enough any more. It didn’t make any sense any more. But this was okay, because from the beginning, that’s not what it was about. The Makuta wasn’t evil, and his brother, Mata Nui, wasn’t good.”

“We knew that while building was fun, it was just as much fun to destroy. They were two sides of the same coin, and neither were wrong: it was all part of the play, part of learning, part of having fun. Not good or evil: Creation and Destruction, equal powers in the universe, natural and necessary. Both good. Both bad. Both neither. It’s true, we’d painted Destruction a bit negatively - using words like “Infected” Mask, or “Monsters,” but we’d needed the conflict.”

“So the Makuta, for all its darkness and danger, was not evil after all, and he says as much at the end. The final act was the confrontation, not between Good and Evil, which was meaningless, but between Creation and Destruction, where everything comes from nothing, and goes back to it, eventually. This was the struggle between the Toa and the Rahi, and Mata Nui and Makuta, and a LEGO fan and her kid brother, building and smashing happily, in equal measure. Our world had gone a bit mad, but to us, this helped make some sense of it. We wanted to share what small comfort it brought.”

Rebuild the Galaxy uses something similar, having Jedi Builders against Sith Destroyers feeling like it takes the act of playing with Lego part of the story, which is really fun. And if something's gonna be effectively a toy commercial, I'd rather it be fun and light about it. The people working on it definitely have a lot of love for Lego, and it showed throughout the miniseries.

[alastheswarmleaderhasescaped]

Got bored at work today so I claimed the celesta room and screwed around with some BIONICLE music

So here is the Telescope from MNOG!