Week 14… It’s the end game now. Once again, no time to waste, so let’s get started.
A Bit Here and There
Last week we left off with some button business needing to be finished up. All I need to do is first print a test design to make sure I have the measurements correct, and then go ahead and print the final product once I have confirmed that.
While it printed, I decided that it was finally time to put a few things in place, starting with Kongu and the Arduino board.
It ended up being a bit of a hassle to connect the cables, and I had a few of them break off from the circuit board that I needed to resolder, but eventually I managed to get it all set in place. The next thing I did was screw the circuit board on to the underside of the foam, which really helped with the cable management issues.
And then I went ahead and finally attached the rocks, and a bit of extra pieces of the chain-link fence for more decoration.
Adding all of those changes together gave me this result:
They’re finally starting to look like a true Toa team.
I’ll definitely want to carve some extra rocks to scatter around the base some more, but I’ll save that for last so it doesn’t cut into my valuable time.
But with that said, the next thing to work on is the decal, at long last.
Retro Fashion
I got the measurements set up in Photoshop, and while I have a general idea of what I want to achieve for the decals, I wanted to make sure I did it 100% correctly. And thankfully, I didn’t have to do it by eye alone.
One website I frequent is the BioMediaProject.com (currently in the process of moving to MaskofDestiny.com), home to all things Bionicle. From archives of the original Flash and retail games to specific marketing materials only meant to be seen by Lego employees, it’s an absolute haven for people like me.
Part of these archives includes some of the style guides that were used by Lego and companies it outsourced to, to make sure their branding stayed consistent. One for each year, save for 2002 and 2010, the years 2006-2008 are grouped together in a special “e-style guide” (found here) that unfortunately runs off of Flash, which made it somewhat of a pain to open.
Nonetheless, using an emulator, I was able to view the contents inside. Included were the specific guides for the years of 2006, 2007, and 2008, along with a general introduction to both the story during the time period, and also a general guide to Bionicle itself.
There’s too much specifics to go over here, so I do highly recommend taking a look at it for yourself. For the purposes of this project though, these are some of the pages that will serve the most useful to me:
Unfortunately, all of the downloadable content linked in these images are lost, for the most part, but there are other ways to get some of them, either through recreating them myself, or by taking other Photoshop files that contain the assets.
This is also not everything that I will be relying on, it’s simply the most interesting parts of the guide. Beyond the guide itself, I also have the physical canisters with me that I can reference. No better of a guide than what was officially released, after all.
But with this all gathered, I took some time to begin work on the display banner.
While creating it, I decided that, instead of trying to measure everything constantly and make sure none of the logos or icons go somewhere I don’t want them to, it would be much easier to print out the background on its own, and then print out any extra decals I want as stickers! Following this pathway made it much, much easier for me to create it all.
I first got the background that would host everything I wanted, which I decided to model after the background on the Inika canisters and promotional material:
From there, I created a new canvas to host all of my sticker designs. I started by adding the Toa Inika icons that I’ve always loved:
I also wanted to add both the Inika and Bionicle logo to the display. The Bionicle logo was easy enough, even though BioMediaProject didn’t have the specific one used in 2006, the biosector01 wiki did. For the Inika logo though, I wanted to use the same one from the canisters. On the design document, it has the “Scratched Outline” label.
However, it wasn’t so straightforward. I thought that BioMediaProject would have it, and that would be the end of it, but strangely, the only Inika logo they host is the “Clean” one from above, not outlines, no scratches.
And as I said before, all of the download links in the design documents are broken, so no luck there. I got a bit desperate, so I just kept trying to search to see if anywhere else hosted the files from it, but there was still nothing. I did, however, come across biosector01 again though, and amazingly, they had a high-quality version of the “Scratched” version of the logo.
I was baffled, nowhere else had the logo in such a high quality, so I honestly have no clue where it came from, but I’m very thankful for it. My job wasn’t over though, as I needed the outline, partially for styling reasons, and partially because the sticker paper can’t print transparent parts.
I tried using the “Stroke” modifier in Photoshop, but it didn’t give me the same results as the official logo, so instead of trying to make it work, I just traced the outline with the pen tool and made it fit the logo I had.
It’s pretty close, but there are very minor imperfections, that do bother me. But I’m willing to leave a bit of errors, since it won’t be super big anyway.
While working on the stickers, I had another idea of something I wanted to add. The Piraka hazard sign from the commercial!
It’s a little goofy, because who could this possibly be for, who could’ve put this up? Maybe the Piraka just want to mark their territory that much more. Regardless, I think having this sign be a part of all the broken fences would be a really nice detail, so I got to work.
I knew I would have to recreate this one, as there’s no way the original texture would just be floating around online, at least easily. The triangle and its outline were easy enough to do in Photoshop, but the Piraka head itself was a bit tricky.
It is very clearly a silhouette of Vezok, but there’s no icon that looks like it. Some of the Piraka icons are pretty abstract (how is Hakann’s symbol a representation of him?), and while Vezok and Thok’s symbols look similar, neither one shows their teeth like in the commercial.
This tells me that the sign was custom made, but it’s no issue. I decided that just using Vezok’s icon as is will still looks pretty good, so I made the following:
I could probably add teeth in, but I’ll do that only if I really don’t like this design.
Nonetheless, I’m still not done with this sign. It’s much too clean, especially since it’ll have just been attacked and blasted off of its fence, so I remedied that with some basic dirt and scratch textures.
It’s got a lot more going on than the sign in the commercial, and I think it’s a bit cluttered, but it’s still recognizable, which is all that matters for me.
With all of this together, I’m ready to print on paper, but there’s something to attend to first.
Pushing Buttons
It’s taken me so long to do all of this that my brand new button has been sitting around for a while! It’s time to show it off.
Unfortunately, the process was not perfect for the Voya Nui icon. There is a lot of black mixed into the green in the center, something I cannot clean up at all. The ring also suffered from some very odd issues, probably due to it being so small, and me printing it with a very, very high detail level.
I don’t really want to reprint either of these. They’re not unusable, and trying to print the bubble again is just priming for more headaches and issues. Perhaps if I have extra time. Either way, my measurements were absolutely perfect. So perfect, that I actually cannot remove the button on the backside of the bubble without a tool, and some force.
Thankfully, this is exactly what I wanted, so no issue there.
With the button complete now, there’s only a few more steps left to go.
One Minute to Midnight
However it will have to wait, as I am out of time for this week. I ended up being very busy and did not work on what I wanted to as much as I needed, so I am a bit behind now. But thankfully, not by much.
From here, all that’s left to do is print the decal and stickers, and then I can start putting the Plexiglass on, and making any final touches I need. It’s been a long journey, and I’m ready for it to be over.
That being said though, there are a few things I’d like to do if I have extra time. First, of course, is adding more debris around the base, as it’s much to clean right now, and scattering some extra rocks can really help sell the illusion. I’d also like to secure the platform raisers, as while they will work, they’re very loose right now and don’t sell the idea that this was made by a professional very well. Beyond that, I may reprint the button if I can’t stand it, and I may also end up adding more decals and stickers as I go.
For now though, I need to rest and prepare for my finals next week!