Read on Twitter
last year, i made an exhaustive 307 tweet long thread chronicling the lore of bionicle. it starts much stronger than it ends but it was the most fun i've had on this website and i hope this year will let #BionicleMonth be just as fun. https://twitter.com/M1STERRYAN/status/1178883738538844160
if you missed out on this thread here it is in a much easier way to check it out https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1178883738538844160.html
i'll be chronicling all of this year's #BionicleMonth drawings in this thread to keep things nice and neat
now i know what you're thinking, and spoilers for last year's thread, but "mr. ryan you covered all of bionicle, you drew a picture that said 'the end' and everything"
yes, but in 2015, bionicle got a reboot!
yes, but in 2015, bionicle got a reboot!
...but i want to take a look at this part of the timeline real quick
so imagine this, you're getting into middle school, one of your favorite things just ended, and you're at an age where toys are starting to not be cool anymore. this won't actually happen, but bear with me. you walk by the toy aisle at walmart and see a bionicle(?) named william
i actually don't remember if i was getting into middle school or deep into middle school at this point, but i like to keep everyone on their toes.
anyway, my interest in hero factory was not quantifiable
*at the time*
anyway, my interest in hero factory was not quantifiable
*at the time*
homies were just the Stars sets but with a different aesthetic, something which, according to some, would not be enough to save the Stars
i'm gonna be here real quick, but i'm not here for negativity
i've been thinking a lot about how there's a lot of things that i never got into because i wasn't the right age at the right time. in 2011, bionicle was a decade old, it was inconceivably obtuse with so much lore and story and it's asking a child (or adult) a lot to get into it
i don't think i could ever get someone my age Into bionicle. they can appreciate it and respect it but i could be wrong but i'm not sure if i could make a Fan. and with the massive monolith that bionicle was, Lego was probably thinking the same thing
so they did the unthinkable and took the leftovers from their last year of bionicle, and gave it a......
....simplified story.
no obtuse names borrowing from polynesian culture, no thousands of years of villains scheming.
just heroes named preston saving the day
....simplified story.
no obtuse names borrowing from polynesian culture, no thousands of years of villains scheming.
just heroes named preston saving the day
so i've been ragging on the Real Names these dudes have and i'm being facetious, their last names or code names or whatever were their "actual" names
so william was called William Furno, or just Furno.
so william was called William Furno, or just Furno.
so interesting thing, these 7 folks were the only heroes in the Hero Factory toy line. They get a ton of different versions and armors but it's just that 7 and a massive swath of Monster of the Week style Villains. no time skips, no 12 different Red Dudes. Simple
They also got mini figures, which were some of the coolest minifigs around. The legs were pretty fragile though :/
I’ll be back tomorrow
anyways hello welcome back to #bioniclemonth
one of the problems with drawing something i don't know 100% about at 2 in the morning is that i will get things wrong, and i forgot about two of the hero factory heroes. so here they are to cover my butt
one of the problems with drawing something i don't know 100% about at 2 in the morning is that i will get things wrong, and i forgot about two of the hero factory heroes. so here they are to cover my butt
i think the most important part about this was that these heroes weren't the only heroes in the lore, they were just one team out of hundreds. this encouraged the all important Custom Fan Made character shtick. that being said, kids are gonna do it regardless
With that in mind, here’s my hero factory hero, Jefferson Coldfusion. He’s the hero with the fattest butt
jefferson coldfusion looks a little different from previous bionicle builds, because hero factory would take on a building system with a new range of parts, focused almost entirely on ball and socket pieces.
early on, bionicle had a new batch of core parts every year that made the previous one somewhat obsolete, the Character and Creature Building System (CCBS) was a safe and easy means of making an actual building system that didn't do that sort of thing.
the ccb system had only minor variations as time went on but it pretty much stayed the same, and was, for better or worse, relatively versatile
jefferson coldfusion
jefferson coldfusion having a giant dump truck butt is not just a bit, i made him that way to point out a somewhat annoying flaw in early ccbs sets: that they are completely devoid of details on the backside at times
