Oh right it's Artakha'n

Mask Monday

There are so many beautiful colours in the world. It's so wild how much the lighting in a space can change how those colours look. It's a big reason I have to check every colour test in multiple rooms to be sure each time!

Oh for sure! If I were to include heads in blind bags, they would likely keep to more neutral colours (the various grays, dark colours, sand colours, etc) they would be available on the shop in all the same colours as Kanohi.

Eventually, every piece in every colour is the goal, after all

Okay, time to gather some more community feedback!

I know blind bags are really popular, many are nostalgic for the old Kanohi packs and Krana bags, and I've even been selling imperfect parts in triple blind bags.

I would like to get to actual good blind bags soon. Once I've gotten through some more commissions I'll have more masks and colours to add to them, so I just want a better number for more variety first. One of my ideas was a regional blind bag - eg, a Ta-Koro blind bag could have any mask in red, yellow, orange, dark red, reddish orange, black, bright pink, etc; Ko-Koro ones would have white, sand blue, light gray, light bluish gray, medium azure, sky blue, etc. I would like to have at least 4 colours per region before starting these though, but there's also not much point in starting them if there isn't interest - it'd be a more focused blind bag compared to the breadth available in a standard one, so maybe that should include something else to make it worthwhile, like a regional tool? That'll push things back even further...

And that brings me to another key point regarding blind bags - the original Kanohi packs included two masks, an eyestalk, a head, and two 3axles. My current blind bags are 3 masks and nothing else. Would people prefer more masks, since heads are probably not too hard to come by? Or would it be better to stick more closely to the original packs for nostalgia?

Please, if you have any feedback to provide on anything discussed here, do let me know! I'd love to properly discuss people's interests and ideas for this to ensure I'm making these best how people want them, and I can't do that if I don't know!

I wouldn't be including heads without eyestalks lmao

So many colors they just never appeared in!

Okay, time to gather some more community feedback!

I know blind bags are really popular, many are nostalgic for the old Kanohi packs and Krana bags, and I've even been selling imperfect parts in triple blind bags.

I would like to get to actual good blind bags soon. Once I've gotten through some more commissions I'll have more masks and colours to add to them, so I just want a better number for more variety first. One of my ideas was a regional blind bag - eg, a Ta-Koro blind bag could have any mask in red, yellow, orange, dark red, reddish orange, black, bright pink, etc; Ko-Koro ones would have white, sand blue, light gray, light bluish gray, medium azure, sky blue, etc. I would like to have at least 4 colours per region before starting these though, but there's also not much point in starting them if there isn't interest - it'd be a more focused blind bag compared to the breadth available in a standard one, so maybe that should include something else to make it worthwhile, like a regional tool? That'll push things back even further...

And that brings me to another key point regarding blind bags - the original Kanohi packs included two masks, an eyestalk, a head, and two 3axles. My current blind bags are 3 masks and nothing else. Would people prefer more masks, since heads are probably not too hard to come by? Or would it be better to stick more closely to the original packs for nostalgia?

Please, if you have any feedback to provide on anything discussed here, do let me know! I'd love to properly discuss people's interests and ideas for this to ensure I'm making these best how people want them, and I can't do that if I don't know!

I hadn't even properly considered Metru heads... even though I use one for my product photos.

Notably, though, when I mention heads here I do mean to include eyestalks. Still a ways off because I haven't matched any translucent colours yet, but I wouldn't start blind bags with heads until I could get everything for them ready

Okay, time to gather some more community feedback!

I know blind bags are really popular, many are nostalgic for the old Kanohi packs and Krana bags, and I've even been selling imperfect parts in triple blind bags.

I would like to get to actual good blind bags soon. Once I've gotten through some more commissions I'll have more masks and colours to add to them, so I just want a better number for more variety first. One of my ideas was a regional blind bag - eg, a Ta-Koro blind bag could have any mask in red, yellow, orange, dark red, reddish orange, black, bright pink, etc; Ko-Koro ones would have white, sand blue, light gray, light bluish gray, medium azure, sky blue, etc. I would like to have at least 4 colours per region before starting these though, but there's also not much point in starting them if there isn't interest - it'd be a more focused blind bag compared to the breadth available in a standard one, so maybe that should include something else to make it worthwhile, like a regional tool? That'll push things back even further...

And that brings me to another key point regarding blind bags - the original Kanohi packs included two masks, an eyestalk, a head, and two 3axles. My current blind bags are 3 masks and nothing else. Would people prefer more masks, since heads are probably not too hard to come by? Or would it be better to stick more closely to the original packs for nostalgia?

Please, if you have any feedback to provide on anything discussed here, do let me know! I'd love to properly discuss people's interests and ideas for this to ensure I'm making these best how people want them, and I can't do that if I don't know!

Okay, time to gather some more community feedback!

I know blind bags are really popular, many are nostalgic for the old Kanohi packs and Krana bags, and I've even been selling imperfect parts in triple blind bags.

I would like to get to actual good blind bags soon. Once I've gotten through some more commissions I'll have more masks and colours to add to them, so I just want a better number for more variety first. One of my ideas was a regional blind bag - eg, a Ta-Koro blind bag could have any mask in red, yellow, orange, dark red, reddish orange, black, bright pink, etc; Ko-Koro ones would have white, sand blue, light gray, light bluish gray, medium azure, sky blue, etc. I would like to have at least 4 colours per region before starting these though, but there's also not much point in starting them if there isn't interest - it'd be a more focused blind bag compared to the breadth available in a standard one, so maybe that should include something else to make it worthwhile, like a regional tool? That'll push things back even further...

And that brings me to another key point regarding blind bags - the original Kanohi packs included two masks, an eyestalk, a head, and two 3axles. My current blind bags are 3 masks and nothing else. Would people prefer more masks, since heads are probably not too hard to come by? Or would it be better to stick more closely to the original packs for nostalgia?

Please, if you have any feedback to provide on anything discussed here, do let me know! I'd love to properly discuss people's interests and ideas for this to ensure I'm making these best how people want them, and I can't do that if I don't know!

YEEEAH

Finally

Mask of Heat Vision

Just got these cool blind-bag masks from @0m3g4skanohiforge on Etsy! I LOVE THEM, especially the teal-and-silver Kaukau! The visor is transparent! :D

I'm gonna have to make up some MOCs to go with them 😁

Those got to you even faster than I was expecting! I'd also recommend seeing if you can get a bar to fit in that Akaku scope - I think it might just be the right size! That'll open up even more options 😎

Just got these cool blind-bag masks from @0m3g4skanohiforge on Etsy! I LOVE THEM, especially the teal-and-silver Kaukau! The visor is transparent! :D

I'm gonna have to make up some MOCs to go with them 😁

Actually being haunted by some of these colours lmao

I'm just trying to match Sand Blue. Spoilers for upcoming releases I suppose lol, but I'm somehow 10x closer to getting

Light Bluish Gray

Dark Bluish Gray

Medium Blue

Light Gray

Dark Gray

Sand Green???

Than I am to getting Sand Blue right now. Why are blues so particular? Why are so many of my blues so green? Why are so many greens so blue for that matter?

The one on the left is 1/9 of my strongest blue. The one on the right is 3/10 of my 3rd strongest blue. 2nd not pictured because it's too green.

Maybe I just need to switch gears, focus on a different colour for a bit.

Love having adhd and missing a step of a routine that I'm doing incredibly frequently resulting in botched work

Eh. It should be salvageable, at least

MASK MONDAY

This is another reeeeeally old one! My initial strategies were basically the worst way of going about it, and would very often result in pockets of air getting trapped. Even then, I would try to fill the gaps by adding more resin, but that didn't work as well back then...

This one went back into the mold probably... 3 times? Minimum 2, based on the colours. Of course, the largest two holes never got filled 😒 but it makes for a great corroded mask!

Back when I was babysitting nearly every week, I would bring my Toa Mata and tell the Legend of the Bionicle, using this mask to represent Makuta. Since then of course I've got better parts to use, but I still think it was a cool effect

Hero

I'm gonna make sure it's got real cool stuff for ya

Lmao I'm one (1) label away from filling out a sheet of shipping labels if someone wants to buy a blind bag or two

They'll be shipping Tuesday at the latest

Hold your fire please

Someone has ordered blind bag, thank you 😊

Lmao I'm one (1) label away from filling out a sheet of shipping labels if someone wants to buy a blind bag or two

They'll be shipping Tuesday at the latest

Lmao I'm one (1) label away from filling out a sheet of shipping labels if someone wants to buy a blind bag or two

They'll be shipping Tuesday at the latest

MASK MONDAY

This is another older one, and probably the most intricate I've ever attempted. A Kaukau is opaque Teal (matching the Tarakava quite closely!), with a blend atop in metallic silver, similar to the Metru Nui Matoran Kanohi. The Visor has been cut out and refilled with a transparent Teal, though it ended up too foggy to look nice.

White Teal was the first (or second?) colour I ever matched, this was all using older resins and those formulas no longer work, so I need to rediscover the colours. The visor likely ended up foggy because I was working without a Pressure Pot, thus filling the entire mold with tiny bubbles.

While the idea of cutting and reinjecting the visor seems nice, it can get pretty messy. In the future, I'd like to try to reverse-engineer the way Lego makes removable windows in pane bricks, as that way the visor could be cast separately and inserted, also allowing for customizable combinations of visors.

MASK MONDAY

Today's the Eclipse! I wanted to make a mask specially for today, but unfortunately it didn't come out as I'd hoped and I'm out of time/material again lol (don't worry, material is on the way)

My hope was to have a white-edged mask with black forming into the center, similar to how I made my Shadowed Kanohi for comic con.

However it seems such a pattern isn't as easy as I believed, and is influenced greatly by the shape of the mask... more tests will be needed to see what different blend styles I can make

This is one of my biggest motivators when trying to develop more shapes and colours. Not just to make characters as they appeared in MNOG, but to be able to make them even more varied! There's so many colours in Lego's total library, it'd be beautiful to see them all available

With the (eventual) ability to recast parts into any colour, I think this opens a lot of potential to reinterpret the colour schemes of basically every character, and there's some I've already been planning in advance.

Jaller is depicted in MoL with Dark Red instead of Red, easily contrasting Takua and falling in line with his Toa forms. Maybe his yellow should also be swapped for Keetorange, to more closely match his Mahri orange?

Hahli is shown with medium blue between dark blue, but the dark blue is the only consistency, later being replaced with lime green. Why not meet in the middle, with teal?

Vakama starts primarily orange but is shown in Metru Nui as exclusively dark red. This would be a great character to test reddish-orange!

While I don't want to change the Mata/Nuva colours much, I do want to note that Tahu is shown almost exclusively red and dark red. Considering Mistika Tahu takes dark red, what would he look like in dark red and reddish-orange?

Ahkmou is just Hewkii with a black Rau. What if we swapped the tan for Metru Brown?

Speaking of Hewkii, in MoL him and Pohatu have basically swapped colours! The dark orange makes Pohatu closer to the bright colours of his Phantoka form, and the darker brown makes Hewkii more akin to his gunmetal Inika form. Feels like a fitting change!

While these are just some floating ideas for now, I'd love to hear other folks' ideas on alternate/more varied colour schemes for existing characters! Add even more variety to Mata Nui

Maybe an odd question but I want to make sure people enjoy stuff so!

To clarify - the Standard is the one most commonly seen on pieces. Takanuva wears it, Makuta uses it as gloves, etc. The Glossy version is exclusive to the trans-glitter variant included with the ussanui.

Considering the common use of the standard, I imagine that would be most important, but the gloss would shine so much nicer... fitting it's status as the Avohkii.

And of course, all of this info is going towards resin casting efforts in the future, so if you wanna see something, lemme know!