Toa Kelerina

Nov. 8, 2020 

Kelerina has been a rough concept in my mind for about a year now. She first came to mind through several day dreams I had while having certain kinds of moods, mainly a sense of sadness, combined with multiple other things like anger.

She represented something within myself, and I normally only thought of her during particular moments in time when I was feeling the very moods that inspired her.

Some of the deeper details behind her existence are more personal, but the basics are as listed above. Kelerina has the ability of shadow, but isn't Makuta, and has a secondary element which remains hidden and dormant till sometime later in her story.

The first rough concepts of her bust were finally brought to existence when I had a reason to hurry up and design her after recently starting a role play with MsMindflayer based off of the day dreams I've had of Kelerina. 

With Kelerina's story starting to take form, she needed a design, so instead of overthinking it, I just dove in and based everything about her from a single blurry idea that her mask/helmet was intricate and celestial based, depicting moon cycles in black and silver white.

Her heart light is a white orb with a special stone placed within. And then her helmet later had an extra trait added, a small white gem on the crescent horns over the forehead.

The very first stage of her bust (shown right) had the improper foreshortening when I designed the moon cycle patterns of her mask. Those were meant to be bent back and follow along the top half of the helmet. 

As shown on the left, a rough sketch of the side to explain where that extra strip of moon patterns was meant to be.

I was pleased when I rounded off the front view with just the main moon in focus, then thought about how something seemed missing still.

This is when I added a lower face vizor (left) with etching on the metal. Something about seeing her face didn't sit right with me, and I wasn't aware that's what it was at the time. Her face was purposely made more Humanoid than Toa, which is part of the story.

Her bust was created as an outline in FireAlpaca using the symmetry brush, something I like using for quick designing and rough concepts, especially for robot/machine based things.

Nov 12, 2020- Later I applied the newer mask cover design over the bust to see what it looked like. It seemed a little different from the full body drawing, but was more closely accurate to the settled design as a whole. The previous face vizor needed to follow the chin line of Kelerina's face beneath as this one does. I didn't realize till I squinted too, that it kind of looks cat like.

Going off her conceptual bust design I then got to work on making a full body design. I started off still showing her face from beneath the helmet, then decided I didn't feel right being able to see it, so I adjusted the mask to be fully covering.

 

After that came color. Kelerina's dark moon mode is her official color scheme (left). 

Then I decided to play with ideas on inverting the colors of her armor, which got me the concept on the right.

I called the inverted version the halfway mode between her two elemental traits. In this mode she can use her duel elements out of each hand, but they'll be less powerful unless combined.

Full moon mode is the color scheme where I didn't invert all of the colors and only inverted anything that wasn't silver. The first try seemed a bit warm, like the white had gold dust mixed in. 

I thought I might like it better if it were more silver, and took away most of the color as best I could (left). In full moon mode Kelerina's eyes change from yellow green to teal.

"Toa" Tosho

I've been inventing and inspiring some more Bionicle role play content with Ms Mindflayer. This is her character, "Toa Tosho" a female ice type at first glance, but careful, there's a secret, Tosho is actually a Makuta in disguise.

The main version above is MsFlay's color scheme with the whip sword and a black fur collar (a bit of natural neck fuzz Makuta Tosho can't get rid of).

I had done a bit of coloring and outlining before the official version of Tosho was finished, and color schemes are a bit different. My version is much colder and pastel, MsFlay's is brighter and more noticeable.

I had also tried out a dark setting for fun, a little reveal of the evil beneath .

There was also the Tosho bust MsFlay drew, and I then colored as a concept. This was before I knew the neck fur was going to be black.

Kelerina Encounters- Tosho's Darkness

In the role play, labeled "Eclipse" involving the main characters Tosho and Kelerina, I imagined a point when Makuta Tosho hunts down Kelerina to attack her either in a cave or a crypt. 

This is a collage combo of my Kelerina drawing and Ms Flay's Tosho drawing colored by me. 

First version above is like a misty dream, but the second below is more of the official, focused version with added motion blur.

The shaking and blur around Tosho's hand was inspired by the pencil smudges of the original pencil drawing of Tosho.

Lewa's Bath

Night time cleaning, tonight was Lewa's turn. I liked the way he was just peeking out of the bubbles, and how the lighting was kind of mix of dark and light.

Maybe a bit of editing later on will bring these pictures to life.

Pohatu's Bath

Every now and then I clean my Bionicle toy sets when they either get dusty or dirty from play, display, and photography. 

Pohatu had a soak in a big bowl of dish soap and oxyclean mixed water. "Hey guys, look! I'm actually floating!"

Storm Matoran

Stovau, the storm Matoran was an unexpected, but fun project to randomly start while my eyes spotted the picture in the bathroom tiles.

In short, I see pictures in textures, in this case my bathroom floor tiles, and sometimes I like bringing out the pictures I see within a texture. In this case I saw a Matoran's mask, and then the scenes of a stormy sea and an island in the background.

I brought out the picture in black and white first, then added color over top, thought it looked pretty interesting for being something I saw in a couple of tile textures.

After the pictures were done, I created my journal records shown below, choosing to make this setting look like an old journal being written in by my character, Pearllight. Because Pearllight is supposed to be the one writing, I used cursive to tell a story and talk about art process. 

Not everyone may have an easy time with reading the actual pages, so beneath each one I've added the print translation. 

Storm Matoran

There was a story once shared between the Ga Matoran about a male water Matoran named Stovau.

He was said to have been granted the power of a Toa after touching a strange, rare artifact from the ocean. Try as he did to never use such abilities for fear of hurting others, he discovered all too late that his power was no normal one, effecting the weather and not a single element itself.

His emotions at times could get the better of him, his friends feared him ever since he became a “short Toa”. One day when they once more called him this, he could no longer contain his anger, which lead to a mighty storm with lightning, a tornado, and a raging sea. In guilt, hoping to save his friends, he swam from the island as fast as he

could, hoping the unleashed power would go with him and stop the storm.

As he looked back at his island, illuminated by the yelling thunder,bombarded by the raging waters, he was quite literally struck with amazement as a bolt of lightning hit the water near to where he clung for dear life onto a rock.

It’s then claimed that the electricity pulsing through the waters coursed through his body and recognized the elemental power within him. Out there in the ocean he was granted the full form of a Toa.

With the extra boost in power and size, as he floated unconscious over the violent waves, he woke just in time to realize he could bring all his power back to himself and stop the storm. This he did with great determination, then swam back to his island hoping his people were okay.

When he arrived the villagers greeted him and praised him for saving them from a storm caused by their friend. They didn’t recognize him anymore, and spoke about him like he was a stranger, telling this new Toa that their friend Stovau had caused the storm and may have died out at sea.

Rather than showing regret they simply asked if his body had been found, and that maybe the storm stopped because he drowned.

Toa Stovau stared at his friends with a hard, stern glare. “See here, your friend tried to save you by going out to the ocean hoping the storm would follow him, and it did.”

His friends wondered how he knew, then realized their mistake. They asked him to stay, but he realized this island was no longer his home, and left to find a new one.

Ga Matoran claim he was the prototype Toa that lead to lightning Toa being made, and that they too held a weight in their hearts much like Stovau, which is why they’re so temperamental.

Right page written in Matoran-

(His tears
deepened
the sea.

Stovau, the
mighty
Matoa of
storm.)

Before the wide version of the Storm Matoran picture, I had started on a smaller close up image. The illustration, cropped or full, originated from pictures I’ve spotted in the bathroom tiles.

I took photos of the tiles that I see pictures in the most,and then worked over top of them
with digital paint.

- Tile photo.

Somewhere in the texture I spotted an island,and later the mask of a Matoran. Stovau’s mask was the first thing that brought out the rest of the illustration.

I started by painting over the textures to create his mask first, then built upon the picture from there. Stovau’s mask is a mask of weather. The design was adjusted in the wide illustration.

Right page title- (Peeking from the sea).

The pictures on these pages are actually just unfinished prototypes of the full picture.

To create the wide version of the Storm Matoran illustration, I took two tile photos and put them together. These tiles are side by side on the floor, but I had to do some merging of them on the computer.

I like how the texture of the tile becomes part of the illustration when you paint over it using multiply or overlay options.

I’ve always seen a storm and an island when looking at these tiles.

Multiple characters have been spotted in the texture, but the scene has remained the same, a stormy sea with a lightning lit island in the distance.

Many other illustration could come out of this texture, but the Storm Matoran came first.

I realized paint alone wasn’t the best way for me to bring out the picture, and instead I used the burn and dodge tool to bring out the values first.

After patient burn and dodge painting, the results are a stormy, black and white picture that looked pretty cool to me even without color.

After this step was done, though I wasn’t sure how well another could make out the scene as a black and white, I went over the whole thing using a watercolor brush set as an overlay layer. I added extra dodge effect on the gray underlayer where needed.

right page Matoran translation- (The shock of his life).

Toasty Kino

Toasty Kino- Toasty Kinbean (keen bean).

"That's it", she thought, "just inch by inch and I'll make it through over these really really hot gaps of lava and be home safe." As she spread her legs across a boiling spring, though skinny compared to others she had seen, she thought about what a friend back home would say, "If you get too close to the source of a hot spring you either end up as a steamed fish or a roasted pile of goop like the beans you're having for dinner."

"No!" she huffed to herself as sweat dripped down her brow, "I will not be a Kiinbean, I won't go down in history as bean soup, I will make it out of here even if I am a little toasty."

(A little story bit of 'Kiinbean's' thoughts as she traveled through a dangerous volcanic area, the heat source of her favorite hot springs nearby).

Kino, or Kinbean were quick nick names for Kiina when I was trying to name my art files for this picture.

I wasn't planning on making this into an illustration. It started with wanting to play around with some Bionicle symbols, and Glatorian/Toa mask icons. Some mixing up and size adjustment of said icons gave me something that looked like a built, semi buff Kiina.

I wasn't sure about background, but her pose looked like she was trying not to step in something while looking down. First I thought maybe she was edging her way along a narrow strip of trail dangerously close to the edge of a cliff. When I went to figure out how to make that happen, it went another direction and instead I thought it would be interesting if she were carefully traveling over lava veins.

The background is of two different Toa element symbols, then gradient was added to the different pieces for color, and finally I played with some texture overlays and filters for either a glowing look, or a scorched look.

Process pages of Toasty Kino. 

Buzz Core

Marker overlay version with plants (left). Buzz Core- Paper texture only base version (right).

In the thick of a swamp sat a pool of energy. The pool itself was meant to keep an actual energy source cool, that energy source was cased inside a special container that had to be removed and replaced every now and then from its unit embedded in the coolant. Normally a Matoran could do the job, but replacing this battery was a special case.

A fracture had formed on the barrel, a leakage broke out. What could be the source of the problem? A toa of air was sent to fly over the area to determine how bad the leak was. What he discovered was bad news, the swamp had become home to a species of hornet, normally harmless, but these hornets had a queen who decided to nest on top of the battery. 

These hornets liked cooler environments for their eggs, a cooling pool was too inviting to resist.

The queen hornet was none too happy when the toa landed and tried to bat her away. Bearing through several stings and having the queen bug cling to his head, he dutifully removed the broken energy pod and replaced it with a new one, then left the hornets a warning by blowing their nest away.

Dreams of the hornet lair. Sounds scary, looks pretty. Gradient color experiment with marker overlay. Has a kind of watercolor effect. I was aiming for something that looked like a quickly done sketch in a field journal. I think I’ve played around enough for this project now.

A reflective version came last. I had played around with this in the quick guide of PSE 12 to create reflections,then did some of my own tweaks afterward. The water effect added a lot of extra interest to the picture I think. This may just be the final stage of the picture.

Some details are missing in the reflective version. You can’t see the unit that holds the battery, which is submerged beneath the water.

There are also no signs of the hornets nest in the scene to show the mess built on top of the exposed part of the battery unit. The only way to make true sense of what’s going on in the scene with added reflection is that this is the broken battery which the Toa carries away from the unit, and the queen hornet came after him, summoning her swarms to pursue the attacker of her nest.

This picture didn't really have a story when I started it. It was a random illustration started with some experimenting. Details about the process and origin of the picture are shared below in the process pages.

I've recently been starting compilation process pages of projects and other subjects to remember things I used, techniques I tried, steps I took, and history behind the project too. I find I like creating digital journal records like this, and would like it even better if I could have enough pages together to print out as a book so I can escape the screen more often.

  Buzz Core-process-page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 6

There are other pages from my records, but not important pages talking about the base steps of the project. A lot of the extra pages are compilations of what I've already written in this post.