The Bio-cup is an annual building competition, mostly centered around the Bionicle building system, but mostly just a tournament for making good mocs! It's been going since 2011(!) but I only joined in 2024, and I've made it to semifinals both years I participated so far!
Before I get to showing off my mocs I built for the cup, I do want to show off This Board I made showcasing every biocup and all its matchups! please check it out and let me know your thoughts! (be warned the sheer number of images may cause it to run slow/crash on mobile)
Biocup 2024 Preliminaries: Space
I was vaguely aware of the Bio-cup in 2023,mostly just to the point of seeing a lot of cool mocs at the same time. when people started sharing around the announcement post for 2024 with the preliminary theme of 'Space', i realized "oh this is like a thing. hm lemme see if I can put something space-y together!" It was my first year having a room dedicated for pouring lego all over the floor and building, so I was excited to have a big project to throw myself into. I grabbed the Endor planet part to represent a planet, and came up with a planet eating...bat...thing. idk it looks cool.
I tried several different eye/teeth options in the building phase, but ended up just using the G2 Onua Armor stickers as the eyes, I think it works for the end presentation i went with. Though there is always something to be said about the goofier ones.
Round 1: Gravitational Energy
Woohoo! I made it through to the actual bracket! The theme for round 1 was Energy, with several subthemes and matchups being assigned. I got Gravitational Energy, and my head was buzzing with ideas.
the Dance of the spheres seemed the most "artsy" one, and was the one I had the clearest vision for, so i got building!
pretty quickly stumbled on this Metru torso + SW shell combo that i absolutely LOVE, and i just ran with it. initially I gave the Sun flame arms using that connection they have, and while i did like that, my gf said it made it more "fire being" and less "personification of the sun", and I agree.
Here's a solo shot of the Sun cause she's just so gorgeous
Round 2: Cleric
After proving myself in the first round and getting used to the pace of two-week building, the next round was announced. The theme was DnD classes, and I was assigned Cleric! Other contestants were assigned Wizard and Monk, so I had to make sure my entry definitively read as "cleric-y". I did research into the different subclasses and schools and examples of clerics in media, trying to decide which would be best. I narrowed my choices down to two options I would be happy building. One was a robotic Nature cleric, in a scene defending a small flower. The other one was a Moth cleric of Twilight, serving as a night watchman type.
I asked around, and the unanimous decision was the moth. Nature robot is such a trope in DnD, and moth felt like the more interesting and unique choice. As I often do, I started with the face. It was pretty difficult to nail the cuteness of moths while still feeling buglike, but also a little creepy. I was also having trouble with the legs, it felt incoherent in the early days.
I had initially planned to use the old knight feather part seen above for the tufts on the antenna, but after finding out how expensive they are in white on the secondary market, I pivoted to the Mario wings, which honestly suit my style a lot more, and made my character feel much more fluffy. After doing some sketching, I realized that a long cloak would really help the silhouette here. in retrospect this seems obvious, but sometimes you just get lost in the weeds of a project.
At this point, I wanted to rework the face/neck area. I tried pulling in more lavender using these minifig arms, but I still hadn't found that perfect charm yet. I did find that these Hero Factory armor pieces gave the right collar silhouette I wanted, and would be even better with the cloth from the Range Trooper when I replaced my paper proxy of it.
