#timecats

Practice drawing straight lines, curves, circles, and ovals because there will be A LOT of that going on. For circles and ovals, try to make the ends touch (as you can see it takes a few tries lmao but it’s a good warm-up). I usually do these whenever I don’t have time to draw, like on a scrap piece of paper. 

Use one single stroke rather than a bunch of small ones. Not only is it a good habit to make your lines nice and clean, but it also makes the drawing process so much faster in the long run.

Use geometrical shapes like cylinders and cubes to block in poses and armor and to visualize proportions and how they interact in space. It’s also a good opportunity to practice some perspective and foreshortening. (this is where those art mannequins come in handy if you want, I personally never used them but I probably should’ve lmao). There’s quite a lot of art books and online tutorials out there that go into much further detail, so I highly recommend reading through some.

USE REFERENCE (such as the actual sets, screenshots, concept art, etc.) This one here is very important for drawing anything in general. 

Breaking things down into shapes makes it so much easier to mentally visualize how things would look at a different angle. You can even trace the pics for study purposes to see how things fit together and to get the shapes and proportions down.

Search up pictures and videos of how different mechanisms work, like different types of joints and pistons and hinges (there’s quite a lot of ball joints in particular).

Although what I like the most about the movie designs is that quite a few areas are filled with organics like muscle sinews for the Toa Metru or that brain-looking stuff for the Toa Nuva.

I kinda jumped into drawing biomechs straight away instead of learning to get a grasp on human anatomy first (which in hindsight was a mistake because even now I struggle with humans lmao) but it would be incredibly useful to learn because there’s quite a lot of connections between the structures of biomechs and the human body. Bonkles are just a lot more skewed, and this goes for more than just the movie version I’m using as an example. Posing will also be a lot more easier to deal with.

When it comes to posing, nothing’s better than stick figures amirite guys

Personally I’ve found Kanohi and non-Kanohi faces to be especially difficult to draw because it’s so easy to make them look wonky. Tracing references to study them helps a lot to get the proportions down, and then you can break them down into blocks. Try out different angles, the shapes change drastically sometimes.

But once you’ve gotten Kanohi/faces down, the fun part comes where you can squash and stretch them! Play around a bit and learn how the facial features interact with each other. Making silly expressions in a mirror helps a lot (even without the mirror you’ll probably end up involuntarily making faces anyway). Watching any of the Bionicle movies will give you plenty of examples since you get to see animated expression changes. I use the Piraka as an example here because of their giant teeth. \o/

If squash-and-stretch masks aren’t your thing, then body language and eye expressions will help compensate.

All this stuff may sound daunting, but all it really takes is practice! The earlier you start, the better you will be later, and you’ll save a lot of time and work in the long run. Take inspiration from the works of other Bionicle fanartists and note what you particularly like, such as lineart or color choice or armor design.

Of course, the most important thing is to have fun!