Bara Magna Map

When the Bionicle legend continued into 2009 the story moved to an entirely new location. I drew this map to give the full overview of this rough and traitorous world. Danger and mystery lurks everywhere.

Great Dane Productions logo

In 1997 I designed this logo for my good friends from Great Dane Productions in Los Angeles. 

Maersk Air decoration concept

I have always thought that it would be fantastic to design the paintjob of a commercial airline and at one point I got very close to try. At Advance we had Maersk Air as a client for many years and they planned to get a new design on their fleet. With this design I tried to capture the magic moment where the plane breaks through the clouds into the blue sky. It never got further than the paper and the airline was sold in 2005  

Diving deep with the Toa

2007 was a fantastic year in the Bionicle legend. We got to go underwater for an entire year and for the second half of the story I directed the trailer teasing the adventure of the Toa Mahri as they chased the Mask Of Life. "Face Me" was specially composed by (what later would be known as) Cryoshell to support the story of the Toa Mahri.

Mahri transport vehicle design

When the Toa Mahri chased the MOL and had to get to the bottom of the sea in the second half of 2007 we took the opportunity to change the style of the equipment and the tone of voice of the campaign. The Toa Mahri goes into action “special ops style” in a very high-tech underwater transport vehicle and their equipment includes all kind of diving gear and the gatling inspired Cordak blaster. All the equipment the Toa had found in the bottom compartment of the island core. They traveled inside the cord that ran from Voya Nui to the Mahri Nui plateau. Ghost VFX helped rebuild the Toa Terrain Crawler and we designed a full inner cabin for the Intro scenes of the Mahri trailer. The design includes pressure chamber and valve room with exit hatch. It has a Cordak rag that folds away in the roof and automated dive helmet lowering device. The tentacles at the end of the vehicle points at the idea that this was a biomechanical craft. It was a blend of machine and sea creature, maybe a giant squid.

Mahri Nui concept

This concept drawing of Mahri Nui was done to depict the mood and feel of this surreal underwater location. It is a “snapshot” seen from one of the rocky gorges up towards the Matoran villages under their air bubbles. The air is kept in place by a web of special super strong seaweed. In front on the right you can see the plant that the Matoran harvest for air. Some red molten protodermis has made its way all the way from Voya Nui and is flowing over the ledge. The small craft on the left is an early design for a vessel that the Toa would use to descent to Mahri Nui in the hunt for the Mask of Life. Later that craft would be designed and shaped very differently and it would travel inside the hollow cord that held Voya Nui anchored. But more about that in a later post.

The design of Mahri Nui

This was a dream come true to design. I love the underwater setting so getting to create something from scratch was great. The broken off piece that make up Mahri Nui was impaled into the sea bed and the Matoran that were captured down her build a village for themselves. They lived inside bobbles of air which the harvested from the giant seaplants growing down here. Air was their most valuable treasure because it kept them safe and kept them away from the corrosive saltwater and the monsters of the pit.

The Voya Nui icon

The shape of Voya Nui was designed to look evil and mysterious inhospitable. Almost resembling an evil eye. This was the home of the Piraka the infamous smiling villains

The design of Voya Nui

 The Ignition trilogy that kicked off in 2006 was all about getting the Toa on a great quest. This was an adventure that would send the heroes into fantastic unknown location to meet amazing opponents, all in the chase to restart the heart of Mata Nui.

The next 3 years of story would take the heroes from a floating island to the bottom of the sea ending up at the heart of the universe for the final showdown in the air. So all tree environments would come in play ensuring diversity from year to year until 2008.

The floating island of Voya Nui, which actually was the missing piece of the heart, was now in the ocean anchored to the seabed by a chain of molten protodermis. The anchor point was the pit of Mahri Nui that at an early stage broke off and sunk to the bottom capturing a population of Matoran in the deep. The hunt for the mask of life led the heroes to discover the lost Matoran in the deep. So they could be saved and get inside before Mata Nui was revived.

Bionicle Heroes cover concepts

At Advance we did a lot of different cover suggestions for the Bionicle Heroes game and the face off between an Inika and a Piraka was chosen for the final cover but here are two of the other suggestions. 


This cover concept uses a very graphic style with a silhouetted hero seen from the back facing a horde of redeye villains symbolizing the impossible task the Inika are facing.

The other cover concept shows Hahli Inika coming ashore on the very hostile coast of Voya Nui. The rocky coast resembles the face of a Piraka

Bionicle Heroes Logo

Early in 2006 I designed the logo for the Bionicle Heroes game. It had to contain the original Bionicle logo as well as the word Heroes so I chose to use a symmetrical shape and make “Heroes” into a spiky arch that could work as a baseline for Bionicle. At the same time Bionicle was made bright orange to differentiate it from all pervious launches.

The final showdown

This concept poster was done in 2006 trying to envision what the battle in Karda Nui between the Toa and the brotherhood of Makuta would look like. 

At that point I had no idea what the actual product would look like, only that this would be a battle in mid air so here you see a Toa riding some kind of glider. He is being chased by an evil looking craft or creature looking like a blend between an “M” for Makuta and a manta ray. It shoots energy blasts and hits the wing of the Toa craft. The fight takes place just next to the “great fall” the water pouring into Karda Nui and Av-Matoran are watching from the fragile suspension bridges between their villages.