I never actually intended to make Casey Jones, but the one positive result of the new BIONICLE® color pallete is that the dark-red and dark-blue match his outfit perfectly. I can’t even remember what the original cartoon version looked like, so this one is based entirely on the modern animated version. The body design proved to be a lot more difficult than I’d originally expected. I was just thinking VAKAMA torso and NOKAMA hips/legs, and I’d be set. The problem is that his pants ended up with a dark-red stripe down the center in front and back, and it looked bad. I tried tacking on 1×2 flat liftarms, but that only really helped when viewed straight on. From the side it still looked bad. Then I tried making a little wrap-around piece out of dark-blue pieces from the TECHNIC® R2-D2 set, but I was missing one vital piece …until I realized that if I dropped the waist one notch, I could do it entirely with one shape.

The arms were pretty simple, since he runs around in a tank top, and the head is modified with a RAHKSHI head for his long black hair. The legs were a bit tricky to pull off, because I wanted them to be entirely dark-blue, and quite a bit shorter than the standard TOA METRU stilt-legs. Again, R2-D2 came to the rescue, along with six HAHLI hands. Socket joints are linked end to end with C-shaped pieces from the R2-D2 sets, and NOKAMA’S forearms serve as shins. In order to further reduce the height, I flipped the ankles flat, which does have the somewhat unfortunate result of making the feet a little bowed.

So, with the body done, it was time to move on to his arsenal. Looking at the new TMNT DVDs, I was able to make out two baseball bats, a golf club, and a hockey stick, all packed in a golf bag. In a bit of sneaky ness, the baseball bats only have one handle between them, since he’ll always be holding at least one. When he’s holding both, they each have half a handle, and when he’s only using one, he’s holding it two-handed with the other stowed in his golf bag. I did have to make a duplicate of the large part, which does not fit in the bag. Unlike the spare bat, which is just a handle when displayed, the golf club and hockey stick are actually removable and have full-length handles. The two bottom discs on the golf bag are rotated 90 degrees so the holes don’t line up, which prevents the hockey stick from dropping through the bottom, and after a lot of trial-and-error design, I finally came up with a workable shape for the shoulder strap that didn’t involve resorting to a chain piece.