Lewa helped land Creative Capers the Bionicle production. All images © 2003 the LEGO Group. © Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.

Bionicle: Mask of Light is the first feature in a planned series of movies based on the popular line of comics and toys created by the LEGO Co. Produced in association with Miramax, the film brings the legend of Bionicle to life in a full-length CG feature. The film was produced in record time using a combination of domestic and overseas animation studios.

Jaller, captain of the Ta-Koro guard, awaits the start of the Kolhii game.

The characters in the Bionicle universe had been well established in the past. In addition to the toys and comics, LEGO expanded the franchise into Flash-animated games on its Website. Bringing the Bionicle characters to the big screen, however, required that the characters become fully fleshed out entities that could carry a long form movie. To take Bionicle to the next level of entertainment, LEGO partnered with production entity Create TV & Film, which contracted with animation studio Creative Capers Entertainment and its three principals: directors David Molina and Terry Shakespeare and producer Sue Shakespeare.

Creative Capers has been in business for more than a decade, and has had very strong experience both in traditional animation as well as toy design. This gave them a distinct edge when bringing the LEGO products to life. In order to land the deal, though, they produced a short audition tape of Lewa, one of the characters, in brilliant CGI action. “It was Lewa speaking, moving, and expressing emotions in ways we had never seen before,” says exec producer Bob Thompson. “After viewing that test, we knew we had found an animation partner with the talent and skills to take our characters from action figures to CGI action heroes.”

Creative Capers’ first task was to redesign the characters for the big screen. “The LEGO toys had previously been converted into CGI-animated characters for 30-second TV ads,” adds Terry Shakespeare, “but David and I knew we had to make major adjustments if the characters were going to be able to express emotion and move naturally on the screen for 70 minutes.” To this effect, the Creative Capers team added such features as hands, muscles in the legs and arms, as well as custom texture maps to give each character a signature look and personality. The final addition to each character was a light in the chest, symbolizing a life force.