Bionicle MOC: Valtys, Fire Titan of Bara Magna

If you haven't yet seen the story of Valtys, you can check it out here.  What was my inspiration for this MOC?  Basically out of nowhere I wanted to do another being that would tie into the Bara Magna storyline, and the first things that came to mind were the colors red and yellow.  This is how most of my builds begin -- a random spark of inspiration, which leads me to start pulling parts out of bins and spreading them out on the floor.

Now, we've already had some official Fire Tribe releases from LEGO, including two Glatorians, and Agori are pretty easy, so I decided to go with something on the larger side, and the idea of an original Glatorian titan emerged.  Here's the direction I was going at first:

I felt like this had too much Mata Nui in it, though, plus the Brutaka mask, even with the Bara-esque translucent shadow-Matoran head underneath, didn't really feel right to me.  I think mostly it was just too large, making the whole figure seem smaller.  When I substituted Mallum's head, it was perfect, making this guy look really tall and buff, and I rolled with it from there.

The horizontal part of the shield actually can be pulled out slightly and rotated parallel to the vertical part for carrying.  I don't have a good picture of the left hand but I set it up so it looks like he's holding a real shield handle with his clenched fist, rather than integrating a ball socket into the structure of the shield itself.  The axe uses two Axxon axe halves back to back, forming parallel blade edges.  There's a hand & wrist guard only on the right side for a little extra protection -- he didn't need one on his shield side because, well, there's a shield there!

Valtys has a little bit of twist available at the waist thanks to one of those sturdy two-way rotating joints from the original Makuta Teridax set, buried deep in his lower core.  Yes, I use a Zamor launcher as a Thornax launcher.  No, it doesn't really shoot, but visually I think it fits together nicely, especially for a shoulder-mount where proper Thornax launcher jaws would be pretty long and unwieldy.

Well, that's Valtys for ya!  Hope you like 'em!