MATA

MATA is an internet comedy series created by CallanLoF and Jman98. It revolves around the misfortunes of the Toa Mata, as they try to live out their normal lives among the villagers of Mata Nui in-between their various adventures.

Production
The show is produced by, who does all of the directing and editing. Music is usually from CallanLoF's editing program iMovie. Episodes are primarily written by as well, though  and  also write episodes. All three participate in the conception of episodes, however. Towards the end of the first season, joined the MATA writing team and has already written two scripts,.

Conception
The idea for the series was sparked when created the shorts Bonding Brothers and Broken! on his own channel. This inspired to approach  with the idea of creating a full-fledged series surrounding the characters on the Custom BIONICLE channel. Enjoying the idea, agreed to produce them. Later on Chicken Bond became a writer for the show. The name MATA became final and was chosen due to it best representing what the series was about, the Toa Mata.

Casting
The cast from the two original pilot shorts were casting for MATA, namely, , Bethany Lang, and. With this, the final part in 's shorts was released under the MATA name. During the pilot's production, iBIONICLE was casted as Lewa. The only main character not casted was Onua, which was undecided by the time the pilot finished it's primary production, in which Onua wasn't intended to appear until the following episode. However, it was finally decided that would take on the role. With this finalized casting choice, the final short in 's Toa Mata shorts was released under the MATA name, titled Golden Kanohi that featured Onua. Along with this, an additional scene at the end of the pilot episode was made featuring Onua. After the pilot episode aired, was replaced as the voice of Tahu due to unreliability, in which he was replaced by Heronexus. Lewa later on was also recasted after What the Dermis Turtle? had aired for similar reasons, being replaced by Toddy Harold.

Reception
Initially the first three episodes received mixed reactions, however after the release of the fourth episode, What the Dermis Turtle?, episode ratings began going up along with critical responses. The series has been called "one of the best stop motion series" by The Three Virtues, a BIONICLE news/media channel. The series has been praised for it's voice acting, writing, and production.

Toa Mata

 * Tahu (6 episodes)
 * Lewa (5 episodes)
 * Gali (6 episodes)
 * Kopaka (7 episodes)
 * Pohatu (8 episodes)
 * Onua (7 episodes)

Matoran

 * Ahkmou (1 episode)
 * Zemya (1 episode)
 * Nuparu (1 episode)
 * Pisto (1 episode)

Rahi

 * Dr. Doom (2 episodes)

Mata Nui

 * Cafe Custom (1 episode)
 * Best Buyonicle (1 episode)

Main Cast

 * Heronexus - Tahu
 * Toddy Harold - Lewa
 * Bethany Lang - Gali
 * Jman98 - Kopaka
 * CallanLoF - Pohatu
 * Ids5621 - Onua

Former Cast

 * Jareroden97 - Tahu
 * iBIONICLE - Lewa

Crew

 * CallanLoF - Writer | Director | Editor
 * Jman98 - Writer
 * Chicken Bond - Writer
 * BobTheDoctor27 - Writer

Trivia

 * CallanLoF's shorts Bonding Brothers and Broken are what inspired Jman98 to inquire a full fledged series surrounding the Toa. CallanLoF enjoyed the idea and thus, MATA was created.
 * A special episode, titled Vocal Therapy, was created for The Three Virtues YouTube channel to announce the affiliation between Custom BIONICLE and them. It featured the cast from their upcoming film BioCraft and the cast of MATA acting off each other.
 * What the Dermis Turtle? and Order are the only episodes thus far to feature all six Toa onscreen at once.
 * The Toa Mata have appeared in videos on CallanLoF's channel, namely an episode of the Gallitor Report and his 2013 Christmas special.
 * They also appeared in The Brutaka Update's 200 subscriber video.
 * Puns, What the Dermis Turtle?, and Conversation all feature a glitch with the Custom BIONICLE intro, either it lagged or wasn't present at all. This was due to a problem with iMovie, the editing program CallanLoF uses to edit the episodes. The issue was fixed when Jman98 took on the job to add the intro and credits for each of the episodes starting with Life.
 * Pohatu has more appearances than any of the other Toa in the series, while Lewa has the least.
 * Despite having been mentioned in several episodes, the Turaga never actually appear.