>>8831728>What would you do to achieve this?Not any of the previous anons, but I'd go with a sort of JtO-like approach where the masks had limited expression but they were still clearly shown to be masks separate from the characters' heads and they couldn't fully emote like the Creative Capers ones.
The thing about the original three movies is they gave the masks two separate "modes". They behaved and some even looked different depending on whether they were worn or not. Like the Mask of Light is flat and lacks the little prongs on the side when it's unworn, but it transforms into a functional "face" when it's on Takanuva. Some other characters have extra bits on their masks, like jaws that match the mask's design and just appear if someone's wearing them. This probably a leftover from the first Lewa mask animation test where Lewa's mask only covered the top of his face but his jaw was poking out on the bottom. Tahu even has tubes connecting his mask to his brain, like it's part of him. Many others have muscles visible in the gaps on their masks, and in Jaller's case these muscles disappear from his mask when he's dead, then reappear when he's alive again. So they didn't simply make the masks expressive, they went out of their way to portray the masks as if they were parts of the characters' bodies when they were worn. But when they take them off, the masks revert back to static objects and the "extra bits" disappear.
The directors used to work on Don Bluth animated films and they said they wanted to bring their experience from there to the Bionicle movies. It's a valid stylistic choice to make the toys look alive, but it's also a weird one for a franchise where masks were so prominent.