Building the Build-Up

If you've seen my published photo-stories, you'll know I love a good build-up.

I'll do a more detail post later on my file-structure and the character work I'm beginning- right now, I want to show you the sort of preliminary work I like to do, to give my story characters some depth.

This scene is going to be a training fight. From left to right, you can see:

• A base G8.1 figure with no morphs or clothes loaded. She's just a place-holder. I want the fight to look like a training one, so there will be other women watching and waiting their turns. I wasn't sure whether to have them seated around the mat, or standing at ease along the back wall, like this one. Still undecided.

• Two fully-done characters with morphs and hair, wearing what I'll be using as a training leotard for the attackers. I also have duplicate versions of these two in full scuba kit, and they'll show up as characters in the battle. I posed the grapple from scratch in a blank screen and saved them separately, which is why they're the only characters that look finished.

• An instructor. You can tell she's in charge because she gets to fold her arms, she's not dressed to do any actual work, and gets to stand on the mat without being told off. She's watching her trainees with a critical eye, and in a minute she'll tell the loser to do press-ups.

• Another place-holder figure, fighting an invisible opponent. I want another fight and audience going on in the background, to give the impression that this is a packed training room. These are the attackers remember, and they'll be using weight-of-numbers as their strategy.

• A man in a suit. He's going to be the mysterious buyer who'll be footing the bill for this mercenary company to take on this raid. He's being shown around by someone, and this is part of the sales pitch.