EDIT: I'm shutting off comments on this version of the piece just to clear up some confusion. I know some of you wonderful folks will comment on everything, and I also know sometimes it's hard to come up with something new to say to what is a very similar piece. Let me me what you think on the FINAL version of this, and if you like this one better, etc. I really like this one. I was sitting there, on stream. I didn't want to continue the last piece I was working on because all it needed was some final adjustments to the light and then hit the render button, and I didn't want my broadcast to be that short. For a few moments I stared at the blank "canvas" and wondered what to do. I thought of doing something inspired by a ying-yang, with interlocking figures. I loaded these characters because I thought it would be fun to use them for it. I didn't think to just ROTATE the second figure, lol. Instead i used the symmetry tool to mirror the first. I started moving them around a bit, and realized that I liked where it was going a lot. Back to back. Echoing the ideas of both loneliness, and closeness. I spent some time fiddling with the poses to better fit their shapes, to make them more comfortable. Then i started working on dForce. Lenny proved to be a challenge. I made the mistake of trying to run everything all at once, and that Jam hair is no joke! Things exploded in the chest area. dForce breasts, but no dForce shirt - learned a lesson there. Took a bit to finagle that, but I do think I ended up with a better outfit in the end. Once i got the hair set properly I was sure to freeze it and then work on the rest. Ended up using a timeline animation to get it all together. I figured Lola would give me fits. Because of course I decided to use a dForce item on her as well. The excellent "Relaxed" shirt, however, proved just how excellent it was when it ran through the entire simulation with zero issues, moving from memorized pose all the way into position with no fuss. So it all comes back to contrast and balance. Lenny always wears black, so Lola needed to wear something colorful, which suits her. That also came together with minimal fuss, as the hearts pattern for Relaxed fit the bill, and "Universal Tee" came with a pure black texture. There's a lot of great texture packs for Relaxed in the store that I'm going to have to add to my collection. It's such a great shirt to work with. Then came the lighting. Here, too, I wanted contrasts. Lenny should be in shadows. I set up a spotlight and tuned it until it was how I wanted it for Lola, but at that point Lenny was a little TOO much in shadows. To fix that, I set up a plane with an emissive, raising the light levels just enough to define her, to reveal her, but not enough to banish those shadows. Seeing how it rendered, I'm tempted to run it again without that panel though. It came up darker in the preview. Lighting can be so fussy! I textured the plane they're on, which required a little more fiddling with the light as the grey backdrop darkened everything. That little bit of texture, I think, adds just the right touch. It felt right, anyway. Originally I was going to run it with the camera putting them perfectly symmetrical. Lenny on the left, Lola on the right, easy to draw a line straight down between. But it felt wrong. A little rotation fixed it, with the light coming more from below. Still kind of mimicking the ying-yang to a certain extent. I feel this better emphasizes their differences, that it looked "unbalanced" with the camera set the other way. I like it. Anyone think I should try it again without the light panel and see what happens? It don't take too long to render. I'm thinking of using it as a promotional piece for the book, so I probably should see it the other way, just to be sure. I hope this is enjoyed. Thank you in advance for comments. I always look forward to reading them! ~~LA