Obstacles with the Lotus Position

I was just about to delete this (pretty decent) image, when I decided I could at least share and talk about it first. It seems unlikely I will use this in LLRR, unless I can fix it.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a big fan of breasts pressing against the chest. Also eye contact, strained breathing, and more. I love missionary, but I also really like the "lotus" or variations therein (both people upright).

I've attempted this basic upright pose SO MANY TIMES, you have no idea. Every time, there's a whole fucking slew of problems I have to deal with before it starts to look alright.

First, there are the basic pose questions: How are Flin and Amy holding each other? What exactly should their arms do? Should Flin wrap his arms tightly around her, or should his hands grip her shoulders, or grip her hips? If wrapped around her, should they be around her waist or around her chest? Should Amy mirror him, or should she grab his hair? Should her arm(s) be more loose and free?

Let's look at an example:

See, I bent Amy's left arm back, and had Flin's right arm go more around her waist. Their hidden arms are implied to be what's holding them together, though I sorta imagined she could be resting against the steering wheel a bit. Anyways.

I really like when both are gripping each other tightly, but if I have both of them do that, it covers up all of the breasts except the top cleavage part. Like so:

It does have a certain niceness to it, but I dunno, I wanna see that area. But now, consider this shot that was used in the car scene:

This used the above car shot as its starting point, and there are things I really like about it, but I kinda hate what Amy's and Flin's arms are doing (the arms closest to the camera). There isn't really that "fervent grip" I wanna see. However, you get to see Amy's bellybutton and torso shape and stuff, and I think that looks kinda cool (and hot). Not to mention, you see the entire breast shape.

Take a look at how I handled it in Julie's car scene (nice, daytime version currently unavailable in game!):

Flin's arm grabs her flank, while her arm bends UP to grab the head of the car seat. I really liked how this one turned out (mostly), but I didn't want to repeat the exact same thing for Amy and Kelly. But, speaking of Kelly, this isn't the first time I've done the "arm up" thing:

A friend of mine felt this looks like she's recording this with her phone. While I don't really agree, I'll admit it does almost feel that way to me. Anyway, if her arm bent down, it would either have to grip Flin and cover up that nice underboob curve or lay limp against the bed, which is just not the energy I wanted here. It could grip the sheets or something, but it's still not the same energy as straining the entire arm.

So, figuring out what the fuck to do with the arms is the first hurdle. Assuming I even get that far, THEN I need to figure out the logistics of posing them into place, getting things to slot together without clipping too far in together, etc.

THEN (or rather, concurrent with that) I need to figure out the breast curves, because that region's the focal point approximately 100% of the time in everything ever, right? THAT is its own pain in the ass that I don't even wanna get into.

Finally, and probably the toughest hurdle of them all, is trying to give a sense of "velocity," or motion. Animations take a TON of work, so most the time I want the image to just work on its own. And what I mean is, I want it to look like Flin's thrusting into her, and she's thrusting back against him.

And I just do not feel that in the original image above, where I pretty much do in all the other images shown here. It could MAYBE be repurposed if I softened their expressions, but I hate repurposing. I want to/have to make the image I set out to make!

Anyway, I'm starting over and building up to this one again, and I think I'm onto something, but I'll get back to you on that.

Amy's scenes are coming along quite nicely overall, but as you can see here, I'm still hard at work trying to finish them out. Current plan has shifted to release the next update around the start of next month, but I'll try to make it worth it! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!