Hi All,

I am working on a column about dios for PopMatters, and it occurred to me that I have no idea how this strange offshoot of the hobby began; when did people start photographing toys outdoors and building settings and such?

Also, what do dios mean to you? For me, they helped me to rediscover play, to some extent; I collected toys as an adult for fifteen years but never did anything but place new figures on my shelf; taking them outdoors is a lot more like how I played when I was a kid.

If anyone has any facts or insights or soundbites to add, I'd be grateful.

Cheers,

Monte

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I used to build settings for my toys when playing as a kid, I just never thought to take photos! As for dio-pictures, my earliest experience of those would have to be the brochures, leaflets and posters that came with the toys showing all the products in the range. They often had scale scenery making the toys look more realistic, and considering all the different environments GI Joes were made for this helped reinforce the character of the figures & vehicles. You also often got to see sets probably built by professional model-makers on the TV commercials, which made me want to go out and landscape my dad's garden in 1:18 scale!

I totally agree on your point about making dios being like playing. I always used to like making dynamic poses with my figures so now that can be considered practice for when I'm going to take some pics. And it gets the imagination churning too -- I don't have the ability to just escape into play at the drop of a hat like I did as a child, it takes a bit of effort now but I can get similarly excited when I start to construct a storyline around what I'm setting up. If this is the closest thing to play I'm capable of as an adult, at least I'm justifying having this toy collection by doing something with it -- I didn't spend all that money on stuff that's just going to sit hidden in a box!

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Last updated 2/5/10.

I'm pretty sure you want the impetus for most dio creators has to be a toy catalogs or store displays. If not for these, how would we know what the things were, much less how to take them out of the basement/bedroom floor and do something else with them?

I think the armature sharing their displays was the beginning back when people had to rely on film. Digital photograph and the internet were the big game changers lowering the barrier to entry probably for most of us into this hobby.

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Is for constructive criticism (will even settle for destructive) just anything but "Nice shot" or "Awesome".

I'd had story ideas in my head for a while and after reading Violent Fix's Operation Rapier, dio stories seemed the best (and most fun) way to tell them. Doing dio stories is a fun way to combine writing, toy collecting, photography, and web site design. I've learned a lot about photography since I first started taking pictures of toys 4 years ago.

Probably what introduced me to the art of diorama building were a series of levels.. starting with Lego and their space sets, then Star Wars 3/34" with the various Kenner playsets, then to Joes, model rail roads (HO scale then N scale), then to scale model building, then back to Joes with the skills learned from the scale model building.

During my early years I had to rely on my friend's who seem to collect more toys than I could. One friend in particular collected just about anything he was into. Lego had playsets with a space theme. We made Lego bases that grew pretty large.

Kenner came out with a number of playsets for the Star Wars line. The smaller figures meant it would be more realistically doable to sell larger, more complex playsets. The Death Star set was the first that really jumpstarted the diorama scene for me at the 3/34" scale. Other playsets from Kenner at the time included cardboard backgrond scenes. The earliest I remember was the escape pod where the droids landed. But the first one that was durable to move outdoors was the Death Star.

Outdoors we used bricks, flowerbeds, and everything we could to make a stronghold. Bricks were used to expand the Death Star set. The Empire had a base on some planet rising out of the ruins of some other civilization.

Then came the Joes, and the dios just grew from an outset of the Star Wars thing--bricks were used to build Joe bases. The same idea but now switched to the more advanced figures.. the Joes.

Model Rail Roads came into play after a while. Totally different and more fragile, but it introduced some skills on making a set more realistic.

From there I got into scale model building of Japanese WWII ships in the 1/5000 scale. Had them on an acrylic sheet with epoxy shaped waves. It was a small fleet. Other things were 1/100 scale WWI and WWII aircraft. These got me into more advanced levels of painting, weathering, and building my own parts for a more accurate model. Scale models develop a lot of skill which I then applied to the Joes.

Then comes the modern Joes, which got me back into collecting them. But I get no thrill from just seeing numbers of Joes on a shelf. Especially not with the memories of them being outdoors all muddy, exposed to the elements. But I'm not a kid anymore. Ahhh! But what about combining 1/18 scale Joes to diorama's, just like I did with scale model building and HO/N scale model Rail Roads? Now there's something a grown man won't feel guilty about.

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I strongly agree. In the 80's I had tried taking photos of the Joe battles my friends and I had. I didn't have a camera, so used my friend's. Unfortunately that also meant he has all the photos, and I just have one.

Digital camera's has changed that. Now I can take hundreds of photos in various light, poses, etc, and not fear I'll be spending a fortune developing them, or having to wait a week for them to get developed. Now it's just so easy to point and shoot and have something to post online within the hour.

Anyway, too bad about the lost photos.. b/c some were really well done.. with burning VAMPs and Duke's dead body on fire....

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For me, as for others posting above, it definitely started with the catalogs, showing the toys in realistic, to scale environments (desert, polar, buildings, airfields...). So, as a kid I already took my Joes and Cobras outside and took pictures of them, even including water and fire in those pictures. And I simply never stopped doing it.

I can't say I had a particular source of inspiration for taking dio pics, it just seemed like a natural progression for me. I started taking pictures of my Joes back in the pre-digital age, and it was a lot more difficult to do back then. Obviously you had a limited number of shots per roll of film, each shot was hit-or-miss, it was $10 a pop to have the roll of film developed (for maybe 6 or 8 good pics) plus you had the hassle of getting to and from the one-hour photo place. Taking pics back then was an occasional proposition rather than the whenever you feel like it pastime that we are lucky enough to enjoy today. Thank God for the digital revolution!

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I got started doing dios because I always wanted to do a comic and I thought using action figures would be easier than drawing. Turns out it's a lot harder and more limiting but it's a lot more fun. I hope to get TOD up and running again soon, I really miss doing it.

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