Motion Capture

Ellie showed up at the studio in her yoga pants and loose-fit tee, a little ahead of when she knew the director liked to get started. She was feeling energized, having had a light breakfast and still working on her travel cup of cold brew.

The interior of the motion capture studio was always warm, but even more so today, and when she reached the central open area, with all of the lights and cameras and green screens, she started to understand why.

Her costar Todd was there before her, as he typically was, running through his repertoire of stretches on the mats. This was part of Todd's routine. Ellie didn't even know how early Todd got started every morning, but he wouldn't talk to anyone or even make eye contact until the morning officially started.

This morning though, Todd was doing his stretches completely nude. The only thing he wore was a slight sheen on his skin, and more dark, coarse body hair than she would have expected, if she'd ever imagined Todd naked. He seemed completely un-self-conscious about it. Around the periphery, members of the crew were getting everything else set up for the day. Ellie noticed a couple of them sneaking looks at Todd's muscled form, but otherwise everyone acted as if this was business as usual.

"Good morning," Ellie said softly to Maria, one of the audio techs. "No dot suits today?"

"Yep, no dot suits today," Maria replied, with a raised eyebrow.

Ellie took in a deep breath. This was her biggest role yet, co-starring in a triple-A game, along with the legendary Todd Stevens. Curveballs were just part of the job. If Todd could handle it professionally, then so could she.

It felt a little odd to shut herself away momentarily in a changing room, only to change into...nothing at all. On the counter was a bottle of body oil for her. It had a pleasant coconut scent, and it felt good, rubbing a little of it onto herself, her arms and legs and torso and chest. But she couldn't let herself get distracted, the shoot would be starting soon.

She took a look in the mirror. She was used to seeing herself in the dot suit--an intimately form-fitting bodysuit with white dots all over it for computer tracking. She'd also practiced her moves on the mats in a sports bra and shorts. She was used to seeing her muscular, stocky physique, and this wasn't all that more revealing, right? But oiled to a shine, her every curve shone like marble.

The studio had felt warm when she walked in, but walking back out into the open space, it felt much more neutral to her interior temperature. She still had goosebumps though, from going naked in front of so many people at once.

There had to be about a dozen people working in the studio, something she'd never felt so acutely aware of before. Everyone she worked with would see her large nipples on full display. They would all see the trail of hairs down to where her legs met. And if her movements required spreading her legs, there would be no hiding what lay between them. Nevertheless, if it was no big deal for Todd to let his junk hang out, then she could do this in the name of gender equality. If there's going to be boob jiggle in this game, it's going to be the way my actual boobs actually jiggle, she thought.

"Huddle up!" the director, James, called out from the center of the room.

They all formed a circle there, everyone at least lightly clothed, except for Ellie and Todd. Ellie could feel their eyes on her naked, oiled body, whether they were leering or not.

Across the circle, Peter joined the group a little late, and gave her a look of surprise. He was less subtle than others about looking her up and down, but the sight of her naked also wasn't entirely new to him. They'd recently started dating, their relationship starting with a late-night hookup after the studio's Christmas party.

Ellie wondered what Peter thought of her going naked in front of everyone, but there was no opportunity to ask, in front of everyone else. It wasn't as though their relationship, if it could even be called that yet, was at the "announcing to coworkers" stage.

"We have a short agenda today, because the scenes that we're shooting are going to be physically demanding for our leads here," James said. "As a reminder, absolutely no social media today. Footage from today is not cleared for release under any circumstances. Not even a making-of documentary."

That possibility hadn't occurred to Ellie until he mentioned it. The rules were reassuring, even though they made her more conscious of being on display.

"Today we're capturing the romancing scene between Cranos and Hadra. This is something we've been building up to for a long time. It'll take players almost two hundred hours of play time to reach this point in the game, and you all know how many hundreds of hours of motion capture have gone into that."

Ellie nodded. It had been clear from the start that Cranos and Hadra, the two playable characters, were being set up as potential romantic partners of each other. They'd even shared a brief kiss, rudely interrupted by a dragon.

Doing motion capture of the kiss had been a new experience for her, the cameras focusing in on their faces to analyze how their lips came together, in a way the dot suits just couldn't capture. It had meant nothing to Ellie herself; Todd had been unfailingly professional about it of course.

This wasn't Ellie's first gig doing a romancing scene, either. When she started out as a voice actor, she'd just go into her sound-dampened closet in her pajamas, and record her moans of passion, collecting a bunch of takes for the audio editors to comp together however they wanted it. She found herself getting into it sometimes, and would even finger herself during some of the takes, to lend it authenticity. And because it felt good, of course. Sometimes those takes made it into the final game, sometimes not.

That was before the voice acting gigs started to be more competitive and lower-paying. Transitioning to motion capture hadn't been easy. She had to learn the technology. She had to learn martial arts and stage acting. But the gigs were better, and she ended up in the best shape she'd ever been in. Not thin, she'd never be thin, but strong and muscled and fit.

A lot of her early roles in motion capture had been the stocky sidekick. Or an early-game boss fight. Or a wise auntie. Occasionally she had roles where she was romance-able, the thicker romantic option, for people who were particularly into that. These would typically be graphics-lite indie games, and all she and her romantic interest had to do was bump their hips together suggestively, like teenagers grinding at a high school dance.

Ellie figured it'd be something like that for this game too. A little bit of playful foreplay on screen, maybe a montage of them banging in different positions, and then a fade to black, maybe a scene of post-coital cuddling. James held them to a high standard for their performances though. Some generic grunting and cooing wasn't going to cut it.

She was a bit lost in these thoughts when Maria handed her an earpiece. Everyone else was clearing the stage, other than a couple guys bringing in a waist-high table, padded on top and covered in bright green fabric.

They closed off the motion capture area, leaving only Ellie and Todd inside, but they were far from alone, with cameras on all sides, and their coworkers just beyond the plexiglass partitions. For the first time in a while, Ellie became conscious that the people working in the studio were probably 75% male. When she first joined the team, that seemed comparatively good for the games industry, but it was still heavily imbalanced, and all those male gazes were trained on her.

In her ear, James started giving them directions. "Hadra stands at the center mark. Now, action. Cranos comes in from the left. A door swings shut behind him."

It always took a second for Ellie's mind to shift gears and respond to the name Hadra, but once they started rolling, it was easier than switching back and forth.

"Cranos strides towards her, gazing at her intensely. Almost runs toward her, but restrains himself. Doesn't want her to feel threatened. This is the first time they've been alone, and out of mortal danger, since that kiss. Hadra reaches out for him, but he stops just out of reach."

Todd was indeed almost rushing at her, and he was entirely in character now as Cranos. Ellie found the shift almost unrecognizable. Where Todd was sparing with his words, Cranos could be boisterous at times. Where Todd kept his face impassively slack, Cranos had a constant tension in his jaw, and the lines of his brow always had something to say. Even after months of shooting, Ellie knew almost nothing about Todd, but she felt like she knew Cranos inside and out.

"A beat, and then her want registers with him, and he closes the gap between them."

Todd pressed in close, and Ellie leaned up, her lips meeting his. They had to kiss, really kiss, for this. There was no substitute, and so she did. The human contact made her instinctively gasp, even if she could sense that behind the mask of his role, Todd was indifferent to it. His abdomen was pressed against hers, and if he'd started to become erect, she would have felt it, but nothing stirred down there.

"The force of their collision pushes her back to the edge of the table, her hips sliding up onto the edge, her legs drawing him closer. They embrace there, marveling at each other, drinking each other in, exploring each others' bodies."

Ellie recognized when James's direction turned vague, he was giving them space to improvise. She continued making out with Todd, reaching around and feeling the contours of his broad shoulders, the curve of his back, the muscles of his buttocks.

She had to shut off the part of her brain that wondered if Peter was watching, and what he might think of how she acted as Hadra. She couldn't afford to let that affect her performance. After all, Peter ought to know that's all it was. If Todd's worshipful caresses of her naked breasts made her cleft run hot, that was her private pleasure, her embodiment of her role, even if it meant nothing to Todd. She wondered if she could conclude anything about Todd from this--that he was gay, or asexual, or just really not into bigger girls like her.

"Cranos's desperation grows. He must have her," James said into their ears, still reading off his cue sheet.

Todd reached down between them, his hand coming to rest flatly against his pelvis, but it was a motion as if he was lining himself up with her. In response, Ellie leaned back a bit onto the surface of the table, angling her hips up, as if to take him. And then Todd pushed forward, spreading her legs wider. He didn't quite press his flaccid penis against her vulva, but they were mere millimeters apart. Ellie cried out as if he'd plunged into her depths, her hand steadied with white knuckles against his collarbone.

He started to push at her then, but gently at first. By keeping a strong hand on her hip, Todd could push her back and forth in time with his movements, without making actual sexual contact. Ellie settled into his rhythm, rocking herself in time with his "thrusts", her vocalizations moving from drawn-out moans of ecstasy to little breathless cries. It wasn't hard to draw upon her own physicality for inspiration. She felt so sensitive down there already, she wouldn't have minded at all pressing something--anything--against her. Even Todd's flaccid penis.

They could draw this out if they needed to, but Ellie was also ready to fake her orgasm whenever the moment came. She had plenty of experience at doing that, from her past acting gigs, and from some of her past relationships. On the other hand, sometimes it worked for her, and she had a wealth of life experience to draw upon for her performance.

"What are you two doing??" James said, his voice loud in their ears. "Cut. Cut! No, don't get down, just pause there. I'll come to you."

Ellie and Todd stopped, holding their positions, as James moved aside one of the dividers to come stand by them.

"Todd, you not even...!" James said, looking at Todd's flaccid dick.

Cranos was gone from Todd's face. "This is how we did it in the last one. This is how we've always--"

"Look, I know this is how things are usually done, but it's just not working for me," James said. "I can tell it's pantomime. The rhythm isn't right. The angle between you two isn't convincing. You've both been literally beating up stunt men for months. You can't pull your punches now."

The remark was aimed mainly at Ellie. Some of the stunt performers hadn't been ready for the very real level of power her kicks and punches had to them.

James went on. "The reason we're not using the dot suits today is partly because your characters are naked, and we need to see how their skin moves. But also because we need to see some real connection here. If we have to hand-animate parts of you, it's not going to give us the same result." He gestured at Todd, still limp. "Would Cranos really be soft right now? Would Hadra really be satisfied with...this?"

"You want actual penetration," Todd said bluntly.

The question had been forming in Ellie's mind too, but she hadn't figured out how to ask it, or whether it'd be appropriate to ask.

"Yes, Todd, this whole sequence depends on it," James said. "We've already invested a lot of R&D into making this part of the game real for the players."

"Real? He shoots fireballs from his hands. I'm playing a mage who fires ice arrows," she said.

"That's why it's so important to have these authentic, human moments too, and to make them as real as possible," James said. "Players will get haptic feedback through the controller. They'll have quick time events to keep it going, they'll have decision points over how it plays out. If we take shortcuts here, it'll cheapen the experience as a whole."

It was straining Ellie's back to stay in their mock coital position, so Ellie sat up straighter on the table. This demand was unexpected, but many of the director's demands were.

On the one hand, it was something that had never been asked of her before, even in those other sex scenes she'd done. On the other hand, it was just another physical challenge on top of many others. There had been lots of days when she'd gone home sore, dehydrated, even bruised. She couldn't truly say they weren't using her body for this game. No, they were already using it to the fullest. And she could almost see this as more of the same.

There was just one minor issue. Ellie wasn't on birth control.

When she first became sexually active as a teenager, she started taking the pill, and she thought it was safe, but she ended up with a teen pregnancy anyway, because the pill wasn't dosed right for a girl her size. A couple months after her period stopped, she took a test just to rule it out, and was in for a shock. She hadn't had any other symptoms, and with her freshman fifteen sitting around her waist, it seemed like she could have easily carried a baby to term completely unaware. Fortunately she was able to terminate it before it went too far.

She'd experimented briefly with IUD, but couldn't take the pain. Over the past several years, she'd been meaning to find some kind of birth control that worked for her, but she hadn't ended up dating enough to justify the bother. In the meantime, knowing how easily she could get pregnant, she'd always used condoms, including most recently with Peter.

But that meant the possibility of pregnancy was always there, lurking underneath, and sometimes it was exactly that risk that added to the excitement. Ellie had no plans to get pregnant though. She figured that had to follow after dating and marriage first, and she'd had little progress on any of that.

Sure, she'd dated a few guys over the years, but mostly she was still used to being overlooked by guys, on account of her weight, and a perhaps self-reinforcing cycle of not putting effort into dating, or how she looked. To her, dating could be fun while it lasted, but she'd long ago been disabused of any expectations that it'd go anywhere.

To make matters worse, this was probably the riskiest point in her cycle to be doing something like this. Besides the risk of pregnancy, she had no idea where else Todd's cock had been.

"Can we use a condom?" she asked.

"Where's Cranos going to get a condom?" James asked. "Besides...no, that wouldn't work for the story."

"No, I mean, can Todd use a condom?"

Todd's expression gave no hint of a reaction for or against the idea. "It won't really affect my performance one way or the other."

James rubbed his temples impatiently. "No, there'd be a discrepancy between the real shape and the digital shape. We'd spend a ton of time trying to touch it up in post-production, and we don't really have the budget for that."

Todd looked to her, waiting patiently. If they were going to do this, she had to agree. It was reassuring, in an odd way, that Todd wasn't jumping at the chance to have sex with her. After all, that's what it would be. Literally having sex to do motion capture of a sex scene.

"Can we reschedule this scene for later?" she asked.

If they could delay, at least Ellie could go get some birth control pills today, and be better prepared for doing this later. Though she didn't want to have to spell that out for these guys.

"We could rearrange the schedule for this week, potentially," James said. "But after that, we've got the final battle, and we've already booked two dozen extras for that. Big set pieces to climb. And we've already set up for this now; some of this equipment has to be returned in a few days. You see how that would impact the project, right?"

Ellie's mouth felt dry. Another day this week wouldn't really be any less risky. But she didn't want to derail this game. It was already a huge, high-budget production. It was already potentially her break-through role. And casting her as the female lead had been a controversial choice, a statement in support of body positivity, in an industry still dominated by unrealistic standards of beauty. She knew the studio was expecting a lot of push-back for it, and if she started making unreasonable demands, they might decide to recast the role, even if that cost time and money too.

"Okay," she said. "I get it. Let's just get this done."

"Good," James said, stepping away. "Back to starting positions, everyone."

They started the scene over from the beginning. Except with a couple key differences. On the first take, Ellie's arousal, though definitely present, was only a faint shadow of Hadra's arousal she was trying to portray. But this time, it was very real for her. Maybe as real as it would be for Hadra. He was literally going to penetrate her, and her whole body was trembling with anticipation of it.

The other difference, which became apparent partway into the scene, was that Todd was obviously aroused as well. When we stepped close to her, she felt his erection firming up between them. It was something else for her hand to tease and take the measure of, when they were exploring each other's bodies.

Ellie had dated enough guys over the years to not measure them against each other, but she did recognize Todd's as a bit long, to match his stature, and a bit muscled and veiny, to match his physique. She couldn't guess how he'd managed to get himself hard this time, but not the last--what fantasies Todd must be running through his head behind his Cranos mask.

He was sensitive to her touch, or at least he portrayed Cranos that way, and sometimes it was hard for Ellie to keep straight which of the two she'd be fucking, before remembering that it'd be both, in a way.

When he reached down and lined himself up with her, she felt the tip, spongy but insistently firm, pressing into her folds. He didn't ask if she was ready, because he didn't have to. It was voluminously evident, her juices guiding him seamlessly into her core.