Capturing Your Distinctive Sitting¶

A recording guide for performers. Optional — skip unless your sitting is part of the character.

Skip this unless your sitting is part of the character¶

A trained model already knows how to sit — it's seen countless people on chairs, sofas, and floors. Ask for your character sitting and it'll handle it. You only record sitting on purpose when the way you sit is itself a signature you want reproduced — a recognizable slouch, a particular perch, a habitual lean. If you just want the character to be able to sit, you don't need this; cover sitting lightly in your general footage and move on.

First, is the sitting actually distinctive?¶

Three quick checks. If it doesn't pass all three, this module doesn't apply.

The silhouette test. Picture your seated shape as a black outline, no face or detail. Could someone still recognize you from that shape alone? If not, it's ordinary sitting — nothing to capture here.
Is it repeatable? Do you sit this way consistently, or differently each time? A signature has to be stable to be learned. If it changes clip to clip, there's nothing fixed to capture.
Is it different from default? Does your posture genuinely stand apart from how most people sit? If it's roughly what anyone would do in that chair, you don't need to train it.

Passes all three — continue. Fails any — skip it.

Name what makes it distinctive — before you record¶

You can't film "distinctive." You film a specific thing. Decide where the signature actually lives, so you capture that and don't waste clips:

Overall posture / shape — slouched, ramrod-upright, perched on the edge, sprawled, leaning back
Legs — ankle-crossed, knee-crossed, splayed, tucked under, one foot up
Weight and lean — forward, elbows on knees, or reclined with arms spread
Hands and arms — clasped, draped over the chair back, fidgeting, steepled
How you sit down — the way you lower in, where you look as you do (only if the motion is the signature)
Idle movement while seated — a bouncing leg, shifting, rocking

Pick the one to three that actually carry your identity. Trying to capture all of them dilutes the signal.

Keep the posture the same, change the seat¶

This is the heart of it. The model picks up what stays constant and treats what changes as swappable. You want it to learn the way you sit and treat the particular chair as just a prop.

So record your signature posture across several different surfaces — a chair, a sofa, a stool, the floor, a bench, the edge of a bed. When the same posture shows up on all of them, the only constant is you and your way of sitting, and that's exactly what makes it transfer to any seat later.

The opposite — every clip on the same chair — fuses the posture to that one chair. You'd get that chair turning up where you didn't ask for it, and a pose stuck to a single surface.

Vary the angle too — front, three-quarter, side — so the posture reads from every direction, not just one frozen viewpoint.

Sitting still vs. sitting down are different footage¶

Already-seated clips teach the held posture.
Standing-to-seated clips teach the motion of lowering into a seat.

They're not interchangeable. If the signature is in how you sit down, you need transition clips. If it's the resting posture, seated clips are enough. Either way, keep natural motion in your seated clips — talk, shift, gesture. Frozen seated footage teaches a frozen result.

How much to record¶

10–25 seated clips, spread across three or four different surfaces and a few angles.
Keep it proportionate to the rest of your footage. If sitting clips dominate your whole set, the character will tend to always sit. Sitting is one behavior, not the whole character.
If you also want the sitting-down motion, set aside a few extra clips just for that — held poses won't teach it.

What to record — sitting shot list¶

Only if it passed the three checks above.

Your signature posture, across surfaces¶

On a chair
On a sofa
On a stool
On the floor
On a bench or edge of a bed
From the front, three-quarter, and side on at least a few of these

With natural motion¶

Talking, shifting, or gesturing while seated (not frozen)

If the sitting-down motion is the signature¶

A few standing-to-seated clips — the way you lower in