The DioWarriors Original Dio-Story

Do you remember "diostories"?

It began over 20 years ago. I can't recall the exact date when I first sat down to use Google Docs for writing a dio-story. I had seen what other people had written and taken photos of: amazing stories using custom diorama settings and action figures. The whole genre of a "diostory" was new to me.  At that time, dio-stories were quite popular on the inter-webs. Various Joe websites and even some related to Star Wars were bustling with activity as their members shared images of dioramas under construction and custom action figures being crafted and painted. Eventually they posted photos of their completed works, typically one chapter at a time, arranged in a photo-journal illustrating a progression of an ongoing story. These were dio-stories -- also known as a photo-novel. They were entire stories made using toys, uploaded and shared among fans. I had not seen anything like it before and I was hooked, and I wanted to do my own.

DioWarriors has always been about creating an idea and using available tech to make that idea real. To make something from our imagination tangible. DioWarriors itself did not exist back then when I became hooked with the photo-novel concept. However, it was the dio-stories that inspired the creation of DioWarriors -- "diorama warriors" a tribute and link to our photo-novel fandom. But to make our dio-stories we needed a way to easily make the props and sets. Thus, DioWarriors embraced the modern trend of home-manufacturing through 3D printing. Since those times we have grown to incorporate various technologies for creating our props -- 3D software, laser cutting, etc.

Now, fast forward to the present: as we prepare the new office I began to think about trying to revive the old dio-story from years ago -- the same story and plot that I wrote in Google Docs. And I was thinking "why not share the old story with everyone." Make the effort of sharing into a shared experience too, where I would post revisions of the story, express thoughts and ideas of new props and even new characters, and share the thought process of pulling it all together into a complex story. The original Google Docs story was meticulous and I wrote it in story-board form so that each scene would be easy to take photos of. But now that I am building the VSS 002 and the original story is already in story-board form, I'm going to start a series of blog posts of this photo-novel.

Please keep in mind this series of blog posts is going to be an active project. I will be posting the original idea, making changes, and re-posting the idea. Eventually the story will take shape -- first as text in this blog, but in time as the new office becomes available, it will become into photos. New props will be made (so you'll see designs of those) and some will become available in the DioWarriors Store. This project will be the revised photo-novel that ignited the dream that eventually led to the formation of DioWarriors.