Global Scale Modeller

Howdy.

I've been thinking about planning a diorama for the near future, and I wondered how other people decide which figures to use.

The reason for my question is that there are limited sets of figures, all with fixed poses, so how does everyone avoid reproducing the same scenes as other people over and over again? Is there an element of frankensteining involved to alter the poses by mixing and matching body parts from different sets?

I've looked at what's available and found myself thinking things like "those would be perfect for the subject, but so-and-so used those last month".

I've got a variety of sets and tend to mix and match whole figures from the sets to fit what I've got in mind although I don't hack the figures about to repose them too much (not yet anyway).

Some of the sets just naturally lend themselves to certain groupings but personally I don't worry too much if I'm using them in a similar way to another builder because the chances are the vehicle & scene will be different even if the group looks similar.

F'rinstance Quax used a really interesting set for the Feline Fever build last year and they're definitely on my list to investigate for future use - I just don't know what for yet

A box full of figure bits and a couple packets of Milliput is my solution to making figures fit my need.
Just by changing arms and legs you can change the whole purpose/appearance of a figure.
You can also buy sprues with replacement heads to give more life and action.

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm watching a few sets of ebay at the moment - quite excited to enter the world of dioramas (when I get round to it!)