Behind the Scenes: Lo-Fi Illustration (Patreon)

I really enjoy simple and low tech visuals, that represent analog world. They have a sense of calm and focus. That's probably the reason, why the creator of lo-fi study music channel chose the mellow visual of a girl studying in a simple room with not much around.

Apart from it becoming a meme that represents the grit (study forever), it's also one of the best grounding and focused experiences. Running that music with the image on the background while working can really elevate your focus. Guess what I'm listening to right now :)

So when I was looking for something to make this week, I realized I'm looking at it all along. I've made a retro room before, but this is not about the past. This is about the simplicity.

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I went ahead, created a Pinterest board and saved the original lo-fi girl references. Then I started to expand the reference sources by searching for terms like "lo-fi room" or "analog room". I saved whatever caught my interest, even if it was just a single object in the image. 

There was a room image with telescope and I liked the idea of including it so much, that I made sure I save it so I don't forget. Sounds simple, but trust me, after seeing 50 references, your brain will gladly throw out some small piece of information it deems unnecessary.

To help with this, I transfer the best reference images into PureRef and if I need only a single item, I just crop the image and create sort of an object palette to pick from.

And to make a full circle, before jumping into digital world of 3D design, I used my 2B mechanical pencil and paper notebook to sketch out some layout. It really helps me remove the the pressure of having to come up with ideas on-the-fly while working in Blender.

While sketching the basic room layout, I was focusing on proportions and style of the furniture. I wanted this to be a bit out of dimensions, so it feels like a really tiny room with chunky and playful style. So I made sure even in the sketching phase, that the table has unnaturally thick wood and same for the chair.

I kept this kind of approach for other objects as well and slowly filled them in using the PureRef object palette. If you don't trust you pencil skills, just use a lot of eraser like me :)

You can watch the process video on Youtube.