Behind the Scenes: Friends Apartment (Patreon)

Some themes are probably just eternal. If you feel like there's nowhere to turn for inspiration and you want to make your consistent weekly or monthly progress with a new project, they are a good pillars that you can count on.

All of us have some shared popular culture moments. Be it the blockbuster movie that defines an era, or a TV show that everybody in a generation watched at least a bit at some point.

So this week it was my time to take a creative rest, grab one of those evergreens and just enjoy the process of creation. And it's hard to imagine a bigger TV staple of the generation, than the Friends TV show.

Visit the full Pinboard here

There are multiple iconic settings within the show, but since I have already made Central Perk coffee shop, it was time for the apartment. You can even go really meta on this topic and create it as a studio set.

I was interested in more stylized, tiny room approach so naturally it would mean some compromises. But first I had to round up all the available reference and gather details. I mostly use Pinterest and image search and collect everything in a board. It keeps all my boards online and easy to share with you.

But for the actual production board, I default to PureRef app, drag all the important images there and use crop and scale tools to get rid off the clutter and only focus on some particular images and details.

The final and most important step before the production for me is the rough scene sketch. Here is where everything that I soaked in comes together and forms into a composition.

Don't dwell on the sketch visual itself, it can be only few rough lines. The important thing is the ability to synthesize your ideas and all the reference and test out different versions of what you want to create. It was apparent, that for this style of room and at this scale, the whole living room was impossible.

Not only that, leaving out certain parts of the furniture and whole chunks of room became necessary to make it work at this small stylized scale. I picked a few key details that were absolutely necessary to include and laid them out first. I'm talking about the iconic slanted patio window, the sofa, table, old TV set and blue door. All of it wrapped in purple walls.

The rest was just about deciding which little details should make it into the scene.

You can watch the process video on Youtube.