Behind the Scenes: Halloween Lo-Fi Room (Patreon)

Aaah, October. Air thickens with chimney smoke in the countryside as the night temperatures drop, while during the day you catch the last warm sunlight beams of the Indian Summer. Just the perfect season. Spider webs, bats, skeletons and pumpkins. Candle light and cauldrons, cookie jars and candy. 

If you enjoy popular culture and themed holidays, you can easily get inspired and find a lot of creative motivation. At this point, it's almost second nature. I can't imagine going through October without modeling at least one spider, or a pumpkin.

It makes things a bit easier for a while, just going with the flow and not forcing yourself to come up with ultra-original ideas. It's cozy.

Visit the full Pinboard here

I really enjoy a bit more stylized and playful style this year, so naturally I had a cute Halloween themed design in my list since August. I wanted to follow up on the lo-fi inspired study room from earlier, but this time filling it with all the October goodness. Lo-fi girl gets a witch's hat this year.

I built a mood board following my weekly pattern, searching for the broad range of subtle and low-key room ideas. All the while injecting the finest Halloween kitsch in between. 

It was quite a lot, so naturally it requires some filtering and organizing, so I pick the best candidates and literally crop out the small details, arranging them into a grid of details to remember.

This helps me to build the assets palette that I can use while sketching. Not everything finds the way in. You need to be aware of the detail density, because if you over-do it, even the best models can get lost in the mess.

This is why a sketch is the perfect medium to test out ideas. And yes, I'm again cheating with iPad and Procreate. I might make it a permanent habit. The time saving is enormous. Layers, selections and transforms as opposed to a B2 pencil and eraser is completely different game. I used to stick to traditional medium, because I could accomplish two things at once. Ideate and train my lines. 

But as time becomes more and more precious, I have to reconsider old habits and on the other hand, the freedom of digital sketching allows for much more forgiving trials and errors, hence more iterations.

But it's a bit of a conundrum. Limitations and unforgiveness of a pencil forces you to think more and can a positive impact on the outcome, while digital unties your hands, but can make you go on auto-pilot.

What's your choice of a medium?

You can watch the process video on Youtube.