DEMONSTRATION
SETTING THE SCENE

You’ve designed your characters. You’ve outfitted them for a desert wasteland. Now it’s time to bring their world to life by creating a detailed, believable backdrop for daily life.

1 ESTABLISH A LAYOUT

Before you do anything else, start by creating a floor plan overview. This particular setting is a tiny, one-bedroom house, so think about what would be there. Make sure you cover the necessities: a bed, a stove for heating and cooking, a small table and a shelf for storage. (The outhouses are outside.)

2 CHOOSE AN ANGLE AND PUT IT IN PERSPECTIVE

Play around with angles until you determine how you want to frame the scene. An easy way to compare the possibilities is to make lots of quick thumbnail sketches from various points of view. Since this example is only one room, set it up like a cube. Place the furniture where it went in your overview sketch, but change the angle accordingly. This is the angle we’ll use for this demonstration. It shows multiple elements of the room and offers a clear view of the doorway and the window.

Now It’s time to start figuring out perspective. If you elongate the left wall, it keeps the scene from being too symmetrical and shows more of the window, shelf and bed. The vanishing point is the red dot at the corner of the doorway.

3 MATCH THE SETTING

Start adding more content to the interior. To make it fit into the setting, get rid of most of the straight lines. The ceiling is a bit wavy—a combination of woven plastic and corrugated tin. Even the wall on the right and the doorway are slanted.

4 FILL IT IN

Have some fun thinking about the kinds of things that would fit into this type of home. Take into consideration what is needed to live, but also what’s comfortable for the family who spends their lives here. Edible plants crammed right next to the window take advantage of the available light. A stove serves for both warmth and food prep. Shelves provide storage, a small table doubles as a work surface and dining area, and the rugs on the floor and the collection of pillows and blankets on the bed add a lived-in touch.

5 ADD DETAILS

Now’s the time to really sell your setting. Add in little hints of the outside world to tie this home together with what you’ve already established. The grill of the stove started life as a jeep grill; it’s been scavenged from an unusable vehicle. The planters are made of rubber tires, and the window shelf is held up with cobbled pieces of pipe. Everything is showing wear; the walls, furniture and household goods are all a little dingy and well-used.

DAYTIME PALETTE

In the morning, try coloring the scene with natural light, yellows and oranges. Provide a warm tint to the beiges and grays within the house; even the green on the plants is tinted yellow. Add lively expressions to the characters to match the colors and complete the picture of a vibrant, happy scene.

NIGHTTIME PALETTE

Try leaving the angle and room the same, but switching to a nighttime palette. There is some light coming in through the window, but the blue shadows don’t tint the interior. The plants have dulled to a blue-green shade, and the embers in the stove cast a faint yellow-orange glow.

6 EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT COLOR PALETTES

Using a different color palette can give the same scene an entirely different feel.