I wanted to create a piece that captured both the landscape of Los Angeles and the emotions I felt the night I left the city at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. That night, the Grapevine was completely shut down, making it difficult to get out of LA. The experience felt surreal and tense, and I wanted the environment and lighting of the piece to reflect that feeling.
These are early shots from the first draft of the piece. At this stage the scene was made up mostly of buildings, and the lighting was coming from a lower emitter, which caused the structures to lose a lot of their definition. In the next render, I focused on adjusting the lighting to bring more clarity and depth back to the architecture.
In the second render, I added more models to better communicate the landscape of Los Angeles, including mountains and palm trees. I also experimented with switching the lighting from pink to white to see how it would affect the scene. While the white lighting did help define the buildings more clearly, it lost some of the emotional tone I was aiming for. Because of that, I ultimately shifted to a red lighting scheme for the final render to bring that feeling back into the piece.
Short Gif Version
