The scene is inspired by the interior of the ISS. I modeled, sculpted, textured, and lit everything in under a week. No kitbash models were used because I wanted to see how much I could fill the scene with custom assets inside my self-imposed deadline. And, if I'm being honest, a friend didn't think I could do it in a week, so of course I had to prove him wrong :P
With only a handful of days to work on the project, creating areas of rest in the blockout was more essential than usual. Not only would they create negative space and give the eyes a place to rest, they would also cut down on the amount of shit I would have to model. Fortunately, the nature of the scene allowed me to make heavy use of arrays.
Normally, you start to suffer diminishing returns as you continue to work on a project. However, I was essentially creating my own kitbash elements as I worked. The more I modeled, the more assets I had to reuse and modify for a new purpose. My biggest challenge was holding back from adding micro details that I love, but that no one could notice on fisheye and a 14mm lens. Instead, I forced myself to stick to the ref and create big, chunky shapes that looked boring to me, but would become greater than the sum of their parts in the final renders.