Finished color version! This was a hell of a piece to figure out how the lighting would work on. Man!

Here we have a concept of where Maia lives.
We got a glimpse of what her apartment was like on page 3 [link] , 4 [link] , and 5 [link] of the short thesis comic I did, but we only saw a small corner of the living room the whole time. I wanted to draw the whole thing now, so that I could get a good feel for Maia's place within the city of Aricee.

After a few days of moving in, she's still trying to get settled. The majority of the space is empty, as she has very little to fill it with. Some of her utilities aren't connected yet, so the TV doesn't even work. She's too new and culture shocked to go wandering outside to explore her new neighborhood. So... she just sits and thinks to herself.

The looks of the apartment was inspired by the Brutalist Architectural movement: [link] - mixed with the aesthetics of the 1996 N64 game Wonder Project J2. Boston, [where I live,] has a good number of famous brutalist buildings. [See more awesome examples here: [link] ] Combining that with Wonder Project J2 yields a more industrial feel with the use of bright colors and grunge.

For clarification, Maia's apartment used to be a greenhouse on the roof of the building. Years before, no one was using it anymore, so the landlord butchered it and converted it into a livable space for rent. It explains the very open living room where the walls and ceiling are glass, the odd ventilation, and the air misting sprinklers still in the ceiling.

The steep stairwell added up front is the entrance/exit. Those stairs lead down to the roof on the third floor [seen in on page 5 linked above,] where Maia must use an emergency stairwell on the side of the building to get to the street level.

Bedroom through the door in the far back, kitchen through to the left, and the bathroom is the door on the left close to us.


Influences: Wonder Project J2 [link] + [link] + [link] , Swedish Graphic Design [Lego, IKEA,] Brutalist Architectural Movement, Tokyo Commercial-Residential Suburbs


Process Shots:
Initial Rough Sketch: [link]
See JUST the line art: [link]
Closeup Detail of my favorite little section: [link]