1:53 AM

Two hundred miles away from family, doing odd jobs by day and hustling her music a few nights a week. She’s just managing to get by in the city. There are people in her life that her mother wouldn’t have approved of, and the persona she wears for them gets tiring. But the rent gets paid, so she doesn’t feel too bad about the way she lives. She’s awake far later than she needs to be, but that’s fine. She craves it. It’s all hers. And that’s enough.

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My thanks to the original artists whose assets are used here, including "Parzival", "konast", "wazzabi", and "Aleksn09", among others.

For this scene I wanted to tackle the cyberpunk genre conventions - shop lights, garish neon tones, clutter, chaotically-mixed levels of shiny technology - but I wanted to do it in a way that felt grounded. The lighting here was primarily an exercise in drawing the eye across the piece from the background to the foreground, and balancing the visual 'weight' of shadows and colors across the view. As the character's background became more fleshed out, the overall drama needed to be paired back into something that was more soothing and warm. It was a fun exercise in creating an evocative snapshot of a private moment.