Ashna Choudhury
3D Artist | Modeler | Programmer
Baker's Kitchen
About a year ago, I created a Kitchen Set as part of a short film I was working on with my peers from college. Although I immensely enjoyed working on that project, I could recognize that the final product had a lot of room for improvement. Looking back on it, I could have been a lot "smarter" about how I set dressed the environment. By that I mean that I did not pay as much attention to the scene composition, lighting, sets shading and a lot of other factors that affected the final product.
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Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I came across this wonderful Kitchen Interior concept by Milena Vasyukova. It immediately caught my attention and stood as a fun piece to create. The artist did an excellent job in creating an engaging, lived-in space without over-burdening it and utilized lighting and composition to do so. I realized that this would my opportunity to redo a kitchen set, but this time recognizing the many things I overlooked a year ago. It was deeply satisfying to see and feel how my skills significantly improved from then, and this piece ended up being a wonderful learning lesson in set dressing a space efficiently.
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Along the way, I had a lot of fun researching different tools and recipes for baking and learned a lot about it in the process.
A huge special thanks to my friend Stella Seo who acted as my "Baking Expert and Consultant" on this project and endured my many silly questions.
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Responsible for modeling, set dressing and lighting
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Concept by Milena Vasyukova | Baking Expertise by Stella Seo
The original concept 'Kitchen Interior' by Milena Vasyukova that inspired this project.
As I started to model and set dress this piece, it occurred to me that I should begin by doing more research into the actual baking goods being made in the concept to ensure accuracy in the tools, items, and ingredients in the final set. After speaking my Baking Expert and Consultant, she determined that the cake shown in the cake is most likely a layered Chiffon Cake with whipped cream in the middle and an orange icing glaze on top.
I referenced specific recipes that she sent me and made sure to include the vital ingredients and baking spices into the set. As a result, the set does have a sense of accuracy and believability as well as a personal touch to it that I'm proud of.
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These were the recipes I referenced while doing research for the set:
Chiffon Cake | Orange Icing Glaze
After creating the set, I decided to experiment with some volumetric lighting to get the wonderful halo-like glow coming from the window and shining perfectly onto the cake. That combined with some depth of field and other camera work made the final renders incredibly dynamic.
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Some day in the future I hope to shade the set!
