As I started to consider what my oasis might be like, I realised I didn't much care for dreamy landscapes or futuristic cities, nor did I want it to be something completely detached from the world I'm part of. Instead, what I've always admired are people who do good with whatever they have in the place they call home, so I decided that would be the leitmotiv of my entry. Other than that, I knew my keywords would be:
- Funky
- Cosy
- Bittersweet

Since I didn't think I'd be able to participate in this contest and starting to work on my entry with only one week left 'til the deadline, I'm going to have to make smart choices to make the process as smooth as I can - it's a cool challenge tho! 

Whilst in my usual workflow I would spend lots of time on thumbnails to explore angles and compositions, because of extreme time restricitons I used them more as a way to help me think rather than help me visualise the scene. For the scene I had in mind, making smart choices meant jumping right into Blender to take full advantage of the wonderful superpowers of 3D to help me out with the composition. 

Here are the earliest steps of the process :)

I always knew the piano player would be my focal point, so with the thumbnails I was merely trying to think about what perspective would make them and the window behind them most legible. Even if v1 was clear, I wanted a more dynamic composition with multiple levels that would allow me to tell different parts of the story at once, so I briefly refined v3 into v4.

 And this is what the earliest 3D blockout looked like - most assets are either sourced from Blenderkit / Sketchfab or modelled by me, although it won't matter much in the end since most things will be overpainted. 

Later on I will add more elements to the blockout and some very basic materials just to get a better idea of the values given by light and local colours.