The Lost Chest

An unlocked chest sits in a room that time has begun to erase. Its owner and contents remain unknown. Sunlight still enters, flowers grow across the floor, and the chest stays where it was left. I wanted the scene to raise questions about this place without answering them for the viewer.

I started with the room’s basic structure and built the chest as the focal point. Then I worked through its form and details before bringing in vegetation and sunlight. Those additions changed the space from an empty room into somewhere that felt abandoned, but still alive.

The finished scene was my first attempt at making a realistic environment tell a story. The flowers reclaiming the floor and the light drawing attention to the chest suggest that life has carried on around it. Building this space showed me how composition, lighting, and individual assets could work together to make an imagined world feel believable.