While it's snowing outside the window

Once, I watched how my granddad while sitting by the stove, was bending his old body to put some logs in the fire. Looking around, I saw scratches and peeled paint on the old furniture. My little house has become timeworn just like my grandparents. 

I wanted to create a scene resembling memories of my vacations at the old house in a small village. The scene of my grandfather drinking tea and heating the stove, while it's snowing outside the window. 

The first image resembles warm memories at my grandparents house. My grandparents enjoy reading a good book, when there is a snowstorm outside. It's cozy and we all just love to drink hot tea with sugar and bagels. Winter is also a season for nuts and tangerine.

In my second scene I removed the warm and cozy mood to impose cold and dark, but still magical atmosphere, because that's how I see winter. I wanted to show the details on the worn out furniture, because winter is also about getting older and wiser. Also, I wanted my viewers to notice the somovar hiding behind the stove and waiting patiently for the winter to go.  

Moodboard

The first two rows of my moodboard, was used for reference different on the different furniture. The rest was for lightning and mood. 

Design concept

I wanted to create semi realistic assets, but the lightning should be more exaggerating and fantasy like, because in the end, this is a resemble of my memories. 

Assets and materials

At first, It was very hard for me to understand what I was doing with the nodes, cuz I haven't really played much with them before. Especially the painted stove with rust and burn outs was a challenge, but as I progressed I learned so much, that my tangerine, nuts and bagels where entirely made without watching a single video. 

I had to use, some textures like fingerprints for the surface imperfections, frozen ice (for my window), the imperial texture for the curtains, water droplets and steam for my tea, but the rest materials and assets where made by me, including the texture on the wall.

I would also like to point out, that I used emission for my steam and when the strength is completely down, it will make the steam invisible.  

Composition

When you sit for too long with a project, you kind of don't see anymore, where it looks bad or good, but luckily I had a bunch of people to ask for help, and they came with great advices for improving my scene.

My idea was to make the tea my main focus object, because it is the most important part of my story, I wanted to put it in the right corner of rule of thirds so that it would be noticeable, but not taking all the spotlight, as the other items also play a role in my story. I placed some stuff nicely  around and tried to make sure that there was no side that was heavier than other.  

This is from my first to one of the latest test renders. Crazy how much has changed, and I'm honestly very happy with the results :))

Thank you for your time :)