“With my compositions, I never really aim for realism,” muses Amrit Pal Singh, a product designer with an unflinching devotion towards storytelling. Having recently rekindled his love for 3D design, the next logical step involved wielding it to reimagine a string of brilliant rooms—gateways to a world of possibilities and childlike wonder—where a shared sense of adventure ties them all together. “No matter where the room is or what is going on, you do want to take a second and imagine living in it,” he says as he dives into the key processes, insights, and research that make each room worthy of spending a lifetime in. The designer shares the first six of twelve rooms that are part of this nostalgia-soaked series inspired by art, literature, cinema and everything in between.
Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles
“I have a replica of the original painting in my studio, right above my desktop. Staring at it routinely for the last year, it was naturally the first room that came to mind.” Singh's research led to a very special letter penned by the post-impressionist himself—“Vincent describes the painting to his brother, which is what inspired my style. "Yellow Like Fresh Butter" is how he'd described the bed. I used saturated colours and a little flat lighting so it still looks like a painting.”
The Classroom with Mirror of Erised
“I belong to the Harry Potter generation, I was the same age as Harry when the first movie came out,” says Singh. Including the Potterverse was, therefore, a must. “The window in this artwork sets the tone.” Singh's rendition of the Classroom is a lesson in achieving whimsical flair through lighting. “The moon is at its nighttime peak and lights the room beautifully. Sparkling gold off the mirror against Hogwarts' dark blue walls made for a wonderful colour composition. The candle adds a little bit of warmth to the frame because I wanted it to look inviting, not scary.”
Murph's Room from Interstellar
“There is something about space travel that really excites me,” says Singh who turned an ordinary room from a science-fiction film into an extraordinary symbol for cosmic exploration. He elaborates on his process—“One of the hardest bits was locking the colour scheme. I fixed on a palette of browns and golds based off of the Tesseract in the movie.” The shot features 237 books and he'd hardly consider designing them a picnic. "Modelling all the props took quite a while—which props to focus on was a big challenge. The bed, bed sheet colour, and the headphones balance out the many space-related artefacts to make Murph's room seem more believable.”
The Room With Aladdin's Lamp
“Calling the cave a room might feel like cheating but Genie was in lockdown for ten thousand years so his room deserves a shout-out. There are 5132 gold coins in the scene. Naturally, the file was heavy. I could have faked it but what's the fun in that?” muses Singh. Because there are no natural sources of light in a cave, he “used the magical jewels and gold to light up the scene. If you notice, the colours in this scene are from the magic carpet.”
The Simpsons Living Room
For someone who's been alive and around for as long as the show has been on-air, inducting The Simpsons into ‘The Rooms Project' was a no-brainer. “It's an institution,” says Singh and the fact that it's “the one with the least sense of adventure” hardly puts a dent in its legacy. “Most of us are living this quarantine like Homer Simpson, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as you stay inside,” he quips. “Look out for the doughnuts and Duff beer. I wouldn't mind some right now!”
Jerry's Room from Tom and Jerry
The sixth room could very well be Singh's homage to Gene Deitch, the recently deceased director credited with reviving the beloved cartoon series. With several different studios working on the show through the years, “there was no particular iconic room that Jerry had like in The Simpsons.” The artist combined variants designed over time to create his own. “This so far has been my favourite room to make because I got more freedom and the idea of being miniature like a mouse or a gnome was really fun to execute,” he adds.
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