I hand modeled everything in the scene to make it feel more stylized and cohesive in its design. If i only did a few models and then  sourced others from online, the models would have different resolutions and modeling all of the models gives me complete control of it.

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Originally i was going to make a single blender file for the assets and then pool them together in the final scene assembly. However, I did not do that, because after making the first couple of models(treasure chest  and the bookcase) I wanted to play around with these models after  enjoying them so much.

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the background is just a 2D plane, jest extruded and manipulated simply.

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One Important thing I learned from this was duplicating objects vs. Instancing objects in blender: Where I am more used to just copy and pasting or just duplicating (shift+D) objects in blender, i found instancing objects in the scene to be much more useful. Instancing objects would not only duplicate them, but any changes i made with UV's or Textures would follow through.

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The most Eye-catching object in the scene is the Orrery(the big moving planet thing by the window). The window itself was based off the works of Illustrator and painter Alphonse Mucha and his  Art Nouveau art style. the final window was chosen to be orange, to contrast against the mostly blue interior. The Orrery itself is just a the same math function put into the rotational axis, just with a  few differences. Using "#frame=40" on the z-rotational axis was the only math function I used for the orrery, just changing the number between halfling it for smaller gears and setting the integer to a negative would make colliding gears seem to work together, clipping at a very small instance. Taking inspiration from the Michael Bay Transformers  visual effects philosophy of having everything in front of the camera practically work. Every gear, every rotation the Orrery does is technically correct, the speed, and nothing clips into itself .

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The other math function is the mystical orb  on the ground floor. it just does "sin(frame=10)+14" to move it up and down on a sine wave offset vertically by 14m. 

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While i did hand model and animate everything, I sourced almost the textures from https://freestylized.com/all-textures. their stylized look of textures is exactly what i was looking for. The star ceiling pattern, the glass,  and the sun texture I made myself in Photoshop.

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the paintings in the scene are done by Rebecca Guay, Raphael and Alphonse Mucha

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For the lighting, i worked to make as many lights practical, which means having the light come from realistic places. That being said, the glass and transparent textures on the glass don't entirely allow the light to come through, so i had to compensate with area lights to let the scene be better lit. The torches were also a challenge. I wanted to use keyframes and a noise modifier to allow the lights to 'flicker' like real flames, though its only noticeable on one shot for the final render. I chose not to  fix them because i wanted to get this render done. If I had unlimited time, i would definitely work on that, but the project overall is not affected by it's success or failure.