Find references from real-life space imagery, or from space scenes in movies, TV or games, which you think convey scale effectively. Then, using VERY simple shapes, try creating some sketches based on these images to convey scale. Play around with placements and shapes, to see how they affect the feeling of size.

Don’t worry about the quality, texture or realism of your sketches during this homework. We’ll get to the specifics of creating awesome space keyframes later in the course. For now, focus purely on the scale fundamentals.

If you took Gabriel’s Planets & Stars course and did this homework already, you can skip it here. Though it’s a good warmup exercise either way!

Use the techniques Gabriel showed in this chapter to strategically gather reference for your project. You can also take your own reference photos, or collect photos you’ve taken previously. Then collect all your reference images on a PureRef board or series of folders on your computer.

Create a set of two black and white sketches, conveying potential story beats. For extra credit, you can create two more sketches, for a total of four. Your sketches should be very simple, and only need to show the main idea of your scenes. Once you have the sketches finished, choose which ones you’d like to refine further in the next lesson.