As a way to challenge himself, 3D Artist - Nick Dodd created Mini Detective Office, a project that involves the 'cubic style' which has been pretty prominent nowadays. Check out his great work!

This was mainly an exercise in composition, color, and lighting. I wanted to portray a moody film noir type setting, but without the use of final gather or physical sun and sky based lights. So what that means is I have my key lights emitting both light and shadows, like the desk lamp and window, and then several “bounce lights” that imitate light bouncing around the room. The system called a non-final gather light rig, allows me more control over my overall color and composition in a scene.
-Nick Dodd

The design of the room assets and furniture were predominantly based off of old film noir sets and props. I rarely do this, but I didn’t mock up an initial sketch, so I just kept modeling assets until the room was properly filled. This sort of cubic style has been getting pretty popular as of late and I really enjoy the simplicity of it. I wanted to see if I could do it.
-Nick Dodd

Learn to invest in yourself with time rather than with product. There is no “make me good,” program or class. A lot of what you learn as an artist comes from yourself and being able to keep a hungry, critical eye for your work. Learn to never be satisfied and always want more for yourself and your work.
-Nick Dodd

About Nick Dodd

Nick Dodd is a 25-year-old 3D Artist working for a multimedia production studio called Softway Solutions. There he performs a wide variety of task in the 3D pipeline, ranging from storyboarding all the way down to rendering and post editing. His simple goal in his career as an artist is to “get gewd” at 3D in general. Funny thing about it all is he didn’t even know how to use Photoshop before joining college, much less 3D software. He was all about traditional mediums. See more of Nick's work at Behance or his Tumblr.