3D Anime Backgrounds - Urban Exile

I have been working on creating more stylized background renders from LightWave 3D using some techniques of my own design. The goal is to create backgrounds that fit better into traditional Japanese-style animation shows (anime).

I have made good progress but I still have a lot of work to perfect the new techniques. My current goal is to create a reasonable likeness of a background from the show FLCL (one of my favorite anime shows of all time, although it’s a bit surreal and probably nonsensical if you aren’t already interested in the genre). Here is the background I am trying to duplicate in LightWave:

Screenshot from FLCL showing the bedroom of Naota, the protagonist. — Screenshot from *FLCL* showing the bedroom of Naota, the protagonist. (Click for larger view).

Here is my progress so far:

Raw LightWave render of the basic walls from Naota's room. (Click for larger view). — Raw LightWave render of the basic walls from Naota’s room. (Click for larger view).

The gradients on the wall are created from the way the surfaces are lit by pure white light. However, I created a new node network that attempts to mimic some of the properties of paint (specifically, watercolors) and I’m using that on the walls, which is how I get some variation between yellow and green. I also used some shader tricks in the node network of the right wall to reduce the darkness of the shadows, but I haven’t fully decided if I will use that technique for all of the textures.

I want to reduce the complexity of the scene; right now there are six lights just for the room and I don’t know if they will work right when I add new objects to the scene (like the desk or bookcase). But I have a good start and the results so far are very encouraging.