Side Project - 3D Environment Art

For my side project I am attending a 3D drop in session ran by Lothar Zhou. We have been give the assignment of creating a 3D environment in which we create a scene from a given image.
The brief goes like this:

ENVIRONMENT ART TEST
 

 

Reproduce the elements showing the provided images, using poly modeling and
texturing. Once this is done, imagine the environment around it and extend your scene
accordingly.
 

Polygon limit is around 6000, care should be taken over usage and topology layout (of
both geometry and UVs). Keep the mesh clean, no zero area faces, edges, floating
vertices! No overlapped or degenerated faces, this will cause problem exporting to
engine.
 

Each texture size is 1024*1024 pixels, maximum 6 diffuse textures (not including
normal and specular maps).
 

Please consider props and small asset pieces as reusable meshes, don’t combine any
mesh until I approve.
 

Please provide the tests results in Maya or .obj data (if that is a problem, let me know)
along with your textures pages.

Take the time you need to achieve the test, don't finish anything that you're not a
hundred percent satisfied with and, above all, have fun.
 

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to ask Mark, Leigh or myself.
Lothar Zhou.

So far we have had one session and from this we have been doing a step by step guide into creating the mine shaft. I joined this brief because I want to take my career path down the 3D route, and I want to learn everything I can and improve my skills greatly. I feel this is a no brainier to do and feel this will help me achieve this goal. Here is my WIP:

It doesn't look like much at the moment but over the next sessions we will be creating the environment more, texture it and hopefully exporting it into a game engine.

I will keep updating each week on the progress I have made.