At the start of this competition, I decided to take inspiration from just the picture. I looked at the colors, the environment, the characters and elements, and started brainstorming ways to convey those aspects through music. For inspiration, I listened music from games or movies that I thought fit close enough to the themes I gathered from the image. Stuff like Finding Nemo or Ponyo which capture the essence of underwater in their scores.
Afterwards, I started thinking of a melody; something that encapsulates everything that I have collected so far alongside my personal tastes and experience. For this competition, I started with choosing the key of Ab, since I though any of the black note keys would create a majestic feel to the piece. When building the melody, I wanted to convey the slow, beautiful and peaceful nature below the sea. The chords for me mostly come second to melody but that is just my preference. However I wanted to use sus chords to represent the feeling of suspension when your underwater.
The piano instrument I used was Spitfire LABS Soft Piano. In addition to the spacious reverb to represent the span of the ocean, the piano created a nice, deep and moody ambience. I also used sine pads to create a deep atmosphere. Some sound effects I thought would fit were also thrown in there for emersion (like bubbling water). Lastly I brought in strings to add variation to the piece as well as add a few more chords in for color. Also, those strings were using either legato or portamento to represent the flow of water.
After everything was written, I added dynamics, changed volume, shifted the equalizer, and did other technical methods to capture the vibes I was looking for. I tend to take a break from working and come back with fresh ears to hear something I miss when mastering or within the composition itself. In the end, I think my pieces turned out great and I'm glad for the feedback everyone provided. But yeah, that's one of the processes on how I write my music!