I’ve decided to kick off a long-on-the-backburner creative project in earnest this year, after spending much of last year wondering if I can teach myself to draw (leading to all sorts of private notepad-and-Clip-Studio related tomfoolery.) It turns out I have a really bad mind for the sort of abstract mental shape-rotating I need to draw vehicles and buildings freehand. But I can get decent passable results if I make myself props and work from those.

I’ve forgotten pretty much everything I learned about Blender last year, and really just needed a prop that I can wiggle into place to get the rough proportions of a 3d object. So I had a go with Magicavoxel, a very easy-to-learn free open source bit of software that lets you plonk and colour cubes, essentially Lego-style, and it was exactly what I wanted.

Here is the stuff I’ve created to actually use so far: a little one-person cargo trike, and a set of Imaginary Lorries (loosely based on the Alvis Stalwart).

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