I needed one other vehicle for Box Tales book three, and it’s Bea’s Mom’s car. I wanted her to have an older car, so I decided on a 1970s Subaru hatchback.

Sometimes, when designing a car, I will buy a die-cast car to use as a reference, or if I can’t find one or don’t have the time to look, I will just do a Google search. In this case, it was a Google Search, which I use only as a guide.

While sketching the car, I try to caricature it a bit, maybe making the wheels smaller or the roof a bit taller with bigger windows. This way, there’s more room to see the characters inside. The reference picture had bucket seats in the front, but I changed them to a bench seat because the taller seats would have blocked the view of Bea and Box in the backseat. And for any parts that I can’t see in the reference picture, I will just make it up from my imagination.

I also knew from the outline that I would need a three-quarter front view, a three-quarter back view, and a three-quarter back view with the hatch and door open. These three views should work for the various sections of the story where they are in the car.

As you can probably tell by this point, I put a lot of thought into the choices I make.