I was browsing the Journal of Applied Treknology, and saw some really amazing ship designs. I'm interested in making some myself, but I don't even know where to start in learning how (e.g., what software to use). Any suggestions?
Well...the obvious one is probably Blender. Its free and open source. And there are dozens of you tube channels providing free tutorials. blender.org - Home of the Blender project - Free and Open 3D Creation Software It can be a little overwhealming at the beginning. But it dosent really take a long time to get hooked and achieve good results. For starters I would recommend the channel Blender Guru - YouTube wich is kind of the classical, go to guy for beginners. Grant Abbitt - YouTube for exaple is also very good and has a discord with a lovely community to start at. But honestly there are too many good content creators with helpful quick tips and tutorials and to name them all would take half the day. You might find "some" tutorial where people use advanced techniques wich are complicated and not easy to use as a beginner. But keep in mind that you really only need a tiny fraction of blenders features to make your design become real. (and it highly depends on what you want to achieve. Its ok for concept art to be kinda sloppy in the execution. And a model wich is supposed to shown in an image has other requirement then one for a video game or movie...)
I am familiar with Blender. I should specify 2D designs, but thank you for the response. (Example of what I mean: )
For 2D, you can use: Vance´s toolkit: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/vance.php Kelvin Veldar toolkits: https://www.deviantart.com/kavinveldar/gallery/51843109/parts Mihoshik toolkits: https://www.deviantart.com/mihoshik
I use Illustrator on my work machine and Affinity Designer on my hobby machine, but neither are free in any way. At least Affinity is pay-once rather than a subscription. The free alternative to those apps is Inkscape, which is... well it's pretty darn good for free.