Alan says:

It is a kind of worldbuilding, but it is different to painting or drawing which restricts your vantage point as you tend to have a fixed view. With a 3D model, you can actually pick it up, turn it around, and imagine yourself walking through it. When I am making, I imagine myself walking through the landscape and I think about how it would seem to a tiny person in that place. I like things to be grounded and interesting from every perspective. I spend an awful lot of time staring at trees, trying to observe their form and proportions and how they change in different seasons. But these scenes are also inspired by stories like Alice in Wonderland and Jabberwocky, so they have that element of imagination in them too. They have a nostalgic feel. To achieve that I have played with scale so, for example, there are tiny animals dotted around which are the correct scale to the tress, but the mushrooms are much much bigger than they ought to be. Even if you don't notice that as an onlooker, it gives it that playful feel to the scene, almost unconsciously. You can imagine being a tiny person in this magical place, putting your arms around these giant mushrooms, giving them a hug. What fun to be somewhere like that!