From AI Prompt To Printable Figure with Jake McKee: Episode 159

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
The Voice of Bob (Bair) (00:11):
Welcome to plastic model mode.
It's dedicated to skillmodeling.
Well, news and events aroundthe hobby.
Join my days to be informativeentertaining.

Mike (00:43):
All right, Kentucky Dave.
It is episode 159.
Yep.
Man.
I know.

Kentucky Dave (00:50):
I know.
March is almost halfway over,man.

Mike (00:55):
We'll be tomorrow.
Well, almost.
About noon tomorrow.
I'll be half over.
Oh, man.
I you're right.
It's it's we're a little latehere.
We had a little schedulingdifficulty here.
I had to run down to EastTennessee for a family matter,
and I'm back now.
And we've had the interviewrecorded for almost a week.
Could be a week tomorrow.

(01:15):
Yeah.
But we're getting it all on thebooks tonight, and we'll get
this out in plenty of time.
And uh we'll get it out alittle after some of our fellow
podcasts drop their episodes forthe second week of February or
March.
So it's all good, man.
It is.
It is.
Well, man, what is up in yourmodel sphere, Dave?

As you may remember, in February's episode,
one of February's episodes, I Imentioned that I started
tracking my bench time.
And I said that in January, Igot about six six hours and
thirty or forty minutes of benchin the the entire month of

(01:56):
January.
Well, I've been continuing totrack it, and February, shorter
month, I got five hours andthirty-seven minutes in at the
bench, the entire month.

Mike (02:08):
What was January again?
Six and like six thirty.
Okay, so and probably youprobably still went the wrong
direction.

I probably did still go the wrong direction,
but and and now keep my keep inmind, I am being ruthless about
this.
This is only time I'm at thebench actually building.
So not watching YouTube orcleaning up or prepping or any
of that stuff.
So I'm still I'm stilldeficient in the amount of time

(02:39):
I'm managing to get to thebench.
And March, I wish I could sayso far in March there's been an
improvement, but there hasn't.

Mike (02:48):
Oh man, I thought you were gonna say you're already there
and it's only the middle of themonth, and you're already at six
hours.

Nope.
I wish I could.

Mike (02:55):
Give him ribbon, folks.

Yes, that's right.

Mike (02:57):
Well keep them spurs in deep.

Yeah.
I've also been acquiring thingsfor the hobby room to try and
improve my my hobby room, andwe'll talk about more of that in
the what broke your walletsegment.
And then finally, HeritageConis almost upon us.
Just about.

(03:20):
And I I cannot tell you howmuch I've been anticipating
that.
So my model sphere is good.
I'm jazzed.
It's uh everything's positive.
I want it to be more positive,but it's positive.
How about you?

Mike (03:36):
Except your bench time.

Yeah, it's getting we're getting there.
We're getting there.

Mike (03:40):
All right.
How about you?
Model sphere-wise, there's alot going on.
Yeah.
I got a lot of forward planningto do still.
I keep saying that, and peopleare probably getting tired of
hearing it, but uh things aregetting a little more
complicated month to month,which is, I guess, a good thing.
Right.
I just gotta figure out theworkflow to make it to make the

(04:02):
workflow.
Yeah.
Honestly.

Well, you're burying the lead here, man.

Mike (04:06):
You you've you finished a model.
That's we got a bench time halfshort.
I know, but you could at leastmention it.
Okay, I'll mention it.
I did finish the Moosuru cup,and I'm so glad that is in the
rear view mirror.
We'll get to that later.
Yep.
It's done.
Is it done to the degree Iwanted it done?
No.
But it's not bad.

(04:28):
No, it you I'll take it.
Yeah.
Other than that, man, justtrying to get the planning done.
And, you know, I'm trying tothink of things that aren't
bench related, right?

Right.

Mike (04:38):
But you know, with the Moosaru Cup completion, I did a
full wipe down and sanitizationof the bench.
So uh time to get back to theother things.

Yep.

Mike (04:47):
Well, that's it.
All right.
All right.

Well, since we're recording an actual episode
here that requires a modelingfluid, do you have a modeling
fluid?
I do.

Mike (04:57):
And what is it?
Don't spit your dentures outthere.
Okay.
You don't wear dentures.
I'm being facetious.
At least not that I know of.
Right.
I'm working on the WellerSpecial Reserve again.
Oh man.
It's all right.
I got another bottle coming,man.
It's all good.

Hey, listen, I don't play that stuff.
That stuff is just so good.

Mike (05:17):
It's otherworldly good.
There's like a third of itleft, and I've had the bottle
for stinking almost two months.
It's a miracle.
Yeah.
So well, you were trying to bea good good boy.
Well, and I keep putting tapeon the lid so I can put it in
the car and not have it be anopen container.

Right.

Mike (05:33):
I keep having to take it off.
So my buddy Sean's gonna hookme up with another one.
He's already got it, actually.
So we'll have some for HeritageCon.
We we need to that's Fear not,Dave.
You'll get to partake in theweller.
We'll get to it later.
Let's not uh make the uh frontend of this segment too fat.
What do you got going on?

Well, I've got the Great Lakes Brewing Chill
Wave Double IPAs.

Mike (06:00):
You're doing the doubles now?
This folks, this is a guy whodid not like hoppy beer in 2020.

Absolutely.
That is true.
That is true.
Now he's drinking a double IPA.
Gumball Head was the gatewaydrug, man.
And I guess it's it's not anIPA though.
No, it isn't.

Mike (06:16):
But it's close.
But it's hoppy.
It is.
It's a what is it?
It's pale L.

Oh man.
Oh, that we may struggle.
That one's hoppy.
Wow.

Mike (06:27):
Probably give me an allergy attack.
That one is hoppy.
Double.
What'd you expect?

Stay tuned.
Well, stay tuned, folks.
We'll see how I get through theepisode.

Mike (06:38):
We got plenty of listener mail, Dave.
Good.
Let's get to it.
We have a manageable amounttonight.
Good.
Which is good because we have along-ish interview.
Yeah.
But it's a good one.
So we got plenty of listenermail.
First up, Lee Edmonds again.
And this one's interestingbecause he he he parsed this out
into basically four or fiveparagraphs here that are all

(06:59):
kind of separate things we'vebeen doing based on our last
episodes.

Okay.

Mike (07:04):
And I guess we talked about last episode what people
get out of this and you knowwhat they like about the hobby
was kind of the the crux of theepisode.

Yeah.

Mike (07:13):
And he had a few things resonate with him, and one of
them was all the people talkingabout doing the research on the
model while they're making it orafter they're done or before
they start.
Just whenever, right?
Right.
Get some research to do.
Well, he's a history PhD, andhe's been an academic and
professional historian as acareer.
So he doesn't do a lot ofhistorical research when he gets

(07:36):
into his models because uh he'skind of tired of it by the end
of the day.
I can understand that.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And then we'd mentioned, Iguess it was John Bryan, who was
had the website he created andhe was looking at his models on
there.
Yep.
And we we elaborated a littlebit about hey, maybe you need to
make this public or orwhatever.
Right.
Because he's a really, reallygood modeler, and that's not an

(07:57):
overstatement.
He's he's a fabulous modeler.
And I'd mentioned this otherwebsite, just oh, what was it?
It was the uh the LittleAviation Museum.
I don't think that's what Icalled it before, but he
reminded me that's what it wasbecause it's his.
He's the guy in Australia withthe website with all his builds
on it.
Gotcha.
So he reminded me that.
So, folks, if you're out thereand you want to see Lee's photo

(08:19):
montage of all his product allhis uh projects, it's the Little
Aviation Museum.
You can either Google that andwe'll put the I'll put a link in
the show notes to get there,but he's the guy that's been
doing this.
So there we go.
And finally, I'm gonna forwardthis on to the person he was
addressing, but he had some hehad some kind of encouraging
words for Warren Dickinson.

(08:40):
I'm not gonna read those, butuh Warren, I I think you'll
you'll like what he has to say,and I'm gonna send those out to
you.
Okay?
Yep.
Well, Dave, up next is PaulBudzik again.
He's written in quite a bithere, Lady.
Maybe maybe he's got more timebecause he's returned.

That's exactly what I was gonna say.

Mike (08:57):
This is a really, really good tip and something I've
never thought of, and it he he'sprobably right.
I mean, yeah, he's what are theodds that Dr.
Budzik is wrong?
I mean, come on.
I don't know.
It's titled Your CyanoacrylatePhobia.
I get it.
I don't know that I would callit a phobia.
I just have an apprehension, Iguess.

(09:18):
Right.
Maybe it's just uh what'sseparating those two?
A degree of severity, maybe.
He says he just got throughplacing his yearly order through
CA and he thought about me.

Okay.

Mike (09:32):
And the main reasons why people find the material
unpredictable is the uh age ofit.
So apparently he he renews thisevery year, whether he's used
it all or not.

I can see that.
I know that cyan cyanoacrylatedoes age badly.

Mike (09:48):
It probably does.

It gets all stringy, it gets stringy or it
well, it can either get stringy,it can get thick, or it can
also seem to lose that adhesiveability to some extent.

Mike (10:02):
Well, I think he's getting at my complaints that it sticks
when you don't want it to anddoesn't when you do.
So that's the that's theunpredictability, which is one
of the big reasons he's is hementions his age.
Retailers really don't rotatetheir stock that often.
Yeah, and so sometimes thisstuff can sit on their shelves a
long time, a year or more.
It's an ambient environment,but how good is it?

Right.

Mike (10:24):
See, so as a general rule, Paul orders his stuff annually
and he gets it right from PacerIndustries.
Robart, I guess, is theirprimary distributor.

Right.

Mike (10:36):
And he's provided a link, and I'll put that in the show
notes, and maybe I'll justrefresh my all my glues.

It wouldn't be a bad idea.

Mike (10:44):
It's it's not something I'm gonna never use, not use.
Right.
It certainly is a game changerin a lot of ways for a lot of
applications, but I have myfrustrations and I've been vocal
about them, and this this couldbe it.
This could be the reason.

Well, you'll have to keep us updated.

Mike (11:03):
I will.
So we'll see what happens if Iget some new glue.

Good.

Mike (11:07):
Listener Frank Blatton has written in from the IPS
Richmond Old Dominion Open show.
Well, he he was at he's inRichmond, and he's certainly
involved with that show and aregular attendee.
Really interesting interesting.
He sent me the stats for theshow.
So they had it's a one-dayshow, 246 modelers entered the
contest.

(11:27):
They had 863 paid walk-ins.
So total walk-ins were 942.

Yeah.

Mike (11:34):
So I guess some folks can get in free.
Probably kids.
Kids, because 863 and 246 don'tadd up to 943.
The models entered, notcounting display only, was
1,135.
That's a lot.
That's a lot.
140 vendor tables sold, one dayshow, spectacular, spectacular

(11:55):
day, my friends.
And of course, he's inviting usto come, and we would love to
come to that sometime.

And just think it would provide you an
opportunity to see where I grewup.
I could take you by the house,and you know, you could Is there
a plaque?
Yeah, there probably is.
There if there isn't, thereshould be.

Mike (12:14):
Well, he says this show has grown quietly.
You know, it was the first timethey broke a thousand entries.

Yeah.

Mike (12:21):
And there are more models.
They had the display only.
There's there's there's morestuff there to see than just the
official records.
So just a big celebration ofstyring and community, says.
Sounds pretty interesting.
I'm sure the model geeks willhave a feature episode.
Maybe it's in the one theydropped here recently.
It might be.
As we record this.
I don't know if they've uhgonna drop a special on the ODO

(12:42):
or if it's gonna be part oftheir feature episode, but uh
normally they cover that onepretty good and we'll see what
they do.
But Frank, thanks for the data.
Always curious.
So that that puts it right onpar size-wise with uh Heritage
Gone, honestly.
Yes, it does.
So that's a big deal.

That is.

Mike (12:59):
Well, you're gonna help with this one, Dave.
All right.
Daniel Brewer from theKnoxville Scale Modelers
Association down in Knoxville,Tennessee, where I was actually
at this afternoon for a shortperiod of time on my drive home
from East Tennessee.
Yeah.
In episode 158, apparently youwere talking about surface air
missiles, and you were.
I remember that.
He wonders if he couldrecommend in 72nd scale an SA2

(13:24):
and a Patriot battery.
Now the the SA2, I can answerthat.
Yeah, I can.
I'll let you do it.
The other one I've got no clue,but go ahead, Dave.

Well, SA2 would be Hobby Boss.
Or is it Trumpeter or HobbyBoss?

Mike (13:36):
It's it's one or the other.
I know Trumpeter's got the 35thscale one.

Yeah, then it's Trumpeter, because it's the
same.
Yeah, they just scaled it in.
Trumpeter 72nd scale SA2.
Now, if you have the old airfix one, not bad at all.

Mike (13:52):
It's a bit of a collector scale.

It's a collector's item, but if you you
you put your hands on one andwant to build it as a nostalgia
build, it builds up to a reallynice model of an SA2.
But Trumpeter would be thewould be the the 72nd scale SA2
choice.
And then the Patriot battery isall right.

Mike (14:18):
I got I got no clue.
I know Aerie made in one in48th scale during one of the
Gulf Wars.

Yeah, there is one out there, and I'm trying to
remember who it is.
It's not model collect.

Mike (14:31):
I'm not sure there is one in 72nd scale.

Yeah, there doesn't appear to be one in
plastic, at least according toscalemates.
There's just this militaryscales, 72nd scale 3D print kit,
but and I know nothing aboutit.
So if anybody out there knowsdifferent, please let us know.

Mike (14:53):
And hey, finally, from the email side of things, is Mark
Duramus in the Seattle area.
Yeah.
He appreciated all the love forJim Bates in episode 147.
You mean 157?
He said 147, but uh you'reprobably right.
157.

Yeah.

Mike (15:08):
Jim's a great guy, worthy of the praise he's receiving,
and he's proud to call him afriend.
Well, isn't that nice?
So, Jim.
There you go, buddy.

Yeah, we'll have to cut, you're gonna have to cut
that out because we can't letJim get the big hat.

Mike (15:21):
It's too late.
And he also throws a bunch ofkudos at him for the the monthly
meetings and I guess the uh theModel Mania show at the Museum
of Flight.
So Jim gives above and beyond.
So help him out, folks, ifyou're out there.
Well, that's the email stuff,Dave.
Okay.
What is going on with thedirect messages?

We've got a number of direct messages.
First, you mentioned WarrenDickinson already, and Warren,
along with Jeff Inchai Groves,seems to bound and determine to
break my wallet constantlybecause every time there's a
book sale, I get DMs from fromJeff Groves.

(16:01):
Meanwhile, Warren DickinsonDM'd me because he knows of my
decal addiction and he knowsthat I like DP Casper, the decal
company, and he DM'd me to letme know that there were a whole
bunch of new sheets that wereshowing up as future releases on

(16:23):
Hannon's site.
And I told him that I hadactually known that because I
had been perusing DP Casperstuff about a about a week ago.
So yeah.
Stop reminding you.
Yes, exactly.
Stop reminding me.
But I appreciate I appreciateWarren thinking of me.

(16:43):
The podfather, Dave Goldfinch,he and I exchanged several DMs
regarding his attendance thisyear at the Nats.
He's coming in from Australiato attend the Fort Wayne show.
And we were finalizingscheduling and all, so because
he's gonna fly into Louisvilleand I'm gonna pick him up, and

(17:05):
he's gonna stay at my place fora few days.
And then he's talking aboutwanting to come back again the
following year to attendWonderfest.
So I told him he's welcome tocome anytime.
We gotta go this year.
We're gonna go I go every year.

Mike (17:26):
I went last year.

Yes, you did.
It was good.
It was, it's always good.

Mike (17:32):
That's a great show.
I know I know some of the otherpod folks are talking about
hitting it up too.
So we'll see.

Next, William Christman reached out because
you and I had mentioned bothmentioned ordering from Burbank
House of Hobbies and I jokedaround about they ought to
sponsor us, they don't.
Um but he chimed in because hetravels to there several times a

(18:00):
year on work, and he alwaysstops by Burbank House of
Hobbies, and he absolutelyagrees with us regarding their
fantastic service, they'rethey're hopeful and friendly
employees, and he he just uhwants us to know that he he
agrees that uh Burbank House ofHobbies is a good place for

(18:24):
getting hobby supplies andhobby-related materials.

Mike (18:29):
And I assume that's first person, and we're yes, we're
doing it through the mayor.

That's right.
He goes in a couple of times ayear in person.

Mike (18:36):
Well, I think Ed Bareth goes up there every now and
then, so he he's also had greatthings to say about the place.
So nothing like a good hobbyshop.
We all know that.
That's not news to anyone, isit?

No, that's true.
Next is Stephen McDonald, whosent me, sent us a long DM and
uh replied to him briefly, but Ineed to get back with him
because when I got his originalDM, I was out on date night.
And, you know, it kind ofspoils the mood if you're
spending your time DMing.
But he he reached out because Ihad mentioned considering

(19:10):
getting the AK Gen 3 Air boxset, and he was interested in it
because he recently came into alittle bit of money and he's
been doing some hobby spending.
He got a compressor through Dr.
Strange Brush.

Mike (19:27):
Really?

And was considering this Gen 3 Air box
set, so he couldn't find what Iwas talking about, so I sent him
a link from the AK website.

Mike (19:39):
Gen 3 or Gen 3 Air?
Yeah, Gen 3.

Gen 3.
They call it air because it'saircraft colors, not because
it's airbrok.
Okay.

Mike (19:48):
All right.
I was confused.

It's not like Vallejo Air.

Mike (19:51):
Okay.
Sorry.
Sorry for that.
I mean, it's not like you can'tget confused by all the
different manufacturers.
Yeah, really, because there'sonly a couple.

Yeah, right.
We we haven't had a new paintin years, right?
He also, as an engineer,married to a lawyer, uh, which I
thought was a ratherinteresting combination.
Kind of like this podcast.
Yes, kind of like this podcast.
And he did have some very, verynice things to say about the
podcast and what it's meant tohim and how motivating he finds

(20:19):
it.
And well, send me that.
I will send that to you becauseit's well, if it's a DM, I can
read it.
Well, no, it's a DM to me, soyou're holding out on me now.
Well, about half the DMs I getare not to the podcast, but are
actually directly to me.
Well, that's okay.
Because I'm friends with I'm DMFacebook friends with a lot of

(20:42):
listeners, tons of them.

Mike (20:43):
Did your wife know how popular you've become?

I don't know about that.
Uh finally, from Does she care?
Yeah, but that's no, she doesnot.
Finally, from the DM side, Ihad mentioned on the dojo Xacto
used to make a lighted Xactohandle.
A hand an Xacto handle with aflashlight in the end of it

(21:10):
through like an acrylic chuckwith a light behind it.

Mike (21:14):
So it's like a light tube or fiber optic kind of thing.

Yeah.
And they stopped making it.
And this is my favoritemodeling hand, knife handle.
I love it.
I like the light.
And you can't find themanywhere because they stopped
producing them years ago.
I put out a uh plea on the dojoand said, if anybody knows
anywhere where you can get oneof these, let me know.

(21:40):
And Mr.
Hurt reached out, said he's gotone, and that he he offered it
to me.
It was very kind of him.
It reinforces to me how, ingeneral, how great modelers are.
Just willing to go out of theirway.
To bend over backwards to helpfellow modelers.

(22:03):
I haven't gotten it yet, but hehe told me he was going to send
it to me.
Oh, that's nice.
It never ceases to amaze me howgenerous our listeners are.
And you guys, it's it'sappreciated.
Mike and I both realize it andare very, very thankful for it.

Mike (22:26):
Not bad for listener mail, man.
Nope.

Not bad at all.

Mike (22:29):
Got anything else?
That's it.
Well, folks, if you want toemail the show or DM the show,
you can email us by sending usan email, obviously, to
plasticmodelmojo at gmail.com.
That'll get the email to me,and I'll take those typically.
And Dave will take the directmessages off Facebook, and
obviously that's Facebook'sdirect messaging system.
Send them on.
We really like it.

(22:49):
We get some cool stuff and uhit makes fun conversation.

There's also a feedback link on our website.
There is.
So you can send it to us thatway as well.
We've gotten a few that way,and we appreciate that as well.

Mike (23:27):
We do.
In my modeling lifetime, we'vegone from stock figures to
conversions done variousdifferent ways to resin figures
to lidar-generated 3D modelsthat become printed figures to a
lot of stuff.
But we had a listener write innot so long ago about wondering

(23:48):
if you could go from an AIprompt to an STL file.
And apparently you can.

Yes.

Mike (23:54):
We had Jake McKee back here recently.
We had him back because he isactually pushing the envelope
here once again and is going totell us how he's actually
pulling this off.
And I hope everybody can followalong to what Jake's got to say
here.
But it was a really interestingconversation.
So, Dave, what do you think,man?

(24:14):
Let's get on with it.
Well, Dave, back in the end ofMay last year, listener Eric
Kinser wrote in, and wementioned that in the 12-minute
model sphere, and in an actuallyin this in the uh episode prior
to that, about using AI togenerate 3D printer, STL files

(24:36):
for 3D print of figuresspecifically.
So his email closed with astatement so is the technology
good enough to make this happen?
And we've got somebody here, arecurring guest, Jake McKee from
the Austin, Texas area.
And uh he's gonna answer thisquestion for us tonight.
And I think it's gonna surprisea lot of people.

Jake McKee (24:54):
Jake, how are you doing?
I'm doing great, Mike.
Thanks for having me back onagain.
When you guys have me, I Ibreak out my papy.
So you know my modeling fluidtonight is always a treat.

Mike (25:03):
Oh, good for you.
Uh, you know, we've we've seenfigure companies using
essentially it's a type of CAD,but they're doing 3D sculpt, you
know, to create to generateSTLs for figures.
There's even folks out thereusing LiDAR to bring a model in
and clean it up and use that forSTLs for 3D printers.

(25:24):
But now we're to a differentplace where you can just about
or absolutely without doubtcreate something from pretty
much nothing now.
So I'm gonna let you talk andget into the project you're
working on and uh how thismanifested itself and get into
some of the tools you're usingto actually to make this happen

(25:45):
and answer this question.
Is the technology good enoughto make this happen?
Being AI prompts to a physicalfigure in your hands.

Jake McKee (25:54):
So yes, no, and maybe.

That's always the answer.

Jake McKee (26:00):
Right, right, exactly.
So let me let me give a littlecontext first.
Sure.
Uh, you know, I I know I'vetalked to you guys a little bit.
I talked to the small subjectsguys at one point about you know
AI and the hobby.
And, you know, we we often hearAI and we think about these
high-level concepts or you know,these really terrible videos
that we see popping up orwhatever.

(26:21):
And, you know, whatever youmight think about some of that
stuff, it is what it is.
But when I I think it's been atleast a year, maybe more, since
I talked to the small subjectsguys about this at in depth.
And I'm kind of curious now togo back and hear what I had to
say, you know, in retrospectbased on what's going on now.
But you know, I kind of lookedforward at that point and said,
you know, there's a lot ofopportunity with AI to do a

(26:43):
bunch of different things,right?
And I was just showing you guysmy my vibe-coded app that uh
I'm using AI to help me organizeall the files on my on my
computer so that I can search mySTL library, which is ever,
ever, ever growing.
Way too easy to collect STLfiles, but it's not as easy to
go search them out, right?
So I've created a web interfacefor my computer basically to be

(27:04):
able to search much much moreeasily in flag and all that sort
of stuff.
You know, that's part of whatAI is.
But the other part that you'respecifically referring to is
this question of, you know, canyou do sculpting with it?
And I have two projects rightnow that are well underway doing
exactly that.
And you know, back to yourquestion that came in about, you

(27:24):
know, is the technology goodenough to sort of have AI create
or sculpt uh figures?
And that if that question cameback in in May, the answer was
nope.
Hard, hard no.
It was I tried it about sixmonths ago, even, and it was
just it was just awful.
The the the stuff that came outof it was just unusable, not
even close to consideration.

(27:45):
I went in about a month ago,two months ago, maybe at this
point, and tried it again.
And with some work, this is themaybe part, with some work, I
got to the yes.
And one of the projects I'vegot active, I have three figures
that are gonna be they're allthree AI generated.
They're gonna be used on thediorama I'm working on.

(28:07):
They look great and completelyusable.
I've got one other projectwhere I was I was not super
particular, and this issomething we'll we'll talk about
that super super particularpiece, about the design.
I kind of needed this sci-filooking contraption to strap to
a tree.
And I had a general idea ofwhat I wanted, but I wasn't

(28:28):
replicating something superspecific.
And same thing, you know, justlike the process that we can
walk through.
But the process that I did withthe figures, I did with this
little piece of sci-fitechnology.
And after some some tweakingand some playing and some more
tweaking and playing, I gotsomething that was that was
something I liked and thatworked for the diorama and

(28:50):
printed it out and boom, it cameout perfect.

Okay, let me ask a super layman question.
When you say generating afigure from an AI prompt, an STL
file that you can print, whatdoes the prompt look like?
I mean, do you take aphotograph and say, can you

(29:13):
reproduce this figure in 3D inan STL file?
Or how walk me through whatthat means, because I don't
understand any of this.

Jake McKee (29:25):
Yeah, totally, totally fair, totally fair.
So there's a couple of answersto that, or a couple of
opportunities you can you cantake advantage of.
One is what you're talkingabout, what we know about AI,
right?
You go into Chat GPT, you type,hey, I want something, and out
it comes.
You can do that with generatingSTLs, but it it's not very
good.
Um in part because just thetype of technology that's going

(29:48):
on and the way that Chat GPT istuned to be, you know, much more
tech uh sorry, uh text and andvoice conversational, right?

Right.

Jake McKee (29:58):
But it we've started to see that it can generate
static images.
And so the the process I'vebeen using is you know, I first
think about what's what's theplan here?
What is it that I need, right?
So for instance, I needed aphotographer figure of one of
the three of them that I'mworking on for this diorama.
And so I thought, okay, whatkind of what kind of

(30:18):
photographer?
What does he look like?
Well, it's from the 1950s,early 1950s, so that kind of
dictated the dress.
And I wanted him to be using amedium format camera that he's
got a kind of leaning over tolook down the top of.
And so once I had that in mind,I went into, in this case, it
was it started with Chat GPT andjust said, make me a

(30:39):
photorealistic picture ofphotorealistic image of a
photographer doing those thingsdressed like this, you know, so
on.
And it kicked out uh a versionof that, you know, that
photorealistic, you know, netnew image.

And it was and it was just an image file.

Jake McKee (31:00):
It was just an image file so far.
Right.

You're prompting it first.
Okay, let me see what it wouldlook like as a picture.

Jake McKee (31:09):
Well, yes, because so right now, a huge part of AI
is that there's there's very fewsolutions unless you're doing
some really minimal stuff thatthat are only one tool at a
time, right?
Right now, and and and that'sthat's already changing
dramatically.
It's gonna continue to changedramatically.
At some point, I'll be able togo into you know some particular

(31:30):
tool and say, here's exactlywhat I want, no matter what that
output is, and one step andboom, it's there.
Right now it's not.
So part of this was to firstdevelop the the image of the
thing that I wanted.
And that took some effort.
You know, the first thing thatcame in was it was okay.
You know, there's another onethat had some weird shoulder bag
thing that I'm like, that guynever would have been wearing

(31:51):
that.
So I had to continue to refinethat prompt and keep going.
And you know, part of it is youknow, the prompt process, if
anybody's been using GPT foranything or quad or any of them,
you know, how you talk to theAI improves the way that the
results come back, right?
And the same thing here.
And sometimes I go into it witha very specific plan of exactly

(32:13):
what I need and work towardsthat.
Other times I'm like, well, Iknow I need a photographer, but
I don't really have a vision inmy head.
So let's let's work together onthis one, Chat GPT.
And I I created the photo.
And once I had a very goodphoto that was the right pose,
the right, you know, the rightclothing, the right equipment on
him, then I took that intoinitially I took it into a site

(32:35):
called meshi.ai, M-E-S-H-Y dotAI.
And then the I I eventuallystarted using Tripo, trip tripo,
I think, T-R-I-P-O.
It seems to be doing a littlebetter job, but it takes a whole
lot longer.
But basically, I put that photoin and say, turn this into a 3D

(32:57):
model.
And it takes a couple of times.
Sometimes it doesn't quitework, or it adds artifacts
that'll have to go back intothat photo and either take it
into Photoshop and clean it upbefore I take it into Meshi, or
I go back to chat GPT and say,hey, recreate this image without
this particular thing in place.
And there's a lot of back andforth there, right?

(33:19):
But then once it's once it'scoming out of Meshi or Tripo,
you're getting the STL file andit prints perfect, prints really
well, you know, that does areally great job of designing
some things.
Most of the time.
This is the yes, no, maybe,right?
There's there's some timeswhere like I have three figures,
a photographer, an artdirector, and a driver.

(33:40):
The driver has been an ongoingeffort because of his weird
position, sitting in a, youknow, with his knees up to his
chest and you know, the steeringwheel in the middle of his
hands.
And that it's so compact that'sreally problematic.
The art director standing therewith a pad of paper and you
know, having his hair and handin the air and wearing a certain
outfit, that's that was supereasy.
I think it was the third orfourth attempt at getting the

(34:03):
image, and it was basically thefirst run through Meshi to get
the STL, right?
That one was super easy.
There's been several weeks forthe driver.
I'm still working on that guy,but you know, and I'm learning a
lot along the way, right?
It is it is all about you knowkind of what you prompt, how you
think about the process, thatsort of thing.
That just takes some practiceto to get familiar with the
tools.
Does that help, Dave?

Now, yes, absolutely.
You explained the processbeautifully, and it it kind of
was somewhat like I wasimagining it in my mind.
Now, when you get the STL file,do you then take it into CAD
software and clean it up at all?
Or do you I mean, or do you domost of your cleanup in the AI?

Jake McKee (34:48):
So if I knew Blender, it would be a different
answer.
But I uh and you know, learningBlender is a a baton death
march towards you know, losingall of your time.
But I'm yeah, if I ever had thematrix function to just be able
to jack knowledge into the backof my head, that would probably
be the first thing I'd startwith is Blender, but maybe that

(35:09):
and karate, I don't know.
There you go.
The uh jujitsu or something.
But if I knew Blender, thenyeah, I'd probably just knock it
out as fast as I could and thentake it into Blender and get it
exactly right.
Because I don't, and becauseI'm also trying to experiment
and learn the AI workflow, I wasI was trying to do everything
within the AI workflow withouthaving to clean up anything,

(35:30):
even even using Photoshop,right?
There was one place where thethe photographer had this bag,
kind of a like a photo bag thatwas slung over one shoulder.
But the way that the the meshyAI tool was interpreting the
photo and turning it into theSTL was putting a strap on both
sides.
And it was this weird artifactof how the image pose was was

(35:52):
done.
And so I just went in Photoshopand you know, took a really
rough white brush on his whiteshirt with the black strap and
and painted it out and ran itback through, and it was
perfectly fine after that.
It didn't have to be, you know,photorealistic quality to fix
it.

Gotcha.

Mike (36:07):
Interesting.
So you know, you mentionedBlender.
Blender's not really atraditional parametric CAD
program.
It's it's more for like organicdesign.

Jake McKee (36:17):
Correct, yeah.
Yeah.
So if you think about themechanical, the you know, the
straight lines and the sharpangles, yeah.
That's that's fusion, you know,that's the CAD software.
The blender is sort of likeZBrush and some others that
allow you to do that moretraditional sculpting, right?
Uh, you know, if you you canthink about it as machining
versus sculpting clay, so tospeak.
But and Blender is anincredibly robust, powerful,

(36:40):
powerful tool, but it is it's abit of a nightmare to learn.
So, you know, I'm I'm gettingthere slowly but surely with
some small things here andthere.
But you know, the nice thing isif I did know Blender, and this
is part of what I'm working onlearning right now, is I could
take the figure, for instance,that the driver figure I have,
his knees aren't in the rightplace, but his his legs are
modeled perfectly fine based onthe STL I have.

(37:01):
I could take that into Blenderand just basically remap where
his leg bends and it it wouldautomatically, and I say
automatically with a bunch ofwork, um, would be able to move
it, you know, kind of repose himin the way that that animators
are using digital imagery andyou know, kind of reposing them
inside the software.

Mike (37:21):
It's it it's to me, it's interesting, and maybe it's even
frustrating when the eitherthese artifacts or the guy's got
seven fingers or you know, allthese things you see, you know,
kind of with low-end AI imagedevelopment or creation, just
the you know, people knockingaround on it, and you get some
of these crazy looking, crazylooking things that's just not

(37:43):
quite right.
Have you had much of that?
Or have these things beenpretty manageable for you?
Or is it I guess probably maybeit's an iterative thing.
It's maybe the first pass isreally eh, and then it just goes
gets better from there once youchip away at it.

Jake McKee (37:57):
Yeah, it you know, it's it definitely is a garbage
in, garbage out situation,right?
You know, like I said, whenthat when that driver figure
who's sitting looking over hisshoulder, are you know, both
hands on the steering wheel,knees in driving position, you
know, that's a lot for that AIright now, anyway.
Maybe not later, but probablyto some extent forever.

(38:19):
That's a lot to interpret,right?
That's a lot to sort ofextrapolate where I should, you
know, if I've only got onephoto, what's it gonna look like
on the other side of that photoif all these posing things are
in the way that they are?
The the guy standing up withboth of his arms kind of out to
his side, that was that wasgreat.
That was almost no work for me,right?
Because it was such a such astraightforward picture.

(38:43):
When I did that little sci-fi,you know, mounted tree-mounted
thing that I'm working on.
That was fairly straightforwardas well, because it was, you
know, the the picture I createdwas was pretty pretty linear.
Yeah, and you know, one ofthese days you'll you'll
hopefully see it.
But you know, it was it wasn'tcomplex as far as you know, the

(39:05):
organic shapes.
It was much more inorganic inits shape, right?
So, and maybe that's theeasiest way to think about it is
the more organic, lots ofcurves, lots of bends, lots of
organic shapes that are notstraight lines, that gets a lot
harder for the for the machinesto interpret.
But if it's a lot of straightlines, it's it's a lot easier
for the machine to interpret.
So, you know, again, garbagein, garbage out.

Mike (39:27):
Well, certainly is going to open up a lot of
possibilities for the dioramasto get exactly what they want,
which is you know, it'sessentially that's exactly what
you're you're doing with this.
You've got these three uniquefigures.
In the past, you would havegotten as close as you could
with commercial figures andhacked them up and puttied them
and all that mess.
And and that's fun for a lot ofpeople too.

(39:49):
I've never liked reposingfigures, so this this has a lot
of interest for me.
What can you say about that asfar as the uh the creative
possibility of getting exactlywhat you want and the
storytelling aspect of it andhow that all kind of comes
together with being able to docustom figures on the fly like
this?

Jake McKee (40:07):
Yeah, and I think I think that's the the most
intriguing, exciting,fascinating thing for me is
exactly what you're talkingabout, that it opens up to
creative ideas prettysignificantly.
I'm I have long said that whatimpresses me about every one of
us in the hobby, no matter whoit is that's working on whatever
project, we have a lot of skillsets in our brains at any one

(40:31):
time, right?
Not only do you have to bereally good at building, you
also have to be really good atcolor theory and painting, and
you also have to be really goodat ideation, and you really have
to be good at groundwork andall the things, right?
These are, you know, if you'rea painter, you're kind of
painting on canvas with the sametypes of oils over and over
again.
Nothing, no knock on that atall whatsoever.
But it doesn't have 14 othermediums that are part of this

(40:53):
process in order to get to thefinished product, right?
And and there's a naturalinclination for some people to
really enjoy some stuff morethan other stuff, right?
We hear this all the time that,you know, I really like
building, I just hate painting,or I really like getting it to
the base coat, but I hateweathering, right?
Or I like doing all of it andreally pulling it together with
a great story, you know, andthat's that's my fascination is

(41:14):
storytelling or whatever.
And I think that for me, thethe figure posing, kind of like
you were saying, I uh I know Itheoretically could do it.
I just have never really had alot of fascination in it or, you
know, drive to go out there andstart hacking up figures and
just not where I want to put mytime and energy, you know.
And especially as I've beentrying to really push myself on
storytelling and sort of overalldiorama approach, not just the

(41:39):
the vehicle or the figure on it,but the whole, you know, as the
chefs say, everything on theplate, and you know, kind of
considering that wholeeverything on the plate mindset,
I really have these ideas thatthat in the past I wasn't able
to, either from skill or accessor time, to go in and create all
these things net new, right?

(41:59):
And, you know, there's athere's an argument to be made,
sort of, I guess, that, youknow, well, some point you're
just gonna plug this in, it'sgonna come out painted and
you're done.
Well, cool, but you know, it'sgonna be a long time before
there's no work at all involvedin that.
Uh, you know, lots of peoplestill like to do, you know,
digital sculpting just for thedigital part of it, not for the

(42:21):
actual printing of it.
Lots of people like to do, youknow, digital artwork that never
gets printed and hung on a wallin a gallery, right?
That's just their their joy inthe process.
And so, you know, I've reallybeen having fun focusing on, you
know, this diorama idea I'mworking on.
If I can pull it off, it'sgonna be really cool and unique.
But in a million years, Iwouldn't have ever even thought

(42:42):
to try this idea if I couldn'thave otherwise come up with the
these very custom figures.
And there are none of thesethree figures don't exist out
there in the world.

That makes me ask a question.
You you talk about creatingthese figures from the AI
prompts.
Have you tried taking ahistorical photograph and
creating the figure using AI tocreate the figure in the
photograph?

Jake McKee (43:12):
Ah, so here's where you know I mentioned a second
ago the how much you care uhreally has an impact.
So this this diorama I'mworking on right now has three
civilian figures.
And if they have buttons in thewrong order or you know, the
vest is cut in a different, in avery specific way that is not

(43:35):
what I initially had in mind,then I kind of don't care.
It's close enough to beperfectly fine, and it's not
something I'm getting wound upwith.
This sci fi thing isimaginative sci fi.
And so if I think it lookscool, good enough, right?
Right.
To your point, though, if Isaid, you know, I want to
recreate a motorcycle rider from1914, World War II, British in

(43:57):
this pose and these.
These uniform garments and thisamount of equipment and they
have to be exactly accurate tothis.
I mean, now you're get you'repushing, right?
In a year, maybe, right?
That may be a whole lot morepossible because I do think that
the speed at which these thingsare improving is has become
dramatic at this point.
It's not just impressive, it'sjust mind-blowing how fast the

(44:20):
the improvements are, right?
So maybe in another year or twoyears, then yeah, we could take
a single historical photo of auniform, plug it in, set our
pose dynamically, and spit theSTL out, and we go from there.
But right now, you know, ifyou're gonna start playing, I'd
play with something that didn'thave to be absolutely
historically accurate.

Mike (44:40):
Well, what's next, man?
What are you gonna I guess yougotta finish finish the driver?
The World Sure Oyster.
Well, let me back up.
Let me back up first.
That because that that makes mewonder if if if you've if
you've tried something.
The the Jeep driver's areacould be brought in as a model.

(45:03):
And I wonder how that might getinto actually letting the AI
pose the figure.

Jake McKee (45:07):
I'd say the more complexity you add, the less
likely you're gonna get theresult that you want.
So in theory, that makes sense.
The easiest way in theory to dothis is exactly what you're
talking about.
And in fact, I was eventhinking the other day that you
know the Ming Jeep kit that Ihave that I'm working off of,
the the ejector pin holes on theback of the seats are insanely

(45:32):
deep.
And I was irritated by it.
So I was I was curious if Icould, you know, in in in sort
of the same time, not exactlythe same amount of time,
certainly not a one-to-one, butclose enough.
Could I model, you know, couldI go into fusion, model the
seats, print them out, and havethem close enough to be even
better than the kit part and nothave to do that stupid ejector

(45:54):
whole cleanup?
Because y'all mine, they aredeep.
I know not everybody has thesame ones, but these two seats
are just ridiculous.
And no, I couldn't do it in thesame amount of time, but I did
it.
So those seats exist now.
I've 3D printed them, they lookgreat, they're even more
detailed than the kit parts,which is awesome.
So I was thinking, you know, Iwonder if I could try and do all

(46:16):
this together to your point.
You know, get a get a you know,get that seat somehow baked in,
but you know, well, does thatneed to have the Jeep body
itself in there?
Does it need to have the seat?
How do I get the seat fromfusion into this other workflow,
right?
That you know, that that thenmatches it to the driver's seat.
And you know, you're justadding a ton of complexity at

(46:36):
that point.
I think the the better optionreally, and one of the options
I've been exploring is toactually find somebody who knows
Blender.
You know, I've got a guy that Ifound on Upwork years ago that
does illustrator work for me.
So if I need, you know, here'san image, turn this into a
vector file so I can put it ina, you know, the logo in a CAD
design or or a presentation forwork or something.

(46:58):
You know, in like 20 minutes,he'll knock that task out that I
could learn how to do it.
It'd take me a couple hours tolearn how to do it in
Illustrator.
And I don't really likeIllustrator, so I don't want to
learn it.
It's not interesting to me.
And for five bucks and youknow, 20 minutes, I'm perfectly
fine to spend that money, right?
I'm trying to do the same thingwith Blender so that I can
basically get these figuresclose enough and then say, hey,

(47:19):
can you go and tweak his arm?
You know, move it 10 degrees tothe right and move it up, and
you know, I'll send you the STL,make it match, right?
And you know, if you knowBlender, those are sort of
straightforward things.
They're not really thatdifficult.
But if you don't know Blender,then it takes forever to get to
the point where you can do thatcorrectly and and effectively.
So, you know, that's that'spart of what I've been playing

(47:39):
with is what can I do to helpthe workflow overall?
Because again, we're not in theone, the the one-step process
yet.
You know, it does take a bunchof steps to get to and some work
to get to that point.
But, you know, I like thisprocess better than trying to
learn Blender so I can take thetime to carve all the you know,
to sculpt all these thingsmyself.

(48:00):
Because if I was sculpting itin Blender from scratch, it
certainly wouldn't take theamount of time that the AI
kicking out something that'salmost there that I can then
just tweak a little bit takes,right?

I've got a question for you.
You've mentioned three AIs, uhChat GPT, what was the I forget?
Meshi.
Meshi.

Jake McKee (48:22):
Meshi and and Tripo.

Tripo.
How many a AIs have you playedwith this stuff in?
And is there reasons you'reusing particular AIs?
Because there are a ton of themout there.

Jake McKee (48:38):
There are, and they each sort of are better or worse
at different things, right?
So I started this journey withthese three figures in Chat GPT
developing the images in the inthe this is what I'm talking
about, things are moving sofast.
In the week or so that Istarted messing with these
figures and felt like I had adecent result from Chat GPT with

(49:00):
the photorealistics first step.
Jim and I updated their imageuh creator capability.
And in some ways, with somefigures, it was vastly better at
image generation.
And of course, ever all oftheir image generation is 30
times as fast as what ChatGPTwas taken to do, which is also

(49:23):
helpful when you're doing abunch of bunch of versions of
it.
So each one kind of has its owndifferent flavor.
Like I said, Meshi takes almostno time to generate these
models, whereas Tripo takessometimes 15 minutes to generate
the model.
But they come out of Tripomuch, much better most of the
time.
Not always, but you know, mostof the time I've I've seen them

(49:43):
come out in a much better, muchmore accurate representation of
that photorealistic image.
But I've also gone in and hadtimes where two very similar
posed figures come out of one AImuch better than they come out
of the other AI, right?
And so it's right now, becausethere isn't one sort of perfect

(50:04):
solution or you know, industryleading solution, so to speak.
I've just been playing.
You know, this is part of thepart of the process.
It's sort of like when, youknow, Meg or AK comes out with
some new new product and you tryit, you're like, it's okay.
I like the idea, but you know,this didn't really work that
great.
And then you try anothercompany and it really works
well.
And you're like, oh, this isfantastic.
You know, it's kind of the VMSversus AK thing that, you know,

(50:26):
a lot of people say I love VMS,and I can't ever make it work
worth a damn, but but theycertainly can.
So it's it's kind of whatyou're comfortable with, what
you can make work, and what fitsyour workflow more than more
than anything.

Now, a related question, are you using the free
versions, the publiclyavailable versions, or are you
actually paying for theprofessional, the one, the the
one where you actually pay thesubscription?

Jake McKee (50:54):
Yes.
So I'm not in in all the stuffthat is part of my daily
workflow, I'm probably payingsomething for it.
Part of that's because, youknow, through work, I've been
playing, trying to, you know,I've been building some vibe
coded apps to help me offloadsome of my work skills.
And so, you know, I'm alreadypaying for Lovable, right?
The vibe coding platform thatthat helps build websites and

(51:15):
stuff.
And so, you know, since Ialready have that, I have used
that to build out that thatorganizational tool that I was
talking about.
I already pay for Chat GPT andand Claude as part of the work
that I do for a living.
Um, and so you know, thosetools are accessible to me.
I believe Google's tool isfree.

(51:36):
I don't think I'm I don't thinkI'm paying anything for Gemini
at the moment.
So, you know, there then thisis part of where we're going,
right?
Is some of these things aregoing to get better and and you
know more free based on adrevenue or you know, getting you
to go use Gemini so you canalso buy these other suites of
tools.
But right now, yeah, and andI'm I'm paying for I'm paying

(51:59):
for the subscriptions for a lotof for those tools.
And this weekend I was workingon three different vibe-coded
apps, one the the hobby one andmy two work ones that I'm
working on.
And I I hit my Claude usagelimit for the day for the first
time.
I've I've reached the number ofimages you can have in one
chat, which is 100, by the way,in Claude.

(52:20):
Didn't know that was a limit,but there you go.
But but for stuff like Meshiand Triple, you basically are
buying tokens just like youwould at an arcade.
And you put a token in the slotor a series of tokens to play
the game just like you'd play,you know, Smash TV or pole
position or something.
My two favorite games, by theway.
And and you play the game, andthen when it's done, you put it

(52:42):
more quarters in to get the nextgameplay, right?
And so those those are kind ofhow you how you're doing that.
It's you're you're basicallybuying time on the server,
effectively.

Mike (52:52):
Right.
Well, I I had a question, butyou've kind of answered it is
how you got how do you got towhere you are with with the AI
usage as a as an interest andjust as a and it sounds like
it's it's been initially drivenby your professional life, and
and now it's crept into yourhobby life.

(53:13):
That's uh a lot of some thingslend themselves to that, some
don't.
And uh, you know, I have a lotof overlap with my work and my
hobby life, but it's alltechnical, it's all it's all the
hard skills and and uh makingstuff and and taking stuff apart
and putting it back together.
It's kind of like what I do atmy workbench when I'm modeling.

(53:33):
So I I can understand that, butAI is kind of new and kind of
neat.
And it's I I assume you've youyou you've figured out how to
apply this in your in yourbusiness and it's just kind of
bleed bled over.

Jake McKee (53:46):
Yeah, and and I'm generally fascinated by things
and generally do work that Ilove.
And so the line between workand home is is often pretty
fuzzy.

Yeah.

Jake McKee (54:01):
You know, I take a lot of what I learn in the hobby
or, you know, whether it's myphotography work or whether it's
my my scale modeling or otherthings, you know, there's always
something I can learn or applyin the work.
And the work also comes intowhat I'm doing in the hobby.
Not always directly, you know,the Venn diagram isn't two
circles overlapping, it's stilla Venn diagram.
But, you know, in the in thecase of AI, one of the things

(54:24):
that I find fascinating about AIgenerally as a as a concept is
that whatever we you think aboutit, it's here to stay.
So we all need to be practicingand learning and figuring out
where does it fit.
It's like any other tool, wheredoes it fit?
But this tool is actually apretty remarkable change of how

(54:45):
we need to be thinking about theworld around us because, you
know, I I've built threeextremely robust tools, two for
work and this this hobby toolfor myself, that would have
taken thousands and thousands ofdollars and developer time, you
know, weeks of developer timeto get to this basic fundamental
place where I'm at.

(55:05):
And it's it's because of theAI, and it's because I'm, as
I've been saying often, I'mdreaming bigger, right?
We have to sort of rethink ourour dreams and our and our
challenges to ourselves becausepart of what happened when when
I started building that thatorganizer, all I really wanted
to do was find some sort ofviewer app to be able to look at

(55:29):
a bunch of messy folders andturn it into something without
touching the folders.
I didn't want to start movingfiles around on my computer or
anything like that.
I just wanted to have a view ofthat sat on top of that
infrastructure and and make itmuch easier to use.
Well, as soon as I got that inplace, I started saying, well,
this is pretty cool.
And then as so many of thethings in my life, my my hobby

(55:49):
life go, I started talking toMatt McDougal over lunch, and he
started saying, Well, how aboutthis?
And what about that?
This and before you know it, Iwas chasing a much bigger dream
of all kinds of stuff I could Icould add to the tool.
And one of the things I added,for instance, into my hobby
vibecode app is a brick,cobblestone, and stone

(56:10):
generator, pattern generator.
Mike, I know you know with withlaser cutting, you need like an
SVG file that tells the laserwhere to go and what to cut.
So when I when I'm doing adiorama and I want a piece of
foam that has a really intricatestone pattern, I can do all
that hand carving, but I've beenplaying a lot with trying to
get the laser to cut thatpattern in into the foam

(56:31):
directly, whether it's brick orcobblestone or you know, a rough
stone wall or whatever.
But I've been making thosepatterns by hand with
Illustrator, and I hateIllustrator.
So uh as we've discussed just asecond ago, it's not my
favorite tool.
I don't want to be in there ifI don't have to be.
And I thought, you know what?

(56:51):
I gotta be able to generatethis.
And so I started talking toClaude and saying, hey, I want
here's the tool I want to build,here's the output I want it to
be, on and on and on.
And the more that I saw an ideawork, I started thinking, okay,
but what else can I generate?
Like what else can I take offmy plate that is a repeatable

(57:11):
standardized process, right?
So on the brick wall, I go inand I pull foam out to remove
bricks sometimes, right?
To make it look like the wall'sbeat up.
Well, I can just tell Claude,add a setting to toggle on
missing bricks.
Well, yeah, but I don't want itto always be in the same place.
Well, you add a randomizationfunction, and now it's a

(57:33):
randomized amount of bricks.
You don't like where those are,hit the button and it
regenerates those random brickpatterns.
You know, and so on and on andon.
There's just, there's, I don'tknow how many features I have
added to this thing now.
But you know, as you start kindof as your mind starts to open
up to, you know, this one thingis what got me started.
But now that I see this onething working and you start
thinking in that what AI can dofor you sort of mindset, then

(57:56):
all of a sudden there's 50 ideasthat are rushing to you when
you're just driving down thestreet, and you're like, oh man,
when I get home, I gotta tellyou know, the lovable app to go
add this feature to the to thething I'm working on because
that's pretty cool.
Or you're sitting at your benchgoing, man, I got a I got a
problem here.
I always have this problem.
Huh, you know, I could probablyautomate this.
I probably could build a toolto catalog that or make that,

(58:17):
you know, make save those notes,or you know, whatever it might
be that you're you're strugglingwith.
So, you know, it really isfascinating to me how the human
brain starts to, you know, youit's the seeding, and then once
you've gotten something seeded,it starts to really grow and and
expand and sort of like bamboosometimes, right?
That you know, one little stockof bamboo turns into your
entire backyard if you're notcareful.

Put aside for the moment all the time you spent
generating the app and the doworking in the AI to create this
cobblestone pattern generationtool.
If you use the tool and thelaser cutter to generate a

(59:04):
cobblestone streak compared tositting down with a piece of
foam and the toothpick andstraight edge or whatever, you
know, your normal tools to do itby hand.
What's the time comparison forokay, I tell my laser printer to

(59:26):
laser cutter to generate thiscobblestone street, as opposed
to I sit down at my bench withmy hobby tools and I make the
cobblestone street by hand.

Jake McKee (59:40):
Yeah, and I think it's you kind of once you've
passed the learning curve, youmean?
And you've kind of got theknowledge.

You've got the software working the way you
want.

Jake McKee (59:57):
Well, so I think there I'll give you two answers
for that.
One's the the thestraightforward answer, which is
you know, honestly, I thinkonce you once you get that, you
know, once the pattern generatortool exists, right?
So if you came in tomorrow andstarted using it once I've
gotten it dialed in, and youspit out that SVG to then take
into your laser cutter software,you throw a piece of foam on

(01:00:20):
there, and 10 minutes lateryou've got you know a carved
piece of foam, you're stillgonna go back and texture it.
You're still gonna go back anddo all that work.

Kentucky Dave (01:00:26):
Right.

Jake McKee (01:00:26):
You know, in theory, I could also just output an STL
and print it and then boom,it's done.
I don't have to do any foamwork, right?
The texture would already bebuilt in, the, you know, all
that.
But it's really a matter ofpreference in some ways, right?
You know, there are there arepeople that that buy figures,
there are people that sculptfigures.
There's people that, you know,buy pre-mixed washes, there's

(01:00:46):
people that mix their ownbecause it's all sort of what
you where you like spending yourtime.
And the reality is we only haveso much time.
And for me, you know, there'sthere's stuff that I'm not
beholden to any sort ofphilosophy that says if I'm not
doing this particular thing byhand, then I'm doing it wrong.
Right.
Uh yeah, we when I looked at uhoh god, I just forgot his name.

(01:01:11):
The I think it's the VGdioramis guy that's doing such
amazing uh like building uhkits, you know, that he's doing
these really amazing 3D printeddesigns.
And I think it's VG.
I'll have to I'll we'll I'llsend you a link to make sure uh
you put it in the show notes,but I think it's VG Dioramas,
guy from Spain, nicest guy inthe world.

(01:01:31):
He's doing absolutely deadcrazy, insane great work, right?
It is wonderful, but it's allthe stuff that I find the most
interesting, right?
I I can buy one of his threeprinted factory dioramas and
throw a vehicle in it and paintit, and it's gonna look great.
For me, the as you know, uhJeff Feller at SMC and I were

(01:01:54):
talking about this, and he wassaying, yeah, but I really like
making walls.
Yeah, walls are fun, and sameway.
For me, I like the the processof working with foam.
What bothers me about theprocess of working with foam is
trying to make sure I'm alwaysmeasuring exactly right.
Like it's the carving, it's thetexturing, it's the painting
that I really enjoy.
It's not the drawing thestraight lines at the right

(01:02:16):
dimensions to make sure that itdoesn't look wonky when I'm
done.
Right.
That part's not interesting tome.
So I'm taking the parts that Idon't enjoy and sort of
offloading them to give myselfmore time to do the parts I
really do enjoy.
Right.

Makes perfect sense.

Mike (01:02:30):
And you're you're I said it in the 12-minute model sphere
that you're you're probably themost tech forward modeler I
know of that I've had any kindof substantive interaction with.
And you know, we've had Johnbefore, you've been doing and
we've talked laser cuttingoffline, and I got something I
want to talk to you about thatmaybe via email later in the

(01:02:51):
week.
But anyway, you're you're doingall these cool things, man, and
it it makes me want to do somecool stuff too.
But a lot a lot of things Idon't know with the figures
though, uh that one reallyinterests me because like I
said, I don't I don't likeposing figures.
I just don't think mine evercome out very good.

(01:03:11):
But there are you know, I likepainting figures sometimes, but
be it figures or or whatever,there's there's gotta be a
balance, I guess, between whatwhat you like and what you don't
like, and you just articulatedthat pretty well a few minutes
ago.
Where do you see you applyingthis kind of stuff going

(01:03:33):
forward?
I mean, is there anything youhaven't done yet that you you're
you're wanting to do, eitherwith the with the figures or or
a CAD design or or anythingreally through the AI
specifically?

Well, I was gonna say, I'm glad you clarified that
because I was gonna say, isthere anything I want to do and
finish more things is definitelythe top of the list.

That's that's all of us.
Right.
Every single one.
I've yet to meet a modeler whosaid, you know what, I want to
finish fewer models.

Yeah, no kidding.
Well, you know, I I'm I thinkthat that I'm kind of making a
joke about that, but but thatreally is part of there's
something joyful about getting aproject to completion, right?
And the reality is with, youknow, three kids, a full-time
job, you know, other hobbies,you know, as much as I
absolutely adore scale modeling,there's only so much time in a

(01:04:24):
day that's left over, right?
Right.
Um and so finding ways that Ican really have a great time
doing, doing stuff is is themost important thing for me.
And so trying to figure outwhere are the where are the new
techniques, where theinteresting things, how do I
start to create my own paletteof options that I really enjoy
instead of you know the paletteof options that we had

(01:04:46):
accessible to us, right?
I I've I've heard someconversation, I've read some
conversation online about likethe you know the the contrast
painting method or slap chop oryou know, the the new AK quick
gen paints that you know in intheory you paint a white base
coat and then you dump a bunchof paint on it, and the paint
all runs where the darkerpigment goes into the recesses
and the lighter, you know, thethe medium kind of is what

(01:05:10):
colors the the highlights,right?
And there's plenty of war gamerpeople out there or you know,
people painting the little minimini figures that most of that
kind of work would be perfectlyfine with them and they're
happy.
Cool, all right.
But you look at what CalvinTan's doing with it, and he's
combining the normal paints withthe quick gen paints and a

(01:05:30):
whole bunch of other techniquesand making incredible works much
more enjoyably and probablymuch more quickly, too, for that
matter.
And there's nothing wrong withthat, right?
There's I I don't I don't thinkthat that's a problem.
And I don't think that goinginto AI to help you develop your
figures instead of sculpting isa bad thing any more than me
saying, Well, you know, I'mgonna go out and buy this

(01:05:53):
existing Dynamo models figure.
It's a great build, it's itlooks wonderful and it fits
exactly what I had in mind, andso I'm just gonna buy that.
I don't have to sculpt my own,right?

Yeah.

Nobody's nobody says, oh, you didn't sculpt your
own figures.
You're not a real modeler.
So you know, I I I I think thatit is.
Somebody probably did.

Yeah, I was gonna say there's there's at least
one guy out there who has saidsomething like that.

Yeah, and and we're chuckling about that, right?
Yeah, I think that's exactly Ithink that's the same thing here
is you know, it it's one thingto there are things that I that
I print out on, especially on myfilament printer, where you
know, I want a little fidgettoy, you know, for whatever
reason.
Something to play with when I'msitting here on Zoom calls.
And so I go on the bamboo labsite and I find something that

(01:06:39):
looks cool and I print it outand I'm done and I've got it,
and that's amazing.
And I had so much fun now, andit I'm holding it in my hands.
And so, you know, there'snothing wrong with that.
I think the question is what'syour particular palette of
tools, digital, physical, orotherwise.
But for me, I think, you know,back Mike to your question
about, you know, kind of wheredo you, where do I go from here?
I don't know.

(01:06:59):
Part of that's you know,retraining my brain right now to
be able to think in advance of,you know, not be kind of as
surprised at ideas, but startthinking about, you know, I've
got enough understanding of howthis AI tool works, whether it's
figure sculpting or websitecreation or, you know, ideation
or whatever it might be.
There's been some times whereI've gone into ChatGPT and I've

(01:07:20):
said, I've got this rough idea.
I don't know where it's going,but I think there's something
here.
Point me in the rightdirection.
And it gives me three ideas.
And I'm like, man, all thoseare great.
But that now gives me a fourthidea that I hadn't thought of
before that I probably wouldn'thave bridged into if not for
that help, right?
And I think so some of that itall goes back for me.
It goes back to being able torealize more interesting, more

(01:07:44):
in-depth, more challengingbuilds and concepts and ideas
thanks to being able to offloadsome of the hard work that you
know may or may not be all thatinteresting to me, right?

Yeah.
Okay, you mentioned a little bitin our discussion about how
while you were working onthings, the software's got
better.
What is the Delta looking likeinto the future?
I mean, do you think given whatyou've experienced so far, how

(01:08:20):
rapidly are these different AItools getting better at what
you're asking them to do?

Yeah, there's there's two parts to the answer
to that, as so often is the casewith me.
Um there's there's a toolgetting better, and there's a us
getting better.
And they're both they're bothrapidly growing, right?
As I said, if you had talked inMay, but not even May, if you
had talked to me in November, Ithink was the last the the first

(01:08:50):
time I tried to output thefigures.
I tried it with both the thetext prompt, right, where you go
in and you say, I want a figurein into a tool like Meshi or
Tripo.
You can type in, I want a youknow, a World War II soldier,
and you don't have to give itany photo.
What it gives you is justrandomly whatever it decides is

(01:09:12):
a great thing to give you,right?

Right.

That ability is an inherently from a technical
standpoint, feels like it'sgetting better hour by hour,
right?
Not even day by day or week byweek, but it feels like hour by
hour it's getting better.
And that will continue on.
And especially as the peoplewho are developing these tools
get a better understanding ofhow they're working and you know
they continue to add their ownknowledge on top of their own

(01:09:36):
knowledge, right?
That the tool themselves isgoing to get better.
But the other part of this is,you know, I spend a lot of my
time talking about conversationin a business context, right?
That's so many product teams,for instance, have a hard time
really making great productsbecause they're getting this,
this, the insights handed tothem, right?
And so, you know, part of thereason why that's the case is

(01:09:57):
because they've lost some of theconversational skills that that
go into talking to customers inan effective way.
Maybe they talk to them, a lotof them don't talk to them
directly anymore.
They they rely on the salesteam or the customer service
team.
And we're kind of having toretrain our brains on that
conversational soft skill.
And reality is that is what weare doing with AI.

(01:10:18):
The same way that I have tolearn how to converse with AI,
I'm having to learn how toconverse with my wife, is
different than how I conversewith my colleagues, different
than my clients, different thanthe person that delivers my
groceries, right?
They're different types ofconversations, but learning that
process is also getting betterfor all of us.
The more that you use it, themore you go, oh, you know, if I

(01:10:40):
ask it in a certain way, or if Istructure the prompt in this
particular way, it's gonna yielda better result for me, right?
Or I'll get to a better resultwithout so much churn, you know,
doing iteration afteriteration.
I know how it's gonna work, Iknow what the reaction is gonna
be, much the same way that if Isay something particular in a
particular fashion at aparticular time, I know my
wife's not gonna be happy withme in the way that I said it or

(01:11:02):
the timing I used, right?
Gotcha.
Yeah, yeah.
It it is often predictable,unfortunately, often after I've
said it, but still it'spredictable, right?
And I think that's part of whatwe're all learning is how to
have that interaction, you know,that relationship, so to speak,
with the with the AI.
And we're getting better atthat while the AI is getting
better as well at understandingus and performing what we're

(01:11:25):
asking of it.
So, you know, the reality isthat if you start thinking about
AI not as this technical toolthat can output things in a
certain way, but thinking aboutit as a creative and critical
partner that is getting betterevery day at understanding us,
that moves from the intern rolethat basically is only guided by
what we tell them to do, andinto a senior manager role that

(01:11:47):
we give it some basic structureand it can figure out based on
its experience, based on itsexperience with us, how to fill
in the blanks much more easily,then you know it'll get to a
point where I could say, I needa driver figure and it needs to
be in this pose and theseclothes, and boom, it comes out
exactly right.
You know, it it's it's notfar-fetched to think that that's

(01:12:08):
possible because we are soclose to that being almost
possible now.

If you had to guess how how far away are we
time-wise from that?

I think it I think it goes probably sooner than
whatever we might guess.
Gotcha.
Honestly.
That's kind of the answer I'vebeen giving on anything AI is,
you know, AI timeline is soonerthan we're probably assuming.
I think that you know, the inMay, uh this was May of last
year, uh, this whole figurething was was a non-issue.

(01:12:38):
We just wasn't a even a glimmerin the eye of hope that we
could pull this off.
Uh today it's it's pretty good,right?
It's it's usable, completelyusable.
Uh I think, you know, when wehave this conversation a year
from now, I think that the waythat this stuff works is going
to be dramatically different.
And I think that you know, thethe conversational interface

(01:13:02):
will change, you know, the sameway that you know, we're we're
basically teaching AI andtraining AI to on be human
behavior patterns.
And so if you if you want toknow the answer to where AI is
going, it it is as much aboutunderstanding human dynamics and
human interaction skills andhuman relationships as it is the
technology piece.
So the same way that you knowyou teach your kids to push in

(01:13:25):
the chair at the table when theyget up and take their dishes
and put it in the sink rinsedoff, you know, that's a that
doesn't start there.
You know, and maybe you can getthem to push in the chair the
first time, but they forget theplate.
And then after six months, youget them to, you know, finally
start getting it to the sink,but it's not rinsed off.
And you just have to keepiterate iteratively pushing that
further and further with thehope that they have the ability

(01:13:47):
to teach their own kids at somepoint those same skills, right?
Because they know them so well.
And so uh if we take thatparallel into AI, I think it's I
think it's the same thing.
I think we're gonna get to apoint where I don't have to tell
it as much.
It just understands the basicgoal.
It's got those skills to makethose changes and make those
actions happen.
And you know, that's we'rewe're we're in that, we're

(01:14:10):
moving in that direction at themoment.
It's you know, that's that'swhere we're going.
So the question I always comeback to is what's your big
dreams?
You know, so for me, the bigdream is I can describe the
things that I normally wouldtell a shopkeeper, hey, uh do
you have any figures that are inthis basic pose?
And they go, I got somethinglike this.
And instead of it being almostclose or close enough that I

(01:14:33):
have to modify my my the idea inmy head a little bit, the AI
says, Yeah, I got that for you.
Here you go.
And I go, excellent.
I'm off to implement myconcept.

Mike (01:14:45):
Well, other folks are gonna want to implement their
concepts, so and they mightoverlap yours, Jake.
To what degree is this beingdocumented on your blog and
where can folks find that?

Yeah, good question.
So my blog is atbuild.jkee.com.
I'm sure you'll put a link inthe show notes.
But I am I'm working on anarticle that kind of uh uh
summarizes all the rambling thatI did tonight and some of the
learnings that I've got.
I will put that I hopefullywe'll get that up this week.
So maybe by the time that thisthis episode drops, it'll

(01:15:19):
already be posted on my blog.
And I think the other piece ofthis is just start playing, you
know, go get, I think Meshi andTripo have some like starter
accounts, you know, that you cando a few things to play around
with.
But you know, the the best wayto learn this stuff is not to
listen to me, it's to go playwith it and see, you know, start
to learn what it can do.

(01:15:39):
You know, even if you just havean understanding of it, so you
can start thinking about whatthe possibilities might be, and
and at some point the technologywill catch up to your interest
level or your your time you wantto invest in this learning
process.
But if you really want to play,yeah, the best way to to learn
is just to jump in.

I've got to say it it's inspired by everything
you've been talking about and itjust popped into my head.
I've got a cameo cutter, maskcutter is what I use it for.
Have you tried using AI tocreate masks rather than you

(01:16:22):
know using the software for thecutter to basically draw the
files?

Yes.
Yes, in a couple of ways.
So the the laser cutters workoff of svg files, or I think
some of them can use a PNG file,you know, the image the vector
image files.
Yeah.
And basically you're creatingline work that it the laser
knows where to where to lay downthe the cuts on the material,
right?
And I've used AI a couple oftimes to either create or clean

(01:16:53):
up some like logo designs thatI've that I've had, you know, on
my F-14 pilot.
I've got some like angel wingson the side of his helmet.
Those angel wings, I went intoAI and said, hey, I want some
angel wings that go in a helmet,and you know, they should be
kind of this style.
And it outputted something thatI said, yeah, that was kind of
that was basically what I had inmind.
Not exactly right, but closeenough that I don't care to go

(01:17:17):
any further.

Right.

I had it output an SVG file.
I took that SVG file into mylaser cutter software and and
set up some to me a sheet tapeto to cut on, and away it away
we went.
And and so that, yes, so that'sthe same thing as what the
brick pattern generator is doingthat I've got.
If I want to make that astencil, then it's the exact

(01:17:39):
same process.
It spits out an SVG file, Itake it into the software, and
it cuts away.

You you have inspired me to start playing
around with some of this stuff,because I've got to echo what
Mike said.
You you really are the most notjust tech forward, but tech

(01:18:05):
forward thinker about what allthis tech can do in our hobby.
And it's endlessly fascinatingto me.

Well, thanks, guys.
I appreciate that.
Those those kind words.
I'm I I just like playing, youknow.
This is this is as much thehobby for me as as anything is
you know, trying to figure out,you know, is there something
that that I can do to make thisfaster, better, and more fun at
the same time?
Right.
And, you know, I I like playingwith the toys.
I like playing with the lasercutter and the 3D printers and

(01:18:39):
the CAD softwares and you knowthe AI tools to spit out stuff
and in order to get to thesereally cool and interesting
ideas that I almost certainlywouldn't have been able to pull
off otherwise.

Mike (01:18:49):
All right, Jake.
Well, thanks once again forjoining us once again.
It's about your third triphere, I think, but it's always
maybe fourth.
I can't remember.

Well, we have to have him back on sooner rather
than later, because I'll bet yousix months from now, a lot of
changed.

Yeah.
Oh, Dave, I'm I'm positivethat'll be the case.
I'd love to come back on.
I I will make sure to save somepapi for that time as well.
And you know, I'm sure there'san episode count where I'll get
my zero, you know, double zero.

You'll you'll get a double O and you get the gold
jacket.
You know, once you've been it'slike SNL once you've hosted
five times, you get that jacket.

Okay.
I didn't know we had uh mojojackets.
This is fantastic.

We're working on it.

You can you can put me down for uh, I don't know, 33
regular.
I don't know how they size thisup.

Mike (01:19:45):
All right, sir.
We'll let you get back to yourAI and your laser cutter.
Thank you.
And you're Pappy.
Yeah, and you're Pappy, mostimportantly.

Oh no, it's it's gone.
Thanks, guys.
I appreciate you prompting meto pull it out and you know dip
into it a little bit.

Mike (01:19:58):
Makes me wish we were side by side.
Maybe I could have some too,but uh I'll have to get my own,
I guess.

It's here waiting for you, Mike.
You come right on to Austin.
I'll be happy to serve you up adecent pour, not a not a big
pour.

Mike (01:20:09):
I understand.
I understand.
That's right.
Yeah.
Well, keep innovating and keepuh doing cool projects with all
your cool toys, man.
It's really fun to watch.

I appreciate it.
Thanks for the invite, guys.

Mike (01:20:25):
Man, did you follow along, Dave?
Did you keep up?

Yes, and I actually was DMing with we, as
you said, we recorded thisinterview about a week ago.
I have not stopped thinkingabout this since we talked with
Jake.
The possibilities and not onlywhere things are now, but where
you can imagine them being injust a year or two.

(01:20:50):
But it just blows my mind.
It it really does.
And I gotta say, I'm I'mfascinated with what he's doing,
and knowing him, he's gonnakeep pushing the edge in the
envelope, and I cannot wait tosee what he does next.

Mike (01:21:11):
He just took the words right out of my mouth, man.
Yeah.
And I told him during theinterview that, you know, he he
is absolutely of folks I'vepersonally interacted with, he's
absolutely the most techforward-facing modeler that I
know personally.

I agree.

Mike (01:21:26):
It's a blast to see all the things he's doing.
We have a few offlineconversations about things
sometimes, uh laser cutting,things like that.
But really, really cool.
And I can't wait to see thatdiorama or that vignette or
whatever he's gonna call it whenit's done.
It's a really interestingproject.
Since we recorded that, he'sposted the blog portion of that
on his website, and we'll putall that in the show notes.

(01:21:47):
And really curious where thisgoes.

Me too.

Mike (01:21:50):
Pretty dang cool, man.

Yep.

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Mike (01:22:55):
Kentucky Dave, I know your bench time has not been what
you hoped it would be, but I'msure you're gonna improve on
that.
And I'm certain our listenersare gonna goad you on now that
you've coped to the fact that uhit's been uh lackluster.
Yeah.
That said, you have gottensomething done, I'm certain.
So don't disappoint us, man.
What have you got going on?

Well, work on the F6F continues.
Um about halfway through theprocess with the tube oils on
the panel working on the panellines.
Yeah, I wish it was fartheralong, but unfortunately, it
just, I mean, the way time hasfallen.
It's it's tough, but I'm stillhoping to get everything done

(01:23:38):
and still have it done in timefor HeritageCon, but we'll see.
In the meantime, I'm alsoworking on the Platz T33, the
project that was in suspense foreight years, but has been
pulled back into the light.

Mike (01:23:54):
It's like Ted Williams' head.

Yeah, that's right.
Um to me, it it really is niceto get to pull one off the shelf
like that and to feel motivatedto go ahead and build the
project again or take theproject on to completion.
So I'm I'm happy to report I'mfired up about it.

(01:24:18):
Well, good.
So that's it for my bench,Mike.
Uh, what what you well, I kindof know what's been going on in
your bench.
Uh to let the rest of the worldknow.

Mike (01:24:28):
Uh, I've been knocking out that Musuru Cup Miata kit they
sent me, man.
Yeah.
You finished it.
I finished it.
Um one for the year.
Boom.
Yeah, that's pretty sad.
But yes, one for the year.
I'll take that notch in my beltand get on with the next one.
Because I we'll get to it, butyou know, I got some potential
for the rest of the year.

(01:24:48):
Yes, you do.
But back to this thing.
I wanted to go into a vignette,which I actually might still
finish.

Yeah.

Mike (01:24:56):
But there's no vignette, but it's done.
It's I submitted the photos touh the Hamilton Club yesterday,
and I got a verification thatthey got them today.
So that part, and I've revealedon the Musaru Cup Facebook page
and on the dojo, and it's allthat.
So it was a lot of fun most ofthe time with some caveats.

(01:25:18):
The oh man.

Well, since you haven't been able to tell people
about this, because we don'ttalk about we don't talk about
the Musaru while the Musaru'sgoing on.
The kit's an Aoshima kit,right?

Mike (01:25:32):
It's an Aoshima curbside kit of uh a Mazda Miata.
It's it's themed to some animeshow that I've never seen and
have no knowledge, priorknowledge or present knowledge
of, because I didn't even golook after I started the kit
because I really didn't care.

Right.

Mike (01:25:47):
I was gonna build it the way I wanted to build it.
And you know me, since thething, so we started this thing,
I've always tried to dosomething unique.
I I I turned the the Gundaminto a bench top kind of bench
warrior with the the uh the basewas a uh self-healing mat, and
there's an X Acto knife as theweapon, and there's he had a

(01:26:09):
foot up on a Humbrel paint tin.
There's a tube of Tester's tubecement all squeezed out all
over the place and made use ofthe articulation of the figure.
So that one that's the one weactually won that year.

Yes.

Mike (01:26:21):
That one was cool.
And then you built the Mustangand almost finished it.
Almost.
Sorry, man.

I finished it the next year.
It it it showed up in Hamiltona year later.

Mike (01:26:35):
It did, it showed up in Hamilton.
And then I built uh that littleUral truck.
It's a Hot Wheels car.

Yeah.

Mike (01:26:42):
Didn't win that year.
That's okay, but it it waspopular.
Everybody liked the idea, so Iwas pleased with that.
That was win or no win.
It got the uh it got theattention I I wanted to get
because it was uh it was a funidea and and it it came together
pretty good.
And uh I had fun doing it.
It had its warts as well, butuh we got that one done.

And then uh next year was the Sea Hund, the
little mini sub, which Itechnically did finish,
submitted the photos.
Not the best finish, but afinish.

Mike (01:27:13):
So you've had two that were like bullseye red dot in
your memory, and you barelyfinished them.

Yes.

Mike (01:27:20):
And I keep getting this tangential stuff, and I'm
getting mine done, Dave.

Yeah, I know you are.
I know you are.

Mike (01:27:26):
So this year we had this Miata thing, and it we're
supposed to do things that werekind of on in the vein of all
the Fast and Furious movies,right?
You know, all the cherry bombmufflers and skinny wheels and
stupid ground effects that don'twork, and tail fins and all
that.
And I wasn't feeling that.
So I'm like, well, what can Ido with this?

(01:27:49):
So I built it as a reality carwith a really unorthodox
sponsor.

Yes.

Mike (01:27:53):
The car was built using custom decals to kind of look
like a I say vintage, not thatlong ago because.
They've changed their logorecently.
A vintage XLAX box.
So black, white, and redgraphics on a kind of a powder
blue background.
You remember those boxes, Dave?
Oh, yeah.
So we had some custom decalsmade from some artwork I did in

(01:28:14):
Canva.

Well, and this is part of the thing that I mean,
instead of just building theMusaru build, you took it as an
opportunity to try something.
You and I had been talkingabout this custom decal
manufacturer who offers a customdecal service.
So you took the opportunity tosay, okay, I'm not just going to

(01:28:39):
build this Musaru.
I'm going to utilize theservice so we can A, know for
ourselves, but also B, tell thelisteners, hey, this is out
there and we've experimentedwith it, and this is what we
found.
So tell people what you found.

Mike (01:29:00):
Well, the decals, again, were custom printed by a company
called Hobbyist Decal, andthey're out of India.
I think Mumbai is where they'relocated.
And these were brought to myattention by listener Adam
Coleman, who's also the US repfor uh Liang models.
Right.
But he he put me onto thisdecal company.

(01:29:22):
He'd used them to replace olddecals from I think something he
was working on prior and hadgood success with them.
So I like, okay, we're going todo this with the Moose Root
Cup.
We're going to, we're going tocome up with a unique scheme.
So I did it as a rally carsponsored by X-Lax.
So X-Lax is the primarysponsor.
And then all the plastic modelmojo podcast sponsors are like

(01:29:44):
the little decals like aroundthe front wheel well, like on a
NASCAR or other rally cars.
Yeah.
Kind of a pretty common thing,right?
Yeah.
I just thought that would be aneat way to do the car.

And a custom license plate.

Mike (01:29:57):
And a custom license plate.
We'll get to that in a minute.
So we use Canva to do a lot ofthe podcast graphics.
And I'm like, okay, well, I didI did up the decals and sent
them the artwork.
And, you know, I it's been anexperience.
How was your interaction withthem back and forth?
Well, the back and forth, thecustomer service side of it was

(01:30:19):
excellent.
They're English speakers, and Ithink it's in Mumbai, so
they're they're going to bepretty good English speakers
coming out of Mumbai becauseit's like the what the financial
capital of Asia, pretty much.
That and uh Kowloon.
So the back and forths werequick and easy, really because
of the you know, the 12-hourtime difference or whatever it
is, 13, 11, 14, whatever it is.

(01:30:41):
It's a long way.
They'd they'd ask me somethingand I would reply, and it was
there was only half a day'sdifference between the replies,
so that went pretty quick.
Not as fast as maybe if theywere, you know, in the United
States, but maybe.

Right.

Mike (01:30:53):
That all went pretty well.
We did the artwork, we wentback and forth, made a couple
revisions, and then we we gotthe decals in the mail.

From finalizing the design to having the decals
in your hand was how long?

Mike (01:31:10):
About 14 days.
That's amazing.
So that's that's pretty good.
Yeah, true.
Well, and that's facilitated bythe fact that these things are
they're they're inkjet plotterprinted.

Okay.

Mike (01:31:22):
So because that's the technology they're using, these
decals were adequate for myapplication.

Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:31:30):
But these are not cartograph decals.
Right.
So d don't think you're gonnaget one millimeter text height,
legible stuff from this process,because you're not.
Right.
You're just not.
What you are gonna get ispretty good graphics, well,
excellent to some degree for thelarger stuff.

(01:31:51):
And you're gonna be all you'regonna be able to buy just one
sheet of it and not have toprint 50 or 100 of them.
Right.
That that you now have tofigure out how to disposition,
right?
So you get one sheet, and thisthe again, the graphics are are
are pretty good.
I was pretty pleased with thewith the printing.
I I say adequate for for theapplication because where they

(01:32:13):
would have probably come up orwhere they did come up short for
really crisp, legible stuff,like the our sponsor logos, some
of those were a little fuzzy.
And then the the custom licenseplate was a little fuzzy.
It's it's still recognizablefor what it is, which is really
for what I was doing, all Ineeded.
Right.
It's a custom Kentucky plate,Kentucky state license plate.

(01:32:35):
And that's if you've ever seena Kentucky plate, it's obvious
that's what it is.
So that's all it needed to be.
Yep.
But that said, a differentprocess would be better for
that, but you're getting into tomore higher level custom decal
printing at that point.

Right.

Mike (01:32:50):
The value here is it's that's it's it's a one-off.
And that's all you can ifthat's all you want, it's all
you have to buy.

Well, speaking of value and buy, what did it
cost?

Mike (01:33:01):
Uh I want to say I'm about 30 something in shipping and
all, but let me give you acaveat.
I think we might have got adeal because they were thinking
this might be a lead on somefuture business.

Okay.

Mike (01:33:15):
So I can't say if you order a sheet from them that
it's gonna be $30.
That's that's I'm not sayingthat at all.
That's that's what it costs me.

Gotcha.

Mike (01:33:22):
In in that ballpark.
But if you're gonna do this asa one-off for your own project,
I would not expect it to bethat.
It's certainly gonna be lessthan a hundred bucks.
Sure.
I think it's probably gonna beless than fifty.
I'm gonna ask Adam Coleman tochime in and tell us uh kind of
the price point, uh, generallywhat he's been paying.
I know he's done one, maybe acouple of these projects with
them.

(01:33:42):
So we we can get you a better,a better estimate of what it
what it might be.
So it's gonna depend on thesheet size and probably
whatever, but good enough forwhat I was doing.
Uh, but there, you know, evenwith the print quality, there's
some some other caveats that wecan talk about.
Again, it's an inkjet plotter.
Probably the biggest thing thatcould be better, and I think I

(01:34:05):
know how I would improve it.
The whites could have been moreopaque, but that's that's not a
that's not a problem that'sunique to their process.

Right.

Mike (01:34:14):
That's uh a lot of decals, even screen printed decals or
however like other companies doit, that can be a problem as
well.
You could double print thewhite.

Right.

Mike (01:34:24):
You could say one layer is white, one's yellow, and just
load white ink in both stationsand you double it up.
Or maybe there's a differentway to do it.
I don't know.
I don't know their exact I knowwhat plotter they're using.
I can't reference off the topof my head, but I I did look
into that.
They've got some videos outthere of their process, and it's
a it's a nice commercialplotter, so they could thicken

(01:34:47):
up their whites if if they ifthey wanted to.
If somebody asked them to, theywould probably do it.
I don't think they would hedgeit not wanting to do that.
The other thing is the decalfilm.
And I'm curious again at Adam,if Adam Coleman, what his
experiences was, were this filmis really, really elastic.
And typically that's not atrait of the decal films I've

(01:35:10):
used in the past.

Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:35:12):
So it's really stretchy and rubbery.
It's also pretty unresponsiveto the decal solutions I had on
hand, which are the micro-scalestuff and the alleged nuclear AK
stuff.
Yeah, didn't didn't touch it.
Made it wet.
That's about it.

Gotcha.
But the decals laid down.

Mike (01:35:34):
They did because the the they're so elastic that they'll
they'll stretch over bumps andcurves and stuff like that, but
there was not a situation wherethey had to snuggle down over
rivets or down in a panel line.

Right.

Mike (01:35:46):
So I don't know what they're gonna do in that
situation.
Still undetermined.
So I I think based on myexperience, if I needed that, I
may go a different route.
But I'd be curious what uh Adammight have to say if he's used
them in that kind ofapplication.
Because I I don't know.
There's a another thing kind ofthat gets back to this elastic

(01:36:08):
property of the decal film, isthe sheet is printed edge to
edge on the clear film.
You know, you like a I don'tknow, uh like a micro scale
decal, and and I don't know someof the what's the what's the
brand you're using for the theHellcat?

Furball arrow design.

Mike (01:36:25):
Are furballs edge to edge or are they spot printed on the
clear film?

Oh, there's spot printed.
I mean it's classic.
The the the clear film is notcontinuous across the entire
sheet.

Mike (01:36:39):
Okay.
So there's definitely someadvantages to that.

Right.

Mike (01:36:44):
So this is edge-to-edge decal film, which I've dealt
with before.
Right.
It's not the best situation,but it's a pretty common
situation.
So if you've built many kits atall, you've run across this and
you you've dealt with it.
But the issue is that it'sunresponsive to the decal
setting solution.
So what this company does, atleast on my sheet, my sheet they

(01:37:05):
sent me is is they singulatethe images with a blade that's
on, must be on the plotter printhead.
So you've got a decal sheetthat's got all these images
printed on it on a continuousedge-to-edge clear film, and
this plotter has a cutting bladeon it, and just outside the
color boundary for each image,they go around, they score down

(01:37:28):
a certain depth, they went alittle beyond the clear film
into the paper a little bit tocut all these out, which is in
theory a pretty good idea.
Yeah.
The problem is I don't it it'sit's probably a combination of
the elasticity of the decal filmand the depth they're cutting,
that you get this burr aroundall the decals.

Yeah.

Mike (01:37:50):
That you can't manage because the the film will not
react to the decal solutionsthat I have.

Right.

Mike (01:37:57):
So on the on my moose root cup, the the the number on the
door, the big number two.
Yep, depending on which angleyou look at, there's there's
there's no getting that edge togo away with with uh decal
setting solution.
And you might could get itcovered up with with uh gloss
coat, but I don't know how muchyou're gonna need.

Yeah, a lot of times the gloss coat will
accentuate the burr rather thanbury it.

Mike (01:38:24):
It can, but you can also with a more typical decal film
and and a heavy clear coat, youcan actually sand that
interface, and that's kind of a,you know, that's a tenuous
situation in my opinion.

Yeah, I don't like saying anytime the words
sanding and decals in the samesentence, yeah, makes me makes
me a little nervous.

Mike (01:38:48):
I know it's been done and I've seen people do it, and I
don't know.
Maybe maybe I'm overthinkingit, maybe they're not hitting it
as hard as I think they'rehitting it.
But anyway, with this rubberydecal film, that's not gonna
work.

Yeah.

Mike (01:39:01):
So I would probably use them again, but I would ask them
to not singulate the decals.
All the linear stuff, all thestraight line graphics, I just
cut it right to the colorboundary.

Gotcha.

Mike (01:39:13):
J inside of the cut they had already made.
I cut I made a new cut.

Right.

Mike (01:39:17):
So all that stuff looks pretty good.
It's just the round shapes thatI really didn't have much
option for.
And it was really bad.
Like on the round sponsordecals, a couple of our sponsors
use round logos.
Right.
I guess because of the thediameter and the the they're
cutting around this tight radiusthat it kind of made things
worse.

Yeah.

Mike (01:39:38):
Or the bird's the same size and the decals smaller.

So it shows up, yeah.

Mike (01:39:43):
Yeah, the but the ratio of bad to good is is not in your
favor.
So yeah, that bothered me alittle bit.
So I think I would probably usethem again.

Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:39:52):
But I would just say, don't singulate the decals.
Just I'll cut them myself.

Yeah.

Mike (01:39:57):
Because I I wouldn't, I would do it different.
I I would use a really sharpscalpel blade and a and a
straight edge, or you know,maybe you could even use the
thinner line.
I don't know.
To cut the circles, maybe, ormaybe you can't.
I don't know.
But I I'm I've I'm gonna sendthem a follow-up email about
what I thought.
Yeah.
And uh be curious to see theirresponse.

Well, yeah, I would be interested to see if if
they respond and say, well, wecould have done this or we could
do this in the future.
Exactly.

Mike (01:40:28):
Yeah, yeah.
Or if there's another film theycould use.
Yeah.
Part of the problem is the filmthey're using.
Yeah.
You know, but they build awhole business.
They've got all kinds of, theygot hundreds of decal sheets.

Yeah.

Mike (01:40:38):
So, you know, it's working for most people.
Maybe I'm just I don't know,stuck in my ways, old dog new
trick kind of thing.
Maybe, I don't know, but man,micro set and saw won't touch
it.
The ACAL, uh, the AK decal,what is it?
The decal adapter.
Right.
Which is supposed to be likesuper hot.
Toxic waste for decals.

Yeah.

Mike (01:40:59):
Didn't touch it.
So I I don't know.
Yeah.
You are you are you you sprayit on to me extra thin now?
What are you doing?

Yeah, it's a great question.
I want to see you post all ofthis to the dojo too.
But like I said, one of thegreat things was that you took
advantage of the musaru to say,hey, go try something new and be
able to tell the listeners,hey, I've tried this.
This is what it is, this iswhat it does, this is the pros

(01:41:32):
and the cons.
And look into it if it soundslike it's something that might
meet one of your needs.

Mike (01:41:39):
Exactly.
And that's I've kind ofapproached that's this moosaru
thing with that in mind everytime.

Yeah.

Mike (01:41:46):
Because a lot of the things I'm learning on these
projects isn't nothing I'm gonnalearn on armor projects.

Right.

Mike (01:41:53):
Gloss coats and I, you know, you may be custom decals,
but not like this, not like racecar graphics.
Bubble packs.
How to make a bubble pack?
Bubble packs, yeah.
So it's been fun.
The the the bugaboo with themoose root cup build was that
the the windshield frame had aknit line right in the middle of

(01:42:13):
the top of the frame, and I'dbroken it during the initial
construction, and then when Iwas taking off the the mask for
the weather stripping that I'ddone with the bare metal foil,
yeah, I cracked it againpost-paint.

Yeah.

Mike (01:42:28):
So now it's a lot harder to fix.

Yeah.

Mike (01:42:31):
So oh well.
It it kind of that's about mylast givea damn.
Yeah.
You know, it still looks prettygood.
It still still makes me smilewhen I look at it.
So uh well, good.
I hope everybody else enjoys ittoo.
It was a fun little build, andthen the decal thing was an
interesting experiment.
So that's the Musuru cup.

(01:42:53):
That's not the only thing on mybench, man.

Well, your bench is cleaner now because you said
you did a post-finished clean.

Mike (01:43:01):
I did, but I've got more stuff on it now.
What is it?
That 3D printed flak pens I'vebeen working on.
I've been working on the turretnow.
Because I've had the hull donefor the most part for a long
time.
I've been working on the turretand I've been sourcing some
replacement parts.
I don't like the wheels thatit's not the printed wheels that

(01:43:22):
I've printed.
I don't like the file.
I don't like the STL becausethey're they're basically Hetzer
wheels, but they don't have therivets on the back side, which
has been a was a an age-oldproblem before the modern Hetzer
kits started coming out.
That they're those are thoseare visible, particularly on the
the first and last road wheelstations for that vehicle.

Right.

Mike (01:43:43):
Because the ground clearance is so high, you can
see the backs of those wheels.
Folks care, folks don't care, Icare.
So I've sourced someaftermarket resin late late
Hetzer wheels.
Because it's not gonna matterhow good I print them, the
detail's not there.

Right.

Mike (01:43:57):
So it's not a matter of how good my printer is.
It's it's a matter of fact thatthe files, the model is
inadequate.
So I've ordered those, thosecame, I've test fitted them to
the model, that's looking good.
So I'm trying to get that thingto paint really, really quick,
just so I can have something inpaint.
Because it's gonna get topaint, it can get to paint
before the KV-85.

Right.

Mike (01:44:18):
But not by much.
I'll jump to it.
The KV-85's back on the bench.
There's minor turret detailingwork to do.
I did a little bit of thatbefore we started recording.
There's some minor hulldetailing work to do, and the
biggest thing left to do is thethose crazy turnbuckles they use
to secure the tow cables to thetank.

Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:44:38):
Still looking for a solution there.
I'm not happy with any of theones that I'm not happy with the
ones that were in the kit.
And I'm not happy with the onesthat are in any trumpeter KV
kit, and I'm not happy with theones in the Ryefield Models KV
kit.
Because they all they all dothe same thing, which is the the
hooks and the the bar in themiddle of the turnbuckle to turn

(01:45:00):
it are all in the same plane,flat.
And there's no reason that itshould be that way unless you
deliberately placed all theturnbuckle in that position.
So the the the hooks on theends could be turned in any
orientation along with the barin the middle.
So I'm trying to figure out tomake a new one that's got all
that stuff randomized so itlooks better, looks more

(01:45:23):
natural.
So not a big deal.
It's not a hard problem to fix.
I'm just not sure how I want todo it yet.

Gotcha.

Mike (01:45:30):
So that's the k that's KV85.
And then in addition, Mr.
Evan McCallum, Panzermeister36, has got me looking at this
BT5 thing again, because hewants to build one.

Right.
So remind everybody the problemof the BT5?

Mike (01:45:50):
Of the BT series.
There's no BT5 kit.
There's two Tamiya BT7s, andthere's a bunch of Eastern
Express BT7s.
There's a horrible ZvezdaItalary BT5 that's not even
worth considering.
There are three Hobby BossBT2s, and then there's every

(01:46:13):
dumb iteration of the BT2one-offs, two or three different
ones from Hobby Boss.
That why would anybody anybody,somebody would want to model
one, but it's not like massmarket appeal kind of subjects,
right?

Right.

Mike (01:46:31):
And all they got to do is put a new turret, which they've
already got in their T26 series,and put a new upper hole in the
kit, and they can do a BT5.
And they've just never done it.

Yeah.

Mike (01:46:43):
So there's been a couple of companies, one was Rhino
models.
They're gone now, was a resinupper hull or a BT5 conversion.
And then my friend Scott Demickout of New Jersey has a uh a
business called Hellcat Models,and he's done several U.S.
things, and he's done somethings for the BT series, BT5.
He's got a BT5 upper hull, a 3Dprint of the upper hull.

(01:47:07):
And I've had mine for a coupleyears, and Evan just got one.
He had it sent to me so I cantake it up to HeritageCon and
give it to him.
Right.
But we're gonna kind of gothrough a project together, and
we need to talk at HeritageConand see about how we're gonna do
this.
But uh looks like it's gonna bea thing.
So when his came, I was like,well, I'm gonna go ahead and get

(01:47:27):
that freaking support structureoff mine, my part, and get it
cleaned up.
So I've done that.
I've taken all the supportstructure off the upper hole
plate piece that is in theHellcat models kit, and started
fine-tuning a little bit, doingkind of secondary cleanup.
And we've I've ordered some BT2kits.

(01:47:51):
The BT2 medium kit is the oneyou need to convert to a BT5.
And I've got one for me and Igot one for Evan.
So looks like we're covered,man, and we just got to get
going with the project.
Sounds sounds like it'll beinteresting.
So that's my bench.
I got a lot going on, man.

Yes, you do.
You do.
You've got to and to be proud.
One for the year, lots ofproduction, lots of things going
on.
You should be proud.

Mike (01:48:18):
Maybe I think I can get one more done this year, maybe
two.
This is the first time in along time I've had two that are
ought to be close enough to bedone by the end of the year.

If life won't interfere, we shall see.
Yep.

Plastic Model Mojo is brought to you by
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Uh, Mike, uh, do you do you do a bladder check?
Make sure you got plenty ofdrink, cuz this might be a long
segment.

Mike (01:49:03):
What broke your wallet?
Uh well, I've mentioned a fewthings.
I've bought some kits, man.
Okay.
I think unfortunately I boughtsome kits.
Go ahead.
I mentioned the Hobby BossBT2s, so I've got two of those,
one for me and one for Evan.
Got that one in.
Right, I opened that one up andstarted messing with the BT5

(01:49:25):
hull on that one, see what all Igot to do to it.
In addition to that, I've got aTamiya BT7.

Mm-hmm.

Mike (01:49:32):
And I made a boneheaded move there.
I ordered the Model 37, whichis the conical turret.

Gotcha.

Mike (01:49:38):
If I ordered the 35 version, I could have cabbaged
the turret out of that one touse on my BT5 project.
So I'm probably gonna have topick up another one.
I probably should have justbought the 35 to begin with, but
uh I I just wasn't payingattention to what I was doing.

It happened.

Mike (01:49:55):
Uh I got a mini art T 3485 factory 112.
I got the non-interior version.

Gotcha.

Mike (01:50:02):
Which still got a lot of parts, but not quite a full
interior.
Mm-hmm.
I picked that one up.
And I got some late Hetzerwheels from LZ models to use on
my flakpanzer because I didn'tlike the like I said, I didn't
like the uh 3D printed file thatuh they provided to to make
those with other than that Ithink I got some magazines, a

(01:50:24):
couple of magazines to be extrathin because I was about out.
Other than that, I think Italked about the paints I bought
for the Moosuru last timemaybe?
I can't remember.
But it probably wasn't a whatbroke your wallet so I brought I
bought some AK Gen 2 paints topaint the blue on the Moosuru.

You mean the real c real colors?

Mike (01:50:43):
Sorry, yeah the real colors the lacquer paints so I
I've spent a little bit butapparently you're gonna make me
feel like a chump.

Well I don't know about that but uh David went on
a little spending spree.
Okay well you know how I'vewhined about my model room and
how I need to rearrange it, makethings better endlessly to the
point where you mock me over it.
Well came into a little moneyand I've been buying uh first

(01:51:23):
last time Skippy was over itmade me realize that I needed a
new chair in my modeling room.
And so I spent a little moneyand I got you know your classic
high backed artist chair for youknow like a drafter or an
artist sitting at a relativelyhigh art table.
Really nice.

(01:51:45):
I got a mini vacuum that's botha vacuum and a blower.
It's advertised for like workand detailing cars and such but
it's perfect for the hobby roomand vacuuming up and cleaning up
stuff.
I got you know I've got anoptivizor.

(01:52:06):
Well you gotta make a mess tohave something to clean up yeah
okay I liked it better when Ifinished models than you did.
I've got an optivizor and I useit but it's a little cumbersome
and all and you know to changelenses you have to to take off

(01:52:27):
the whole front of the of theoptivizor well somehow I got
pushed an advertisement forthese magnifying glasses that
have multiple lenses that youcan snap in and out and they
look like kind of like a pair ofglasses with the like cups on

(01:52:52):
the back so that they snug uptowards your eyes.
And I got them and I've triedthem on uh both with my glasses
and in replacement of my glassesum they're actually pretty good
I'm gonna play with them somemore but man I I think they're

(01:53:13):
gonna come in real handy doingdetail work.
You can get those uh stencilsright side up exactly that's one
of the motivations as a matterof fact I bought a set you know
Molotol makes those silvermarkers or the chrome um I
bought a set of they're notmolotol but they're the same

(01:53:34):
stuff same thing it's a set ofthree in varying shades of the
of chrome and silver because Iuse the Molotov in fact I you
most times I use the Molotov Idon't actually use it as a
marker I'll I'll bring the paintout of the marker and then use

(01:53:54):
that with a very fine brush andthat's what I plan to do with
these as well.

Mike (01:53:59):
Were they just different shades of silver?

Use different shades of silver I got a new
light box a new photographiclight box my old one's kind of
old and it's had modelhalf-built models sitting on it
and all sorts of stuff buildstuff to photograph it man yeah
thank you take the shot actuallyI ended up with two of those

(01:54:23):
due to a shipping error so uhyou're gonna get one too hey all
right I'll photograph themooster and send it to you there
you go I also bought you knowwhat a swing arm is you mount it
well yeah no not you know youmount it to your table and then

(01:54:43):
you can mount like a camera onit and use it to photograph your
bench yeah I've got a highlyarticulated one on my bench yes
well I've got one that I use formy video camera but or the or
the my video chat camera not mynot a camera camera but one just

(01:55:06):
uh you know for a standardscrew on it for a for a camera
exactly well I bought thisreally nice high-end swing arm
because I want to start shootingsome video or at least
experimenting with it and thisthing looked really good so I

(01:55:26):
wanted went ahead and bought itI haven't mounted it yet also
due to a listener who I had someinteractions with I ended up
with the display vice and uh Ireally like that I mentioned
that I dropped in like the spaceof a week two sets of tweezers

(01:55:48):
and ruined both of them so toreplace two tweezers I went out
and got four tweezers I got twofrom a company called Steady
S-T-E-D-I-A-N I picked up twotwo display tweezers and so I
replaced the two I destroyedwith four so hey good move I

(01:56:12):
think so too and really nicetweezers not not very expensive
but really qu h high quality youknow you and I have talked
about not not buying cheap whenit comes to tweezers and these
things really are good andthey're not overly expensive.

Mike (01:56:30):
No and we mentioned that last time I think that uh you
know when we we had the big dclub debate about that it was a
lot harder really good tweezerswere it was like a you had to go
to a a scientific supplier yeahit's like a 50x multiplier on
what the cheap ones cost maybe ahundred X.
Yep it's not so not so much nownope not at all.

I also picked up speaking in a study S T E D I
they make some scribers now I'vetalked about the fact over the
last year I concentrated ontrying to get my paneline
scribing and rescribing betterand there is nothing that I like
more than the US UMM USAscriber.

(01:57:17):
Yep but I'm always on thelookout for something else just
to see if there's somethingbetter out there and this
company Steady had a set ofthree scribers and a handle not
very expensive and so I wentahead and got them I haven't
used them yet we're gonna see itturns out there was a hobby

(01:57:40):
town that's been open for aboutnine months in in Louisville and
not too far from from where Ilive that I didn't know about I
was in the shopping center whereit is going into a Kroger as a
matter of fact and I saw it andI'm like I don't remember that

(01:58:01):
being there.
Turns out they've only beenopen about nine months.
So I walked in there I did pickup one of my display tweezers
there because I want to you knowanytime there's a hobby shop I
want to try and spend some moneyand encourage the business.

Mike (01:58:15):
They also had a very random selection of Mr Color
paints they didn't have the fullrack they had like 20 that just
this must be part of thepackage that I know I wonder if
they don't have a favoritecustomer that needs a couple of

(01:58:37):
colors and they have to orderboxes of six.
Oh maybe that could be it toobut these were very random I
mean it wasn't like you know ifyou ours is the same way they've
got like a handful of thingsand there's it makes no sense.

Yeah.
So but I picked up one twothree four five six bottles of
Mr.
Color um wasn't too random foryou apparently wasn't too well
I've I'm I eventually am goingto acquire all of the Mr.
Color paint because I Becausewhy not?
Well I'm sold on them gettingout of other paint lines and I I

(01:59:11):
love these things.

Mike (01:59:13):
Moved on from enamel.

I moved on from enamels although I'm still going
to keep the uh color coatsbecause I like them too um and
finally I did pick up a kit justto make you feel better.
And help me meet my minimumorder meet your minimum order.
I picked up an Arma HurricaneII it's the kit multi-kit with

(01:59:35):
the 2A, two B, two C.
So you can do any one of thethree versions of the Hurricane
Mark II.

Mike (01:59:43):
So either British or Russian mark.

In br either British or Russian marking.

So if the plastic's not on it when you
get it all the parts are thereI promise oh yeah sure sure so
I've been spending I'm done nowalthough with HeritageCon in two
weeks and a vision visit toMichigan Toy Soldier and the
HeritageCon vendor room thereprobably is going to be some

(02:00:08):
more money spent but I think I'mdone right now Plastic Model
Mojo is brought to you by ModelPaint Solutions, your source for
harder and steambeckairbrushes, David Union power
tools and laboratory grademixing measuring and storage
tools for use with all yourmodel paints be they acrylic,

(02:00:30):
enamels or lackers check themout at www.modelpaint solutions
dot com guys uh I'm as tired ofsaying it as you are of hearing
it but please when you're donelistening to the podcast on

(02:00:52):
whatever app you use please gorate the podcast give it at the
highest rating available ithelps drive new new listeners to
discover the podcast inaddition if you know a model
who's not listening to PlasticModel Mojo please recommend us

(02:01:13):
to them help them if they don'tknow how to what a podcast is or
how to listen to one pleasehelp them out so that they can
start listening.

We continue to grow the best way for us to grow
is for current listeners tohelp us bring in new listeners.
So please we appreciate youdoing that.

Mike (02:01:36):
In addition to that please check out all the other
podcasts out in the model sphereyou can do that by going to
wwwmodelpodcast.com that's modelpodcast plural it's a
consortium website set up withour friend Stuart Clark up in
Canada from the Skill ModelPodcast he's aggregated all the
banner links to all the podcastsin the model sphere you can go
there it's a one-stop shop anduh check them all out.

(02:01:57):
In addition to the podcast wegot a lot of blog and YouTube
friends out there as well.
I already mentioned EvanMcAllen Panzermeister36.
He's got a great YouTubechannel you're gonna want to
check out and be curious wherethis BT5 thing goes.
Maybe it's gonna be on hischannel maybe it's gonna be on I
don't know what we'll see.
We'll see.
To be detrimental we've gotmodel airplane maker our friend

(02:02:20):
Chris Wallace who's been doingsome great stuff lately.
He's been doing some greatstuff he's got a YouTube channel
and a blog in addition to thathe gave us a big plug on his
latest blog post.
He elaborated on what he woulddo if he came into a bunch of
money.
Yes which was a listener mailquestion a couple episodes ago

(02:02:41):
we appreciate that Chris we doyou mentioned Jeff Groves the
anti guy he just finished up allhis stinking Sturmovics.
Yes I didn't realize there arethat many kits out there.
Yep how many did he build?

Oh God I did looks like a dozen yeah there's
something close to that.

Mike (02:03:00):
Now there may be one or two repeats in there but yeah
anyway it's his I don't know hismost epic batch build but it's
got to be close.
Yes it is an awesome one.
He's built a lot of uh Aleutianground attack planes so check
out the Inshai Guy blog we gotSpru Pie with Fritz Steven Lee
great 72nd scale blog and it'sMatho scale railroading long and

(02:03:22):
short form content some greatstuff there you're going to want
to check that out and we gotPaul Budzick's scale model
workshop and he's always puttingsome uh videos out there that
are gonna help you along in yourhobby so please check them all
out if you're not a member ofIPMS USA please consider joining

(02:03:43):
if you're not in the U.S.

you can still join IPMS USA but you also can
join your national IPMSorganization.
Great group of people who aregiving up their modeling time to
help your modeling experiencebe better.
In addition if you're intoarmor modeling or post-1900
figures modeling take a look atjoining AMPS the Armor Modeling

(02:04:10):
Preservation Society a dedicatedgroup of modelers who want to
elevate the art of armormodeling and they do so Mike uh
we're almost the end of theepisode uh are you at the end of

(02:04:32):
your modeling fluid almost Davenot quite but almost but we had
a pause that the listenerswon't hear where maybe I
refilled it yes well I I feelsilly asking you I mean it's
Weller it's nectar of the godsit's it's the pinnacle of the

(02:04:52):
bourbon art I mean what is thereto say that is good and it's
smooth smooth doesn't begin todescribe well we can talk about
why well go ahead and talk aboutwhy Weller is a wheated bourbon
yep so by definition a bourbonhas to be 51% corn.

Mike (02:05:13):
Yep after that it doesn't matter what else is in it only
to taste does it matter onlywell yes per definition by the
ATF it doesn't matter so spicierbourbons have a lot of rye in
them some of them have no wheatat all right and some have more

(02:05:35):
wheat than rye and some have norye at all which I think is
where Weller is.
I think so too so there's Icould be wrong but I don't think
so there's no rye in Weller.
Weller is the mash bill afterthe corn is almost entirely
wheat.
Yeah so it's a very smoothbourbon it's a little sweeter

(02:05:56):
it's just really really goodthis is the special reserve
which is kind of their theirlower end one yeah if you can
get your hands on the 12 year ohthat one's really really good
but it's gonna cost you somemoney.
Yeah but it's really good.
So it the short of it is I'mI'm I've enjoyed it it's good
don't worry Dave they'll comeanother bottle to Canada because

(02:06:20):
I've got another one securedbecause right now it's a little
easier to get than it used to bebut we won't get into that
we'll we won't get into the why.
Yeah it is so I've got anotherbottle and uh we'll take
advantage we'll crack that oneat Here is gone.

That sounds great.

Mike (02:06:36):
Well what what what about you man?

I had to tap out got about half of this thing
drunk and it's I get it manymark these words for me it's too
hoppy.
It's just too much too muchit's like eating eating
potpourri yeah kinda it just Imean the hop is so far forward

(02:07:03):
and it's such a bitter hopbecause not all hop is bitter to
some extent it is but it's notall the same and this is just
full on in your face bitter andyou know what I I I drink
modeling fluid because I enjoydrinking modeling fluid.

(02:07:27):
So if it's something like thiswhere the bitter and the hop is
just so much that it robs me ofthe enjoyment I'm not gonna
drink it.
So yeah I tapped out.
How many you got?
It's the only one I bought itas a single at Trader Joe's.

Mike (02:07:44):
Okay.

And so because that's what I do they sell a lot
of singles and so I go on I buyit as a single that way I can
sample one of them.
So luckily I'm not stuck withfive more of these things.
But it's a two for one it'syour first and your last yeah so
it is both my first and my lasttime for shout outs Mike do you

(02:08:13):
have a shout out?

Mike (02:08:14):
Well I would be remiss to not shout out all the folks who
have chosen to contribute toPlastic Model Mojo through their
generosity folks like JunSickna, Stephen McDonald and
Martin Pietta.
Those folks have chosen to helpus out through Patreon or
PayPal or buy me a coffee or allthose avenues are available

(02:08:35):
through the Plastic Model Mojowebsite at www.plasticmodel
mojo.com.
Man, we appreciate it right nowfolks have been really generous
and we are on the crux ofgetting the change to the
website done it's just beenfabulous and we really really
appreciate it folks so uh wehope to be able to bring you a
bunch of new content that that'snot audio let's put it that

(02:08:58):
way.

Yep and folks thank you thank you so much we
could not be here were it notfor you and then we could not
make the improvements if it werenot for you so yeah I joined
Mike in a shout out got one ofyour own well actually I have
instead of shout outs I've gottwo Dave recommends TV shows or

(02:09:22):
video one is a classic networktelevision show.
I don't watch much network TVanymore.
God I haven't for years there'sthis British series Doc Martin
that my wife and I really enjoyuh span 10 seasons about 15 18
years because British TV you'llget a season and then it'll

(02:09:45):
it'll take two years till youget a new one.
Well it's a very popular showhere in the U.S.
among watchers of British TVwell NBC has decided to do an
American version just like theydid with the Office where you
had the British office and thenthey did the Steve Carell office

(02:10:08):
here in the U.S.
There's a show now called BestMedicine and they're about 10
episodes into it.
It's really really well done Ihighly if you enjoyed Doc Martin
the British show you will enjoyBest Medicine.
Takes a couple episodes to getgoing but they're into like

(02:10:30):
their tenth episode now and it'sreally really good so I highly
recommend that.
In addition if you have Netflixthere is a six or seven episode
TV show with just one seasonthat's all it's going to be it's
a contained story.
It's called His and Hers andit's the actor John Barenthal is

(02:10:55):
the lead male actor and Iparticularly have enjoyed a lot
of his work so when I saw this Iwas like okay I'll give it a
try very good and man at the endit has some twists that you
know I'm a pretty good TVwatcher and I can see stuff

(02:11:16):
coming absolutely blindsided mesome of the twists at the end.
So again if you're looking forsomething to watch Best Medicine
his and hers on Netflix.

Mike (02:11:28):
Well I got another one okay it's it's still Q1 and our
sponsors have all been kind ofin a renewal period.
Model paint solutions we gotsquadron we got kit mask bases
by Bill and Bill Moore's Worldof Armor looking forward to
helping these folks promote whatthey got going on in 2026 and
it's it's all going to be good.
We support people we like andwe like all these folks so

(02:11:52):
patronize them folks.

Yes and and truly these are all companies are all
things that I would whether ornot they were sponsors, I would
recommend because they're allreally, really good at what
they're doing.
And good people.
Yeah, good people.
And you can't say you can't sayenough about good people.

Mike (02:12:16):
Well, we're getting close to the end, man.

Yeah.

Mike (02:12:19):
We're not already there.

Yeah, we are.
I think we're at the end.

Mike (02:12:23):
Well, Dave, as we always say, so many kids.
So little time.
And uh see you at the bench,man.
See you at the bench.

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