August 18, 2023 • 46 mins
Derek "Shop Sweeper" Young and Darren "Ask for Help" Moser are back this month to talk about what methods they use to get back into a project after it's stalled.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Welcome to the nerd Party. Welcomeback to Maker's Method, a conversation about
what it is to be a makerhere on the nerd Party Network. I'm
one of your hosts, Derek YounglavanosProps, and I'm joined by my fellow
(00:23):
maker, cause player and buddy DarrenMoser, who some of you may know
as doctor sci Fi And if youdon't, you should. I'm just going
to throw that out there and weare back once again. It's been about
a month. Our goal for amonthly release is thereabouts. You know,
(00:43):
we didn't say exactly. I thinkwe're going shooting at the beginning of one
month to the end of the othermonth, but still technically true. Yeah,
I mean it's it's been at leastthirty days since we've recorded this,
that is true. Yeah, SoI think before we get into our topic
for this episode, it's been aminute since we've had a chance to chat.
(01:10):
And the last time that we saweach other was what three ish weeks
ago. Yeah, in person,there were there was at least one droid.
There were many monsters and haunted houses. It was quite the hot and
Muggie like you know, conventions are, Yeah, but Darren made the trip
(01:37):
down to Long Beach to come checkout Midsummer Scream, the Halloween and horror
convention that I've taught workshop classes atfor the last ten years, which was
you know, thank you Facebook forbeing useful for something to remind me how
long I've been doing it for.Did you get a ten year service pin
on your badge? I think theyshould have done that, you know what.
(02:00):
There's a lot of people that havesurface bins. But yeah, so
it was nice. We were ableto sit down towards the end of the
day on Sunday and catch up amidstpeople wanting to ask questions about Beat one,
and I don't blame them, becausehonestly, Beat one is a lot
(02:23):
more interesting than I am on Sundayat about four o'clock in the afternoon after
teaching all weekend. But I'm curious, as I wouldn't say that you're not
a fan of Halloween, but you'renot a crazy Halloween person like I am,
sort of what your take was onthe convention, considering you do conventions,
(02:46):
but this one would be kind ofa standout for you. Yeah,
I've never been to Midsummer Screen andI will totally admit that you know,
having a friend that worked, therewas reason enough for the stars to line
to get my my butt. Imean, it's just driving everywhere in la
is just you want to play inthe time to drive. That's really the
(03:06):
only concessions. Only twenty minutes wellfrom from somewhere, it's twenty minutes not
anywhere, I know, but no, it was it was fun. It's
definitely a one day con like obviouslyit's the whole weekend, but you could
do it in a day, Ithink if you really wanted to. And
yeah, it's just you know,a big expo floor with like most artist
(03:29):
alleys or expo areas often kind ofsame variations of the same thing, maybe
the same kind of five six shops. But it's so funny, you know.
Even with a lot of the attendeesI'm sure really into horror, really
into you know, Halloween and allof that, there were still some of
the nicest people I ever like walkedacross, Like everybody's kind to everybody else.
(03:53):
No one was yelling at anybody,you know, because it's hot and
humid, because you're right next tothe ocean and all of that, and
it's just it's fully summer now.It's it finally got here. Yeah,
but it was fun. I hadI had a really fun time. I
didn't do any panels or anything likethat. I had penciled them in.
But you know, my favorite thingto do at cons is just walking around
with bed one or something else onmy arm, and which you know makes
(04:15):
shopping and eating and bathroom mingled slightlydifficult, but you know, you figure
it out. But yeah, andagain no one came up and said,
like, sir, the Star Warsconvention is a different week. This is
you know, no, they've gotnone of that. Everyone, like you
said, everybody loves bad One.He's a great conversation starter. And saw
(04:40):
a couple other puppets there, whichwas cool. There was someone who had
a little I think it was likea little chucky puppet, and so saw
that. And there was actually aperson who was doing a panel where the
puppet was doing the panel itself,and I caught him like right before he
went in. He was chatting tosomeone and I didn't get a chance to
(05:00):
give him my collector card, buthe you know, saw Beady and we
said, hey, like basically hadthe normal five second. Puppets are awesome.
I think you're awesome, you thinkI'm awesome, and then we part
ways, which that's always a greatlittle conversation, but yeah, it was.
It was fun and it was coolagainst seeing your workshop. Yet that's
(05:20):
awesome, pretty large space right inthe middle, and it worked great.
You were cutting foam and I couldtell you really loved that jigsaw. It
was really not being the easiest toolknown demand. But we were coming up
and I saw a lot of peopleat the end of Sunday who were picking
up their piece that they had madeearlier, and obviously they didn't have to
(05:43):
carry it around, but they werealways really appreciative and thankful and happy that
they got to do that. Andit sound like you were pretty sold out
almost every single session that weekend,which is awesome. Yeah, we'd sold
out every class except for our verylast one on this Sunday, which it's
expected. Yeah, yeah, youknow, it's Sunday and it's late in
the day. But you're right.The people that that came and took the
(06:11):
classes all were just lovely people.They were really excited to be there,
and I think a lot of themwalked away feeling a bit more confident in
their own abilities, which for meis kind of the whole point to a
lot of it, and even evenmore so than like a generic convention,
(06:33):
I feel like Midsummer it gives offa tribe feel. It's like these are
people that kind of had the samevibe. They like the same things,
you know, in different ways,like not everybody as a decorator, or
not everybody you know dresses up inhorror cosplay or anything like that. But
you're all kind of vibing on thesame wavelength. And that's why you have
(06:54):
these not only Midsummer in the summer, but I think there's another one in
the fall, so you're double dippinginto the spookiness which exhaust It's very fun.
Yeah, yeah, it was agood time. It's like any convention
often a lot of work. It'seither a big physical lift or it's a
(07:16):
big social lift, or in thecase of Midsummer for me, it's a
little bit of both, because itis very much akin to going to summer
camp, which seems to be kindof a recurring theme for me. A
lot of Summer Camp back to backthis year. But it is sort of
like, you know, you showup for load in on Thursday and you
(07:41):
get to see people who you maynot have seen since the last convention,
and so, you know, forme, it's it's often like seeing people
who I haven't seen for a year, so there's a lot of catching up
and you know, sadly telling alot of the same stories to different people.
So he kind of feel like,wow, have I just spent this
(08:03):
entire weekend saying the same things overand over again? And the answer is
yes, and thank you all foryour patients. You get really good at
it that way, and it's truethe story and you know, pause at
the right times for applause and shockand exactly. I now finally understand why
my dad would would tell the samestories over and over again, and when
I'd interrupt him, he would say, no, I've worked on it.
(08:26):
It's better this time. I getit now. But no, but it
was really fun, and like yousaid, I really enjoyed getting to sit
and chat with you for talk atleast like half an hour or so and
just catch up, you know,like and I got it was enjoyable for
me as well because I could takeBeaty off and set him on the table
for a while and have two functioningarms, so that it was a bonus
(08:50):
yeah, it definitely, you know, if you if you wanted to know
what the conversation was, Like,Darren and I kind of looked at each
other for a split second and hadthat thought, like we should probably be
recording this, and then both bothagreed that we would just enjoy the time
and enjoy the hang. Being aprofessional cause player is knowing when not to
(09:13):
record is much exact to record exactly, but that's what we have this show
for, and uh, you know, to keep it interesting, we try
we try to limit the amount ofconversation we have before we start recording so
that you guys get to hear allof it as it unfolds. And that
(09:39):
said, I will just jump rightinto our tomic for this episode because I'm
rusty and I couldn't think of agood segue. Now. Not rust,
like artificial rust, like with cinnamonand special effects, do you mean like
real rust? You know, I'mprobably a little bit of both at this
time of the year, but we'lltalk about that in a minute. So
(10:01):
the topic that I thought would beinteresting to discuss would be ways that we
kind of break the monotony of ourusual making habits that tend to kind of
reinvigorate our interest in projects and getsus like reinspired. I guess it's probably
(10:24):
a good way to kind of restartingsomething that's you still love it, but
it hasn't been getting the attention itdeserves for a while exactly. And I
think as creative people, it's easyto have a lot of gas in the
tank for a project and then eventuallykind of run out of gas on it.
(10:46):
And it's not that you're not interestedin it any longer, but that
you've kind of just you've like hita dry patch, you know, towards
the towards making what it is thatyou're making, and you just need to
step away, but you still wantto do it. You still, you
(11:07):
know, envision it being a completedproject. So I guess as someone who
I think you probably more than I, because you've had projects that you've been
working on really long term. You'vehad projects are weekly video projects, so
you have to crank it in acertain degree. Yeah. Well, and
(11:28):
even the stuff that I make formyself that isn't things that end up in
videos, I don't think I amas I don't know if attached as the
right word. Invested is probably thebetter word than like you with K Twoso,
(11:52):
which that is a big undertaking andit's seen many revisions and improvements,
but I would have to imagine thatat some point while working on it,
you just kind of like hit aroadblock where you're like, I have to
step away from it to gain someperspective on it and whatnot. And so
the question is kind of what isit that you do when you reach that
(12:13):
point on a project to kind ofclear the air and eventually refocus your energy
towards pushing towards that final goal ofa completed project. Well, when you
mentioned this as a topic, yeah, K two was the first thing I
immediately thought of, because that isexactly happened in this last week as really
(12:35):
spinning back up. And as I'vesaid before, this is version four of
K twoso. He's was first madein twenty seventeen, so it's been a
long process of rebuilding. I callhim the Droid of theseus as I slowly
replaced parts and I think there's onlytwo pieces left from version one that still
survived to this day. But yeah, version three was for celebration Anaheim in
(13:00):
twenty twenty two. Two, yes, twenty two, and that you know
that was over a year ago,so what have I been doing since then?
And I've been doing a little,but yeah, it also kind of
goes hand in hand with deadlines,and we've talked about deadlines before and how
(13:22):
they can be a strong motivation andfor this one, as we started to
head into the fall and kind ofcon season started to build up again,
I started to think, like,Okay, what events do I really want
to go to and what event doI want to bring version four of K
two two that's close enough to beenjoyable, Like it's I get that payoff
(13:46):
soon but far enough away to likepractically accomplish what I want to accomplish and
not kill myself. So I amfocusing on La Comic Con, which is
the first weekend of December, andnot that I'm counting at all, but
that would happen to be one hundredand ten days from now. It's a
(14:07):
nice you know, round number twoit but no, I think that we're
gonna have a huge Droid presence there. It's gonna be a really fun time.
And that's again it has that summercamp vibe. Like you said,
it's a bunch of droid builders,not only locally but people come from out
of state. It's three whole daysFriday through Sunday, and it's a lot
(14:28):
of fun. So I'm like,Okay, K two is going to be
ready, so what Yeah, I'dsay one of the aspects of how do
you restart the project is is havingthat deadline. But what really started it?
And it kind of started just thislast week. For me, it
was asking for help and so Iwent to an outside source. So we
(14:52):
I'm actually in a secret K twosobuilders group. It's not like super secret,
but it's it's other people who arebuilding and working on adding animatronics to
their K toso oh and so theseare people who are using like the droid
division or other files to print likethe statue version, and we're all like,
(15:13):
that's cool, but we would lovefor him to move and do other
things. Now I'm kind of likea subset of that because my K two
is not a statue but a puppet, so my requirements are a little different.
But I basically reached out to oneof the beta designers who has been
doing some awesome work on the neckmechanism and the head and all of that,
(15:35):
and basically said, hey, likemy printers kind of at a standstill
right now. I have this deadlinein about one hundred days that I want
to hit. I don't want tolike volunteer you into helping with this,
but as much as you are interested, I would love assistance in getting him
(15:56):
ready and being more of a teamproject, because this is servos and programming
and are duinos and all stuff thatI've never done before. And that's always
the scary part of the project,Like I could I have phone work I
want to do on him, butI don't worry about that because I could
knock that out in a weekend ifI really needed to. I can't magically
learn servoing, you know, ina weekend if I don't know what I'm
(16:19):
doing. And fortunately, uh,you know, these people are are rising
to the occasion and like, hey, how can we you know, get
stuff in your hands. And he'sliterally going to reprint the prototype head and
wire it up and just mail theentire thing to me and I'm going to
just plug it in from there soand I'll pay for the materials and shipping
(16:41):
and time and all of that.But for me, it you know,
taking that step back and being like, yeah, I could do all that
I could slowly print each piece andI could, you know, still have
to dial in my printer and getthe supplies. But you know, he
has a beta version of this walkingand talking and moving in his garage right
(17:03):
now. So maybe not walking,but but other parts are moving and it
looks and it looks great and it'samazing and he's he's pushing the ball right
now. And so I said,as I thought to myself, Okay,
I'm going to ask for help anda you know, the worst they could
say is no, or I'm busyor I can't whatever, which is then
I'll just keep making myself. Butyeah, and that got me excited again.
(17:27):
I'm like, okay, so that'sthat piece of the puzzle kind of
handled for the moment, so Ican focus on the other aspects that I
still want to do. And itagain, that little tiny bit of momentum.
Now it gets that invigoration going of, like okay, because still one
(17:48):
hundred days is not a lot whenyou take away like the weekends we've already
booked ourselves and the nights were tired, and when it's not your full time
gig and it's just evenings and weekends, like that's not many a lot of
days, but it's enough where I'mgetting excited to pull that together. But
there's also the not fear, Butthat means I'm also going to enter a
(18:12):
phase of the project which I callnot a done state. Katuso is in
a done state right now. IfI got a call and someone said,
hey, the children's hospital wants kto to visit tomorrow, I could do
that in a couple of weeks.That is not going to be a possibility
because he's going to be more spreadout on the table than Frankenstein's Monster.
(18:34):
But that's okay. But you gottapush through that. And you know,
you gotta put your stuff on blocksevery once in a while to really dig
into it. So yeah, SoI guess that's my my roundabout answer is
sometimes you got to ask for helpand reach out to the community, and
hopefully the community, whether it's droidbuilding or you know, Halloween decorations or
(18:57):
just making in general. If youhave friends that can help you with pieces,
especially stuff that you've never done before, that can really and again you're
now part of a team. SoI want to keep the ball moving because
my friends are helping move that ball. So I don't want to be like,
well, I just sat on mybutt for two weeks while you did
(19:18):
that and didn't do anything. Thanksfor the piece. You know that use
that momentum, use it to getyourself going. So that's something that's happened
to me just super recently. Butwhat about you, I know you're in
that slight rest period. I saythat with the largest of air quotes between
you. Know, you have MidsummerScreen, which was a large event,
(19:40):
and obviously Halloween is a matter ofmonths away, less than a hundred days
because it's earlier than December first,So what what are you trying to restart
on in your in your shop rightnow? Honestly, I'm in a weird
spot right now where our Halloween decorationshave been more or less the same for
(20:07):
over a decade. Every year Imay do like a new tombstone or something
and swap one out and put anew one in, but it's never like
a huge overhaul. Like there's definitelysome people that like to start from scratch
every year and that's not us.But for me right now, the thing
that's like the sort of weird spacethat I'm in is that after spending a
(20:34):
bunch of time in someone's shop thatwas very organized, and then coming back
to my shop, which is verydisorganized. I'm I'm fighting between wanting both
things because there is that part ofmy mind that just, you know,
(20:57):
I'm just going to put the screwdriverhere. It's fine, I will remember
that it's here, and then I'llwalk away, and then I can't find
the screwdriver. And you know,it's like a cruel joke I play on
myself every time I go into theshop. But what that means to you
know, have a nice and tidyand organized shop is that like a lot
(21:18):
of stuff has to come out beforeI can kind of do that. And
unfortunately, right now is like theworst time of the year for me to
want to make that kind of abig change to how I work. So
there's like nothing on my workbench thatI've been working on long term that I've
(21:41):
gotten burned out on. But Ido kind of vacillate between you know,
completely catastrophic shop or very tidy shop, and I kind of get started and
I take a couple of steps forward, and then I take a step back
(22:03):
and do something dumb, like,you know, this empty spot on the
floor looks like a good place toput scraps from some project I was working
on or whatever, you know.I mean, it definitely feels like as
makers sometimes we always have a dualproject, and that project is the project
(22:26):
and the worker space to make theproject like it. I mean, I've
talked before about my sheet pans.I think I have on here that that
was a kind of a breakthrough forme as I was constantly trying to think
what how do I want to make? What do I want to do.
I'm not an Adam Savage, I'mnot you know, a Brian Thompson.
(22:48):
I'm not. I don't work incertain ways. So when I kind of
realized I just need clear workspace,like flat table top space. So how
do I get stuff off the tableand vertically stuck it and roll it away
into the corner. Yeah, butit's still a work in progress. There's
it's you know, maybe I shouldinvite some makers over and that'll get me
(23:11):
to spur to clean clean up intime. That often does it with company.
Yeah. I was about to say, the last time I was in
your shop it was very tidy,and you promptly told me that it was
just because you had people over.I just will just flat out tell people
like, no, you can't comeover. It's like a not quite so
(23:37):
dirty little secret anymore. It's definitelydirty, it's just not a secret.
You know. My shop is quitesmall and constantly looks like it's, you
know, after an earthquake or something. It's just there's just stuff everywhere.
But that's my mind is just soscattered like that that for some reason it
works for me sometimes because there's definitelybeen times where I'm like, I know
(24:03):
that, you know, I hadthis marker here, I had like a
whole pack of markers here. Wheredid they all walk off to? Well,
it comes in waves. It's like, at least for me, it's
like it's building. It's building,not building like physically, but like the
mess. And then it reaches athreshold where you're like, okay, tomorrow
(24:25):
is cleaning it because I cannot moveforward and I have nowhere to And then
you spend a couple hours and justtaking everything off the floor or clearing off
three of the workbenches and putting awayhalf the tools, and low and behold,
your shop looks a million times better, Like why didn't I just do
that? Because that's just not howit's going to happen. It's just not
(24:48):
gonna happen that way. Yeah,you just described how it is for me
every time, but I will saythat recently it's it's I've been pushing a
bit more towards towards some level oforganization because I'm in the process of tackling
a larger scale project as I liketo do. At this time of the
year, I had a fellow YouTuberreach out to me about creating a large
(25:18):
prop for a short film that they'remaking. And what oddly, I guess,
I mean, anybody that listens tothe podcast would know that this is
how my brain works. But sortof the thing that kind of got me
moving towards getting things organized so thatI could then do the project was getting
(25:45):
into that research mind space, whichis like my favorite part of making anything
is like the planning and in theprocess of planning how I was going to
tackle this build, which I guessI should say. So. The YouTube
channel is called Hollywood Graveyard and basicallywhat they do is visit the final resting
(26:07):
places of celebrities and it's like,you know, everyone from actors, comedians,
musicians, people in film production,producers, things of that nature.
It's weird, fascinating niche that Ifind super enjoyable, mainly because it just
(26:32):
seems like it could be the perfectjob. You know, go to a
quiet place, have minimal interactions withpeople, film a little something, come
home, do some voice over,thank you, good night. Anyhow,
long story short, you wanted tobe a maker? I know. So
(26:55):
they're working on a project and neededme to recreate the coffin of count or
Lock from the nineteen twenty two nosFeratu horror movie. And so as I
was kind of putting together my listof materials and figuring out timelines and all
(27:17):
that stuff, it sort of gotme in that headspace of I don't have
a lot of time to turn thisaround, so I don't have the luxury
of wondering where that thing was thatI all of a sudden need, And
so I started to kind of tidyup the shop a bit, which kind
(27:37):
of like preproduction as a bit.Yeah, and it's it's paid dividends because
but not real dividends because right becauseexactly So, it's been interesting having this
kind of be the the motivation behindgetting my shop cleaned up, which was
(28:02):
the thing that I had kind ofstalled out on was taking on another project
that had a short ish deadline oryou know, timeline to it all,
and not being able to just likestop and try to figure out where something
(28:25):
was and retrace my steps and whatnot. So it's it's really been interesting to
work in this way. But tohave this be the thing that weirdly,
you know, got me in gearto tackle this other project that I kind
of lost interest in a little.Yeah, it sounds kind of like almost
(28:47):
like restarting an engine. Like theengine is making and you get a new
you know, a new project,and it it's starting that wheel turning for
not only your your space and howyou make in it, but also yeah,
it or earlier I was thinking aboutwhen we were talking about projects and
(29:11):
the long term projects and man,but though sometimes those short term projects like
oh well, your brain is justgoing really fast, and like that's why
I love the laser so much,Like I will get an idea. And
like my friend Aaron Harvey, hedoes a lot of work for production for
like book He's the one who madeThe Star Trek, the animated series book
(29:34):
about about all of that, andso he said like, oh, hey,
could we make a mock up ofwhat a a backlit kind of transparent
piece of a clear like in alight would look like if we were making
it in the animated style, thatlooked like when they're beaming on a planet,
(29:56):
they have this life felt so theyhave like a glow around them and
all of that. So simple idea. And he set me a file and
I said, okay, well thisfile is great for print, but it
will not work for laser. AndI basically like I went into every layer
and just turned off all the fillso it was just the wire frame and
send it back and said, okay, look at this and see how it's
(30:18):
just stroke after stroke after stroke,all kind of near each other but not
lining up, like you have tolook at it this way and that's how
the laser is going to view it. So all that to say, that
was a fun project though, becauseI could. We went back and forth
on the files a little bit,and then I threw some extra clear acrylic
(30:38):
in the laser and cranked out aprototype in thirty minutes. So the whole
project was like an hour and fromidea to done and then you can kind
of like mentally unload that and revisitit when you want. But so Yeah,
sometimes those really fast projects it's amazingwhere you know, not that you
don't enjoy them anymore than I enjoybuilding K two, but it's like a
(31:02):
whole different rush when you know thisisn't going to take a long time or
I don't have a long time tomake it take that long, and you
can just knock it out. It'sit's a totally different beast. Yeah,
it's it's like an Olympic sport,like you train and train and train and
train, and then the Olympics comeup and you like get in the block
and they fire the gun and yourun real fast and then it's done,
(31:27):
and then that's it. And forsome reason, if it's not going to
be done, like if it's goingto take two or three days, all
of a sudden you kind of losesteam and you're like, oh, I'm
not actually in it for the marathon. I just thought this was going to
be a sprint, okay, Andnow you're kind of trying to slog and
get it done and off your plate. And sometimes that happens, but it
(31:48):
all depends. Yeah, it doesweirdly put you kind of in a different
headspace about the project. It is. I agree It's a lot more fun
to be able to see something gofrom concept to completion in a really short
amount of time, mainly because itjust makes you feel super accomplished. It's
(32:09):
like, look at this thig Ihave made and it is done. Yeah.
I know, when I was buildingthe Haunted Mansion door frame, for
a while, it just seemed likeI was making the same part over and
over again, which was true.You know, the vertical pieces were kind
of just the same thing, stackedmany times over. And then it wasn't
(32:31):
until like I actually saw it allput together after like months of printing,
and the part where, you know, the assembly of it all was that
very short sprint, you know,after a lot of training to kind of
get there, and then once hesaw it all together, then it was
(32:51):
like, oh, wow, thisis like the thing or whatever. And
then then that's how it looks too. You see a montage of your printing
standing and then you're assembling and it'slike, yeah, but those printing and
sanding was like two months and theassembly was like an afternoon, so which
you know, in the real world, it was thirty days of printing and
(33:15):
I think it took me probably aweek to do all the assembly and then
another week and change to like sandit and yeah, but the turning is
just pushing a button, right,that's nothing. It's nothing. Yeah,
spits it out, that's right.Yeah. The Internet wants us all to
(33:37):
think that things just magically happen soquickly. Actually, I was just having
this conversation yesterday with Odd Jay.We met up for coffee out near me,
and we were talking about how theInternet has a real negative impact on
(34:00):
people who are like kind of onthe fence about being makers or making anything,
whether they see themselves as a makeror whatnot, but like the idea
of starting a project, doing thelegwork, taking it to completion, and
we both kind of agreed that itwas the Internet has been both a blessing
(34:22):
and quite detrimental to people who don'thave that staying power because everything that we're
sharing before you even make anything,but everything that we're being shown that would
make us want to go and makea thing seems like, oh, they
(34:43):
just snapped their fingers and then theyhad this finished project. It's reality TV.
It's not real exactly, yeah,exactly. No. I got to
meet a j at Silicon last yearand he had one of his little shoulder
pop lots and yeah, awesome,awesome guy. I love I love how
he's often posting, you know,on Instagram and things like that, like
(35:05):
and it's just the same. It'skind of the same shots of like,
you know, his desk which lookslike my desk and all of our desks
called full of stuff and he's justworking on pieces and you can kind of
see the evolution, but you wouldhave to like thumb through a month of
pictures to really see the change,because it's every day's problem to solve is
so minuscule in the journey, butit is getting there. And then,
(35:28):
like you said, YouTube just kindof takes all that and smashed, you
know, compresses it into a tenminute video. And it's like, that's
that's why some youtubees make a videoa month or a quarter and it's a
really knockout video. But man,like it's that's because that's all they're doing
for months. Yeah. Yeah,Unfortunately, we kind of we're in that
(35:52):
phase of our life on the internetwhere short attention span theater is is where
it's at for a lot of people, you know, which is weird to
think about. As I like tothink of myself as being an educator,
an online educator. It's debatable,but I like to think about it.
(36:15):
I mean, you printed up yourown degree behind you, so I mean
it's that's half the steps, right. Hey, Look, if Evan and
Caitlin can print their own YouTube playbutton, then I can make my own
dector and doctor sci Fi is totallyself appointed. I just want to try
to put that out there. Butyeah, you know, because there's a
(36:37):
lot of people that say, oh, well you should, you should take
your videos and do YouTube shorts orTikTok with them, and I'm like,
I don't know how it doesn't translatefor me. It might for somebody else,
it just doesn't for me. Yeah, And I mean that's the ever
changing nature of the beast. Imean you see a lot of like,
(36:59):
oh, Sunflower Stardust I think isher name, but she does Dolores the
which is like a it's like anImperial HR kind of comedy comedy sketch and
and she's found huge success in thatshort format vertical video. And I think,
(37:19):
you know, she she got tolike one hundred thousand, like she
hit she got her play button,but just from shorts, like not from
the long form videos, which Ithink she does compilations every once in a
while, but that's a whole newbecause she started when that was a thing,
Like we would have started differently ifthat was a thing when we started.
(37:39):
It's just how it goes. Yeah, And not to say that there's
not a place for that. Ithink like her content in particular is perfect
for that format. I just thinkthat, like, as someone who's trying
to share information in a way thatis meaningful to people that they can recycle,
making territorial just twenty clips like thatdoesn't work. Yeah, it's not
(38:05):
a deal at least. Yeah,I mean we've kind of taken a tangent,
but that is sort of what we'reto do on this shore On Maker's
meant that I don't wish, that'sright, That's right. Yeah. So
the project that I'm working on rightnow, this coffin thing. It's funny
(38:25):
I had the rain for the lastbig project and now I've got the heat
for this project. And it's sodumb because like this week in particular in
Los Angeles, it's actually been coolerthen it's been for like a month or
so, and yet it is stilllike one time because when I'm working.
(38:53):
Like all the videos and stuff thatI shoot are done under an awning on
a fold table, which is Ithink it is so funny. Every time
I've said that to someone recently,They're like, really, yes, really,
but so I'm always protected from thesun. But the scale of this
coffin is it's so big that Ican't do it under the awning, Like
(39:17):
I literally have to do it outon the driveway where I really have a
lot of space. And it's it'swood, it's foam, it's you know,
I'm I'm basically building a box andthen I will skin that box with
foam, and then I will makethat foam look like wood. It is
(39:37):
the most ridiculous circle of life,now that I'm saying it out loud,
But you know, I like foam. What can I say? Is it
just the exterior or do you haveto also deck out the inside? No,
Thankfully, the interior of the boxfrom the original movie in nineteen twenty
two is very nondiscri ripped, andso I am following suit and just making
(40:06):
it very plain. It's I thinkthey're just going to be seen, but
it doesn't have to be a specificthing. Yeah, Like you can tell
that there's some kind of interior structureand it's really basic construction, which is
great, and I think, Ithink for the one that I'm building,
it's just going to get blacked outon the inside. And so they didn't
(40:30):
really care what it looked like.And when I was able to pull stills
from the movie, I could seethat there was nothing of importance happening inside.
So that was, you know,nice, because it's you know,
one last thing to have to worryabout, especially because we're talking you know,
(40:53):
super low grade vintage film that isnot particularly sharp, and so you
know, getting good reference images ofthis thing was challenging, especially anything on
the inside of the coffin. Soyou know, it just has to be
(41:13):
good enough so that if someone hadseen the movie, they could put two
and two together and be like,oh, that's the thing from this But
if you've never seen the movie,it's still a coffin. Yeah, And
thankfully there is some uniqueness to itwhere if you were a fan of the
Nose Ferrato movie, you might seeit and be able to say it like,
(41:34):
oh, yes, that is thesame coffin. But like you said,
otherwise, a coffin as a coffinas a coffin. But yeah,
so working has just been like achallenge. Mother Nature doesn't like me.
It kind of my takeaway from allof this because I basically get like a
(41:55):
few hours in the morning but nopower tools, as I want my neighbors
to like me, and then Iwork a little bit in the evening when
the sun starts to set. Butthat's not great because I can't do a
ton of filming because it gets darkand I don't know, I don't do
all the lights and all of thatnonsense, and so it's it's been an
(42:21):
interesting one so far. But yeah, mother nature is winning this game.
Yeah, I mean, this hasbeen a really interesting summer in southern California.
It was like cool through all ofJune and it was only until like
mid July where all of a suddenwas like, hey, there's those triple
digits we know and love. Andthe nice thing about the heat is anytime
(42:47):
I have to like paint something orplasty to something, it is dry like
that, and that is, youknow, very very nice. I will
say this. I was doing somesupport pieces to applywood and the glue set
up so fast that I ended uplike something got moved as I was clamping
(43:10):
things in place, and so Iended up kind of having to disassemble some
glued pieces that I was not particularlyhappy about. But like you said,
you know, yeah, that's beingable to paint things quickly is definitely nice,
especially if you're using what is it. I try to think back to
(43:32):
the days when it was like reallycool in winter, and I'm like,
man, it is now really hard. Like we had a lot of rain
this last week, and I rememberthinking for once, like and I kind
of miss summer and like how easyit was to print, and now I
have to kind of not do thosekinds of projects or find a day that
lines up with my schedule that I'mallowed to have daylight to paint and it's
(43:54):
not raining, and it's like this. You know, there's always problems,
but these are just different problems.Yeah. It is sort of weird how
that happens, because I know,for me, because my large format resin
printer and my laser are both ina non air conditioned space, I think
(44:15):
there have to run them early inthe morning or late in the evening because
they both are very temperamental when itcomes to temperature. So that makes things
challenging. I mean, of course, these are all high class problems to
have, but you know, it'slike I also had all of the screws
(44:40):
that I was using to assemble thesepanels today sitting out in the sun,
So every single one of them thatI picked up was hot as the surface
of the sun. So not onlyare my fingers burnt, but I'm also
reminded that I'm an idiot, overand over and over. Yeah. Well,
(45:02):
but again, maybe that could beanother thing that reignites a project is
the weather gets better and now it'sa little easier to paint or to assemble,
or you can actually work outside soyou can use the space that's needed
to you know, to get itdone. But yeah, no, this
(45:22):
is is an interesting way of talkingabout what we're working on, but in
a little bit more of a focusedlens in discussion. That that was nice.
Yeah, well, I think that'sprobably as good a place as any
for us to wrap up this conversationof the Maker's method. Thank you to
all of you for listening, andof course thank you to the nerd Party
(45:43):
for helping us get our content outthere. And you can always find a
whole variety of nerdy content on thenerd Party network. So go check out
the full line of a full lineupof shows over at the nerdparty dot com
and until the next one, keepon making
Welcome to the nerd Party. Welcomeback to Maker's Method, a conversation about
what it is to be a makerhere on the nerd Party Network. I'm
one of your hosts, Derek YounglavanosProps, and I'm joined by my fellow
(00:23):
maker, cause player and buddy DarrenMoser, who some of you may know
as doctor sci Fi And if youdon't, you should. I'm just going
to throw that out there and weare back once again. It's been about
a month. Our goal for amonthly release is thereabouts. You know,
(00:43):
we didn't say exactly. I thinkwe're going shooting at the beginning of one
month to the end of the othermonth, but still technically true. Yeah,
I mean it's it's been at leastthirty days since we've recorded this,
that is true. Yeah, SoI think before we get into our topic
for this episode, it's been aminute since we've had a chance to chat.
(01:10):
And the last time that we saweach other was what three ish weeks
ago. Yeah, in person,there were there was at least one droid.
There were many monsters and haunted houses. It was quite the hot and
Muggie like you know, conventions are, Yeah, but Darren made the trip
(01:37):
down to Long Beach to come checkout Midsummer Scream, the Halloween and horror
convention that I've taught workshop classes atfor the last ten years, which was
you know, thank you Facebook forbeing useful for something to remind me how
long I've been doing it for.Did you get a ten year service pin
on your badge? I think theyshould have done that, you know what.
(02:00):
There's a lot of people that havesurface bins. But yeah, so
it was nice. We were ableto sit down towards the end of the
day on Sunday and catch up amidstpeople wanting to ask questions about Beat one,
and I don't blame them, becausehonestly, Beat one is a lot
(02:23):
more interesting than I am on Sundayat about four o'clock in the afternoon after
teaching all weekend. But I'm curious, as I wouldn't say that you're not
a fan of Halloween, but you'renot a crazy Halloween person like I am,
sort of what your take was onthe convention, considering you do conventions,
(02:46):
but this one would be kind ofa standout for you. Yeah,
I've never been to Midsummer Screen andI will totally admit that you know,
having a friend that worked, therewas reason enough for the stars to line
to get my my butt. Imean, it's just driving everywhere in la
is just you want to play inthe time to drive. That's really the
(03:06):
only concessions. Only twenty minutes wellfrom from somewhere, it's twenty minutes not
anywhere, I know, but no, it was it was fun. It's
definitely a one day con like obviouslyit's the whole weekend, but you could
do it in a day, Ithink if you really wanted to. And
yeah, it's just you know,a big expo floor with like most artist
(03:29):
alleys or expo areas often kind ofsame variations of the same thing, maybe
the same kind of five six shops. But it's so funny, you know.
Even with a lot of the attendeesI'm sure really into horror, really
into you know, Halloween and allof that, there were still some of
the nicest people I ever like walkedacross, Like everybody's kind to everybody else.
(03:53):
No one was yelling at anybody,you know, because it's hot and
humid, because you're right next tothe ocean and all of that, and
it's just it's fully summer now.It's it finally got here. Yeah,
but it was fun. I hadI had a really fun time. I
didn't do any panels or anything likethat. I had penciled them in.
But you know, my favorite thingto do at cons is just walking around
with bed one or something else onmy arm, and which you know makes
(04:15):
shopping and eating and bathroom mingled slightlydifficult, but you know, you figure
it out. But yeah, andagain no one came up and said,
like, sir, the Star Warsconvention is a different week. This is
you know, no, they've gotnone of that. Everyone, like you
said, everybody loves bad One.He's a great conversation starter. And saw
(04:40):
a couple other puppets there, whichwas cool. There was someone who had
a little I think it was likea little chucky puppet, and so saw
that. And there was actually aperson who was doing a panel where the
puppet was doing the panel itself,and I caught him like right before he
went in. He was chatting tosomeone and I didn't get a chance to
(05:00):
give him my collector card, buthe you know, saw Beady and we
said, hey, like basically hadthe normal five second. Puppets are awesome.
I think you're awesome, you thinkI'm awesome, and then we part
ways, which that's always a greatlittle conversation, but yeah, it was.
It was fun and it was coolagainst seeing your workshop. Yet that's
(05:20):
awesome, pretty large space right inthe middle, and it worked great.
You were cutting foam and I couldtell you really loved that jigsaw. It
was really not being the easiest toolknown demand. But we were coming up
and I saw a lot of peopleat the end of Sunday who were picking
up their piece that they had madeearlier, and obviously they didn't have to
(05:43):
carry it around, but they werealways really appreciative and thankful and happy that
they got to do that. Andit sound like you were pretty sold out
almost every single session that weekend,which is awesome. Yeah, we'd sold
out every class except for our verylast one on this Sunday, which it's
expected. Yeah, yeah, youknow, it's Sunday and it's late in
the day. But you're right.The people that that came and took the
(06:11):
classes all were just lovely people.They were really excited to be there,
and I think a lot of themwalked away feeling a bit more confident in
their own abilities, which for meis kind of the whole point to a
lot of it, and even evenmore so than like a generic convention,
(06:33):
I feel like Midsummer it gives offa tribe feel. It's like these are
people that kind of had the samevibe. They like the same things,
you know, in different ways,like not everybody as a decorator, or
not everybody you know dresses up inhorror cosplay or anything like that. But
you're all kind of vibing on thesame wavelength. And that's why you have
(06:54):
these not only Midsummer in the summer, but I think there's another one in
the fall, so you're double dippinginto the spookiness which exhaust It's very fun.
Yeah, yeah, it was agood time. It's like any convention
often a lot of work. It'seither a big physical lift or it's a
(07:16):
big social lift, or in thecase of Midsummer for me, it's a
little bit of both, because itis very much akin to going to summer
camp, which seems to be kindof a recurring theme for me. A
lot of Summer Camp back to backthis year. But it is sort of
like, you know, you showup for load in on Thursday and you
(07:41):
get to see people who you maynot have seen since the last convention,
and so, you know, forme, it's it's often like seeing people
who I haven't seen for a year, so there's a lot of catching up
and you know, sadly telling alot of the same stories to different people.
So he kind of feel like,wow, have I just spent this
(08:03):
entire weekend saying the same things overand over again? And the answer is
yes, and thank you all foryour patients. You get really good at
it that way, and it's truethe story and you know, pause at
the right times for applause and shockand exactly. I now finally understand why
my dad would would tell the samestories over and over again, and when
I'd interrupt him, he would say, no, I've worked on it.
(08:26):
It's better this time. I getit now. But no, but it
was really fun, and like yousaid, I really enjoyed getting to sit
and chat with you for talk atleast like half an hour or so and
just catch up, you know,like and I got it was enjoyable for
me as well because I could takeBeaty off and set him on the table
for a while and have two functioningarms, so that it was a bonus
(08:50):
yeah, it definitely, you know, if you if you wanted to know
what the conversation was, Like,Darren and I kind of looked at each
other for a split second and hadthat thought, like we should probably be
recording this, and then both bothagreed that we would just enjoy the time
and enjoy the hang. Being aprofessional cause player is knowing when not to
(09:13):
record is much exact to record exactly, but that's what we have this show
for, and uh, you know, to keep it interesting, we try
we try to limit the amount ofconversation we have before we start recording so
that you guys get to hear allof it as it unfolds. And that
(09:39):
said, I will just jump rightinto our tomic for this episode because I'm
rusty and I couldn't think of agood segue. Now. Not rust,
like artificial rust, like with cinnamonand special effects, do you mean like
real rust? You know, I'mprobably a little bit of both at this
time of the year, but we'lltalk about that in a minute. So
(10:01):
the topic that I thought would beinteresting to discuss would be ways that we
kind of break the monotony of ourusual making habits that tend to kind of
reinvigorate our interest in projects and getsus like reinspired. I guess it's probably
(10:24):
a good way to kind of restartingsomething that's you still love it, but
it hasn't been getting the attention itdeserves for a while exactly. And I
think as creative people, it's easyto have a lot of gas in the
tank for a project and then eventuallykind of run out of gas on it.
(10:46):
And it's not that you're not interestedin it any longer, but that
you've kind of just you've like hita dry patch, you know, towards
the towards making what it is thatyou're making, and you just need to
step away, but you still wantto do it. You still, you
(11:07):
know, envision it being a completedproject. So I guess as someone who
I think you probably more than I, because you've had projects that you've been
working on really long term. You'vehad projects are weekly video projects, so
you have to crank it in acertain degree. Yeah. Well, and
(11:28):
even the stuff that I make formyself that isn't things that end up in
videos, I don't think I amas I don't know if attached as the
right word. Invested is probably thebetter word than like you with K Twoso,
(11:52):
which that is a big undertaking andit's seen many revisions and improvements,
but I would have to imagine thatat some point while working on it,
you just kind of like hit aroadblock where you're like, I have to
step away from it to gain someperspective on it and whatnot. And so
the question is kind of what isit that you do when you reach that
(12:13):
point on a project to kind ofclear the air and eventually refocus your energy
towards pushing towards that final goal ofa completed project. Well, when you
mentioned this as a topic, yeah, K two was the first thing I
immediately thought of, because that isexactly happened in this last week as really
(12:35):
spinning back up. And as I'vesaid before, this is version four of
K twoso. He's was first madein twenty seventeen, so it's been a
long process of rebuilding. I callhim the Droid of theseus as I slowly
replaced parts and I think there's onlytwo pieces left from version one that still
survived to this day. But yeah, version three was for celebration Anaheim in
(13:00):
twenty twenty two. Two, yes, twenty two, and that you know
that was over a year ago,so what have I been doing since then?
And I've been doing a little,but yeah, it also kind of
goes hand in hand with deadlines,and we've talked about deadlines before and how
(13:22):
they can be a strong motivation andfor this one, as we started to
head into the fall and kind ofcon season started to build up again,
I started to think, like,Okay, what events do I really want
to go to and what event doI want to bring version four of K
two two that's close enough to beenjoyable, Like it's I get that payoff
(13:46):
soon but far enough away to likepractically accomplish what I want to accomplish and
not kill myself. So I amfocusing on La Comic Con, which is
the first weekend of December, andnot that I'm counting at all, but
that would happen to be one hundredand ten days from now. It's a
(14:07):
nice you know, round number twoit but no, I think that we're
gonna have a huge Droid presence there. It's gonna be a really fun time.
And that's again it has that summercamp vibe. Like you said,
it's a bunch of droid builders,not only locally but people come from out
of state. It's three whole daysFriday through Sunday, and it's a lot
(14:28):
of fun. So I'm like,Okay, K two is going to be
ready, so what Yeah, I'dsay one of the aspects of how do
you restart the project is is havingthat deadline. But what really started it?
And it kind of started just thislast week. For me, it
was asking for help and so Iwent to an outside source. So we
(14:52):
I'm actually in a secret K twosobuilders group. It's not like super secret,
but it's it's other people who arebuilding and working on adding animatronics to
their K toso oh and so theseare people who are using like the droid
division or other files to print likethe statue version, and we're all like,
(15:13):
that's cool, but we would lovefor him to move and do other
things. Now I'm kind of likea subset of that because my K two
is not a statue but a puppet, so my requirements are a little different.
But I basically reached out to oneof the beta designers who has been
doing some awesome work on the neckmechanism and the head and all of that,
(15:35):
and basically said, hey, likemy printers kind of at a standstill
right now. I have this deadlinein about one hundred days that I want
to hit. I don't want tolike volunteer you into helping with this,
but as much as you are interested, I would love assistance in getting him
(15:56):
ready and being more of a teamproject, because this is servos and programming
and are duinos and all stuff thatI've never done before. And that's always
the scary part of the project,Like I could I have phone work I
want to do on him, butI don't worry about that because I could
knock that out in a weekend ifI really needed to. I can't magically
learn servoing, you know, ina weekend if I don't know what I'm
(16:19):
doing. And fortunately, uh,you know, these people are are rising
to the occasion and like, hey, how can we you know, get
stuff in your hands. And he'sliterally going to reprint the prototype head and
wire it up and just mail theentire thing to me and I'm going to
just plug it in from there soand I'll pay for the materials and shipping
(16:41):
and time and all of that.But for me, it you know,
taking that step back and being like, yeah, I could do all that
I could slowly print each piece andI could, you know, still have
to dial in my printer and getthe supplies. But you know, he
has a beta version of this walkingand talking and moving in his garage right
(17:03):
now. So maybe not walking,but but other parts are moving and it
looks and it looks great and it'samazing and he's he's pushing the ball right
now. And so I said,as I thought to myself, Okay,
I'm going to ask for help anda you know, the worst they could
say is no, or I'm busyor I can't whatever, which is then
I'll just keep making myself. Butyeah, and that got me excited again.
(17:27):
I'm like, okay, so that'sthat piece of the puzzle kind of
handled for the moment, so Ican focus on the other aspects that I
still want to do. And itagain, that little tiny bit of momentum.
Now it gets that invigoration going of, like okay, because still one
(17:48):
hundred days is not a lot whenyou take away like the weekends we've already
booked ourselves and the nights were tired, and when it's not your full time
gig and it's just evenings and weekends, like that's not many a lot of
days, but it's enough where I'mgetting excited to pull that together. But
there's also the not fear, Butthat means I'm also going to enter a
(18:12):
phase of the project which I callnot a done state. Katuso is in
a done state right now. IfI got a call and someone said,
hey, the children's hospital wants kto to visit tomorrow, I could do
that in a couple of weeks.That is not going to be a possibility
because he's going to be more spreadout on the table than Frankenstein's Monster.
(18:34):
But that's okay. But you gottapush through that. And you know,
you gotta put your stuff on blocksevery once in a while to really dig
into it. So yeah, SoI guess that's my my roundabout answer is
sometimes you got to ask for helpand reach out to the community, and
hopefully the community, whether it's droidbuilding or you know, Halloween decorations or
(18:57):
just making in general. If youhave friends that can help you with pieces,
especially stuff that you've never done before, that can really and again you're
now part of a team. SoI want to keep the ball moving because
my friends are helping move that ball. So I don't want to be like,
well, I just sat on mybutt for two weeks while you did
(19:18):
that and didn't do anything. Thanksfor the piece. You know that use
that momentum, use it to getyourself going. So that's something that's happened
to me just super recently. Butwhat about you, I know you're in
that slight rest period. I saythat with the largest of air quotes between
you. Know, you have MidsummerScreen, which was a large event,
(19:40):
and obviously Halloween is a matter ofmonths away, less than a hundred days
because it's earlier than December first,So what what are you trying to restart
on in your in your shop rightnow? Honestly, I'm in a weird
spot right now where our Halloween decorationshave been more or less the same for
(20:07):
over a decade. Every year Imay do like a new tombstone or something
and swap one out and put anew one in, but it's never like
a huge overhaul. Like there's definitelysome people that like to start from scratch
every year and that's not us.But for me right now, the thing
that's like the sort of weird spacethat I'm in is that after spending a
(20:34):
bunch of time in someone's shop thatwas very organized, and then coming back
to my shop, which is verydisorganized. I'm I'm fighting between wanting both
things because there is that part ofmy mind that just, you know,
(20:57):
I'm just going to put the screwdriverhere. It's fine, I will remember
that it's here, and then I'llwalk away, and then I can't find
the screwdriver. And you know,it's like a cruel joke I play on
myself every time I go into theshop. But what that means to you
know, have a nice and tidyand organized shop is that like a lot
(21:18):
of stuff has to come out beforeI can kind of do that. And
unfortunately, right now is like theworst time of the year for me to
want to make that kind of abig change to how I work. So
there's like nothing on my workbench thatI've been working on long term that I've
(21:41):
gotten burned out on. But Ido kind of vacillate between you know,
completely catastrophic shop or very tidy shop, and I kind of get started and
I take a couple of steps forward, and then I take a step back
(22:03):
and do something dumb, like,you know, this empty spot on the
floor looks like a good place toput scraps from some project I was working
on or whatever, you know.I mean, it definitely feels like as
makers sometimes we always have a dualproject, and that project is the project
(22:26):
and the worker space to make theproject like it. I mean, I've
talked before about my sheet pans.I think I have on here that that
was a kind of a breakthrough forme as I was constantly trying to think
what how do I want to make? What do I want to do.
I'm not an Adam Savage, I'mnot you know, a Brian Thompson.
(22:48):
I'm not. I don't work incertain ways. So when I kind of
realized I just need clear workspace,like flat table top space. So how
do I get stuff off the tableand vertically stuck it and roll it away
into the corner. Yeah, butit's still a work in progress. There's
it's you know, maybe I shouldinvite some makers over and that'll get me
(23:11):
to spur to clean clean up intime. That often does it with company.
Yeah. I was about to say, the last time I was in
your shop it was very tidy,and you promptly told me that it was
just because you had people over.I just will just flat out tell people
like, no, you can't comeover. It's like a not quite so
(23:37):
dirty little secret anymore. It's definitelydirty, it's just not a secret.
You know. My shop is quitesmall and constantly looks like it's, you
know, after an earthquake or something. It's just there's just stuff everywhere.
But that's my mind is just soscattered like that that for some reason it
works for me sometimes because there's definitelybeen times where I'm like, I know
(24:03):
that, you know, I hadthis marker here, I had like a
whole pack of markers here. Wheredid they all walk off to? Well,
it comes in waves. It's like, at least for me, it's
like it's building. It's building,not building like physically, but like the
mess. And then it reaches athreshold where you're like, okay, tomorrow
(24:25):
is cleaning it because I cannot moveforward and I have nowhere to And then
you spend a couple hours and justtaking everything off the floor or clearing off
three of the workbenches and putting awayhalf the tools, and low and behold,
your shop looks a million times better, Like why didn't I just do
that? Because that's just not howit's going to happen. It's just not
(24:48):
gonna happen that way. Yeah,you just described how it is for me
every time, but I will saythat recently it's it's I've been pushing a
bit more towards towards some level oforganization because I'm in the process of tackling
a larger scale project as I liketo do. At this time of the
year, I had a fellow YouTuberreach out to me about creating a large
(25:18):
prop for a short film that they'remaking. And what oddly, I guess,
I mean, anybody that listens tothe podcast would know that this is
how my brain works. But sortof the thing that kind of got me
moving towards getting things organized so thatI could then do the project was getting
(25:45):
into that research mind space, whichis like my favorite part of making anything
is like the planning and in theprocess of planning how I was going to
tackle this build, which I guessI should say. So. The YouTube
channel is called Hollywood Graveyard and basicallywhat they do is visit the final resting
(26:07):
places of celebrities and it's like,you know, everyone from actors, comedians,
musicians, people in film production,producers, things of that nature.
It's weird, fascinating niche that Ifind super enjoyable, mainly because it just
(26:32):
seems like it could be the perfectjob. You know, go to a
quiet place, have minimal interactions withpeople, film a little something, come
home, do some voice over,thank you, good night. Anyhow,
long story short, you wanted tobe a maker? I know. So
(26:55):
they're working on a project and neededme to recreate the coffin of count or
Lock from the nineteen twenty two nosFeratu horror movie. And so as I
was kind of putting together my listof materials and figuring out timelines and all
(27:17):
that stuff, it sort of gotme in that headspace of I don't have
a lot of time to turn thisaround, so I don't have the luxury
of wondering where that thing was thatI all of a sudden need, And
so I started to kind of tidyup the shop a bit, which kind
(27:37):
of like preproduction as a bit.Yeah, and it's it's paid dividends because
but not real dividends because right becauseexactly So, it's been interesting having this
kind of be the the motivation behindgetting my shop cleaned up, which was
(28:02):
the thing that I had kind ofstalled out on was taking on another project
that had a short ish deadline oryou know, timeline to it all,
and not being able to just likestop and try to figure out where something
(28:25):
was and retrace my steps and whatnot. So it's it's really been interesting to
work in this way. But tohave this be the thing that weirdly,
you know, got me in gearto tackle this other project that I kind
of lost interest in a little.Yeah, it sounds kind of like almost
(28:47):
like restarting an engine. Like theengine is making and you get a new
you know, a new project,and it it's starting that wheel turning for
not only your your space and howyou make in it, but also yeah,
it or earlier I was thinking aboutwhen we were talking about projects and
(29:11):
the long term projects and man,but though sometimes those short term projects like
oh well, your brain is justgoing really fast, and like that's why
I love the laser so much,Like I will get an idea. And
like my friend Aaron Harvey, hedoes a lot of work for production for
like book He's the one who madeThe Star Trek, the animated series book
(29:34):
about about all of that, andso he said like, oh, hey,
could we make a mock up ofwhat a a backlit kind of transparent
piece of a clear like in alight would look like if we were making
it in the animated style, thatlooked like when they're beaming on a planet,
(29:56):
they have this life felt so theyhave like a glow around them and
all of that. So simple idea. And he set me a file and
I said, okay, well thisfile is great for print, but it
will not work for laser. AndI basically like I went into every layer
and just turned off all the fillso it was just the wire frame and
send it back and said, okay, look at this and see how it's
(30:18):
just stroke after stroke after stroke,all kind of near each other but not
lining up, like you have tolook at it this way and that's how
the laser is going to view it. So all that to say, that
was a fun project though, becauseI could. We went back and forth
on the files a little bit,and then I threw some extra clear acrylic
(30:38):
in the laser and cranked out aprototype in thirty minutes. So the whole
project was like an hour and fromidea to done and then you can kind
of like mentally unload that and revisitit when you want. But so Yeah,
sometimes those really fast projects it's amazingwhere you know, not that you
don't enjoy them anymore than I enjoybuilding K two, but it's like a
(31:02):
whole different rush when you know thisisn't going to take a long time or
I don't have a long time tomake it take that long, and you
can just knock it out. It'sit's a totally different beast. Yeah,
it's it's like an Olympic sport,like you train and train and train and
train, and then the Olympics comeup and you like get in the block
and they fire the gun and yourun real fast and then it's done,
(31:27):
and then that's it. And forsome reason, if it's not going to
be done, like if it's goingto take two or three days, all
of a sudden you kind of losesteam and you're like, oh, I'm
not actually in it for the marathon. I just thought this was going to
be a sprint, okay, Andnow you're kind of trying to slog and
get it done and off your plate. And sometimes that happens, but it
(31:48):
all depends. Yeah, it doesweirdly put you kind of in a different
headspace about the project. It is. I agree It's a lot more fun
to be able to see something gofrom concept to completion in a really short
amount of time, mainly because itjust makes you feel super accomplished. It's
(32:09):
like, look at this thig Ihave made and it is done. Yeah.
I know, when I was buildingthe Haunted Mansion door frame, for
a while, it just seemed likeI was making the same part over and
over again, which was true.You know, the vertical pieces were kind
of just the same thing, stackedmany times over. And then it wasn't
(32:31):
until like I actually saw it allput together after like months of printing,
and the part where, you know, the assembly of it all was that
very short sprint, you know,after a lot of training to kind of
get there, and then once hesaw it all together, then it was
(32:51):
like, oh, wow, thisis like the thing or whatever. And
then then that's how it looks too. You see a montage of your printing
standing and then you're assembling and it'slike, yeah, but those printing and
sanding was like two months and theassembly was like an afternoon, so which
you know, in the real world, it was thirty days of printing and
(33:15):
I think it took me probably aweek to do all the assembly and then
another week and change to like sandit and yeah, but the turning is
just pushing a button, right,that's nothing. It's nothing. Yeah,
spits it out, that's right.Yeah. The Internet wants us all to
(33:37):
think that things just magically happen soquickly. Actually, I was just having
this conversation yesterday with Odd Jay.We met up for coffee out near me,
and we were talking about how theInternet has a real negative impact on
(34:00):
people who are like kind of onthe fence about being makers or making anything,
whether they see themselves as a makeror whatnot, but like the idea
of starting a project, doing thelegwork, taking it to completion, and
we both kind of agreed that itwas the Internet has been both a blessing
(34:22):
and quite detrimental to people who don'thave that staying power because everything that we're
sharing before you even make anything,but everything that we're being shown that would
make us want to go and makea thing seems like, oh, they
(34:43):
just snapped their fingers and then theyhad this finished project. It's reality TV.
It's not real exactly, yeah,exactly. No. I got to
meet a j at Silicon last yearand he had one of his little shoulder
pop lots and yeah, awesome,awesome guy. I love I love how
he's often posting, you know,on Instagram and things like that, like
(35:05):
and it's just the same. It'skind of the same shots of like,
you know, his desk which lookslike my desk and all of our desks
called full of stuff and he's justworking on pieces and you can kind of
see the evolution, but you wouldhave to like thumb through a month of
pictures to really see the change,because it's every day's problem to solve is
so minuscule in the journey, butit is getting there. And then,
(35:28):
like you said, YouTube just kindof takes all that and smashed, you
know, compresses it into a tenminute video. And it's like, that's
that's why some youtubees make a videoa month or a quarter and it's a
really knockout video. But man,like it's that's because that's all they're doing
for months. Yeah. Yeah,Unfortunately, we kind of we're in that
(35:52):
phase of our life on the internetwhere short attention span theater is is where
it's at for a lot of people, you know, which is weird to
think about. As I like tothink of myself as being an educator,
an online educator. It's debatable,but I like to think about it.
(36:15):
I mean, you printed up yourown degree behind you, so I mean
it's that's half the steps, right. Hey, Look, if Evan and
Caitlin can print their own YouTube playbutton, then I can make my own
dector and doctor sci Fi is totallyself appointed. I just want to try
to put that out there. Butyeah, you know, because there's a
(36:37):
lot of people that say, oh, well you should, you should take
your videos and do YouTube shorts orTikTok with them, and I'm like,
I don't know how it doesn't translatefor me. It might for somebody else,
it just doesn't for me. Yeah, And I mean that's the ever
changing nature of the beast. Imean you see a lot of like,
(36:59):
oh, Sunflower Stardust I think isher name, but she does Dolores the
which is like a it's like anImperial HR kind of comedy comedy sketch and
and she's found huge success in thatshort format vertical video. And I think,
(37:19):
you know, she she got tolike one hundred thousand, like she
hit she got her play button,but just from shorts, like not from
the long form videos, which Ithink she does compilations every once in a
while, but that's a whole newbecause she started when that was a thing,
Like we would have started differently ifthat was a thing when we started.
(37:39):
It's just how it goes. Yeah, And not to say that there's
not a place for that. Ithink like her content in particular is perfect
for that format. I just thinkthat, like, as someone who's trying
to share information in a way thatis meaningful to people that they can recycle,
making territorial just twenty clips like thatdoesn't work. Yeah, it's not
(38:05):
a deal at least. Yeah,I mean we've kind of taken a tangent,
but that is sort of what we'reto do on this shore On Maker's
meant that I don't wish, that'sright, That's right. Yeah. So
the project that I'm working on rightnow, this coffin thing. It's funny
(38:25):
I had the rain for the lastbig project and now I've got the heat
for this project. And it's sodumb because like this week in particular in
Los Angeles, it's actually been coolerthen it's been for like a month or
so, and yet it is stilllike one time because when I'm working.
(38:53):
Like all the videos and stuff thatI shoot are done under an awning on
a fold table, which is Ithink it is so funny. Every time
I've said that to someone recently,They're like, really, yes, really,
but so I'm always protected from thesun. But the scale of this
coffin is it's so big that Ican't do it under the awning, Like
(39:17):
I literally have to do it outon the driveway where I really have a
lot of space. And it's it'swood, it's foam, it's you know,
I'm I'm basically building a box andthen I will skin that box with
foam, and then I will makethat foam look like wood. It is
(39:37):
the most ridiculous circle of life,now that I'm saying it out loud,
But you know, I like foam. What can I say? Is it
just the exterior or do you haveto also deck out the inside? No,
Thankfully, the interior of the boxfrom the original movie in nineteen twenty
two is very nondiscri ripped, andso I am following suit and just making
(40:06):
it very plain. It's I thinkthey're just going to be seen, but
it doesn't have to be a specificthing. Yeah, Like you can tell
that there's some kind of interior structureand it's really basic construction, which is
great, and I think, Ithink for the one that I'm building,
it's just going to get blacked outon the inside. And so they didn't
(40:30):
really care what it looked like.And when I was able to pull stills
from the movie, I could seethat there was nothing of importance happening inside.
So that was, you know,nice, because it's you know,
one last thing to have to worryabout, especially because we're talking you know,
(40:53):
super low grade vintage film that isnot particularly sharp, and so you
know, getting good reference images ofthis thing was challenging, especially anything on
the inside of the coffin. Soyou know, it just has to be
(41:13):
good enough so that if someone hadseen the movie, they could put two
and two together and be like,oh, that's the thing from this But
if you've never seen the movie,it's still a coffin. Yeah, And
thankfully there is some uniqueness to itwhere if you were a fan of the
Nose Ferrato movie, you might seeit and be able to say it like,
(41:34):
oh, yes, that is thesame coffin. But like you said,
otherwise, a coffin as a coffinas a coffin. But yeah,
so working has just been like achallenge. Mother Nature doesn't like me.
It kind of my takeaway from allof this because I basically get like a
(41:55):
few hours in the morning but nopower tools, as I want my neighbors
to like me, and then Iwork a little bit in the evening when
the sun starts to set. Butthat's not great because I can't do a
ton of filming because it gets darkand I don't know, I don't do
all the lights and all of thatnonsense, and so it's it's been an
(42:21):
interesting one so far. But yeah, mother nature is winning this game.
Yeah, I mean, this hasbeen a really interesting summer in southern California.
It was like cool through all ofJune and it was only until like
mid July where all of a suddenwas like, hey, there's those triple
digits we know and love. Andthe nice thing about the heat is anytime
(42:47):
I have to like paint something orplasty to something, it is dry like
that, and that is, youknow, very very nice. I will
say this. I was doing somesupport pieces to applywood and the glue set
up so fast that I ended uplike something got moved as I was clamping
(43:10):
things in place, and so Iended up kind of having to disassemble some
glued pieces that I was not particularlyhappy about. But like you said,
you know, yeah, that's beingable to paint things quickly is definitely nice,
especially if you're using what is it. I try to think back to
(43:32):
the days when it was like reallycool in winter, and I'm like,
man, it is now really hard. Like we had a lot of rain
this last week, and I rememberthinking for once, like and I kind
of miss summer and like how easyit was to print, and now I
have to kind of not do thosekinds of projects or find a day that
lines up with my schedule that I'mallowed to have daylight to paint and it's
(43:54):
not raining, and it's like this. You know, there's always problems,
but these are just different problems.Yeah. It is sort of weird how
that happens, because I know,for me, because my large format resin
printer and my laser are both ina non air conditioned space, I think
(44:15):
there have to run them early inthe morning or late in the evening because
they both are very temperamental when itcomes to temperature. So that makes things
challenging. I mean, of course, these are all high class problems to
have, but you know, it'slike I also had all of the screws
(44:40):
that I was using to assemble thesepanels today sitting out in the sun,
So every single one of them thatI picked up was hot as the surface
of the sun. So not onlyare my fingers burnt, but I'm also
reminded that I'm an idiot, overand over and over. Yeah. Well,
(45:02):
but again, maybe that could beanother thing that reignites a project is
the weather gets better and now it'sa little easier to paint or to assemble,
or you can actually work outside soyou can use the space that's needed
to you know, to get itdone. But yeah, no, this
(45:22):
is is an interesting way of talkingabout what we're working on, but in
a little bit more of a focusedlens in discussion. That that was nice.
Yeah, well, I think that'sprobably as good a place as any
for us to wrap up this conversationof the Maker's method. Thank you to
all of you for listening, andof course thank you to the nerd Party
(45:43):
for helping us get our content outthere. And you can always find a
whole variety of nerdy content on thenerd Party network. So go check out
the full line of a full lineupof shows over at the nerdparty dot com
and until the next one, keepon making
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