045 - 2023 Wrap Up & Plans

​Derek "Lamp" Young and Darren "Roadtrip" Moser are back this year as we wrap up our 2023 events and plan for the future. Darren recounts his trips to San Francisco to meet actor Alan Tudyk with his K-2SO puppet.
​VanOaks Props YouTube | VanOaks Etsy Store
DrScifi YouTube | DrScifi Etsy Store

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to the ned Party. Welcometo the Maker's Method podcast here on the
nerd Party Network. I'm your host, Darren Moser aka Doctor Sci Fi,
and I'm joined again as always byDerek Young of Van Oates Props. So,

(00:25):
Derek, I was looking back atthe old calendar and I had to
turn a couple pages to get backto when we had a Creatrix brit On.
It's been a little fun. You'regoing to give me bad news now,
No, no, it's all goodnews. The bad news is this
is episode forty five. Episode fortyone was our twenty twenty two wrap up

(00:47):
episode. So you know what Isaid, At a minimum, we do
one a quarter, and we we'vehit that in spirit, if not in
frequency. But but no, Ilike, we've we've chatted offline. You
know, we still enjoy talking.It's just been busy and hard to find
the time. But when we do, we do enjoy it. And we
are still planning on podcasting and sharingour Maker's methods, be it interviews or

(01:14):
just chatting. But yeah, howhow have you been? How is You're
totally not busy winter? I'm sureit's been interesting. I've traveled a bit
more at the end of the yearthis year than we have previously, which
has taken up some time, butit's been time spent with my family.

(01:38):
So that was a really nice changeof pace. But it did take me
out of the shop for quite sometime, which then, you know,
just means that everything is me playingcatch up. Yeah, and I don't
like that. I mean does anybody, I guess. So it's like quality
time. Quality time in the shopis valuable, is very valuable. It

(02:04):
is it's you know, a lotof people compare it to like going to
church or to meditations. It's justthat place that you can sneak away to
and be alone with your thoughts anddo something with your hands, and you

(02:24):
know, kind of gets us awayfrom all of the digital noise, which
is nice since there's so much ofit, particularly at the end of the
year. Yeah, this November intoDecember, I was I was working you
know, Monday through Friday, oractually more like Tuesday through Thursday. But

(02:46):
I was out basically three weekends ina row at different things and not at
home out and so I really feltthat by the time it all came up,
I'm like, okay, I'm readyto just like I got orders to
fill. I got things to make, and I enjoyed the things that I
got to do, but yeah,it I don't think I'll do that again.

(03:08):
My wife was like, you've beengone a lot this this holiday.
I'm like, yeah, don't worry, that's not That's a one time thing.
That's not going to become the newDecember norm. Fortunately, you went
to a couple different conventions, right, I did two cons and then we
did a trip to Arizona for thePolar Express, which was like a pre

(03:30):
booked paid by my in laws,like that was on the calendar ahead of
time. So yeah, so jumpingright into that. That was kind of
what I was building up towards inthe late summer was getting K two ready
for Fan Expo San Francisco, whichwas the weekend after Thanksgiving. Always an

(03:53):
optical time to leave family and driveto northern California. But the everybody's still
in there like turkey slumber. SoI mean the traffic. There was no
traffic the day after Thanksgiving, surprise, surprise, So yeah, sok,
K two and I did are awesomeCalifornia road trip and drove up the state

(04:14):
to San Francisco for Fan Expo forthree like three four days of fun.
And the main reason, you know, the only reason that I really went
to that convention was because of AlanTudic, who, of course, as
people know, is the voice andmotion and caricature of K twoso. And
he is not in California very often. I think the last time was maybe

(04:39):
like four or five years ago.So I had kind of already always told
myself if he's from Sacramento to SanFrancisco, if he's anywhere in that drivable
range, because I'll just say rightnow, K two doesn't fly, so
I imagine he does if I canget K two to him. You know,
that's always been a dream to haveAlan meet my K twos O puppet

(05:02):
and get to do that, especiallywith version four, who is so much
better than version one all those yearsago. And yeah, that happened.
We pulled in Friday. I wasable to connect with a lot of the
droid builders up in the Sacramento andSan Francisco area who had been down to
R two LA, and some hadactually already met before, but they graciously

(05:26):
opened up their doors to me andlet me pitch K two's console in the
corner of their booth. We hada really good booth setup. It was
like a giant square and each sideof the square was a different club and
then the middle space was reserved forlike changing in storage. So it actually

(05:47):
worked really well on the floor.So you had Mando's Droids, Rebels and
Fibo first on the four sides,and I've like, I think there should
be the old standard. But yeah, we we got all set up,
and it wasn't until Sunday that Ihad purchased my autograph and photo op with

(06:11):
Alan, and it not being myfirst con, I knew that best to
go with the autograph first. That'sthat's the meeting time anyone who wants to
do a meet and greet at aphoto op, that is not the time
those are. You're in, you'reout, you're off. So yeah,
so I had my friend Mayor waswith me and he was kind of my

(06:32):
handler. Now we were at theMoscone West, which is kind of like
a three story building convention center,which actually was kind of nice because you
aren't actually walking that far. It'svery stacked. Yeah, but still getting
from the first floor to the thirdfloor where the autographs and photos were took

(06:53):
a little while. And so yeah, brought Kate two over there you got
to meet Allen. His handlers werevery well handy, but they helped out
because there was no line, buta line kind of slowly started after I
was there, but they kind ofgave me an extra dose of time with
him, which I was very ammergiative. I still like five or six minutes,

(07:15):
like not not a huge amount,but you know, when there's money
to be made with the people behindyou, like that's sure, that still
amount. But it was great andgetting to see the look on his face,
and you know, I wanted tomake sure that, like I said,
the autograph and the inner or themeeting was before the photo op because

(07:36):
if the photo ophs the first timehe sees it, it's like this big
surprise and then we're gone, sothere's like no time to react. So
you know, got to talk aboutK two's construction a bit, gave him
a couple of cards and some youknow, so those a little goodie bag.
But it was great because at thevery end he said goodbye K two,

(07:58):
Andy, but he said it inK two's voice, because you know,
you can flick on that inflection.And it was great. It was
and but again it was also justa con It was. I had just
as much fun really interacting with everybodyelse there and every you know, people
love K twoso, so getting tohe had his little card dispenser spitting out
cards, and I got to reallyenjoy that aspect of it. So that

(08:24):
was. Yeah, that was thefirst of the three weekends. And like
many people have said, who docosplay or do this kind of thing?
You know on the side for fun, getting to meet that actor or actress
who played the character that you've madeis always usually a dream. It's always

(08:45):
a lot of fun when it getsto happen. Nice. Now I know
you would. You've added in abunch of upgrades in this version of K
two S. So how did thosepan out? Because this is I think
was basically you're like field testing alot of the work that you've done a
little bit. Yeah, he hewas pretty much. So the biggest upgrade

(09:05):
as far as stretching me as amaker was he I basically learned Arduino coding
in a couple of weeks because yeah, so he has several servos inside the
head and that control the pan,tilt and yaw of his head and that

(09:26):
goes down to a joystick that's undermy thumb. That lets me look around
and that really, oh man,it like doubles the personality because he can
look at the camera and you know, because before he's kind of just like
looking off into the distance like asailor. And being able to just take
that extra two seconds before they takethe shot and look right at the camera,

(09:50):
it makes him that much more alive. I bet so. I initially
had started with an Eystro twelve andand had that all kind of wired up,
but I could not I know,I can still figure it out,
but at the time, I couldn'tfigure out how to get the joystick to
talk to the arduino and the arduinoto pass through to the servos from the

(10:15):
Maestro. So I kind of justcalled it and I took out the Maestro
and basically just went straight into thearduino because you can do that. It's
not as easy and there's not asmuch smoothing of the motions that the maeshow
can give you. But I waslike, I don't have time to figure
out that. So yeah, basicallywas writing basic Arduino code of take x

(10:39):
Y values of joystick and apply withinparameters of you know this pan and tilt
servo, and the third aspect wasclicking in the thumbstick would spit out one
of the cards from his card dispenserof stuff, which worked about one out

(11:01):
of eight times. I still gotto figure out exactly if it's the button
is kind of faulty, or ifsomething in my code is wrong. I
the last thing I was trying toadd to the code was code for the
NeoPixels. In his eyes, Ishould have just gotten white LEDs, but
you know, NeoPixels, and Ijust want them to be white at just

(11:24):
a single color. And it everytime I added it, it broke my
code. And so I literally justsaid, well, you know what,
fine, We're just not gonna youcan't touch this Arduino. And I pulled
out another Arduino that I had onthe shelf and said, this Artwino's going
to power the lights, and thisArtwino's going to do the joystick and the

(11:45):
and I just kept the code completelyseparate, and they never touched. I
think maybe shared a ground or something, because you know, you're when you're
trying to trace down those issues,it could be anything. It could be
the ground voltage is wrong, orand especially with NeoPixels, like it's sending
all sorts of data in pulses throughtwo wires, and if anything is wrong

(12:07):
with that, it just isn't goingto work. So yeah, so that
at the end got that working.Just lights that are on that are white,
that don't move theirs servos in hiseyes that those aren't even working yet.
But all that to say, thatwas the biggest upgrade, just adding
to the personality. And then therewas also some motion in the hands.

(12:31):
You know, you got a wholenew repaint, a rebuild of a lot
of stuff. Just yeah, justlooking a lot, a lot better.
He's also going to need a littlebit of TLC, just again from being
a little older and needing some morerepairs and adjustments. But but yeah,
I was able to to put thecoating early enough in that last week so

(12:56):
that it wasn't like the last thingI was doing, because it was the
thing and I'm like, that's nota good idea to put that as the
last thing you're doing. So thelast thing I was doing were the hands,
which I had already figured out.The fingers were all printed and they're
all assembled. It was just theknuckle where the finger joined the hand that
I had to kind of figure outthe logistics of and it kind of worked.

(13:18):
There's a lot of friction there andI'm going to remake those, but
they were enough where he had hands, like he can't not have hands.
But so that was done. Soyeah. So but all that to say,
it shook down pretty well. Youknow, he rode in style in
my passenger seat and the rest ofthe car all the way up to Norcale

(13:41):
and survived, yeah, really reallywell. And while we were in the
neighborhood, because it's San Francisco,we took a jaunt over to the Presidio
and got a shot at the YodaFountain because as one, you know,
if you're gonna drive a couple hundredmiles to San Francisco, you might as
well go an extra two to getthat shot in the publicly accessible fountain.

(14:05):
And that was Yeah, that wasalso a cool a cool shot to get,
Yeah, but it was. Itwas a great weekend, a lot
of fun. And I don't knowif I could even judge between that and
La Comic Con, which we'll getto, but because they were both great
for different reasons. I mean,it's hard to top Allen. But I

(14:30):
also didn't know as many people inSan Francisco, So it was it was
a fun con but it was notthe same as like all my friends hanging
out with for a fun weekend ofdroid Sure. Sure, and that definitely
can make a difference. I know, you know, I haven't done a
ton of conventions of that type,but having gone to Star Wars celebration Anaheim

(14:56):
and having people there, actually Iknew I really made it. It really
made a huge difference in the overallexperience, even though a lot of my
time spent was looking for those peopleas one does as one does. Yeah.
Yeah. So then that was theweekend after Thanksgiving, and so then
the following weekend after that was thatArizona or Arizona that was the weekend after

(15:22):
that, so the the yeah,the second weekend, so I pretty much
was there through Tuesday. So MondayI was able to tour Lucasfilm which was
because they're only opened on weekdays,so I'd extended to that, and then
because of the timing of the tour, I'm like, I'm not driving back
on through the evening on a Monday, So I moved that to Tuesday,

(15:48):
and that worked out great because Iwas able to work my way down the
state and visit McMaster who lives inkind of the Central Valley, droid builder
Michael McMaster, and say hi tohit. But yeah, so pretty much
get home Tuesday, and then Fridaywas LA Comic Con, so barely needed
to unpack the car at that point. But and you took K two to

(16:11):
Comic Con as well. Yes,yeah, so K two and BD went
to both conventions. But that wasalso But yeah, LA was great though,
So that was fun because we hada ton of droids. We had
droid builders coming from all over thecountry, from Canada, and it was
just it was the place to be. It was really really fun, and

(16:33):
it was funny because I got tocasually hang out with a lot of them.
We actually all went to Disneyland onMonday after the con, and I
spent more FaceTime with most of themat Disneyland that I did during the cons
because it's so busy, like there'sso many things going on, so that
was kind of nice to have thatkind of just chill time. Yeah.

(16:57):
But the really cool thing though,was it was for me was getting to
hang out with the droid builders whodid a BBA unit and that's sy and
I want to say, Chris,I don't know why I'm blinking on the
name, but they have like theroll's voice of BB eight units. It

(17:22):
drives so smooth, it's so amazing. And we just hung out the whole
weekend and talked puppetry and droids andjust you know, we had a Ray
Cas player with us, and itwas just really really fun just getting to
not just talk shop, but justvibe with someone who was in that exist.

(17:48):
Also in that very small wheelhouse thatyou're operating in, I'm sure you
probably get the same kind of feelingat you know, kind of your Midsummer
Screams and like people were in thatit's like it's very niche. So when
you can vibe and chill and talkabout that stuff and not worry about people
looking at you like what are youtalking about, it's it's a good feeling

(18:11):
for sure. For sure. Thatis honestly my favorite part of going to
the Midsummer Scream convention is I kindof almost equate it to like summer camp
in a way, Oh, whereyou know a lot of these people you're
not seeing for most of the year, and then you get a weekend to
hang out with them. That isnot during sort of the time of the

(18:34):
year that you would normally run intothem, which in this case, you
know, Midsummer Scream is in thesummer, and then Halloween being you know,
a few months later. It's likethere's that weird gap of time where
unless you were doing something really specificto that community, you just don't run
into them. So I kind ofimagine it's got to be the same way

(18:55):
where you have summer campush. Yeah, you'd have some kind of comic com
on or you know, similar typeconvention, and then maybe you'd have like
R two LA where you'd see allthese people in a very niche like you
were saying, circumstance where everybody therehas like a very similar skill set and

(19:15):
interest and you know, geeking outon the minutia of the thing that you
like is encouraged. Oh exactly.Yeah. And so so hanging with with
Chris and Cy, you know,just seeing them puppet their beady around and

(19:37):
you know, just working together,and I let them try BB eight or
sorry, gosh, it was alwayshard because we have BB eight and BD
one at the same time and it'salways a tongue twister. I let them
try BD one on and so thelast day, which was also really interesting
because I'm so used to it,but we had to make a lot of

(20:00):
adjustments because like the length of yourarm becomes really important when you're like manipulating
those controls and and things like that. So so I tried it first,
and you know, we we wereable. It kind of was working,
and then we got back to thebooth to do some some tune ups.
We were able to make actually moreadjustments because the you really learned that the

(20:25):
the kind of backstop behind your elbowis really important to be pushing on your
arm to really let you move everythingaround. Without that kind of push point,
it makes it much more difficult.But yeah, but that was that
was cool to see. It waskind of surreal for me because I'm like,
BD, like you're on that sideof the room and I'm on this
side, and you're moving and youknow that river happens, So watching something

(20:51):
letting someone it kind of was youknow, I mean, it's all could
be repaired if it really needed to, So I wasn't that worried. But
it was more like watching a childtake its first steps because they're they're figuring
out, like you know, basicmotions and how you know, whereas I'm
so dialed in without even on asubconscious level, I'm just bringing it to

(21:15):
life and I'm having a conversation atthe same time. You know, that's
where I'm at because that's my droidthat I built and I puppeted for two
years. Like not to say thatthey aren't good puppeters, but it was
their first time experiencing that. Sogetting to watch that was really cool for
me. And you know, they'rejust I feel bad for Chris because at

(21:37):
all the pictures, I'm I'm lovingthe pictures. He's like, I look
so so serious, and I'm like, well, you were really focused.
You were trying to figure out howto how to manipulate it, and you
know that's your your concentration face.But but that was really cool and that
was and they let me drive BBeight with the remote a little bit at
the end and that was cool too. And just I mean again, there

(22:03):
I say the rolls Royce, Ireally mean it. It's it glides like
butter and it just it makes sound. It makes like the hum sound that
gets louder as it goes faster.It's all artificial, but it sells like
that it's moving, and there's aswitch that makes it the internal way of
the mechanism reverse. So basically,if you get in a corner, you

(22:26):
flip the switch, the head turnsone eighty and now up on the joystick
goes forward where the head is pointed, so you don't have to turn them
around. Oh wow, Yeah,it was just it was really cool.
It was really slick to see theywhat did they call it. It's like

(22:47):
a two bar system. It's basicallynot the hamster ball design, which I
guess is a different kind of internalmechanism. I still didn't quite understand it
because it was still a little bitof mystical magic to me. But yeah,
it was just it was so cuteand cool to to bring that to
life for a little bit. AndI man, I really need to build

(23:11):
an RC droid that that definitely cementedit in my in my mind, I'll
tell you what. I kudos toyou for being like, yeah, hand
me the hand me the remote,let me let me take this for a
spin. Because when we went toURI's Night okay, and there were all
those droids around, I'm fairly certainthat almost every droid builder was like,

(23:33):
would you like to drive it,and I took a look at the at
the remote and immediately declined, yeah, because the first thing that went through
my head is I'm going to breakthis thing that is worth many thousands of
dollars, I think. I Iat R's Night because we were at the
same event. I drove Matt HobbsWally a little bit, yeah, which

(23:56):
I remember weighs probably a couple hundredpounds in his tank drive Like, I
was very conscious of not running overanyone's toes because that could happen. But
and with that one, it's morelike looking for clearances because it's much more
prompt based, where you're like,oh, I want to do the tada

(24:17):
and when you hit the tada button, it's going to move the arms out
and say tada and do a sequence. But you want to make sure those
arms aren't anywhere near anything because you'renot actually puppeting the arms. You are
running the sequence and it hopefully itworks. Yeah. Seeing that made me
feel like that thing was booby trappedand I should stay as far away from

(24:38):
it as possible, although it wasimpossible to stay away from it because it
was such a phenomenally done Wally.Oh all the droids. There were just
gorgeous. And it doesn't matter howold I get or how many times I've
seen any of these things. Theyare magic, full stop. They come

(25:00):
alive all all they really do.Even if you see the person with the
remote behind them and you know thatthat's what's happening, it does not change
that one bet for me. Sothere's a I'm gonna miss up his droid's
name. I think it's R fiveB two B. You have to look

(25:22):
it up. But it's an amazingR five droid. It's based up in
the Sacramento area, and I justwant to say, Hi, welcome to
droid talk. That's all we're talkingabout. But no, this one is
amazing. You'll recognize him. It'sgot two little kind of cylinder eyes that
can look up and down. Andthis guy, he built this droid for

(25:45):
hospital visits. It's the number onepurpose of this droid. So it can
do things that are amazing. Notonly can it do I'm pretty sure it
could do two three two, whichin itself is an amazing feat, which
is when it goes from three legsto two legs to three legs and doesn't
face plant, but it just tippytoes and that's wow, to get closer

(26:11):
to kids in hospital beds. Sowhat that is is when it's it's rolling
up and it's got its third legin front of it, the back to
pivot up just a little bit,but it makes it kind of like lean
up and forward. Yeah, andit has bubbles that come out the top,
which now I'm like, Okay,now my droid needs bubbles because everybody

(26:33):
loves bubbles. But the way it'sbut the way he programmed personality into it
is because it's all his own soundeffects and it's kind of a rumble like
grumpy sound. It's like and it'sjust but again he instead of trying to

(27:00):
nail like the R two sound,which we all know he's making it,
it totally feels like if our twosin R two, This is like Chad,
this is like some other other programming. You know. That's just being
a bro and hanging out with you, and I love it. It's it

(27:21):
was so amazing to see. Butthat was that was the whole weekend,
getting to see all these amazing droids. Yeah, we had Walley's there.
We had you know, a bunchof scrubber droids and mouse droids, you
know K two and BD were there. Yeah, there's just there was a
lot. There was like forty sixdroid builders there that weekend, like it

(27:44):
was huge, and we had twopanels that we ran. The first one
was a new panel that we haven'tdone before, which was kind of like
a story time panel for droid buildersthat had had their droids in in shows,
so they'd actually had them in likethe Mandalorian or the Book of Boba

(28:04):
Fett. And then I moderated againthe Droid Building one oh one panel,
which always is a blast. Butohly, we had Gil out there.
Dave brought out Gil, which isa Captain Rex kind of droid kind of
and it's oh man again, itis so smart. It has programming,

(28:30):
so he's got like a telescopic polefor his neck, and then the head
kind of bobs around and then thevisor kind of goes up and down.
It has programming in it so thatas he talks through the voice mic,
which does a pitch change that amplitudeand voice synthesis puppets the head, so

(28:52):
as he talks, it makes thehead bob and the visor move in ways
that go with what he's saying.So he doesn't have to puppet it.
He doesn't have to have an extrajoystick. So I'm thinking, oh man,
all that mental load you don't haveto do and be like, Okay,
hit the button in a certain wayto make his head bob or whatever.

(29:15):
You know, that just does it. And I'm like, oh man,
that is brilliant. So yeah,we're we were all spoiled with just
all these amazing, amazing droids andyeah, but it was a blast.
Like I said, getting to doDisneyland on the last day was super fun.
And just you know, we're alltired because we've just done three days
of conventions and it was the doubleweekend for me, so I was even

(29:38):
extra tired. But it was ablast. It was super super fun.
And yeah, it was also nicejust getting through those two weekends because I'm
like, okay, k two,you can go back on blocks, you
know, we can go back tothe getting a couple more things upgraded.
But but yeah, it had madeit, and yeah, it was It

(30:03):
was super fun. It was verybusy, which is why we didn't record
Wonderful listeners were I was busy livingat the convention centers and paying seven dollars
for SODA's and popcorn. But no, but they were two great weekends.
And I don't know what convention willbe next, because I don't want to
think about conventions for like a monthor two. But no, it was

(30:29):
really cool. And like I said, you know, it's hard to judge
between the two meeting Allen versus hangingout with forty friends and talking about droids.
They both had their pros, butyeah, definitely high points in twenty
twenty three. Nice. Yeah.I stayed away from conventions mainly just because

(30:56):
I don't really go to many ofthem, and spent the bulk of my
time doing as I typically do,making more videos for YouTube. And when
I'm not doing that, I'm thinkingabout making videos for YouTube and trying to
solve problems that wouldn't exist under anyother circumstance, which is always fun.

(31:23):
And to kind of dovetail it intotalking about droids, I spent some of
the time while you were at conventionsmaking a moisture evaporator with a R five
dome for a head and made itinto a lamp, because that's what people
are. You just got that doorfor that head on a droid body,

(31:45):
and then boom, you have ayou're almost there, Derek, almost.
Let me tell you what you're gonnabuild. One of these days, it's
gonna happen, Derek. I seeit, this happening. You can see
it here behind me. It's happeningright now as we talk. But that's
for a future episode. This thishappens every time that I build something like

(32:09):
this, specifically something that is likedroid or Droid adjacent, because I made
this lamp, like the projector gonklike that when I made the projector donk,
and because my shop is just amess, you know, visualized visualize

(32:35):
the garbage garbage compactor from Star Wars. That's what it's like, which also
is what the inside of my mindlooks like. At most times, I
build these things that I don't haveanywhere for them to live, and so
then I have to find new homesfor them. And when I made the

(32:58):
Gonk, I was super excited tohave it finished. It turned out almost
exactly how I'd imagined, and thenit was like, Okay, I've just
been moving this thing out of myway for months, which you know that
particular build. The type of binsthat I used for the Gonk were not

(33:20):
ideal and they were a bit morefragile than I had expected them to be,
so every time I moved it,I was afraid that I would crack
it or damage it in a waythat would lessen its value to someone else,
or just be one more thing thatI needed to work on that I
didn't have time for. So Isold it, and after it was gone,

(33:45):
I immediately regretted it because it waslike fun to have like a little
buddy out in the shop. Yeah. So then yeah, yeah, So
then fast forward a couple of yearsand I start making this R five done,
which I kind of always knew thatI wanted to turn into a lamp
of some kind. And I thinksome of that came from being at Galaxy's

(34:07):
Edge and seeing that sort of droiddepot area where everything's being repaired, and
they kind of have some like Rtwo domes that they're using as lamps.
Yeah, they do in the outsidearea near the pro droid. They're literally
like lamp shades exactly. And soI had printed one because I had this

(34:28):
massive printer that I could do iton, and then it sat there for
six months. And our five droidsdomes are big, like they're bigger than
our two domes. Like I meanheight wise, yeah, for sure,
the diameter they're the same, butlike volume wise it is. It is
big totally. So imagine having thatmonstrosity just again in my way at all

(34:52):
times, sitting outside in the elementswhatever. So then I finally get around
natural Weather Derek just it wasn't painted. Okay, Well, so I go
through the trouble. I make thelamp. It turns out almost exactly how
I had imagined it would, andthen I'm faced with the same problem again.

(35:15):
I don't have anywhere for this togo, and I need to find
a new home for it. Andit wasn't even It was almost hard for
me to get the scale of itbecause like, it's not a table lamp.
Really, it's like it's big.Yeah, it's hewkes feet tall.
Okay, so it's like a floorlamp exactly, okay. And so I

(35:38):
was lucky enough to find someone whowanted it. And again the minute it
was gone, I mean, especiallyafter when I got the dome painted and
weathered. Oh the dome looked gorgeous. That color combination was. I was
so pleased with the colors that Ichose, Like the Montana paints, say,

(36:01):
what you will about their business practices. Their paints are just like the
colors that they have available are sonice, and the finishes look so good
when they're done. And then ontop of that, having all of the
metal parts painted up in a lumaluster, it just really like really really

(36:25):
looked the part you made a threeD print not look three D. It
looks exact metal. It's that isalways well, it's not always the goal,
but it's often the goal. Well, you know, like I've used
allumaluster in the past because Sam theowner was nice enough to send me some,

(36:45):
but I've never like gone through theentire process to like really sand things
very fine and prep the prints andyou know, do all of the acquired
steps and coatings in order to getthat like perfectly glossy black finish before applying

(37:07):
it so that it really does looklike metal. And on this job,
I actually did it, and it, like you know, we usually say
like the ten foot test, thiswas like the two foot tests, right.
It just looked so amazingly good tome and was not all that difficult

(37:29):
to do, which is always asa maker who's constantly learning things, it's
always nice to learn that something thatlooks like it should be challenging to achieve,
isn't. It's like, you know, shout out to Sam and the
team over at a luminaluster because orat Imperial Surface, because that product goes

(37:52):
on like butter. It's so niceand it does not take a ton to
really like make your metal pieces pop, So you know, kudos to them.
But just having that piece done,I really was like, oh,
like, I don't want to getrid of it. I almost didn't want
to like finish making the lamp becauseat that point I was like, oh,

(38:15):
I can see the entire paint schemefor a droid, but if I
didn't have room for a gonk,I definitely don't have room for a droid,
and I don't have room for thislamp. So they all got to
go. Yeah, it's like findingthe exit strategy, Like you have to
have a way out for the endof the project for it to go live
somewhere, you know, hopefully,which you know, for me has always

(38:37):
been the case with all the Halloweenstuff that I've made over the years.
The rule was it's got to havea place to go come November first,
and if there's no room for it, it either has to get sold or
given away to somebody that wants it. And you know, there's only been
a handful of projects that I've doneover the years where I was like,

(38:58):
Okay, I did it because Ijust wanted to challenge myself to see if
I could do it, and Idid, and now it's got to go
live with somebody else, because it'sjust you know, space is at a
premium. Yeah no, yeah,well, and but you know you have
seasons. You know, there's seasonsof like maybe it's not challenging the paint,

(39:23):
maybe it's challenging like the assembly orpushing a printer into new bounds or
or adding. You know, maybeyou want like start with something static but
the head rotates to follow you aroundor something like that, or more lighting
with LED tricks. Like there's alwaysdifferent aspects to look at in different future

(39:45):
projects. Absolutely, I think there'sa lot of stuff I've learned over the
years that while and this is sortof specific to collecting lightsabers, but like,
while it is always cool to powerup a lightsaber and to hear that

(40:06):
hum and to see the lights gooff, I find I get more enjoyment
out of just seeing them displayed nicelywithout the extra tube and all of that,
Like just the hilt on its own. Let me just appreciate the design
aesthetic of that piece on its own. And I kind of have to believe

(40:30):
that for a lot of collectors,even the ones who build fully animated droids
of whatever kind or really any propthat's like animated that you'd want, the
bulk of your time spent with thatobject is not going to be in its
powered on state, right, youknow, So there really is something to

(40:51):
be said about like having a thing, like having that tangible object that you
can look at and appreciate and notnecessarily have to worry about those things,
particularly at the beginning of a build. I know, for me, I
said, I we would talk aboutthis some other time, but we're here,
so we're just gonna talk about it. So I'm sure if you listen

(41:14):
to this podcast, it's highly likelyyou've seen the clips of the three Duckling
droids that they were walking around GalaxiesEdge at Disneyland one day only, for
one day only. They're not inany movies, they're not in any TV
shows, but they've nailed the StarWars aesthetic. They also happen to be

(41:37):
about three feet tall or possibly lesslittle toddlers exactly, which, if you
are short on space like some peoplein this conversation, they might be a
perfect first droid to make. SoI see. So wait wait wait,

(41:57):
so you could have done an arefive or a gonk, but you chose
a bipedal basically prototype stage new droidto jump into the pool on. Yeah,
now let me clarify, I haveno intention of motorizing this thing.
This is just going to be alook half of your sanity right there.

(42:21):
So that's good and half my savingsapparently, Yeah that too, that too.
Yeah, because I've been there's aFacebook group specifically discussing this droid,
and there's a lot of people whoare much smarter than I am. All
power to them, but man,my pedles is not easy or cheap at

(42:42):
all. That is that is whythis thing will never do anything other than
maybe have light up eyes, maybeturn the head or maybe turn the head
or maybe just make noises. Yeah, I think they make noises. I'm
I feel like that was probably Ithink they did kind of little like they're
they're kind of the beaty noises andwhat yes, yeah, so maybe,

(43:05):
but you know, somebody was likequick to bang out some files on it.
Granted they are very difficult to figureout how to orient to get good
prints from, but they're detailed verynicely. They fit together well, and
so I thought, as a fun, little probably not video project, I

(43:30):
might make this on my own time. No, that's a great idea.
And again, you know, youcould later be like, hey, I
want more to be done in thehead, and you reprint the head.
But it's got space for LEDs ormaybe a servo motor to turn left and
right and up and down. Ithink they had little headlight like flashlights on

(43:52):
one side, and their little antennacan bob, so you could throw a
couple of servos in it if youreally wanted to, Or you could have
it where it's just gazing off outthe window and and motion activate chirps whenever
you walk into the room, orit's your Alexa or whatever, like you
could do whatever. That's what's socool about droid building is you can take

(44:14):
it as far as you want togo, or not very far at all.
Yeah, And like you, Ikind of decided Thanksgiving evening actually that
I wanted to spend some time andlearn a new skill, and so I
also am teaching myself Arduino programming.Ah, yes, well that is that

(44:36):
is great. Bob from I Liketo Make Stuff was having a sale on
his eye bought that too. Istill need to take the class, but
I did buy it. You andme both I got. I got through
the introduction, and then I didjust went to spending time with my family
as as I should. But Ifeel like, based on the types of
projects that I do, whether it'sStar Wars related or Halloween related or really

(45:00):
anything in between, having that knowledgebase because OUR is such a flexible platform
and really well documented and you know, all of the things that go along
with this type of device and allof the accessories that you can find for

(45:21):
it, et cetera, et cetera, it just seemed like a natural progression
to learn at least some basic coding, just because like OUR, it's always
important for me to kind of keeplearning new stuff and to sort of stay

(45:46):
inquisitive totally, you know, likeand I've had some really small successes with
other people's code, but it kindof it created that little spark that was
like, Okay, maybe this isn'tas difficult as I thought it was going

(46:07):
to be. You know, Ihave some experience doing coding as a former
graphic artist. I kind of workedthrough the period of time where people were
handwriting code for websites and stuff likethat. I remember that time. You
know, it still happens, butit's a different game now, and and

(46:28):
so the idea of code isn't unfamiliarto me. I know, this is
like a completely different language. Butagain, I am trainable and ritable language.
Though it's not too much too yeah, really not as scary as you
think it is. Yeah, Andso I thought it was, you know,
important to do a little something tofurther my education because there just seem

(46:53):
to be so many practical uses forit. Well that and I've had this
same thought probably I don't know,eight years ago, and bought a bunch
of ar Duino control, Like Ihave a bunch of Nanos, and I
have a bunch of UNO's, andI have all of the you know,
jumper cables and et cetera, etcetera. And so I want to kind

(47:16):
of make good on past me theseimpulsive purchases and learn something new at the
same time. Yeah, I'm I'mvery much in that same boat. I
mean, all of my droids havebeen puppets and used. My solution was
always independent systems that kind of eachdid their own thing. The sound system

(47:38):
was its own thing, the lightswere its own thing. You know,
lots of batteries and swapping, butit all worked. And so K two
the upgrade was really the first timeof like, well, what if we
ran it all off the same batteryand what if it, you know,
all comes from the same place.And yeah, I recently this year at

(47:59):
my work taught myself SEQL, whichis another programming well not programming, it's
an analytical language, but same thing. Yeah, it's like I'm teachable,
I can and it's even with Ktwo's head, Like I knew it was
possible because I found directories and examplesof turned Joystick into x Y motion,

(48:23):
Like I'm like, that's all Iwant to do. That's a very simple
starting project. Now I want totake it to other levels, but just
getting that baseline, I'm like,oh, and isn't that the truth?
So many times with projects, especiallywhen you're pushing to that next level,
it's like I know what I wantit to do, and I know it's

(48:44):
possible, But connecting those dots,that's where it's really going to be the
learning. Yeah, it's never astraight line, no, but but yeah,
And I mean I could totally seeyou like having a projector like a
microctor projecting on a blank bust andinstead of just running the you know,

(49:07):
grim grinning ghost or whatever, youcould have an ur dueno queuing up,
you know, between different face filesdepending on prompts. Like that's yeah,
you know, I mean there's likeyou said, there's so many use cases
with our duenos. They are reallyvery powerful things, and you just want

(49:27):
something else in your toolkit. AndI get that. That makes total sense.
Yeah, And I think you andI are very similar in this way
where we tend to thrive when wehave a very specific idea in mind and
have assumed that the best means ofattack is one particular thing. So like

(49:49):
in your case, you're like,I'm working on this upgrade to K twos.
I want to run it off ofa single micro controller. Here's how
I can attack this problem. Andfor me, it's it was a similar
kind of thinking. It was like, I want to do this upgrade to
this lantern that I have out inour Halloween display, but I hate how

(50:14):
most flickering lights that you can buyat the store. Look, and I've
got all of this technology that I'vealready spent the money on. I really
should figure out a way to mergethose two things. And I think this
project is a great example of kindof taking that leap into a project that

(50:34):
a is not going to be terriblydifficult to figure out, and B takes
advantage of the things that I alreadyhave on hand, which you know,
for a lot of us, it'slike, sure, we like to make
stuff, and we have, youknow, tools and whatever, but it's
it's all the the did you materialsaying that every time put it in the
jar. I know it just kidding, but you know, like if we

(50:59):
the thing that we run out ofmore than anything is you know, the
expendables, it's wood, it's foam, it's screws and nails and time,
nuts and bolts, it's time jeeyeah, it's filament, it's whatever that
thing might be. But when youhave some left over and you can put

(51:20):
it to good use, then atleast you're like you're lowering the barrier to
getting to having figured out the thingthat you want to figure out, or
completing the task and getting the resultthat you were hoping for or if for
nothing else, figuring out how notto do the thing that you were shooting
for, which in your case,you were like, great, this isn't

(51:43):
working based on my timetable, soI'm going to pivot and do something that
I know will work. Right,And then it turned out great, you
know, so it wasn't like aloss to not have done it the way
you would initially planned. You werelike, I see a path forward was
the ideal, right, not toa bare minimum. Yeah. And the
beauty of it all is that nowthat you don't have back to back convention

(52:07):
weekends, you can sit down andgo, Okay, well, why why
didn't this work? You know,you've something keep driving me because I've also
noticed, like that Kate who's beensitting here in his it is done state,
which is good. Done states aregood because then if he's still assembled,
I'm hoping he's still assembled arms totake him up around minute you get

(52:30):
him home from conventions. But yeah, no, I think the other thing
with the Adrino's and other things ingeneral. But you're talking about barriers to
entry, and you know, wetalked about Bob's UH training course and and
the online directories and stuff. Butthere's also the community. I think for
sure that I was not worried atall. I'm like, this will I

(52:51):
will figure this out one way orthe other, because I have friends that
have done even not this, butsomething really similar. And I mean there
was a whole there's a whole groupof us. We have a group chat
called like the Secret K two BuilderChat, and we're just we're working on
making this amatronic head. Now.Theirs is more like responding to prompts and

(53:15):
programming. In mine is the puppetaspect, but it's like we share nine
tenths of what we're trying to do. And so that was the only way
that I had this anywhere ready.My friend Travis, you know, was
massively prototyping and testing the design.We were giving feedback online, and it

(53:35):
got to the point where I waslike, Okay, I don't have a
super reliable printer right now, I'lljust pay you. Just ship me the
whole thing that you're you're basically yourtest model that you're running on. Ship
it to me. I'll make someyou know, I'll clean it up,
get it painted, get it allready. But that's what's in K two
right now. You know, likeI'll probably print another one at some point,

(54:00):
but that was like, I justlooked at my timetable and we're still
a couple months out at that point, but I was like, I,
that's the fastest way is just takewhat's already working and just go with that.
And so it was definitely a teameffort in a lot of ways.
And I'm grateful because you know,yeah, there's a bit of a benefit

(54:22):
to them, but not really likeI'm getting the most benefit from making this
a puppet than they are. Butthat's the point of community is it's not
about who's winning. It's about howdo we help each other. And eventually,
when you know we've dotted all theeyes and crossed all the droids,
like, we can share this withother people who have k Toso statues and

(54:45):
they want something that has a headthat moves like and then they don't have
to start from scratch. They canjust take what we've done and go from
there. Yeah. Yeah, thatis sort of the beauty of these types
of communities. Well, as we'reround and third on our hour ish podcast,

(55:05):
we've kind of covered our twenty twentythree what's kind of on your plate
or radar for twenty twenty four.I think was it seventy or seventy five
K. You just passed seven zerothe big and well, congratulations on that.
Thank you. It's super weird,just because I don't know that I've

(55:31):
really thought about the channel growing asit has, and I haven't had any
like massive successes that like really drovesuperviralmbers or anything. Everybody's coming in,
nothing like that. It's just likeevery week I get rewarded for like keeping

(55:51):
my nose to the grindstone and doinga new video and sharing my knowledge,
and people just keep showing up,and yeah, it's really cool. I
my wife last night that they miillyou the big play button. I forget
that is Yeah, you're first atone hundred, that's right, and it's

(56:14):
like mill is I think the secondYeah, it's uh yeah, which I
can't even imagine. That's you weresaying. You're sitting with the missus.
Yeah, I was sitting with mywife and I I in gosh, I
guess it was last weekend. Ikept looking at the numbers. I kind

(56:38):
of check to sort of make surethat everything's still working the way it's supposed
to. And I was looking atthe numbers, and I thought, you
know what, it could it couldhappen by the end of the year.
And I was talking with some peoplein the live chat before my videos come
out on Saturdays, which if youwant to come hang out in the live

(57:01):
chat, it's it's always a goodtime. And everybody's like, oh yeah,
It's like it's totally possible. It'sonly like X number of people per
day that you'd have to get tosubscribe to the channel and whatever, and
it just it felt like I hadkind of stalled out a little bit.

(57:22):
Now, granted I was checking itmore often than I normally was probably perception
than it, but it would belike, you know, I'd gain a
couple subscribers and then I'd lose asubscriber, and then I'd be like,
oh man, people hate me,you know, because that's the life of
five step forward, one step back, five step forward, just still moving
forward, but the step back,actually it just doesn't feel like you are.

(57:44):
And then it was probably like eighto'clock or something last night, we
were sitting watching TV and I grabbedmy phone and I loaded up the YouTube
app and I hit the analytics,and it was at seventy thousand and one,
and I just kind of had thislike and you pulled the car over,
took a picture of it because youhad to, Yeah, because it

(58:05):
didn't happen otherwise. But yeah,it was just like really surreal. Yeah.
I don't know what else to sayabout it. It's just I don't
know that I ever put enough thoughtinto it to think that I would have
that many people who enjoy watching theseridiculous videos I make every week. So

(58:30):
twenty twenty four, just like yousaid, continuing on that grindstone, continuing
to push yourself in projects as amaker, and just kind of more of
the same, or is there somethingnew you want to branch out into or
I think it's so tough, likeas someone who is basically doing these videos,

(58:52):
like the week of so if you'rewatching a video on Saturday, I
basically spent the week prior making inthe video cursing the weather all the way.
Oh man, don't even get mestarted. And I'm to anybody that
lives outside of California, I'm sorry. I know I'm a sensitive flower when
it comes to weather related It's justwhen you live in a place that sees

(59:15):
rain like ten days out of theyear and it's right in the middle of
a time when you really need toget something done, you get it.
Anyhow, I don't know that Inecessarily have anything really specific in mind.

(59:36):
I know that there are a lotof other makers who I think don't get
the visibility that they deserve, andso one of the things that I want
to try and do more in thenew year is to sort of get those
people in front of more eyeballs,because there's a lot of people on the

(59:59):
end these days, particularly on likeTikTok, I see it the most where
people are passing off other people's ideasas their own. Granted, a lot
of times there is a sort ofweird I don't know if it's synergy or

(01:00:21):
what it is, but like,yes, it is absolutely possible for two
people who have never met, whoare completely unaware of each other, to
come up with the same idea,because it's happened to me. What do
they always say, It's like,oh, I'm going to make an end
table, and then all of asudden, everybody's making end tables. It's
like just natural spawning. Yeah,it's sort of it's weird like that,

(01:00:43):
And I think it's always important toremember that You're not the only person that's
thinking about these things. There areother people with similar interests and experience that
may come to the same conclusion onany given topic. But I see a
lot of people just like blatantly stealingother people's work and passing it off as
their own. And along with that, and I think we've discussed this in

(01:01:05):
a previous episode, sometimes there's anelement of danger to people not really knowing
what they're doing and telling you todo it this way or trying it,
but they're not really exactly I thinkthe biggest one was like somebody was putting
UV reactive resin through an airbrush tosmooth out three D prints. This is

(01:01:30):
a terrible idea that sound like anycircumstance. It is horribly toxic and it's
not how it's supposed to be used. Let's start there. But that said,
there are a lot of people whoI know specifically came up with different

(01:01:52):
techniques for achieving different finishes and stufflike that, who are getting none of
the credit for it. And soI feel like, because I've got a
platform, I'd like to use thatplatform to say, look, a lot
of people turn to me as aquote unquote expert because they have a particular
project in mind and they want toknow how to do something better. But

(01:02:15):
even someone in my position who hasa bunch of experience, I definitely have
blind spots in my knowledge base.But I know that if I really wanted
something great and I knew that thisperson did it, I think it's really
important to give that person credit.And so if I can do that in

(01:02:36):
video and be like, look,this is the person behind a lot of
the stuff that you're seeing that isn'tgetting credit for it, I feel like
that's like a good use of myplatform and honestly take some of the weight
off of my shoulders of having tocome up with new ideas all the time.
Oh yeah, but so I thinktwenty twenty four all I'll definitely be

(01:03:00):
sprinkling in a lot of I shouldn'tsay a lot of some features of other
makers shout outs and yeah, stufflike that for sure. And you know,
because of Los Angeles is just sucha hotbed for prop makers of all
skill site, all skill sets.You know, if I wanted to call

(01:03:21):
up someone that I know and say, hey, I'd love to do a
video featuring this thing that I knowyou developed, like do you have an
interest in doing that? You know, I could do that, and so
instead of it being like a collaborationlike I've done in the past, where
it was like, hey, herei am in Los Angeles working on this
thing, and then I'm going tohand it off to like my buddy Brian

(01:03:43):
from the Smuggler's Room, who isin Colorado, right, you know,
a little farther away. Yeah,it's a little farther away, and there's
just that, you know, it'sI think it's more interesting to have sort
of two people in the same spacehaving a conversation or demonstrating something, and
I think that's a more interesting watch, you know, Like, yes,

(01:04:06):
I would love to do that collaborationvideos, and I'd love to do collaborations
with tons of other makers. Soif you're listening and you want to do
a collaboration with me, like pleasereach out. But yeah, I'd love
to to kind of do some stufflike that this year. That would be

(01:04:29):
a little bit different from the normbecause it's not going to be my point
of view on all of these things, but more so me and kind of
an interviewer role. I guess.Yeah, No, I'd love to watch
that that it makes me think oflike, like we again, we said
we had Brit on last week,and she does the same thing on her

(01:04:49):
Twitch where she often is just streamingas she's working on stuff, but very
often she'll have guests on I thinkyou've been a guest, and I've been
a guest on her her show,and yeah, it's definitely something worth dabbling
into to help even if one outof four videos a month are that,

(01:05:10):
it's that. I mean that givesyou a little more lead time on the
other things for sure. And shoutout to brit She's always so kind to
the show to me. Anytime thatI happen to catch her twitch stream and
pop into the chat, she alwayslike blows up my YouTube and Instagram and

(01:05:31):
I really appreciate it. So thankyou to brit for for always supporting.
Yeah for for me next year.It's interesting. I feel like in two
aspects, you know, one isprojects and one is like social media.
I don't have a plan for say, with social media. I'm I'm almost

(01:05:56):
kind of considering kind of a seewhat sticks kind of approach. But because
I've spent a lot of time thinkingabout you know, videos or like what
kind of thing would I want tomake. What kind of things would I
want to watch? You know,there's shorts, there's long form, there's
TikTok versus YouTube, all these thingsbecause I've always felt I feel like I

(01:06:19):
always have all the pieces, Ijust haven't found that combo or that drive
to like pull them all together.Like I know how to video edit,
I have good equipment, I havestuff I think people would want to see.
But if I can't find the rightcombo that I'm excited enough about and

(01:06:40):
driven enough about, like I'm notgoing to crank it out on a weekly
basis like that on top of everythingelse I'm doing. So it either has
to be like super easy, butalso what's the word. I'm stuck in
that loop of I know what looksgood, I know what I want it

(01:07:00):
to look like, but getting tothat point on an easy basis is tricky
or maybe not easy. But likeyou know, it's like, yeah,
I could shoot a two minute videoof whatever, but if it doesn't have
subtitle, or it doesn't have likegood music or good lighting or good mic,
or like, I don't want toput that out, Like I don't

(01:07:21):
want to put out a beta versionof whatever. So finding that balance has
been a struggle, you know,and I keep saying like, oh,
this is the year that my YouTubepio career starts. It's like yeah,
you know, And so I've kindof stopped so far as like I don't

(01:07:43):
think that's going to be my approachanymore. I'm going to instead, I
think, look at just doing something, which I know sounds weird of kind
of just like not giving it form. But it could be something like,
hey, I post something, youknow, as often as I can every

(01:08:06):
week, and whether that's a shortlike if it's a short a day or
a short a week, that's something, or if it's a video that's a
long form or whatever, that's something. But and maybe that will coalesce more
after, you know, I havethat running start. But it's because I

(01:08:28):
have the same thing with like streaming, Like I have a lot of streaming
equipment and stuff like that, butalso a lot of the stuff I do
is hard to stream. It's allaround the workshop, it's not on a
computer per se, and so soI don't know, I guess I'm just
it's kind of a throw it atthe wall and sees what sticks mentality,
But I'm just not really letting iteat me up anymore and just kind of

(01:08:55):
just going with just tell the storiesI want to tell, just make the
things I want to make. Andwhile I've always been good at documenting things,
it's just the sharing in a waythat gets traction is always the trick.
Yeah, I mean, I cantell you from experience that people are
drawn to content creators who express aunique voice and are interested in the things

(01:09:28):
that they are doing. If you'renot interested in it and you don't have
anything to add to the conversation,people are not as interested. I literally
just said the same thing forwards andbackwards. Sorry everybody, no, strike
that reverse it. Indeed I didboth. But so all of that said,

(01:09:54):
the next sort of magic element inall of this is you just have
to have a drive to want todo it, because you feel like the
thing that you have to add tothe conversation is unique enough, you know,
and like because you podcast so muchlike from the cheap seats over here,

(01:10:17):
that is your unique voice. Hmm. As far as I see it
as a maker, you're fantastic.Do you need to document it and share
all that with the world. No. And the reason I say that is
because the thing that you share withthe world is the experience of meeting the
droids you've created. That by faroutweighs any video, any short, any

(01:10:41):
TikTok, any Instagram posts, etc. And I think that's the thing you
get more enjoyment out of too.No, I do. And like I've
said, it would be hard tomake these droids and they live in my
garage and they never see anybody,right, Like that would be sad.
Uh, And you're right, that'swhat I strive for, is like,

(01:11:02):
how do I you know the reasonI'm rebuilding K two is not to teach
other people how to build droids.It's to make him emote better and be
more alive when he sees somebody.Yeah, now, if I could just
monetize that feeling, deep deep down. No, no, no, I

(01:11:25):
I really appreciate that. That thatthat is a great perspective, and I
do. I I understand that.Yeah, no, no, And I
do podcast a lot. That isthat And that's also because of ease.
You know, it's a heck,you know, have to shoot anything video
wise, and it's a lot alot easier to just slap it into an

(01:11:49):
audio file. But no, thatis that's a lot of fun. So
that's yeah, that's it's been kindof jumbling around in my mind and I
was, yeah, I was tryingto tell if it was that kind of
thing that i'd usually do with making, where I spend a lot of time
R and D thinking about all thethings and then pull the trigger. Yeah,

(01:12:11):
but I kind of got to thatpoint where I'm like, I don't
know if I need to pull thetrigger. But onto the making side.
The main project on the docket thisyear is BD six, which is going
to be the animatronic BD one droidon top of the austroid. So this
will be my first RC droid.Servos and transmitters and batteries and all these

(01:12:36):
strange things I've never had to dealwith before. But I'm really looking forward
to, like you said, thatmoment where I can drive up to someone
who's twenty feet away they can't seeme. I can see them, and
they're blind to me. They're payingattention to this little creation and it's making
them smile and interacting with them,and then it scurries away. Because that's

(01:13:00):
I can't do that with K twoand b D one. You know,
they're bolted to me physically, soI can do my best to disappear in
plain sight, but there will alwaysbe. It's a different kind of performance
and a different kind of interaction whenthere's a complete miss of the illusion where

(01:13:25):
it's like this could be real becauseI don't see the strings, I don't
see the person behind the curtain,right, But that's where I get all
my joy. That's it really is. Yeah, well, and you know,
having been there to witness it,like it's undeniable, Like people just

(01:13:46):
light up when they see you puppetingthings, so why not you know,
or get out of the way becauseK two is seven foot tall, he's
really big? True true? Allright, well, thank you everyone for
listening to this annual podcast here MakersMethod. You know, we don't know

(01:14:06):
when we'll record again. We dooften. I think we just got to
find a little bit more of arhythm or rhythm in the schedules is really
what it is. But like Isaid, we do enjoy chatting. It
always so fun to catch up withyou, Derek and to share with what
we're up to. But yeah,so definitely look forward to more Makers Method

(01:14:30):
next year, more interviews as well. We do enjoy having friends and fellow
makers on Fillow Makers who become friends, and we'll definitely have more of that
this year. I can't tell youhow many episodes will have in twenty twenty
four, but at least one theone you're listening to right now, Derek.
If someone wanted to check out yourmaker journey, where would they find

(01:14:55):
you? You can find me everySaturday morning over on YouTube YouTube dot com
slash ban Oaks Props, and I'malso on Instagram and occasionally TikTok, which
started off as a joke and nowI've actually posted things on TikTok, So
there's no hope for me now.And what about you, Darren? I

(01:15:16):
have someone wanted to find my works, including some amazing pictures that friends have
taken of my droids, so theycan go to doctorSci Fi dot com Dr
sci Fi they can find me mostplaces again under Doctor sci Fi and sometimes
TikTok. Well. Again, youcan listen to this and other great shows
here on the Nerd Party Network.Check them out. We have everything from

(01:15:38):
movie podcasts, sci fi shows.We even have commentary shows like for Lower
Decks and other great things. Sowe hope you check it out if you
need something either playing while you're makingor commuting to that maker space of yours.
Well, this is Darren and Derekreminding you to keep me