Intro
Welp, I expressed doubt on whether or not I would continue this past the first one, but given that you’re reading this right now, it would seem it’s here to stay–at least for now!
But honestly, though, historically I’ve said things like “I’ll release a video with every 3D model I make to motivate me to make more videos!” which then, in turn, causes me to lose motivation to make 3D models because it’s now that much more work.
So while I thought that perhaps I was doing too much by writing up a grand plan, in reality, it’s been really helpful in letting me focus on getting the things done that I want to get done by essentially making a promise to you, dear reader. If I tell myself I want to get something done by a deadline, it’s all too easy to renegotiate that internally, and then let myself down. But if I put my goals in writing online, then now I’ve made a promise that I need to keep! Even if realistically only about, like, 6 or 7 people read last month’s roadmap/newsletter, and if any of those people would even notice that I didn’t reach my goals, probably 0 of them at this point would ask about it. (So unironically, if you like my stuff, share this and my content around! The more eyes I get on it, the more serious I’ll be about it.)
And wouldn’t you know it, here we are in December, and not only have I written this, I’ve actually WANTED to write it! Funny how those things work out.
But hopefully going forward I won’t need to get all meta and talk about the newsletter as much, and I can jump straight into an actual intro where I muse about how the past month has gone, how the next month might look, how I’ve been personally, blah blah blah. On to that!
Ah, November has finally come to a close. The weather down here in Tanegashima has finally started to cool down, and it’s felt a bit drafty in Castle Carl as my girlfriend has been up in Tokyo taking care of the final arrangements before her lease finally runs out. The silver lining, however, is that I’ve been free to spread out to her side of the desk and take advantage of the extra time to get. stuff. done.
And get stuff done I have! 5 MAYBE MORE new models have hit my account, I finished editing and uploading the Pumpkin Jam results video, and have been active on my other socials as well.
But the big question, of course, is… did I manage to meet my goals?
Last Month’s Goals
This month featured a Goal, a Stretch Goal, an ImpossiGoal, and a side goal. Let’s talk about ‘em!
Side Goal: Pokemon TCG Pocket Coins.
If you’re not in the know, I have an ongoing series where I adapt and upload every single coin released in the Pokemon TCG Pocket App. Going forward, I probably won’t include this as one of my “goals,” and instead just put a section either at the start or end where I announce which ones I got through in the last month, and which ones have been announced but not uploaded.
After all, I really treat this as a low priority project to run when my printer is otherwise idle, so if I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t really care either way if I don’t get all of the coins out in a timely fashion.
With this goal, I wanted to catch up with the 2 coins remaining from October and then create and upload the 4 coins that had come out when I wrote the last roadmap. As it so happens, no coins came out until the 27th of the month, so nothing that wasn’t announced made it onto my page.
The six new ones are Professor Oak, Lillie Ver. 2, Special Set 02, Mega Absol, Mega Blaziken, and Mega Altaria. It ended up getting down to the wire, however! …Don’t check the upload date on Mega Altaria. It was deeeeeeeeefinitely uploaded in November. Ehem.
Anyway, it’s probably for the best if I model the coins at the beginning of the month, and then just print them when I have free time on my printer. That way I won’t find myself in a pickle like I did this month, where they were printing until the last days of the month.
As of writing this, they only announced Psyduck at the end of November, and May was released today. They’re on the docket of course, and if any more are announced within the next few days, I’ll smack them on here. If any more are announced after that, well, you’ll just have to be surprised when I upload them!
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Main Goals
The Main Goal’s meant to be something that is definitely doable–barring any unforeseen catastrophes, I definitely should be able to complete it before the month’s end. The whole point is to keep me motivated by giving me a relatively easy win.
This month, I had a couple things I wanted to do:
First, I wanted to finish the Pumpkin Jam video.
And second, I wanted to finish 10 more Poke Balls for Project Kurt.
But first things first!
The 2nd Pumpkin Jam has come to a close! The video is right here, if you are at all interested in seeing what happened.
But if not, I’ll give you the quick rundown.
Essentially, I had six folks submit models, but this Alolan Exeggutor Planter by Shadow dio sama took the grand prize!
I definitely recommend checking it and the other entrants out via my website as well! If you’re intrigued by the Pumpkin Jam itself as well, the interest form for the 3rd iteration is also live there.
However! It wasn’t all peaches and cream! While I am proud of how it went considering it’s only the second iteration of an event I’m running basically entirely by myself, there was a bit of an issue. Namely, because of how I worded the Theme, I essentially prevented everyone from putting that last bit of shine they would have liked to on their entries.
See, the issue was that I required participants to make something multiple times longer than could fit in their printer. Because of that, people didn’t really have the time to properly test-print things, and a lot of entries were a bit rough around the edges.
Accordingly, I promise the next one will have a Theme that will allow you to make a complete, polished model, even if you don’t want to forgo sleep.
The second part of the goal was to finish up ten more Poke Balls on my end for Project Kurt, so that I’d only have 7 left to go for December.
If you’re not aware of what Project Kurt is, it’s a project I’m doing that involves me creating 3D printable versions of all 28 usable Poke Balls in the main Pokemon games series, as well as–and this is the kicker–make short videos talking about their history in the games. I enjoyed having them done, but didn’t really enjoy the concept of trying to shove more and more edits into my voiceover to make it look better to me. So… I kinda just stopped.
But then an old friend of mine offered to edit them for cheap, so I’ve been leaving that to him! The goal here wasn’t to upload all ten balls right now, rather, it was for me to prepare my end of the bargain for the next ten balls, so that when he was done with a video, I’d be ready to just upload the corresponding ball on the spot. Accordingly, I’ve gotten those done (photo proof above) but OH WAIT! I apparently don’t know how to count, because I only did eight. Huh.
The Strange, Net, Lure, Love, Dream, Park, Sport, and Premier balls are locked and loaded.
The main issue I ended up running into is that while the actual modeling of the balls didn’t take all that long, writing the script, recording the video, filming the parts I needed to, taking thumbnail pics, editing them into a gif that shows the ball opening… takes a long time. Heck, the Net Ball is all but done; I just need to caption the vid and make the thumbnail! Which involves me thinking of where I should take the picture of the Net Ball to be thematically appropriate, which is harder than you might think.
So despite the fact that I wasn’t bothering with editing anything other than putting captions on the final product, I still needed to do significantly more work per ball than expected so…
FAILURE. Technically.
Which sucks, but oh well. I got the Pumpkin Jam vid finished, so I’m still happy with myself.
Stretch Goal
While the main goal is to give me something I absolutely can do to keep my sense of accomplishment/motivation up, the stretch goal is there to make sure I don’t get complacent. Like sure, I might get the main goal done in week 3, but that doesn’t mean I can just laze around until the end of the month! I gotta have something else to keep me busy!
This goal is designed to technically be achievable, but only if multiple fortuitous things happen within the month–like, I get a bunch of unexpected free time, AND I feel particularly in the zone AND things turn out to be easier/quicker than I expected. So I’m probably not going to hit it, but I should be able to start it.
And this time, it was to get all the remaining Poke Balls done! And… yeah. Didn’t get started on that.
ImpossiGoal
Just thought of this name! Do you like it?
Anyway, this is basically just a way to foreshadow what I have my eye on next. I almost definitely won’t get to it, but that’s fine. I’ll talk about what it was in this month’s goals.
What’s the Plan for December?
Well, first and foremost: I’m going on vacation! Starting Christmas Eve, I’m gonna be flying around the country, having fun with my girlfriend. I’ll be meeting her extended family, which is exciting~~(pretend I sang that last word).
But! That means for the last week of the year and the first week of the next, absolutely nothing will get done in terms of 3D printing stuff. I might prepare this newsletter/roadmap beforehand and then drop it on New Year’s Day just to be cute, but…. Meh, probs not.
Anyway! Goals time:
Main Goal: Finish up the Poke Balls I’ve printed so far and the remaining 9 others. This means not only printing them, but writing the scripts, recording the video, and making the thumbnail. Note that this doesn’t mean that they’ll get uploaded, but it does mean that as soon as my editor finishes each video, I’ll be immediately ready to give him the next one, and to caption and upload the video alongside the model. That’ll give me a slow burn of new stuff to upload through the next few months or so. Make sure to watch through the videos and comment in the descriptions of them now if you want to see any of them done sooner than later!
Stretch Goal: Finish the first draft of Durandal. I’m trying to print this redhead’s sword here, which is the main blade of the seventh Fire Emblem game. There’s no official 3D render of it that I can tell, so it’ll be a fun challenge. I just want to try and see if I can’t start printing it before I head on vacation.
ImpossiGoal: Upload Durandal. This also includes recording and editing its corresponding video in my Obscure Items series on YouTube, wherein I talk about weird obscure items I’ve pulled from games and printed. It’s a fun time!
Conclusion
Hoo boy, are we at the end already? Well, I still got a couple things to say.
First, if you’ve read this far, YOU are one of the major reasons I keep doing these things. Love having a positive impact on other people, and the fact that you’ve bothered to read through this means that I’m indeed doing what I love! (Unless if you’re hate-reading this. To which I say… what are you doing here? Go away. Do something productive.)
And of course, follow my stuff! I got a YouTube channel where I do more stuff around my life on a remote Japanese island. There’s probably more stuff I should promote, but… I’m sleepy. It’s 9:30 PM on December 1st, and I wanna get this out. So I’ll leave it there!
Or not. One more thing.
New Bucket List Ideas
Here’s where I’d put any new ideas…. If I had any!!!!!
Basically these are things I’m contemplating on maybe doing eventually in the future, so if you see anything you really think is cool so you wanna see me do it or you just wanna talk about it, feel free!
Bucket List
This is just every idea from the last time put here again for recordkeeping. I’ll probably delete some if I have zero interest in doing them, but feel free to skim through this and see if anything catches your fancy. So here they are!
3D Modeling Poseable Models in Blender
I know Blender is more about animations and stuff, but I currently almost exclusively use it for importing one kind of filetype, and then exporting it as another. Since it certainly seems to be a powerful tool for handling meshes and stuff, I figure it’d be good to learn more about how it works, and to try and model some basic poseable figures in there. The prefecture I live in, Kagoshima, has a group of mascots that are all pigs–I think it’d be cool to create a base form for them, add bones onto it, pose it like they do in their promotional images, and then add their little accessories to make a cute little figurine set.
Gameripping and Crowdfunding
I’ve used The Models Resource to find models as reference material many times before, so I was considering repaying the favor and getting some models to add. The Magical Sword from Hyrule Warriors has always been in the back of my mind to make, but there are a couple problems.
No one ripped the sheath from the game. Both the sword and shield are there, but no sheath to put the blade in.
It would take a lot of filament. More than would be sustainable for a hobbyist such as myself.
For this challenge, I’d like to see if I can’t learn how to rip the model, so I can try and upload it myself. And to get the filament, I want to try out Maker World’s crowdfunding feature to see if I can’t scrape together enough to get the filament to properly test it and then print it out. It’s a pretty complicated model, as you can see here. It’d be a big undertaking by itself in order to try and adapt it.
Making Practical Mechanisms
So I have no idea what direction this would go, but have you ever worn a hard hat? You put it on, and there’s a knob in the back that tightens it down so it doesn’t fall off your noggin. I want to try making a headband that works like that, but has a mechanism in the front that lets you easily attach and detach a mask. How would that work out? Is PLA even bendy enough to make a reliable headband? I don’t know, but I found the patent for the ratchet, so…
Making More Rubber Band Hinges
Y’all remember Bakugan? I do. Really cool marble-like tools with a hidden magnet in ‘em which, when passed over a metal card, triggered the magnet which unlatched a bunch of springed hinges, transforming it into a little figure. Really crappy card game, super interesting concept. I wanna see if I can make one using rubber bands to power the hinges, similar to how my Poke Ball works.
Working with TPU
Fun fact: I’ve never printed in TPU. Ever. Sounds fun though. I’ve seen people make squeaky rubber duckies with TPU, and I want to try to do that myself. Except instead of a Duck, I want to make a Pig Ball, from the obscure PlayStation game Tomba! 2. This is the highest resolution photo I could find of it via a quick google search
What are those Suspended String Thingies Called?
I’ve seen some pretty cool models like the one in this image here. I have no clue (ok I have some clue) how they work, but I want to try one! I’m a fan of Naruto, and for some reason these prints remind me of a Sharingan floating in a tank. I’d like to make one, and swap out the design for every one seen so far in the series. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?
Trying out Some Cosplay
Really small goal, but I want to try and make Zero’s Buster from Mega Man X3. I’ve got an idea to try and use straps that might make it relatively ergonomic and solid, but I also want to think of a way to make it easy to take on and off.
Electronics and API, maybe?
A while back I made a video (or 2… or 3…) in which I attempted to make disco lights for my twitch stream. I kinda succeeded, but the end product was really finicky, unreliable, and hard to set up. Basically, the gist of the thing was that I wanted to make a spinning ball with holes in it that projected shapes from an internal light onto my walls, in order to spice up my twitch stream. I was toying around with trying to make one from the maker’s supply, and if that worked out, I want to try and sync it up with my twitch stream so that it changes color if I get a follow, raid, sub, or something like that. That’d be gnarly. I’ve had a couple people tentatively offer to help, and I feel bad that I haven’t followed through…
The old one had (technically) remote control, RGB capability, and variable spinning speed somehow, but it’d take a lot of learning to figure out how to do it effectively and reliably.