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

An AI prompt that becomes a real scale figure you can hold in your hand sounds like science fiction, but the gap just got a lot smaller. We sit down with returning guest Jake McKee to walk through the exact, messy, real-world workflow he is using right now to create custom 3D printed figures for a diorama, starting with an AI-generated photoreal image and ending with a printable STL. We dig into what works, what breaks, and why “yes, no, and maybe” is the most honest answer when you ask whether AI can “sculpt” for the hobby.

Jake explains how tools like ChatGPT for image creation and Meshi.ai or Tripo for image-to-3D conversion fit together, why simple standing poses succeed faster than compact seated drivers, and how artifacts show up when the software has to guess hidden geometry. We also talk about the practical reality of paying for subscriptions or tokens, the difference between fast results and better meshes, and when learning Blender becomes the fastest path to cleaning and reposing a figure instead of endlessly re-rolling prompts.

After the interview, we shift back to the bench with updates on current builds, HeritageCon anticipation, and an experiment that a lot of car builders and decal junkies will appreciate: a one-off custom decal order for a Moosaroo Cup Miata. We share what the print quality looks like, how the decal film behaves, and what we would do differently next time.

See Jake's workflow and links to his favorite AI tools here!

If you are curious about AI in scale modeling, 3D printing for dioramas, custom figures, or faster ways to generate masks and patterns, this one will spark ideas. Subscribe, share the episode with a modeling friend, and leave us a five-star rating and a review so more builders can find the show.

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Transcript

Welcome And Episode Catch-Up

The Voice of Bob (Bair) 0:11

Welcome to plastic model mode. It's dedicated to skill modeling. Well, news and events around the hobby. Join my days to be informative entertaining.

Mike 0:43

All right, Kentucky Dave. It is episode 159. Yep. Man. I know.

Kentucky Dave 0:50

I know. March is almost halfway over, man.

Bench Time Reality Check

Mike 0:55

We'll be tomorrow. Well, almost. About noon tomorrow. I'll be half over. Oh, man. I you're right. It's it's we're a little late here. We had a little scheduling difficulty here. I had to run down to East Tennessee for a family matter, and I'm back now. And we've had the interview recorded for almost a week. Could be a week tomorrow. Yeah. But we're getting it all on the books tonight, and we'll get this out in plenty of time. And uh we'll get it out a little after some of our fellow podcasts drop their episodes for the second week of February or March. So it's all good, man. It is. It is. Well, man, what is up in your model sphere, Dave?

Kentucky Dave 1:32

As you may remember, in February's episode, one of February's episodes, I I mentioned that I started tracking my bench time. And I said that in January, I got about six six hours and thirty or forty minutes of bench in the the entire month of January. Well, I've been continuing to track it, and February, shorter month, I got five hours and thirty-seven minutes in at the bench, the entire month.

Mike 2:08

What was January again? Six and like six thirty. Okay, so and probably you probably still went the wrong direction.

Kentucky Dave 2:16

I probably did still go the wrong direction, but and and now keep my keep in mind, I am being ruthless about this. This is only time I'm at the bench actually building. So not watching YouTube or cleaning up or prepping or any of that stuff. So I'm still I'm still deficient in the amount of time I'm managing to get to the bench. And March, I wish I could say so far in March there's been an improvement, but there hasn't.

Mike 2:48

Oh man, I thought you were gonna say you're already there and it's only the middle of the month, and you're already at six hours.

Kentucky Dave 2:53

Nope. I wish I could.

Mike 2:55

Give him ribbon, folks.

Kentucky Dave 2:56

Yes, that's right.

Mike 2:57

Well keep them spurs in deep.

Kentucky Dave 3:00

Yeah. I've also been acquiring things for the hobby room to try and improve my my hobby room, and we'll talk about more of that in the what broke your wallet segment. And then finally, HeritageCon is almost upon us. Just about. And I I cannot tell you how much I've been anticipating that. So my model sphere is good. I'm jazzed. It's uh everything's positive. I want it to be more positive, but it's positive. How about you?

Mike 3:36

Except your bench time.

Kentucky Dave 3:37

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

Mike 3:40

All right. How about you? Model sphere-wise, there's a lot going on. Yeah. I got a lot of forward planning to do still. I keep saying that, and people are probably getting tired of hearing it, but uh things are getting a little more complicated month to month, which is, I guess, a good thing. Right. I just gotta figure out the workflow to make it to make the workflow. Yeah. Honestly.

Kentucky Dave 4:03

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

Mike 4:06

You you've you finished a model. That's we got a bench time half short. I know, but you could at least mention it. Okay, I'll mention it. I did finish the Moosuru cup, and I'm so glad that is in the rear view mirror. We'll get to that later. Yep. It's done. Is it done to the degree I wanted it done? No. But it's not bad. No, it you I'll take it. Yeah. Other than that, man, just trying to get the planning done. And, you know, I'm trying to think of things that aren't bench related, right?

Kentucky Dave 4:37

Right.

Mike 4:38

But you know, with the Moosaru Cup completion, I did a full wipe down and sanitization of the bench. So uh time to get back to the other things.

Kentucky Dave 4:46

Yep.

Mike 4:47

Well, that's it. All right. All right.

Kentucky Dave 4:50

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

Mike 4:57

And what is it? Don't spit your dentures out there. Okay. You don't wear dentures. I'm being facetious. At least not that I know of. Right. I'm working on the Weller Special Reserve again. Oh man. It's all right. I got another bottle coming, man. It's all good.

Kentucky Dave 5:12

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

Mike 5:17

It's otherworldly good. There's like a third of it left, and I've had the bottle for stinking almost two months. It's a miracle. Yeah. So well, you were trying to be a good good boy. Well, and I keep putting tape on the lid so I can put it in the car and not have it be an open container.

Kentucky Dave 5:33

Right.

Mike 5:33

I keep having to take it off. So my buddy Sean's gonna hook me up with another one. He's already got it, actually. So we'll have some for Heritage Con. We we need to that's Fear not, Dave. You'll get to partake in the weller. We'll get to it later. Let's not uh make the uh front end of this segment too fat. What do you got going on?

Kentucky Dave 5:54

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

Mike 6:00

You're doing the doubles now? This folks, this is a guy who did not like hoppy beer in 2020.

Kentucky Dave 6:05

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

Mike 6:16

But it's close. But it's hoppy. It is. It's a what is it? It's pale L.

Kentucky Dave 6:21

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

Mike 6:27

Probably give me an allergy attack. That one is hoppy. Double. What'd you expect?

Kentucky Dave 6:33

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

Listener Mail Tips And Show Stats

Mike 6:38

We got plenty of listener mail, Dave. Good. Let's get to it. We have a manageable amount tonight. Good. Which is good because we have a long-ish interview. Yeah. But it's a good one. So we got plenty of listener mail. First up, Lee Edmonds again. And this one's interesting because he he he parsed this out into basically four or five paragraphs here that are all kind of separate things we've been doing based on our last episodes.

Kentucky Dave 7:04

Okay.

Mike 7:04

And I guess we talked about last episode what people get out of this and you know what they like about the hobby was kind of the the crux of the episode.

Kentucky Dave 7:13

Yeah.

Mike 7:13

And he had a few things resonate with him, and one of them was all the people talking about doing the research on the model while they're making it or after they're done or before they start. Just whenever, right? Right. Get some research to do. Well, he's a history PhD, and he's been an academic and professional historian as a career. So he doesn't do a lot of historical research when he gets into his models because uh he's kind of tired of it by the end of the day. I can understand that. Interesting. Yeah. And then we'd mentioned, I guess it was John Bryan, who was had the website he created and he was looking at his models on there. Yep. And we we elaborated a little bit about hey, maybe you need to make this public or or whatever. Right. Because he's a really, really good modeler, and that's not an overstatement. He's he's a fabulous modeler. And I'd mentioned this other website, just oh, what was it? It was the uh the Little Aviation Museum. I don't think that's what I called it before, but he reminded me that's what it was because it's his. He's the guy in Australia with the website with all his builds on it. Gotcha. So he reminded me that. So, folks, if you're out there and you want to see Lee's photo montage of all his product all his uh projects, it's the Little Aviation Museum. You can either Google that and we'll put the I'll put a link in the show notes to get there, but he's the guy that's been doing this. So there we go. And finally, I'm gonna forward this on to the person he was addressing, but he had some he had some kind of encouraging words for Warren Dickinson. I'm not gonna read those, but uh Warren, I I think you'll you'll like what he has to say, and I'm gonna send those out to you. Okay? Yep. Well, Dave, up next is Paul Budzik again. He's written in quite a bit here, Lady. Maybe maybe he's got more time because he's returned.

Kentucky Dave 8:53

That's exactly what I was gonna say.

Mike 8:57

This is a really, really good tip and something I've never thought of, and it he he's probably right. I mean, yeah, he's what are the odds that Dr. Budzik is wrong? I mean, come on. I don't know. It's titled Your Cyanoacrylate Phobia. I get it. I don't know that I would call it a phobia. I just have an apprehension, I guess. Right. Maybe it's just uh what's separating those two? A degree of severity, maybe. He says he just got through placing his yearly order through CA and he thought about me.

Kentucky Dave 9:31

Okay.

Mike 9:32

And the main reasons why people find the material unpredictable is the uh age of it. So apparently he he renews this every year, whether he's used it all or not.

Kentucky Dave 9:41

I can see that. I know that cyan cyanoacrylate does age badly.

Mike 9:48

It probably does.

Kentucky Dave 9:48

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

Mike 10:02

Well, I think he's getting at my complaints that it sticks when you don't want it to and doesn't when you do. So that's the that's the unpredictability, which is one of the big reasons he's is he mentions his age. Retailers really don't rotate their stock that often. Yeah, and so sometimes this stuff can sit on their shelves a long time, a year or more. It's an ambient environment, but how good is it?

Kentucky Dave 10:24

Right.

Mike 10:24

See, so as a general rule, Paul orders his stuff annually and he gets it right from Pacer Industries. Robart, I guess, is their primary distributor.

Kentucky Dave 10:35

Right.

Mike 10:36

And he's provided a link, and I'll put that in the show notes, and maybe I'll just refresh my all my glues.

Kentucky Dave 10:43

It wouldn't be a bad idea.

Mike 10:44

It's it's not something I'm gonna never use, not use. Right. It certainly is a game changer in a lot of ways for a lot of applications, but I have my frustrations and I've been vocal about them, and this this could be it. This could be the reason.

Kentucky Dave 11:00

Well, you'll have to keep us updated.

Mike 11:03

I will. So we'll see what happens if I get some new glue.

Kentucky Dave 11:06

Good.

Mike 11:07

Listener Frank Blatton has written in from the IPS Richmond Old Dominion Open show. Well, he he was at he's in Richmond, and he's certainly involved with that show and a regular attendee. Really interesting interesting. He sent me the stats for the show. So they had it's a one-day show, 246 modelers entered the contest. They had 863 paid walk-ins. So total walk-ins were 942.

Kentucky Dave 11:34

Yeah.

Mike 11:34

So I guess some folks can get in free. Probably kids. Kids, because 863 and 246 don't add up to 943. The models entered, not counting display only, was 1,135. That's a lot. That's a lot. 140 vendor tables sold, one day show, spectacular, spectacular day, my friends. And of course, he's inviting us to come, and we would love to come to that sometime.

Kentucky Dave 11:59

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

Mike 12:14

Well, he says this show has grown quietly. You know, it was the first time they broke a thousand entries.

Kentucky Dave 12:20

Yeah.

Mike 12:21

And there are more models. They had the display only. There's there's there's more stuff there to see than just the official records. So just a big celebration of styring and community, says. Sounds pretty interesting. I'm sure the model geeks will have a feature episode. Maybe it's in the one they dropped here recently. It might be. As we record this. I don't know if they've uh gonna drop a special on the ODO or if it's gonna be part of their feature episode, but uh normally they cover that one pretty good and we'll see what they do. But Frank, thanks for the data. Always curious. So that that puts it right on par size-wise with uh Heritage Gone, honestly. Yes, it does. So that's a big deal.

Kentucky Dave 12:58

That is.

Mike 12:59

Well, you're gonna help with this one, Dave. All right. Daniel Brewer from the Knoxville Scale Modelers Association down in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I was actually at this afternoon for a short period of time on my drive home from East Tennessee. Yeah. In episode 158, apparently you were talking about surface air missiles, and you were. I remember that. He wonders if he could recommend in 72nd scale an SA2 and a Patriot battery. Now the the SA2, I can answer that. Yeah, I can. I'll let you do it. The other one I've got no clue, but go ahead, Dave.

Kentucky Dave 13:31

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

Mike 13:36

It's it's one or the other. I know Trumpeter's got the 35th scale one.

Kentucky Dave 13:39

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

Mike 13:52

It's a bit of a collector scale.

Kentucky Dave 13:54

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

Mike 14:18

I got I got no clue. I know Aerie made in one in 48th scale during one of the Gulf Wars.

Kentucky Dave 14:24

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

Mike 14:31

I'm not sure there is one in 72nd scale.

Kentucky Dave 14:34

Yeah, there doesn't appear to be one in plastic, at least according to scalemates. There's just this military scales, 72nd scale 3D print kit, but and I know nothing about it. So if anybody out there knows different, please let us know.

Mike 14:53

And hey, finally, from the email side of things, is Mark Duramus in the Seattle area. Yeah. He appreciated all the love for Jim Bates in episode 147. You mean 157? He said 147, but uh you're probably right. 157.

Kentucky Dave 15:08

Yeah.

Mike 15:08

Jim's a great guy, worthy of the praise he's receiving, and he's proud to call him a friend. Well, isn't that nice? So, Jim. There you go, buddy.

Kentucky Dave 15:16

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

Direct Messages And Community Generosity

Mike 15:21

It's too late. And he also throws a bunch of kudos at him for the the monthly meetings and I guess the uh the Model Mania show at the Museum of Flight. So Jim gives above and beyond. So help him out, folks, if you're out there. Well, that's the email stuff, Dave. Okay. What is going on with the direct messages?

Kentucky Dave 15:40

We've got a number of direct messages. First, you mentioned Warren Dickinson already, and Warren, along with Jeff Inchai Groves, seems to bound and determine to break my wallet constantly because every time there's a book sale, I get DMs from from Jeff Groves. Meanwhile, Warren Dickinson DM'd me because he knows of my decal addiction and he knows that I like DP Casper, the decal company, and he DM'd me to let me know that there were a whole bunch of new sheets that were showing up as future releases on Hannon's site. And I told him that I had actually known that because I had been perusing DP Casper stuff about a about a week ago. So yeah. Stop reminding you. Yes, exactly. Stop reminding me. But I appreciate I appreciate Warren thinking of me. The podfather, Dave Goldfinch, he and I exchanged several DMs regarding his attendance this year at the Nats. He's coming in from Australia to attend the Fort Wayne show. And we were finalizing scheduling and all, so because he's gonna fly into Louisville and I'm gonna pick him up, and he's gonna stay at my place for a few days. And then he's talking about wanting to come back again the following year to attend Wonderfest. So I told him he's welcome to come anytime. We gotta go this year. We're gonna go I go every year.

Mike 17:26

I went last year.

Kentucky Dave 17:28

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

Mike 17:32

That's a great show. I know I know some of the other pod folks are talking about hitting it up too. So we'll see.

Kentucky Dave 17:39

Next, William Christman reached out because you and I had mentioned both mentioned ordering from Burbank House of Hobbies and I joked around about they ought to sponsor us, they don't. Um but he chimed in because he travels to there several times a year on work, and he always stops by Burbank House of Hobbies, and he absolutely agrees with us regarding their fantastic service, they're they're hopeful and friendly employees, and he he just uh wants us to know that he he agrees that uh Burbank House of Hobbies is a good place for getting hobby supplies and hobby-related materials.

Mike 18:29

And I assume that's first person, and we're yes, we're doing it through the mayor.

Kentucky Dave 18:32

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

Mike 18:36

Well, I think Ed Bareth goes up there every now and then, so he he's also had great things to say about the place. So nothing like a good hobby shop. We all know that. That's not news to anyone, is it?

Kentucky Dave 18:46

No, that's true. Next is Stephen McDonald, who sent me, sent us a long DM and uh replied to him briefly, but I need to get back with him because when I got his original DM, I was out on date night. And, you know, it kind of spoils the mood if you're spending your time DMing. But he he reached out because I had mentioned considering getting the AK Gen 3 Air box set, and he was interested in it because he recently came into a little bit of money and he's been doing some hobby spending. He got a compressor through Dr. Strange Brush.

Mike 19:27

Really?

Kentucky Dave 19:27

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

Mike 19:39

Gen 3 or Gen 3 Air? Yeah, Gen 3.

Kentucky Dave 19:42

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

Mike 19:48

All right. I was confused.

Kentucky Dave 19:49

It's not like Vallejo Air.

Mike 19:51

Okay. Sorry. Sorry for that. I mean, it's not like you can't get confused by all the different manufacturers. Yeah, really, because there's only a couple.

Kentucky Dave 19:58

Yeah, right. We we haven't had a new paint in years, right? He also, as an engineer, married to a lawyer, uh, which I thought was a rather interesting combination. Kind of like this podcast. Yes, kind of like this podcast. And he did have some very, very nice things to say about the podcast and what it's meant to him and how motivating he finds it. And well, send me that. I will send that to you because it's well, if it's a DM, I can read it. Well, no, it's a DM to me, so you're holding out on me now. Well, about half the DMs I get are not to the podcast, but are actually directly to me. Well, that's okay. Because I'm friends with I'm DM Facebook friends with a lot of listeners, tons of them.

Mike 20:43

Did your wife know how popular you've become?

Kentucky Dave 20:46

I don't know about that. Uh finally, from Does she care? Yeah, but that's no, she does not. Finally, from the DM side, I had mentioned on the dojo Xacto used to make a lighted Xacto handle. A hand an Xacto handle with a flashlight in the end of it through like an acrylic chuck with a light behind it.

Mike 21:14

So it's like a light tube or fiber optic kind of thing.

Kentucky Dave 21:18

Yeah. And they stopped making it. And this is my favorite modeling hand, knife handle. I love it. I like the light. And you can't find them anywhere because they stopped producing them years ago. I put out a uh plea on the dojo and said, if anybody knows anywhere where you can get one of these, let me know. And Mr. Hurt reached out, said he's got one, and that he he offered it to me. It was very kind of him. It reinforces to me how, in general, how great modelers are. Just willing to go out of their way. To bend over backwards to help fellow modelers. I haven't gotten it yet, but he he told me he was going to send it to me. Oh, that's nice. It never ceases to amaze me how generous our listeners are. And you guys, it's it's appreciated. Mike and I both realize it and are very, very thankful for it.

Mike 22:26

Not bad for listener mail, man. Nope.

Kentucky Dave 22:28

Not bad at all.

Mike 22:29

Got anything else? That's it. Well, folks, if you want to email the show or DM the show, you can email us by sending us an email, obviously, to plasticmodelmojo at gmail.com. That'll get the email to me, and I'll take those typically. And Dave will take the direct messages off Facebook, and obviously that's Facebook's direct messaging system. Send them on. We really like it. We get some cool stuff and uh it makes fun conversation.

Kentucky Dave 22:52

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

Mike 23:27

We do. In my modeling lifetime, we've gone from stock figures to conversions done various different ways to resin figures to lidar-generated 3D models that become printed figures to a lot of stuff. But we had a listener write in not so long ago about wondering if you could go from an AI prompt to an STL file. And apparently you can.

Kentucky Dave 23:53

Yes.

The Current State Of AI Sculpting

Mike 23:54

We had Jake McKee back here recently. We had him back because he is actually pushing the envelope here once again and is going to tell us how he's actually pulling this off. And I hope everybody can follow along to what Jake's got to say here. But it was a really interesting conversation. So, Dave, what do you think, man? Let's get on with it. Well, Dave, back in the end of May last year, listener Eric Kinser wrote in, and we mentioned that in the 12-minute model sphere, and in an actually in this in the uh episode prior to that, about using AI to generate 3D printer, STL files for 3D print of figures specifically. So his email closed with a statement so is the technology good enough to make this happen? And we've got somebody here, a recurring guest, Jake McKee from the Austin, Texas area. And uh he's gonna answer this question for us tonight. And I think it's gonna surprise a lot of people.

Jake McKee 24:54

Jake, how are you doing? I'm doing great, Mike. Thanks for having me back on again. When you guys have me, I I break out my papy. So you know my modeling fluid tonight is always a treat.

Mike 25:03

Oh, good for you. Uh, you know, we've we've seen figure companies using essentially it's a type of CAD, but they're doing 3D sculpt, you know, to create to generate STLs for figures. There's even folks out there using LiDAR to bring a model in and clean it up and use that for STLs for 3D printers. But now we're to a different place where you can just about or absolutely without doubt create something from pretty much nothing now. So I'm gonna let you talk and get into the project you're working on and uh how this manifested itself and get into some of the tools you're using to actually to make this happen and answer this question. Is the technology good enough to make this happen? Being AI prompts to a physical figure in your hands.

Jake McKee 25:54

So yes, no, and maybe.

Kentucky Dave 25:58

That's always the answer.

Jake McKee 26:00

Right, right, exactly. So let me let me give a little context first. Sure. Uh, you know, I I know I've talked to you guys a little bit. I talked to the small subjects guys at one point about you know AI and the hobby. And, you know, we we often hear AI and we think about these high-level concepts or you know, these really terrible videos that we see popping up or whatever. And, you know, whatever you might think about some of that stuff, it is what it is. But when I I think it's been at least a year, maybe more, since I talked to the small subjects guys about this at in depth. And I'm kind of curious now to go back and hear what I had to say, you know, in retrospect based on what's going on now. But you know, I kind of looked forward at that point and said, you know, there's a lot of opportunity with AI to do a bunch of different things, right? And I was just showing you guys my my vibe-coded app that uh I'm using AI to help me organize all the files on my on my computer so that I can search my STL library, which is ever, ever, ever growing. Way too easy to collect STL files, but it's not as easy to go search them out, right? So I've created a web interface for my computer basically to be able to search much much more easily in flag and all that sort of stuff. You know, that's part of what AI is. But the other part that you're specifically referring to is this question of, you know, can you do sculpting with it? And I have two projects right now that are well underway doing exactly that. And you know, back to your question that came in about, you know, is the technology good enough to sort of have AI create or sculpt uh figures? And that if that question came back in in May, the answer was nope. Hard, hard no. It was I tried it about six months ago, even, and it was just it was just awful. The the the stuff that came out of it was just unusable, not even close to consideration. I went in about a month ago, two months ago, maybe at this point, and tried it again. And with some work, this is the maybe part, with some work, I got to the yes. And one of the projects I've got active, I have three figures that are gonna be they're all three AI generated. They're gonna be used on the diorama I'm working on. They look great and completely usable. I've got one other project where I was I was not super particular, and this is something we'll we'll talk about that super super particular piece, about the design. I kind of needed this sci-fi looking contraption to strap to a tree. And I had a general idea of what I wanted, but I wasn't replicating something super specific. And same thing, you know, just like the process that we can walk through. But the process that I did with the figures, I did with this little piece of sci-fi technology. And after some some tweaking and some playing and some more tweaking and playing, I got something that was that was something I liked and that worked for the diorama and printed it out and boom, it came out perfect.

Kentucky Dave 28:53

Okay, let me ask a super layman question. When you say generating a figure from an AI prompt, an STL file that you can print, what does the prompt look like? I mean, do you take a photograph and say, can you reproduce this figure in 3D in an STL file? Or how walk me through what that means, because I don't understand any of this.

Jake McKee 29:25

Yeah, totally, totally fair, totally fair. So there's a couple of answers to that, or a couple of opportunities you can you can take advantage of. One is what you're talking about, what we know about AI, right? You go into Chat GPT, you type, hey, I want something, and out it comes. You can do that with generating STLs, but it it's not very good. Um in part because just the type of technology that's going on and the way that Chat GPT is tuned to be, you know, much more tech uh sorry, uh text and and voice conversational, right?

Kentucky Dave 29:56

Right.

Jake McKee 29:58

But it we've started to see that it can generate static images. And so the the process I've been using is you know, I first think about what's what's the plan here? What is it that I need, right? So for instance, I needed a photographer figure of one of the three of them that I'm working on for this diorama. And so I thought, okay, what kind of what kind of photographer? What does he look like? Well, it's from the 1950s, early 1950s, so that kind of dictated the dress. And I wanted him to be using a medium format camera that he's got a kind of leaning over to look down the top of. And so once I had that in mind, I went into, in this case, it was it started with Chat GPT and just said, make me a photorealistic picture of photorealistic image of a photographer doing those things dressed like this, you know, so on. And it kicked out uh a version of that, you know, that photorealistic, you know, net new image.

Kentucky Dave 30:57

And it was and it was just an image file.

Jake McKee 31:00

It was just an image file so far. Right.

Kentucky Dave 31:02

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

Prompting Images Before 3D Conversion

Jake McKee 31:09

Well, yes, because so right now, a huge part of AI is that there's there's very few solutions unless you're doing some really minimal stuff that that are only one tool at a time, right? Right now, and and and that's that's already changing dramatically. It's gonna continue to change dramatically. At some point, I'll be able to go into you know some particular tool and say, here's exactly what I want, no matter what that output is, and one step and boom, it's there. Right now it's not. So part of this was to first develop the the image of the thing that I wanted. And that took some effort. You know, the first thing that came in was it was okay. You know, there's another one that had some weird shoulder bag thing that I'm like, that guy never would have been wearing that. So I had to continue to refine that prompt and keep going. And you know, part of it is you know, the prompt process, if anybody's been using GPT for anything or quad or any of them, you know, how you talk to the AI improves the way that the results come back, right? And the same thing here. And sometimes I go into it with a very specific plan of exactly what I need and work towards that. Other times I'm like, well, I know I need a photographer, but I don't really have a vision in my head. So let's let's work together on this one, Chat GPT. And I I created the photo. And once I had a very good photo that was the right pose, the right, you know, the right clothing, the right equipment on him, then I took that into initially I took it into a site called meshi.ai, M-E-S-H-Y dot AI. And then the I I eventually started using Tripo, trip tripo, I think, T-R-I-P-O. It seems to be doing a little better job, but it takes a whole lot longer. But basically, I put that photo in and say, turn this into a 3D model. And it takes a couple of times. Sometimes it doesn't quite work, or it adds artifacts that'll have to go back into that photo and either take it into Photoshop and clean it up before I take it into Meshi, or I go back to chat GPT and say, hey, recreate this image without this particular thing in place. And there's a lot of back and forth there, right? But then once it's once it's coming out of Meshi or Tripo, you're getting the STL file and it prints perfect, prints really well, you know, that does a really great job of designing some things. Most of the time. This is the yes, no, maybe, right? There's there's some times where like I have three figures, a photographer, an art director, and a driver. The driver has been an ongoing effort because of his weird position, sitting in a, you know, with his knees up to his chest and you know, the steering wheel in the middle of his hands. And that it's so compact that's really problematic. The art director standing there with a pad of paper and you know, having his hair and hand in the air and wearing a certain outfit, that's that was super easy. I think it was the third or fourth attempt at getting the image, and it was basically the first run through Meshi to get the STL, right? That one was super easy. There's been several weeks for the driver. I'm still working on that guy, but you know, and I'm learning a lot along the way, right? It is it is all about you know kind of what you prompt, how you think about the process, that sort of thing. That just takes some practice to to get familiar with the tools. Does that help, Dave?

Kentucky Dave 34:23

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

Jake McKee 34:48

So if I knew Blender, it would be a different answer. But I uh and you know, learning Blender is a a baton death march towards you know, losing all of your time. But I'm yeah, if I ever had the matrix function to just be able to jack knowledge into the back of my head, that would probably be the first thing I'd start with is Blender, but maybe that and karate, I don't know. There you go. The uh jujitsu or something. But if I knew Blender, then yeah, I'd probably just knock it out as fast as I could and then take it into Blender and get it exactly right. Because I don't, and because I'm also trying to experiment and learn the AI workflow, I was I was trying to do everything within the AI workflow without having to clean up anything, even even using Photoshop, right? There was one place where the the photographer had this bag, kind of a like a photo bag that was slung over one shoulder. But the way that the the meshy AI tool was interpreting the photo and turning it into the STL was putting a strap on both sides. And it was this weird artifact of how the image pose was was done. And so I just went in Photoshop and you know, took a really rough white brush on his white shirt with the black strap and and painted it out and ran it back through, and it was perfectly fine after that. It didn't have to be, you know, photorealistic quality to fix it.

Kentucky Dave 36:06

Gotcha.

Mike 36:07

Interesting. So you know, you mentioned Blender. Blender's not really a traditional parametric CAD program. It's it's more for like organic design.

Jake McKee 36:17

Correct, yeah. Yeah. So if you think about the mechanical, the you know, the straight lines and the sharp angles, yeah. That's that's fusion, you know, that's the CAD software. The blender is sort of like ZBrush and some others that allow you to do that more traditional sculpting, right? Uh, you know, if you you can think about it as machining versus sculpting clay, so to speak. But and Blender is an incredibly robust, powerful, powerful tool, but it is it's a bit of a nightmare to learn. So, you know, I'm I'm getting there slowly but surely with some small things here and there. But you know, the nice thing is if I did know Blender, and this is part of what I'm working on learning right now, is I could take the figure, for instance, that the driver figure I have, his knees aren't in the right place, but his his legs are modeled perfectly fine based on the STL I have. I could take that into Blender and just basically remap where his leg bends and it it would automatically, and I say automatically with a bunch of work, um, would be able to move it, you know, kind of repose him in the way that that animators are using digital imagery and you know, kind of reposing them inside the software.

Mike 37:21

It's it it's to me, it's interesting, and maybe it's even frustrating when the either these artifacts or the guy's got seven fingers or you know, all these things you see, you know, kind of with low-end AI image development or creation, just the you know, people knocking around on it, and you get some of these crazy looking, crazy looking things that's just not quite right. Have you had much of that? Or have these things been pretty manageable for you? Or is it I guess probably maybe it's an iterative thing. It's maybe the first pass is really eh, and then it just goes gets better from there once you chip away at it.

Jake McKee 37:57

Yeah, it you know, it's it definitely is a garbage in, garbage out situation, right? You know, like I said, when that when that driver figure who's sitting looking over his shoulder, are you know, both hands on the steering wheel, knees in driving position, you know, that's a lot for that AI right now, anyway. Maybe not later, but probably to some extent forever. That's a lot to interpret, right? That's a lot to sort of extrapolate where I should, you know, if I've only got one photo, what's it gonna look like on the other side of that photo if all these posing things are in the way that they are? The the guy standing up with both of his arms kind of out to his side, that was that was great. That was almost no work for me, right? Because it was such a such a straightforward picture. When I did that little sci-fi, you know, mounted tree-mounted thing that I'm working on. That was fairly straightforward as well, because it was, you know, the the picture I created was was pretty pretty linear. Yeah, and you know, one of these days you'll you'll hopefully see it. But you know, it was it wasn't complex as far as you know, the organic shapes. It was much more inorganic in its shape, right? So, and maybe that's the easiest way to think about it is the more organic, lots of curves, lots of bends, lots of organic shapes that are not straight lines, that gets a lot harder for the for the machines to interpret. But if it's a lot of straight lines, it's it's a lot easier for the machine to interpret. So, you know, again, garbage in, garbage out.

Mike 39:27

Well, certainly is going to open up a lot of possibilities for the dioramas to get exactly what they want, which is you know, it's essentially that's exactly what you're you're doing with this. You've got these three unique figures. In the past, you would have gotten as close as you could with commercial figures and hacked them up and puttied them and all that mess. And and that's fun for a lot of people too. I've never liked reposing figures, so this this has a lot of interest for me. What can you say about that as far as the uh the creative possibility of getting exactly what you want and the storytelling aspect of it and how that all kind of comes together with being able to do custom figures on the fly like this?

Jake McKee 40:07

Yeah, and I think I think that's the the most intriguing, exciting, fascinating thing for me is exactly what you're talking about, that it opens up to creative ideas pretty significantly. I'm I have long said that what impresses me about every one of us in the hobby, no matter who it is that's working on whatever project, we have a lot of skill sets in our brains at any one time, right? Not only do you have to be really good at building, you also have to be really good at color theory and painting, and you also have to be really good at ideation, and you really have to be good at groundwork and all the things, right? These are, you know, if you're a painter, you're kind of painting on canvas with the same types of oils over and over again. Nothing, no knock on that at all whatsoever. But it doesn't have 14 other mediums that are part of this process in order to get to the finished product, right? And and there's a natural inclination for some people to really enjoy some stuff more than other stuff, right? We hear this all the time that, you know, I really like building, I just hate painting, or I really like getting it to the base coat, but I hate weathering, right? Or I like doing all of it and really pulling it together with a great story, you know, and that's that's my fascination is storytelling or whatever. And I think that for me, the the figure posing, kind of like you were saying, I uh I know I theoretically could do it. I just have never really had a lot of fascination in it or, you know, drive to go out there and start hacking up figures and just not where I want to put my time and energy, you know. And especially as I've been trying to really push myself on storytelling and sort of overall diorama approach, not just the the vehicle or the figure on it, but the whole, you know, as the chefs say, everything on the plate, and you know, kind of considering that whole everything on the plate mindset, I really have these ideas that that in the past I wasn't able to, either from skill or access or time, to go in and create all these things net new, right? And, you know, there's a there's an argument to be made, sort of, I guess, that, you know, well, some point you're just gonna plug this in, it's gonna come out painted and you're done. Well, cool, but you know, it's gonna be a long time before there's no work at all involved in that. Uh, you know, lots of people still like to do, you know, digital sculpting just for the digital part of it, not for the actual printing of it. Lots of people like to do, you know, digital artwork that never gets printed and hung on a wall in a gallery, right? That's just their their joy in the process. And so, you know, I've really been having fun focusing on, you know, this diorama idea I'm working on. If I can pull it off, it's gonna be really cool and unique. But in a million years, I wouldn't have ever even thought to try this idea if I couldn't have otherwise come up with the these very custom figures. And there are none of these three figures don't exist out there in the world.

Kentucky Dave 42:51

That makes me ask a question. You you talk about creating these figures from the AI prompts. Have you tried taking a historical photograph and creating the figure using AI to create the figure in the photograph?

Jake McKee 43:12

Ah, so here's where you know I mentioned a second ago the how much you care uh really has an impact. So this this diorama I'm working on right now has three civilian figures. And if they have buttons in the wrong order or you know, the vest is cut in a different, in a very specific way that is not what I initially had in mind, then I kind of don't care. It's close enough to be perfectly fine, and it's not something I'm getting wound up with. This sci fi thing is imaginative sci fi. And so if I think it looks cool, good enough, right? Right. To your point, though, if I said, you know, I want to recreate a motorcycle rider from 1914, World War II, British in this pose and these. These uniform garments and this amount of equipment and they have to be exactly accurate to this. I mean, now you're get you're pushing, right? In a year, maybe, right? That may be a whole lot more possible because I do think that the speed at which these things are improving is has become dramatic at this point. It's not just impressive, it's just mind-blowing how fast the the improvements are, right? So maybe in another year or two years, then yeah, we could take a single historical photo of a uniform, plug it in, set our pose dynamically, and spit the STL out, and we go from there. But right now, you know, if you're gonna start playing, I'd play with something that didn't have to be absolutely historically accurate.

Mike 44:40

Well, what's next, man? What are you gonna I guess you gotta finish finish the driver? The World Sure Oyster. Well, let me back up. Let me back up first. That because that that makes me wonder if if if you've if you've tried something. The the Jeep driver's area could be brought in as a model. And I wonder how that might get into actually letting the AI pose the figure.

Jake McKee 45:07

I'd say the more complexity you add, the less likely you're gonna get the result that you want. So in theory, that makes sense. The easiest way in theory to do this is exactly what you're talking about. And in fact, I was even thinking the other day that you know the Ming Jeep kit that I have that I'm working off of, the the ejector pin holes on the back of the seats are insanely deep. And I was irritated by it. So I was I was curious if I could, you know, in in in sort of the same time, not exactly the same amount of time, certainly not a one-to-one, but close enough. Could I model, you know, could I go into fusion, model the seats, print them out, and have them close enough to be even better than the kit part and not have to do that stupid ejector whole cleanup? Because y'all mine, they are deep. I know not everybody has the same ones, but these two seats are just ridiculous. And no, I couldn't do it in the same amount of time, but I did it. So those seats exist now. I've 3D printed them, they look great, they're even more detailed than the kit parts, which is awesome. So I was thinking, you know, I wonder if I could try and do all this together to your point. You know, get a get a you know, get that seat somehow baked in, but you know, well, does that need to have the Jeep body itself in there? Does it need to have the seat? How do I get the seat from fusion into this other workflow, right? That you know, that that then matches it to the driver's seat. And you know, you're just adding a ton of complexity at that point. I think the the better option really, and one of the options I've been exploring is to actually find somebody who knows Blender. You know, I've got a guy that I found on Upwork years ago that does illustrator work for me. So if I need, you know, here's an image, turn this into a vector file so I can put it in a, you know, the logo in a CAD design or or a presentation for work or something. You know, in like 20 minutes, he'll knock that task out that I could learn how to do it. It'd take me a couple hours to learn how to do it in Illustrator. And I don't really like Illustrator, so I don't want to learn it. It's not interesting to me. And for five bucks and you know, 20 minutes, I'm perfectly fine to spend that money, right? I'm trying to do the same thing with Blender so that I can basically get these figures close enough and then say, hey, can you go and tweak his arm? You know, move it 10 degrees to the right and move it up, and you know, I'll send you the STL, make it match, right? And you know, if you know Blender, those are sort of straightforward things. They're not really that difficult. But if you don't know Blender, then it takes forever to get to the point where you can do that correctly and and effectively. So, you know, that's that's part of what I've been playing with is what can I do to help the workflow overall? Because again, we're not in the one, the the one-step process yet. You know, it does take a bunch of steps to get to and some work to get to that point. But, you know, I like this process better than trying to learn Blender so I can take the time to carve all the you know, to sculpt all these things myself. Because if I was sculpting it in Blender from scratch, it certainly wouldn't take the amount of time that the AI kicking out something that's almost there that I can then just tweak a little bit takes, right?

Kentucky Dave 48:11

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

Jake McKee 48:22

Meshi and and Tripo.

Kentucky Dave 48:23

Tripo. How many a AIs have you played with this stuff in? And is there reasons you're using particular AIs? Because there are a ton of them out there.

Jake McKee 48:38

There are, and they each sort of are better or worse at different things, right? So I started this journey with these three figures in Chat GPT developing the images in the in the this is what I'm talking about, things are moving so fast. In the week or so that I started messing with these figures and felt like I had a decent result from Chat GPT with the photorealistics first step. Jim and I updated their image uh creator capability. And in some ways, with some figures, it was vastly better at image generation. And of course, ever all of their image generation is 30 times as fast as what ChatGPT was taken to do, which is also helpful when you're doing a bunch of bunch of versions of it. So each one kind of has its own different flavor. Like I said, Meshi takes almost no time to generate these models, whereas Tripo takes sometimes 15 minutes to generate the model. But they come out of Tripo much, much better most of the time. Not always, but you know, most of the time I've I've seen them come out in a much better, much more accurate representation of that photorealistic image. But I've also gone in and had times where two very similar posed figures come out of one AI much better than they come out of the other AI, right? And so it's right now, because there isn't one sort of perfect solution or you know, industry leading solution, so to speak. I've just been playing. You know, this is part of the part of the process. It's sort of like when, you know, Meg or AK comes out with some new new product and you try it, you're like, it's okay. I like the idea, but you know, this didn't really work that great. And then you try another company and it really works well. And you're like, oh, this is fantastic. You know, it's kind of the VMS versus AK thing that, you know, a lot of people say I love VMS, and I can't ever make it work worth a damn, but but they certainly can. So it's it's kind of what you're comfortable with, what you can make work, and what fits your workflow more than more than anything.

Kentucky Dave 50:37

Now, a related question, are you using the free versions, the publicly available versions, or are you actually paying for the professional, the one, the the one where you actually pay the subscription?

Picking Tools And Paying For Tokens

Jake McKee 50:54

Yes. So I'm not in in all the stuff that is part of my daily workflow, I'm probably paying something for it. Part of that's because, you know, through work, I've been playing, trying to, you know, I've been building some vibe coded apps to help me offload some of my work skills. And so, you know, I'm already paying for Lovable, right? The vibe coding platform that that helps build websites and stuff. And so, you know, since I already have that, I have used that to build out that that organizational tool that I was talking about. I already pay for Chat GPT and and Claude as part of the work that I do for a living. Um, and so you know, those tools are accessible to me. I believe Google's tool is free. I don't think I'm I don't think I'm paying anything for Gemini at the moment. So, you know, there then this is part of where we're going, right? Is some of these things are going to get better and and you know more free based on ad revenue or you know, getting you to go use Gemini so you can also buy these other suites of tools. But right now, yeah, and and I'm I'm paying for I'm paying for the subscriptions for a lot of for those tools. And this weekend I was working on three different vibe-coded apps, one the the hobby one and my two work ones that I'm working on. And I I hit my Claude usage limit for the day for the first time. I've I've reached the number of images you can have in one chat, which is 100, by the way, in Claude. Didn't know that was a limit, but there you go. But but for stuff like Meshi and Triple, you basically are buying tokens just like you would at an arcade. And you put a token in the slot or a series of tokens to play the game just like you'd play, you know, Smash TV or pole position or something. My two favorite games, by the way. And and you play the game, and then when it's done, you put it more quarters in to get the next gameplay, right? And so those those are kind of how you how you're doing that. It's you're you're basically buying time on the server, effectively.

Mike 52:52

Right. Well, I I had a question, but you've kind of answered it is how you got how do you got to where you are with with the AI usage as a as an interest and just as a and it sounds like it's it's been initially driven by your professional life, and and now it's crept into your hobby life. That's uh a lot of some things lend themselves to that, some don't. And uh, you know, I have a lot of overlap with my work and my hobby life, but it's all technical, it's all it's all the hard skills and and uh making stuff and and taking stuff apart and putting it back together. It's kind of like what I do at my workbench when I'm modeling. So I I can understand that, but AI is kind of new and kind of neat. And it's I I assume you've you you you've figured out how to apply this in your in your business and it's just kind of bleed bled over.

Jake McKee 53:46

Yeah, and and I'm generally fascinated by things and generally do work that I love. And so the line between work and home is is often pretty fuzzy.

Kentucky Dave 54:00

Yeah.

AI As A Hobby Workflow Multiplier

Jake McKee 54:01

You know, I take a lot of what I learn in the hobby or, you know, whether it's my photography work or whether it's my my scale modeling or other things, you know, there's always something I can learn or apply in the work. And the work also comes into what I'm doing in the hobby. Not always directly, you know, the Venn diagram isn't two circles overlapping, it's still a Venn diagram. But, you know, in the in the case of AI, one of the things that I find fascinating about AI generally as a as a concept is that whatever we you think about it, it's here to stay. So we all need to be practicing and learning and figuring out where does it fit. It's like any other tool, where does it fit? But this tool is actually a pretty remarkable change of how we need to be thinking about the world around us because, you know, I I've built three extremely robust tools, two for work and this this hobby tool for myself, that would have taken thousands and thousands of dollars and developer time, you know, weeks of developer time to get to this basic fundamental place where I'm at. And it's it's because of the AI, and it's because I'm, as I've been saying often, I'm dreaming bigger, right? We have to sort of rethink our our dreams and our and our challenges to ourselves because part of what happened when when I started building that that organizer, all I really wanted to do was find some sort of viewer app to be able to look at a bunch of messy folders and turn it into something without touching the folders. I didn't want to start moving files around on my computer or anything like that. I just wanted to have a view of that sat on top of that infrastructure and and make it much easier to use. Well, as soon as I got that in place, I started saying, well, this is pretty cool. And then as so many of the things in my life, my my hobby life go, I started talking to Matt McDougal over lunch, and he started saying, Well, how about this? And what about that? This and before you know it, I was chasing a much bigger dream of all kinds of stuff I could I could add to the tool. And one of the things I added, for instance, into my hobby vibecode app is a brick, cobblestone, and stone generator, pattern generator. Mike, I know you know with with laser cutting, you need like an SVG file that tells the laser where to go and what to cut. So when I when I'm doing a diorama and I want a piece of foam that has a really intricate stone pattern, I can do all that hand carving, but I've been playing a lot with trying to get the laser to cut that pattern in into the foam directly, whether it's brick or cobblestone or you know, a rough stone wall or whatever. But I've been making those patterns by hand with Illustrator, and I hate Illustrator. So uh as we've discussed just a second ago, it's not my favorite tool. I don't want to be in there if I don't have to be. And I thought, you know what? I gotta be able to generate this. And so I started talking to Claude and saying, hey, I want here's the tool I want to build, here's the output I want it to be, on and on and on. And the more that I saw an idea work, I started thinking, okay, but what else can I generate? Like what else can I take off my plate that is a repeatable standardized process, right? So on the brick wall, I go in and I pull foam out to remove bricks sometimes, right? To make it look like the wall's beat up. Well, I can just tell Claude, add a setting to toggle on missing bricks. Well, yeah, but I don't want it to always be in the same place. Well, you add a randomization function, and now it's a randomized amount of bricks. You don't like where those are, hit the button and it regenerates those random brick patterns. You know, and so on and on and on. There's just, there's, I don't know how many features I have added to this thing now. But you know, as you start kind of as your mind starts to open up to, you know, this one thing is what got me started. But now that I see this one thing working and you start thinking in that what AI can do for you sort of mindset, then all of a sudden there's 50 ideas that are rushing to you when you're just driving down the street, and you're like, oh man, when I get home, I gotta tell you know, the lovable app to go add this feature to the to the thing I'm working on because that's pretty cool. Or you're sitting at your bench going, man, I got a I got a problem here. I always have this problem. Huh, you know, I could probably automate this. I probably could build a tool to catalog that or make that, you know, make save those notes, or you know, whatever it might be that you're you're struggling with. So, you know, it really is fascinating to me how the human brain starts to, you know, you it's the seeding, and then once you've gotten something seeded, it starts to really grow and and expand and sort of like bamboo sometimes, right? That you know, one little stock of bamboo turns into your entire backyard if you're not careful.

Kentucky Dave 58:38

Put aside for the moment all the time you spent generating the app and the do working in the AI to create this cobblestone pattern generation tool. If you use the tool and the laser cutter to generate a cobblestone streak compared to sitting down with a piece of foam and the toothpick and straight edge or whatever, you know, your normal tools to do it by hand. What's the time comparison for okay, I tell my laser printer to laser cutter to generate this cobblestone street, as opposed to I sit down at my bench with my hobby tools and I make the cobblestone street by hand.

Jake McKee 59:40

Yeah, and I think it's you kind of once you've passed the learning curve, you mean? And you've kind of got the knowledge.

Kentucky Dave 59:53

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

Jake McKee 59:57

Well, so I think there I'll give you two answers for that. One's the the the straightforward answer, which is you know, honestly, I think once you once you get that, you know, once the pattern generator tool exists, right? So if you came in tomorrow and started using it once I've gotten it dialed in, and you spit out that SVG to then take into your laser cutter software, you throw a piece of foam on there, and 10 minutes later you've got you know a carved piece of foam, you're still gonna go back and texture it. You're still gonna go back and do all that work.

Kentucky Dave 1:00:26

Right.

Jake McKee 1:00:26

You know, in theory, I could also just output an STL and print it and then boom, it's done. I don't have to do any foam work, right? The texture would already be built in, the, you know, all that. But it's really a matter of preference in some ways, right? You know, there are there are people that that buy figures, there are people that sculpt figures. There's people that, you know, buy pre-mixed washes, there's people that mix their own because it's all sort of what you where you like spending your time. And the reality is we only have so much time. And for me, you know, there's there's stuff that I'm not beholden to any sort of philosophy that says if I'm not doing this particular thing by hand, then I'm doing it wrong. Right. Uh yeah, we when I looked at uh oh god, I just forgot his name. The I think it's the VG dioramis guy that's doing such amazing uh like building uh kits, you know, that he's doing these really amazing 3D printed designs. And I think it's VG. I'll have to I'll we'll I'll send you a link to make sure uh you put it in the show notes, but I think it's VG Dioramas, guy from Spain, nicest guy in the world. He's doing absolutely dead crazy, insane great work, right? It is wonderful, but it's all the stuff that I find the most interesting, right? I I can buy one of his three printed factory dioramas and throw a vehicle in it and paint it, and it's gonna look great. For me, the as you know, uh Jeff Feller at SMC and I were talking about this, and he was saying, yeah, but I really like making walls. Yeah, walls are fun, and same way. For me, I like the the process of working with foam. What bothers me about the process of working with foam is trying to make sure I'm always measuring exactly right. Like it's the carving, it's the texturing, it's the painting that I really enjoy. It's not the drawing the straight lines at the right dimensions to make sure that it doesn't look wonky when I'm done. Right. That part's not interesting to me. So I'm taking the parts that I don't enjoy and sort of offloading them to give myself more time to do the parts I really do enjoy. Right.

Kentucky Dave 1:02:28

Makes perfect sense.

Mike 1:02:30

And you're you're I said it in the 12-minute model sphere that you're you're probably the most tech forward modeler I know of that I've had any kind of substantive interaction with. And you know, we've had John before, you've been doing and we've talked laser cutting offline, and I got something I want to talk to you about that maybe via email later in the week. But anyway, you're you're doing all these cool things, man, and it it makes me want to do some cool stuff too. But a lot a lot of things I don't know with the figures though, uh that one really interests me because like I said, I don't I don't like posing figures. I just don't think mine ever come out very good. But there are you know, I like painting figures sometimes, but be it figures or or whatever, there's there's gotta be a balance, I guess, between what what you like and what you don't like, and you just articulated that pretty well a few minutes ago. Where do you see you applying this kind of stuff going forward? I mean, is there anything you haven't done yet that you you're you're wanting to do, either with the with the figures or or a CAD design or or anything really through the AI specifically?

Jake McKee 1:03:46

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

Kentucky Dave 1:03:52

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

Jake McKee 1:04:02

Yeah, no kidding. Well, you know, I I'm I think that that I'm kind of making a joke about that, but but that really is part of there's something joyful about getting a project to completion, right? And the reality is with, you know, three kids, a full-time job, you know, other hobbies, you know, as much as I absolutely adore scale modeling, there's only so much time in a day that's left over, right? Right. Um and so finding ways that I can really have a great time doing, doing stuff is is the most important thing for me. And so trying to figure out where are the where are the new techniques, where the interesting things, how do I start to create my own palette of options that I really enjoy instead of you know the palette of options that we had accessible to us, right? I I've I've heard some conversation, I've read some conversation online about like the you know the the contrast painting method or slap chop or you know, the the new AK quick gen paints that you know in in theory you paint a white base coat and then you dump a bunch of paint on it, and the paint all runs where the darker pigment goes into the recesses and the lighter, you know, the the medium kind of is what colors the the highlights, right? And there's plenty of war gamer people out there or you know, people painting the little mini mini figures that most of that kind of work would be perfectly fine with them and they're happy. Cool, all right. But you look at what Calvin Tan's doing with it, and he's combining the normal paints with the quick gen paints and a whole bunch of other techniques and making incredible works much more enjoyably and probably much more quickly, too, for that matter. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's I I don't I don't think that that's a problem. And I don't think that going into AI to help you develop your figures instead of sculpting is a bad thing any more than me saying, Well, you know, I'm gonna go out and buy this existing Dynamo models figure. It's a great build, it's it looks wonderful and it fits exactly what I had in mind, and so I'm just gonna buy that. I don't have to sculpt my own, right?

Kentucky Dave 1:06:01

Yeah.

Jake McKee 1:06:02

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

Kentucky Dave 1:06:09

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

Jake McKee 1:06:16

Yeah, and and we're chuckling about that, right? Yeah, I think that's exactly I think that's the same thing here is you know, it it's one thing to there are things that I that I print out on, especially on my filament printer, where you know, I want a little fidget toy, you know, for whatever reason. Something to play with when I'm sitting here on Zoom calls. And so I go on the bamboo lab site and I find something that looks cool and I print it out and I'm done and I've got it, and that's amazing. And I had so much fun now, and it I'm holding it in my hands. And so, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. I think the question is what's your particular palette of tools, digital, physical, or otherwise. But for me, I think, you know, back Mike to your question about, you know, kind of where do you, where do I go from here? I don't know. Part of that's you know, retraining my brain right now to be able to think in advance of, you know, not be kind of as surprised at ideas, but start thinking about, you know, I've got enough understanding of how this AI tool works, whether it's figure sculpting or website creation or, you know, ideation or whatever it might be. There's been some times where I've gone into ChatGPT and I've said, I've got this rough idea. I don't know where it's going, but I think there's something here. Point me in the right direction. And it gives me three ideas. And I'm like, man, all those are great. But that now gives me a fourth idea that I hadn't thought of before that I probably wouldn't have bridged into if not for that help, right? And I think so some of that it all goes back for me. It goes back to being able to realize more interesting, more in-depth, more challenging builds and concepts and ideas thanks to being able to offload some of the hard work that you know may or may not be all that interesting to me, right?

How Fast This Tech Improves

Kentucky Dave 1:07:56

Yeah. Okay, you mentioned a little bit in our discussion about how while you were working on things, the software's got better. What is the Delta looking like into the future? I mean, do you think given what you've experienced so far, how rapidly are these different AI tools getting better at what you're asking them to do?

Jake McKee 1:08:30

Yeah, there's there's two parts to the answer to that, as so often is the case with me. Um there's there's a tool getting better, and there's a us getting better. And they're both they're both rapidly growing, right? As I said, if you had talked in May, but not even May, if you had talked to me in November, I think was the last the the first time I tried to output the figures. I tried it with both the the text prompt, right, where you go in and you say, I want a figure in into a tool like Meshi or Tripo. You can type in, I want a you know, a World War II soldier, and you don't have to give it any photo. What it gives you is just randomly whatever it decides is a great thing to give you, right?

Kentucky Dave 1:09:14

Right.

Jake McKee 1:09:15

That ability is an inherently from a technical standpoint, feels like it's getting better hour by hour, right? Not even day by day or week by week, but it feels like hour by hour it's getting better. And that will continue on. And especially as the people who are developing these tools get a better understanding of how they're working and you know they continue to add their own knowledge on top of their own knowledge, right? That the tool themselves is going to get better. But the other part of this is, you know, I spend a lot of my time talking about conversation in a business context, right? That's so many product teams, for instance, have a hard time really making great products because they're getting this, this, the insights handed to them, right? And so, you know, part of the reason why that's the case is because they've lost some of the conversational skills that that go into talking to customers in an effective way. Maybe they talk to them, a lot of them don't talk to them directly anymore. They they rely on the sales team or the customer service team. And we're kind of having to retrain our brains on that conversational soft skill. And reality is that is what we are doing with AI. The same way that I have to learn how to converse with AI, I'm having to learn how to converse with my wife, is different than how I converse with my colleagues, different than my clients, different than the person that delivers my groceries, right? They're different types of conversations, but learning that process is also getting better for all of us. The more that you use it, the more you go, oh, you know, if I ask it in a certain way, or if I structure the prompt in this particular way, it's gonna yield a better result for me, right? Or I'll get to a better result without so much churn, you know, doing iteration after iteration. I know how it's gonna work, I know what the reaction is gonna be, much the same way that if I say something particular in a particular fashion at a particular time, I know my wife's not gonna be happy with me in the way that I said it or the timing I used, right? Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. It it is often predictable, unfortunately, often after I've said it, but still it's predictable, right? And I think that's part of what we're all learning is how to have that interaction, you know, that relationship, so to speak, with the with the AI. And we're getting better at that while the AI is getting better as well at understanding us and performing what we're asking of it. So, you know, the reality is that if you start thinking about AI not as this technical tool that can output things in a certain way, but thinking about it as a creative and critical partner that is getting better every day at understanding us, that moves from the intern role that basically is only guided by what we tell them to do, and into a senior manager role that we give it some basic structure and it can figure out based on its experience, based on its experience with us, how to fill in the blanks much more easily, then you know it'll get to a point where I could say, I need a driver figure and it needs to be in this pose and these clothes, and boom, it comes out exactly right. You know, it it's it's not far-fetched to think that that's possible because we are so close to that being almost possible now.

Kentucky Dave 1:12:11

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

Jake McKee 1:12:17

I think it I think it goes probably sooner than whatever we might guess. Gotcha. Honestly. That's kind of the answer I've been giving on anything AI is, you know, AI timeline is sooner than we're probably assuming. I think that you know, the in May, uh this was May of last year, uh, this whole figure thing was was a non-issue. We just wasn't a even a glimmer in the eye of hope that we could pull this off. Uh today it's it's pretty good, right? It's it's usable, completely usable. Uh I think, you know, when we have this conversation a year from now, I think that the way that this stuff works is going to be dramatically different. And I think that you know, the the conversational interface will change, you know, the same way that you know, we're we're basically teaching AI and training AI to on be human behavior patterns. And so if you if you want to know the answer to where AI is going, it it is as much about understanding human dynamics and human interaction skills and human relationships as it is the technology piece. So the same way that you know you teach your kids to push in the chair at the table when they get up and take their dishes and put it in the sink rinsed off, you know, that's a that doesn't start there. You know, and maybe you can get them to push in the chair the first time, but they forget the plate. And then after six months, you get them to, you know, finally start getting it to the sink, but it's not rinsed off. And you just have to keep iterate iteratively pushing that further and further with the hope that they have the ability to teach their own kids at some point those same skills, right? Because they know them so well. And so uh if we take that parallel into AI, I think it's I think it's the same thing. I think we're gonna get to a point where I don't have to tell it as much. It just understands the basic goal. It's got those skills to make those changes and make those actions happen. And you know, that's we're we're we're in that, we're moving in that direction at the moment. It's you know, that's that's where we're going. So the question I always come back to is what's your big dreams? You know, so for me, the big dream is I can describe the things that I normally would tell a shopkeeper, hey, uh do you have any figures that are in this basic pose? And they go, I got something like this. And instead of it being almost close or close enough that I have to modify my my the idea in my head a little bit, the AI says, Yeah, I got that for you. Here you go. And I go, excellent. I'm off to implement my concept.

Mike 1:14:45

Well, other folks are gonna want to implement their concepts, so and they might overlap yours, Jake. To what degree is this being documented on your blog and where can folks find that?

Jake McKee 1:14:57

Yeah, good question. So my blog is at build.jkee.com. I'm sure you'll put a link in the show notes. But I am I'm working on an article that kind of uh uh summarizes all the rambling that I did tonight and some of the learnings that I've got. I will put that I hopefully we'll get that up this week. So maybe by the time that this this episode drops, it'll already be posted on my blog. And I think the other piece of this is just start playing, you know, go get, I think Meshi and Tripo have some like starter accounts, you know, that you can do a few things to play around with. But you know, the the best way to learn this stuff is not to listen to me, it's to go play with it and see, you know, start to learn what it can do. You know, even if you just have an understanding of it, so you can start thinking about what the possibilities might be, and and at some point the technology will catch up to your interest level or your your time you want to invest in this learning process. But if you really want to play, yeah, the best way to to learn is just to jump in.

Kentucky Dave 1:15:58

I've got to say it it's inspired by everything you've been talking about and it just popped into my head. I've got a cameo cutter, mask cutter is what I use it for. Have you tried using AI to create masks rather than you know using the software for the cutter to basically draw the files?

Jake McKee 1:16:29

Yes. Yes, in a couple of ways. So the the laser cutters work off of svg files, or I think some of them can use a PNG file, you know, the image the vector image files. Yeah. And basically you're creating line work that it the laser knows where to where to lay down the the cuts on the material, right? And I've used AI a couple of times to either create or clean up some like logo designs that I've that I've had, you know, on my F-14 pilot. I've got some like angel wings on the side of his helmet. Those angel wings, I went into AI and said, hey, I want some angel wings that go in a helmet, and you know, they should be kind of this style. And it outputted something that I said, yeah, that was kind of that was basically what I had in mind. Not exactly right, but close enough that I don't care to go any further.

Kentucky Dave 1:17:17

Right.

Jake McKee 1:17:18

I had it output an SVG file. I took that SVG file into my laser cutter software and and set up some to me a sheet tape to to cut on, and away it away we went. And and so that, yes, so that's the same thing as what the brick pattern generator is doing that I've got. If I want to make that a stencil, then it's the exact same process. It spits out an SVG file, I take it into the software, and it cuts away.

Kentucky Dave 1:17:45

You you have inspired me to start playing around with some of this stuff, because I've got to echo what Mike said. You you really are the most not just tech forward, but tech forward thinker about what all this tech can do in our hobby. And it's endlessly fascinating to me.

Jake McKee 1:18:18

Well, thanks, guys. I appreciate that. Those those kind words. I'm I I just like playing, you know. This is this is as much the hobby for me as as anything is you know, trying to figure out, you know, is there something that that I can do to make this faster, better, and more fun at the same time? Right. And, you know, I I like playing with the toys. I like playing with the laser cutter and the 3D printers and the CAD softwares and you know the AI tools to spit out stuff and in order to get to these really cool and interesting ideas that I almost certainly wouldn't have been able to pull off otherwise.

Mike 1:18:49

All right, Jake. Well, thanks once again for joining us once again. It's about your third trip here, I think, but it's always maybe fourth. I can't remember.

Kentucky Dave 1:18:57

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

Jake McKee 1:19:07

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

Kentucky Dave 1:19:22

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

Jake McKee 1:19:32

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

Kentucky Dave 1:19:38

We're working on it.

Jake McKee 1:19:39

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

Mike 1:19:45

All right, sir. We'll let you get back to your AI and your laser cutter. Thank you. And you're Pappy. Yeah, and you're Pappy, most importantly.

Jake McKee 1:19:52

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

Mike 1:19:58

Makes me wish we were side by side. Maybe I could have some too, but uh I'll have to get my own, I guess.

Jake McKee 1:20:03

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

Mike 1:20:09

I understand. I understand. That's right. Yeah. Well, keep innovating and keep uh doing cool projects with all your cool toys, man. It's really fun to watch.

Jake McKee 1:20:19

I appreciate it. Thanks for the invite, guys.

Mike 1:20:25

Man, did you follow along, Dave? Did you keep up?

Kentucky Dave 1:20:27

Yes, and I actually was DMing with we, as you said, we recorded this interview about a week ago. I have not stopped thinking about this since we talked with Jake. The possibilities and not only where things are now, but where you can imagine them being in just a year or two. But it just blows my mind. It it really does. And I gotta say, I'm I'm fascinated with what he's doing, and knowing him, he's gonna keep pushing the edge in the envelope, and I cannot wait to see what he does next.

Mike 1:21:11

He just took the words right out of my mouth, man. Yeah. And I told him during the interview that, you know, he he is absolutely of folks I've personally interacted with, he's absolutely the most tech forward-facing modeler that I know personally.

Kentucky Dave 1:21:26

I agree.

Mike 1:21:26

It's a blast to see all the things he's doing. We have a few offline conversations about things sometimes, uh laser cutting, things like that. But really, really cool. And I can't wait to see that diorama or that vignette or whatever he's gonna call it when it's done. It's a really interesting project. Since we recorded that, he's posted the blog portion of that on his website, and we'll put all that in the show notes. And really curious where this goes.

Kentucky Dave 1:21:49

Me too.

Mike 1:21:50

Pretty dang cool, man.

Kentucky Dave 1:21:52

Yep.

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Mike 1:22:55

Kentucky Dave, I know your bench time has not been what you hoped it would be, but I'm sure you're gonna improve on that. And I'm certain our listeners are gonna goad you on now that you've coped to the fact that uh it's been uh lackluster. Yeah. That said, you have gotten something done, I'm certain. So don't disappoint us, man. What have you got going on?

Kentucky Dave 1:23:14

Well, work on the F6F continues. Um about halfway through the process with the tube oils on the panel working on the panel lines. Yeah, I wish it was farther along, but unfortunately, it just, I mean, the way time has fallen. It's it's tough, but I'm still hoping to get everything done and still have it done in time for HeritageCon, but we'll see. In the meantime, I'm also working on the Platz T33, the project that was in suspense for eight years, but has been pulled back into the light.

Mike 1:23:54

It's like Ted Williams' head.

Kentucky Dave 1:23:55

Yeah, that's right. Um to me, it it really is nice to get to pull one off the shelf like that and to feel motivated to go ahead and build the project again or take the project on to completion. So I'm I'm happy to report I'm fired up about it. Well, good. So that's it for my bench, Mike. Uh, what what you well, I kind of know what's been going on in your bench. Uh to let the rest of the world know.

Mike 1:24:28

Uh, I've been knocking out that Musuru Cup Miata kit they sent me, man. Yeah. You finished it. I finished it. Um one for the year. Boom. Yeah, that's pretty sad. But yes, one for the year. I'll take that notch in my belt and get on with the next one. Because I we'll get to it, but you know, I got some potential for the rest of the year. Yes, you do. But back to this thing. I wanted to go into a vignette, which I actually might still finish.

Kentucky Dave 1:24:55

Yeah.

Mike 1:24:56

But there's no vignette, but it's done. It's I submitted the photos to uh the Hamilton Club yesterday, and I got a verification that they got them today. So that part, and I've revealed on the Musaru Cup Facebook page and on the dojo, and it's all that. So it was a lot of fun most of the time with some caveats. The oh man.

Kentucky Dave 1:25:21

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

Mike 1:25:32

It's an Aoshima curbside kit of uh a Mazda Miata. It's it's themed to some anime show that I've never seen and have no knowledge, prior knowledge or present knowledge of, because I didn't even go look after I started the kit because I really didn't care.

Kentucky Dave 1:25:47

Right.

Mike 1:25:47

I was gonna build it the way I wanted to build it. And you know me, since the thing, so we started this thing, I've always tried to do something unique. I I I turned the the Gundam into a bench top kind of bench warrior with the the uh the base was a uh self-healing mat, and there's an X Acto knife as the weapon, and there's he had a foot up on a Humbrel paint tin. There's a tube of Tester's tube cement all squeezed out all over the place and made use of the articulation of the figure. So that one that's the one we actually won that year.

Kentucky Dave 1:26:20

Yes.

Mike 1:26:21

That one was cool. And then you built the Mustang and almost finished it. Almost. Sorry, man.

Kentucky Dave 1:26:31

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

Mike 1:26:35

It did, it showed up in Hamilton. And then I built uh that little Ural truck. It's a Hot Wheels car.

Kentucky Dave 1:26:41

Yeah.

Mike 1:26:42

Didn't win that year. That's okay, but it it was popular. Everybody liked the idea, so I was pleased with that. That was win or no win. It got the uh it got the attention I I wanted to get because it was uh it was a fun idea and and it it came together pretty good. And uh I had fun doing it. It had its warts as well, but uh we got that one done.

Kentucky Dave 1:27:02

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

Mike 1:27:13

So you've had two that were like bullseye red dot in your memory, and you barely finished them.

Kentucky Dave 1:27:19

Yes.

Mike 1:27:20

And I keep getting this tangential stuff, and I'm getting mine done, Dave.

Kentucky Dave 1:27:23

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

Mike 1:27:26

So this year we had this Miata thing, and it we're supposed to do things that were kind of on in the vein of all the Fast and Furious movies, right? You know, all the cherry bomb mufflers and skinny wheels and stupid ground effects that don't work, and tail fins and all that. And I wasn't feeling that. So I'm like, well, what can I do with this? So I built it as a reality car with a really unorthodox sponsor.

Kentucky Dave 1:27:53

Yes.

Mike 1:27:53

The car was built using custom decals to kind of look like a I say vintage, not that long ago because. They've changed their logo recently. A vintage XLAX box. So black, white, and red graphics on a kind of a powder blue background. You remember those boxes, Dave? Oh, yeah. So we had some custom decals made from some artwork I did in Canva.

Kentucky Dave 1:28:15

Well, and this is part of the thing that I mean, instead of just building the Musaru build, you took it as an opportunity to try something. You and I had been talking about this custom decal manufacturer who offers a custom decal service. So you took the opportunity to say, okay, I'm not just going to build this Musaru. I'm going to utilize the service so we can A, know for ourselves, but also B, tell the listeners, hey, this is out there and we've experimented with it, and this is what we found. So tell people what you found.

Mike 1:29:00

Well, the decals, again, were custom printed by a company called Hobbyist Decal, and they're out of India. I think Mumbai is where they're located. And these were brought to my attention by listener Adam Coleman, who's also the US rep for uh Liang models. Right. But he he put me onto this decal company. He'd used them to replace old decals from I think something he was working on prior and had good success with them. So I like, okay, we're going to do this with the Moose Root Cup. We're going to, we're going to come up with a unique scheme. So I did it as a rally car sponsored by X-Lax. So X-Lax is the primary sponsor. And then all the plastic model mojo podcast sponsors are like the little decals like around the front wheel well, like on a NASCAR or other rally cars. Yeah. Kind of a pretty common thing, right? Yeah. I just thought that would be a neat way to do the car.

Kentucky Dave 1:29:55

And a custom license plate.

Mike 1:29:57

And a custom license plate. We'll get to that in a minute. So we use Canva to do a lot of the podcast graphics. And I'm like, okay, well, I did I did up the decals and sent them the artwork. And, you know, I it's been an experience. How was your interaction with them back and forth? Well, the back and forth, the customer service side of it was excellent. They're English speakers, and I think it's in Mumbai, so they're they're going to be pretty good English speakers coming out of Mumbai because it's like the what the financial capital of Asia, pretty much. That and uh Kowloon. So the back and forths were quick and easy, really because of the you know, the 12-hour time difference or whatever it is, 13, 11, 14, whatever it is. It's a long way. They'd they'd ask me something and I would reply, and it was there was only half a day's difference between the replies, so that went pretty quick. Not as fast as maybe if they were, you know, in the United States, but maybe.

Kentucky Dave 1:30:53

Right.

Mike 1:30:53

That all went pretty well. We did the artwork, we went back and forth, made a couple revisions, and then we we got the decals in the mail.

Kentucky Dave 1:31:04

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

Mike 1:31:10

About 14 days. That's amazing. So that's that's pretty good. Yeah, true. Well, and that's facilitated by the fact that these things are they're they're inkjet plotter printed.

Kentucky Dave 1:31:21

Okay.

Mike 1:31:22

So because that's the technology they're using, these decals were adequate for my application.

Kentucky Dave 1:31:29

Mm-hmm.

Mike 1:31:30

But these are not cartograph decals. Right. So d don't think you're gonna get one millimeter text height, legible stuff from this process, because you're not. Right. You're just not. What you are gonna get is pretty good graphics, well, excellent to some degree for the larger stuff. And you're gonna be all you're gonna be able to buy just one sheet of it and not have to print 50 or 100 of them. Right. That that you now have to figure out how to disposition, right? So you get one sheet, and this the again, the graphics are are are pretty good. I was pretty pleased with the with the printing. I I say adequate for for the application because where they would have probably come up or where they did come up short for really crisp, legible stuff, like the our sponsor logos, some of those were a little fuzzy. And then the the custom license plate was a little fuzzy. It's it's still recognizable for what it is, which is really for what I was doing, all I needed. Right. It's a custom Kentucky plate, Kentucky state license plate. And that's if you've ever seen a Kentucky plate, it's obvious that's what it is. So that's all it needed to be. Yep. But that said, a different process would be better for that, but you're getting into to more higher level custom decal printing at that point.

Kentucky Dave 1:32:49

Right.

Mike 1:32:50

The value here is it's that's it's it's a one-off. And that's all you can if that's all you want, it's all you have to buy.

Kentucky Dave 1:32:56

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

Mike 1:33:01

Uh I want to say I'm about 30 something in shipping and all, but let me give you a caveat. I think we might have got a deal because they were thinking this might be a lead on some future business.

Kentucky Dave 1:33:14

Okay.

Mike 1:33:15

So I can't say if you order a sheet from them that it's gonna be $30. That's that's I'm not saying that at all. That's that's what it costs me.

Kentucky Dave 1:33:21

Gotcha.

Mike 1:33:22

In in that ballpark. But if you're gonna do this as a one-off for your own project, I would not expect it to be that. It's certainly gonna be less than a hundred bucks. Sure. I think it's probably gonna be less than fifty. I'm gonna ask Adam Coleman to chime in and tell us uh kind of the price point, uh, generally what he's been paying. I know he's done one, maybe a couple of these projects with them. So we we can get you a better, a better estimate of what it what it might be. So it's gonna depend on the sheet size and probably whatever, but good enough for what I was doing. Uh, but there, you know, even with the print quality, there's some some other caveats that we can talk about. Again, it's an inkjet plotter. Probably the biggest thing that could be better, and I think I know how I would improve it. The whites could have been more opaque, but that's that's not a that's not a problem that's unique to their process.

Kentucky Dave 1:34:13

Right.

Mike 1:34:14

That's uh a lot of decals, even screen printed decals or however like other companies do it, that can be a problem as well. You could double print the white.

Kentucky Dave 1:34:24

Right.

Mike 1:34:24

You could say one layer is white, one's yellow, and just load white ink in both stations and you double it up. Or maybe there's a different way to do it. I don't know. I don't know their exact I know what plotter they're using. I can't reference off the top of my head, but I I did look into that. They've got some videos out there of their process, and it's a it's a nice commercial plotter, so they could thicken up their whites if if they if they wanted to. If somebody asked them to, they would probably do it. I don't think they would hedge it not wanting to do that. The other thing is the decal film. And I'm curious again at Adam, if Adam Coleman, what his experiences was, were this film is really, really elastic. And typically that's not a trait of the decal films I've used in the past.

Kentucky Dave 1:35:11

Mm-hmm.

Mike 1:35:12

So it's really stretchy and rubbery. It's also pretty unresponsive to the decal solutions I had on hand, which are the micro-scale stuff and the alleged nuclear AK stuff. Yeah, didn't didn't touch it. Made it wet. That's about it.

Kentucky Dave 1:35:30

Gotcha. But the decals laid down.

Mike 1:35:34

They did because the the they're so elastic that they'll they'll stretch over bumps and curves and stuff like that, but there was not a situation where they had to snuggle down over rivets or down in a panel line.

Kentucky Dave 1:35:45

Right.

Mike 1:35:46

So I don't know what they're gonna do in that situation. Still undetermined. So I I think based on my experience, if I needed that, I may go a different route. But I'd be curious what uh Adam might have to say if he's used them in that kind of application. Because I I don't know. There's a another thing kind of that gets back to this elastic property of the decal film, is the sheet is printed edge to edge on the clear film. You know, you like a I don't know, uh like a micro scale decal, and and I don't know some of the what's the what's the brand you're using for the the Hellcat?

Kentucky Dave 1:36:24

Furball arrow design.

Mike 1:36:25

Are furballs edge to edge or are they spot printed on the clear film?

Kentucky Dave 1:36:29

Oh, there's spot printed. I mean it's classic. The the the clear film is not continuous across the entire sheet.

Mike 1:36:39

Okay. So there's definitely some advantages to that.

Kentucky Dave 1:36:42

Right.

Mike 1:36:44

So this is edge-to-edge decal film, which I've dealt with before. Right. It's not the best situation, but it's a pretty common situation. So if you've built many kits at all, you've run across this and you you've dealt with it. But the issue is that it's unresponsive to the decal setting solution. So what this company does, at least on my sheet, my sheet they sent me is is they singulate the images with a blade that's on, must be on the plotter print head. So you've got a decal sheet that's got all these images printed on it on a continuous edge-to-edge clear film, and this plotter has a cutting blade on it, and just outside the color boundary for each image, they go around, they score down a certain depth, they went a little beyond the clear film into the paper a little bit to cut all these out, which is in theory a pretty good idea. Yeah. The problem is I don't it it's it's probably a combination of the elasticity of the decal film and the depth they're cutting, that you get this burr around all the decals.

Kentucky Dave 1:37:49

Yeah.

Mike 1:37:50

That you can't manage because the the film will not react to the decal solutions that I have.

Kentucky Dave 1:37:57

Right.

Mike 1:37:57

So on the on my moose root cup, the the the number on the door, the big number two. Yep, depending on which angle you look at, there's there's there's no getting that edge to go away with with uh decal setting solution. And you might could get it covered up with with uh gloss coat, but I don't know how much you're gonna need.

Kentucky Dave 1:38:18

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

Mike 1:38:24

It can, but you can also with a more typical decal film and and a heavy clear coat, you can actually sand that interface, and that's kind of a, you know, that's a tenuous situation in my opinion.

Kentucky Dave 1:38:40

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

Mike 1:38:48

I know it's been done and I've seen people do it, and I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm overthinking it, maybe they're not hitting it as hard as I think they're hitting it. But anyway, with this rubbery decal film, that's not gonna work.

Kentucky Dave 1:39:00

Yeah.

Mike 1:39:01

So I would probably use them again, but I would ask them to not singulate the decals. All the linear stuff, all the straight line graphics, I just cut it right to the color boundary.

Kentucky Dave 1:39:12

Gotcha.

Mike 1:39:13

J inside of the cut they had already made. I cut I made a new cut.

Kentucky Dave 1:39:17

Right.

Mike 1:39:17

So all that stuff looks pretty good. It's just the round shapes that I really didn't have much option for. And it was really bad. Like on the round sponsor decals, a couple of our sponsors use round logos. Right. I guess because of the the diameter and the the they're cutting around this tight radius that it kind of made things worse.

Kentucky Dave 1:39:38

Yeah.

Mike 1:39:38

Or the bird's the same size and the decals smaller.

Kentucky Dave 1:39:41

So it shows up, yeah.

Mike 1:39:43

Yeah, the but the ratio of bad to good is is not in your favor. So yeah, that bothered me a little bit. So I think I would probably use them again.

Kentucky Dave 1:39:52

Mm-hmm.

Mike 1:39:52

But I would just say, don't singulate the decals. Just I'll cut them myself.

Kentucky Dave 1:39:56

Yeah.

Mike 1:39:57

Because I I wouldn't, I would do it different. I I would use a really sharp scalpel blade and a and a straight edge, or you know, maybe you could even use the thinner line. I don't know. To cut the circles, maybe, or maybe you can't. I don't know. But I I'm I've I'm gonna send them a follow-up email about what I thought. Yeah. And uh be curious to see their response.

Kentucky Dave 1:40:18

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

Mike 1:40:28

Yeah, yeah. Or if there's another film they could use. Yeah. Part of the problem is the film they're using. Yeah. You know, but they build a whole business. They've got all kinds of, they got hundreds of decal sheets.

Kentucky Dave 1:40:38

Yeah.

Mike 1:40:38

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

Kentucky Dave 1:40:59

Yeah.

Mike 1:40:59

Didn't touch it. So I I don't know. Yeah. You are you are you you spray it on to me extra thin now? What are you doing?

Kentucky Dave 1:41:07

Yeah, it's a great question. I want to see you post all of this to the dojo too. But like I said, one of the great things was that you took advantage of the musaru to say, hey, go try something new and be able to tell the listeners, hey, I've tried this. This is what it is, this is what it does, this is the pros and the cons. And look into it if it sounds like it's something that might meet one of your needs.

Mike 1:41:39

Exactly. And that's I've kind of approached that's this moosaru thing with that in mind every time.

Kentucky Dave 1:41:45

Yeah.

Mike 1:41:46

Because a lot of the things I'm learning on these projects isn't nothing I'm gonna learn on armor projects.

Kentucky Dave 1:41:52

Right.

Mike 1:41:53

Gloss coats and I, you know, you may be custom decals, but not like this, not like race car graphics. Bubble packs. How to make a bubble pack? Bubble packs, yeah. So it's been fun. The the the bugaboo with the moose root cup build was that the the windshield frame had a knit line right in the middle of the top of the frame, and I'd broken it during the initial construction, and then when I was taking off the the mask for the weather stripping that I'd done with the bare metal foil, yeah, I cracked it again post-paint.

Kentucky Dave 1:42:27

Yeah.

Mike 1:42:28

So now it's a lot harder to fix.

Kentucky Dave 1:42:30

Yeah.

Mike 1:42:31

So oh well. It it kind of that's about my last givea damn. Yeah. You know, it still looks pretty good. It still still makes me smile when I look at it. So uh well, good. I hope everybody else enjoys it too. It was a fun little build, and then the decal thing was an interesting experiment. So that's the Musuru cup. That's not the only thing on my bench, man.

Kentucky Dave 1:42:56

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

Mike 1:43:01

I did, but I've got more stuff on it now. What is it? That 3D printed flak pens I've been working on. I've been working on the turret now. Because I've had the hull done for the most part for a long time. I've been working on the turret and I've been sourcing some replacement parts. I don't like the wheels that it's not the printed wheels that I've printed. I don't like the file. I don't like the STL because they're they're basically Hetzer wheels, but they don't have the rivets on the back side, which has been a was a an age-old problem before the modern Hetzer kits started coming out. That they're those are those are visible, particularly on the the first and last road wheel stations for that vehicle.

Kentucky Dave 1:43:42

Right.

Mike 1:43:43

Because the ground clearance is so high, you can see the backs of those wheels. Folks care, folks don't care, I care. So I've sourced some aftermarket resin late late Hetzer wheels. Because it's not gonna matter how good I print them, the detail's not there.

Kentucky Dave 1:43:57

Right.

Mike 1:43:57

So it's not a matter of how good my printer is. It's it's a matter of fact that the files, the model is inadequate. So I've ordered those, those came, I've test fitted them to the model, that's looking good. So I'm trying to get that thing to paint really, really quick, just so I can have something in paint. Because it's gonna get to paint, it can get to paint before the KV-85.

Kentucky Dave 1:44:18

Right.

Mike 1:44:18

But not by much. I'll jump to it. The KV-85's back on the bench. There's minor turret detailing work to do. I did a little bit of that before we started recording. There's some minor hull detailing work to do, and the biggest thing left to do is the those crazy turnbuckles they use to secure the tow cables to the tank.

Kentucky Dave 1:44:38

Mm-hmm.

Mike 1:44:38

Still looking for a solution there. I'm not happy with any of the ones that I'm not happy with the ones that were in the kit. And I'm not happy with the ones that are in any trumpeter KV kit, and I'm not happy with the ones in the Ryefield Models KV kit. Because they all they all do the same thing, which is the the hooks and the the bar in the middle of the turnbuckle to turn it are all in the same plane, flat. And there's no reason that it should be that way unless you deliberately placed all the turnbuckle in that position. So the the the hooks on the ends could be turned in any orientation along with the bar in the middle. So I'm trying to figure out to make a new one that's got all that stuff randomized so it looks better, looks more natural. So not a big deal. It's not a hard problem to fix. I'm just not sure how I want to do it yet.

Kentucky Dave 1:45:29

Gotcha.

Mike 1:45:30

So that's the k that's KV85. And then in addition, Mr. Evan McCallum, Panzermeister 36, has got me looking at this BT5 thing again, because he wants to build one.

Kentucky Dave 1:45:43

Right. So remind everybody the problem of the BT5?

Mike 1:45:50

Of the BT series. There's no BT5 kit. There's two Tamiya BT7s, and there's a bunch of Eastern Express BT7s. There's a horrible Zvezda Italary BT5 that's not even worth considering. There are three Hobby Boss BT2s, and then there's every dumb iteration of the BT2 one-offs, two or three different ones from Hobby Boss. That why would anybody anybody, somebody would want to model one, but it's not like mass market appeal kind of subjects, right?

Kentucky Dave 1:46:31

Right.

Mike 1:46:31

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

Kentucky Dave 1:46:42

Yeah.

Mike 1:46:43

So there's been a couple of companies, one was Rhino models. They're gone now, was a resin upper hull or a BT5 conversion. And then my friend Scott Demick out of New Jersey has a uh a business called Hellcat Models, and he's done several U.S. things, and he's done some things for the BT series, BT5. He's got a BT5 upper hull, a 3D print of the upper hull. And I've had mine for a couple years, and Evan just got one. He had it sent to me so I can take it up to HeritageCon and give it to him. Right. But we're gonna kind of go through a project together, and we need to talk at HeritageCon and see about how we're gonna do this. But uh looks like it's gonna be a thing. So when his came, I was like, well, I'm gonna go ahead and get that freaking support structure off mine, my part, and get it cleaned up. So I've done that. I've taken all the support structure off the upper hole plate piece that is in the Hellcat models kit, and started fine-tuning a little bit, doing kind of secondary cleanup. And we've I've ordered some BT2 kits. The BT2 medium kit is the one you need to convert to a BT5. And I've got one for me and I got one for Evan. So looks like we're covered, man, and we just got to get going with the project. Sounds sounds like it'll be interesting. So that's my bench. I got a lot going on, man.

Kentucky Dave 1:48:08

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

Mike 1:48:18

Maybe I think I can get one more done this year, maybe two. This is the first time in a long time I've had two that are ought to be close enough to be done by the end of the year.

Kentucky Dave 1:48:29

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

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Kentucky Dave 1:48:54

Uh, Mike, uh, do you do you do a bladder check? Make sure you got plenty of drink, cuz this might be a long segment.

Mike 1:49:03

What broke your wallet? Uh well, I've mentioned a few things. I've bought some kits, man. Okay. I think unfortunately I bought some kits. Go ahead. I mentioned the Hobby Boss BT2s, so I've got two of those, one for me and one for Evan. Got that one in. Right, I opened that one up and started messing with the BT5 hull on that one, see what all I got to do to it. In addition to that, I've got a Tamiya BT7.

Kentucky Dave 1:49:31

Mm-hmm.

Mike 1:49:32

And I made a boneheaded move there. I ordered the Model 37, which is the conical turret.

Kentucky Dave 1:49:38

Gotcha.

Mike 1:49:38

If I ordered the 35 version, I could have cabbaged the turret out of that one to use on my BT5 project. So I'm probably gonna have to pick up another one. I probably should have just bought the 35 to begin with, but uh I I just wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.

Kentucky Dave 1:49:53

It happened.

Mike 1:49:55

Uh I got a mini art T 3485 factory 112. I got the non-interior version.

Kentucky Dave 1:50:01

Gotcha.

Mike 1:50:02

Which still got a lot of parts, but not quite a full interior. Mm-hmm. I picked that one up. And I got some late Hetzer wheels from LZ models to use on my flakpanzer because I didn't like the like I said, I didn't like the uh 3D printed file that uh they provided to to make those with other than that I think I got some magazines, a couple of magazines to be extra thin because I was about out. Other than that, I think I talked about the paints I bought for the Moosuru last time maybe? I can't remember. But it probably wasn't a what broke your wallet so I brought I bought some AK Gen 2 paints to paint the blue on the Moosuru.

Kentucky Dave 1:50:41

You mean the real c real colors?

Mike 1:50:43

Sorry, yeah the real colors the lacquer paints so I I've spent a little bit but apparently you're gonna make me feel like a chump.

Kentucky Dave 1:50:54

Well I don't know about that but uh David went on a little spending spree. Okay well you know how I've whined about my model room and how I need to rearrange it, make things better endlessly to the point where you mock me over it. Well came into a little money and I've been buying uh first last time Skippy was over it made me realize that I needed a new chair in my modeling room. And so I spent a little money and I got you know your classic high backed artist chair for you know like a drafter or an artist sitting at a relatively high art table. Really nice. I got a mini vacuum that's both a vacuum and a blower. It's advertised for like work and detailing cars and such but it's perfect for the hobby room and vacuuming up and cleaning up stuff. I got you know I've got an optivizor. Well you gotta make a mess to have something to clean up yeah okay I liked it better when I finished models than you did. I've got an optivizor and I use it but it's a little cumbersome and all and you know to change lenses you have to to take off the whole front of the of the optivizor well somehow I got pushed an advertisement for these magnifying glasses that have multiple lenses that you can snap in and out and they look like kind of like a pair of glasses with the like cups on the back so that they snug up towards your eyes. And I got them and I've tried them on uh both with my glasses and in replacement of my glasses um they're actually pretty good I'm gonna play with them some more but man I I think they're gonna come in real handy doing detail work. You can get those uh stencils right side up exactly that's one of the motivations as a matter of fact I bought a set you know Molotol makes those silver markers or the chrome um I bought a set of they're not molotol but they're the same stuff same thing it's a set of three in varying shades of the of chrome and silver because I use the Molotov in fact I you most times I use the Molotov I don't actually use it as a marker I'll I'll bring the paint out of the marker and then use that with a very fine brush and that's what I plan to do with these as well.

Mike 1:53:59

Were they just different shades of silver?

Kentucky Dave 1:54:01

Use different shades of silver I got a new light box a new photographic light box my old one's kind of old and it's had model half-built models sitting on it and all sorts of stuff build stuff to photograph it man yeah thank you take the shot actually I ended up with two of those due to a shipping error so uh you're gonna get one too hey all right I'll photograph the mooster and send it to you there you go I also bought you know what a swing arm is you mount it well yeah no not you know you mount it to your table and then you can mount like a camera on it and use it to photograph your bench yeah I've got a highly articulated one on my bench yes well I've got one that I use for my video camera but or the or the my video chat camera not my not a camera camera but one just uh you know for a standard screw on it for a for a camera exactly well I bought this really nice high-end swing arm because I want to start shooting some video or at least experimenting with it and this thing looked really good so I wanted went ahead and bought it I haven't mounted it yet also due to a listener who I had some interactions with I ended up with the display vice and uh I really like that I mentioned that I dropped in like the space of a week two sets of tweezers and ruined both of them so to replace two tweezers I went out and got four tweezers I got two from a company called Steady S-T-E-D-I-A-N I picked up two two display tweezers and so I replaced the two I destroyed with four so hey good move I think so too and really nice tweezers not not very expensive but really qu h high quality you know you and I have talked about not not buying cheap when it comes to tweezers and these things really are good and they're not overly expensive.

Mike 1:56:30

No and we mentioned that last time I think that uh you know when we we had the big d club debate about that it was a lot harder really good tweezers were it was like a you had to go to a a scientific supplier yeah it's like a 50x multiplier on what the cheap ones cost maybe a hundred X. Yep it's not so not so much now nope not at all.

Kentucky Dave 1:56:53

I also picked up speaking in a study S T E D I they make some scribers now I've talked about the fact over the last year I concentrated on trying to get my paneline scribing and rescribing better and there is nothing that I like more than the US UMM USA scriber. Yep but I'm always on the lookout for something else just to see if there's something better out there and this company Steady had a set of three scribers and a handle not very expensive and so I went ahead and got them I haven't used them yet we're gonna see it turns out there was a hobby town that's been open for about nine months in in Louisville and not too far from from where I live that I didn't know about I was in the shopping center where it is going into a Kroger as a matter of fact and I saw it and I'm like I don't remember that being there. Turns out they've only been open about nine months. So I walked in there I did pick up one of my display tweezers there because I want to you know anytime there's a hobby shop I want to try and spend some money and encourage the business.

Mike 1:58:15

They also had a very random selection of Mr Color paints they didn't have the full rack they had like 20 that just this must be part of the package that I know I wonder if they don't have a favorite customer that needs a couple of colors and they have to order boxes of six. Oh maybe that could be it too but these were very random I mean it wasn't like you know if you ours is the same way they've got like a handful of things and there's it makes no sense.

Kentucky Dave 1:58:50

Yeah. So but I picked up one two three four five six bottles of Mr. Color um wasn't too random for you apparently wasn't too well I've I'm I eventually am going to acquire all of the Mr. Color paint because I Because why not? Well I'm sold on them getting out of other paint lines and I I love these things.

Mike 1:59:13

Moved on from enamel.

Kentucky Dave 1:59:14

I moved on from enamels although I'm still going to keep the uh color coats because I like them too um and finally I did pick up a kit just to make you feel better. And help me meet my minimum order meet your minimum order. I picked up an Arma Hurricane II it's the kit multi-kit with the 2A, two B, two C. So you can do any one of the three versions of the Hurricane Mark II.

Mike 1:59:43

So either British or Russian mark.

Kentucky Dave 1:59:45

In br either British or Russian marking.

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Ratings Request And Community Links

The Voice of Bob (Bair) 1:59:47

So if the plastic's not on it when you get it all the parts are there I promise oh yeah sure sure so I've been spending I'm done now although with HeritageCon in two weeks and a vision visit to Michigan Toy Soldier and the HeritageCon vendor room there probably is going to be some more money spent but I think I'm done right now Plastic Model Mojo is brought to you by Model Paint Solutions, your source for harder and steambeck airbrushes, David Union power tools and laboratory grade mixing measuring and storage tools for use with all your model paints be they acrylic, enamels or lackers check them out at www.modelpaint solutions dot com guys uh I'm as tired of saying it as you are of hearing it but please when you're done listening to the podcast on whatever app you use please go rate the podcast give it at the highest rating available it helps drive new new listeners to discover the podcast in addition if you know a model who's not listening to Plastic Model Mojo please recommend us to them help them if they don't know how to what a podcast is or how to listen to one please help them out so that they can start listening.

Kentucky Dave 2:01:23

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

Mike 2:01:36

In addition to that please check out all the other podcasts out in the model sphere you can do that by going to wwwmodelpodcast.com that's model podcast plural it's a consortium website set up with our friend Stuart Clark up in Canada from the Skill Model Podcast he's aggregated all the banner links to all the podcasts in the model sphere you can go there it's a one-stop shop and uh check them all out. In addition to the podcast we got a lot of blog and YouTube friends out there as well. I already mentioned Evan McAllen Panzermeister36. He's got a great YouTube channel you're gonna want to check out and be curious where this BT5 thing goes. Maybe it's gonna be on his channel maybe it's gonna be on I don't know what we'll see. We'll see. To be detrimental we've got model airplane maker our friend Chris Wallace who's been doing some great stuff lately. He's been doing some great stuff he's got a YouTube channel and a blog in addition to that he gave us a big plug on his latest blog post. He elaborated on what he would do if he came into a bunch of money. Yes which was a listener mail question a couple episodes ago we appreciate that Chris we do you mentioned Jeff Groves the anti guy he just finished up all his stinking Sturmovics. Yes I didn't realize there are that many kits out there. Yep how many did he build?

Kentucky Dave 2:02:54

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

Mike 2:03:00

Now there may be one or two repeats in there but yeah anyway it's his I don't know his most epic batch build but it's got to be close. Yes it is an awesome one. He's built a lot of uh Aleutian ground attack planes so check out the Inshai Guy blog we got Spru Pie with Fritz Steven Lee great 72nd scale blog and it's Matho scale railroading long and short form content some great stuff there you're going to want to check that out and we got Paul Budzick's scale model workshop and he's always putting some uh videos out there that are gonna help you along in your hobby so please check them all out if you're not a member of IPMS USA please consider joining if you're not in the U.S.

Clubs To Join And Closing Notes

Kentucky Dave 2:03:45

you can still join IPMS USA but you also can join your national IPMS organization. Great group of people who are giving up their modeling time to help your modeling experience be better. In addition if you're into armor modeling or post-1900 figures modeling take a look at joining AMPS the Armor Modeling Preservation Society a dedicated group of modelers who want to elevate the art of armor modeling and they do so Mike uh we're almost the end of the episode uh are you at the end of your modeling fluid almost Dave not quite but almost but we had a pause that the listeners won't hear where maybe I refilled it yes well I I feel silly asking you I mean it's Weller it's nectar of the gods it's it's the pinnacle of the bourbon art I mean what is there to say that is good and it's smooth smooth doesn't begin to describe well we can talk about why well go ahead and talk about why Weller is a wheated bourbon yep so by definition a bourbon has to be 51% corn.

Mike 2:05:13

Yep after that it doesn't matter what else is in it only to taste does it matter only well yes per definition by the ATF it doesn't matter so spicier bourbons have a lot of rye in them some of them have no wheat at all right and some have more wheat than rye and some have no rye at all which I think is where Weller is. I think so too so there's I could be wrong but I don't think so there's no rye in Weller. Weller is the mash bill after the corn is almost entirely wheat. Yeah so it's a very smooth bourbon it's a little sweeter it's just really really good this is the special reserve which is kind of their their lower end one yeah if you can get your hands on the 12 year oh that one's really really good but it's gonna cost you some money. Yeah but it's really good. So it the short of it is I'm I'm I've enjoyed it it's good don't worry Dave they'll come another bottle to Canada because I've got another one secured because right now it's a little easier to get than it used to be but we won't get into that we'll we won't get into the why. Yeah it is so I've got another bottle and uh we'll take advantage we'll crack that one at Here is gone.

Kentucky Dave 2:06:35

That sounds great.

Mike 2:06:36

Well what what what about you man?

Kentucky Dave 2:06:38

I had to tap out got about half of this thing drunk and it's I get it many mark these words for me it's too hoppy. It's just too much too much it's like eating eating potpourri yeah kinda it just I mean the hop is so far forward and it's such a bitter hop because not all hop is bitter to some extent it is but it's not all the same and this is just full on in your face bitter and you know what I I I drink modeling fluid because I enjoy drinking modeling fluid. So if it's something like this where the bitter and the hop is just so much that it robs me of the enjoyment I'm not gonna drink it. So yeah I tapped out. How many you got? It's the only one I bought it as a single at Trader Joe's.

Mike 2:07:44

Okay.

Kentucky Dave 2:07:45

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

Supporters Shout Outs And Watch Picks

Mike 2:08:14

Well I would be remiss to not shout out all the folks who have chosen to contribute to Plastic Model Mojo through their generosity folks like Jun Sickna, Stephen McDonald and Martin Pietta. Those folks have chosen to help us out through Patreon or PayPal or buy me a coffee or all those avenues are available through the Plastic Model Mojo website at www.plasticmodel mojo.com. Man, we appreciate it right now folks have been really generous and we are on the crux of getting the change to the website done it's just been fabulous and we really really appreciate it folks so uh we hope to be able to bring you a bunch of new content that that's not audio let's put it that way.

Kentucky Dave 2:08:58

Yep and folks thank you thank you so much we could not be here were it not for you and then we could not make the improvements if it were not for you so yeah I joined Mike in a shout out got one of your own well actually I have instead of shout outs I've got two Dave recommends TV shows or video one is a classic network television show. I don't watch much network TV anymore. God I haven't for years there's this British series Doc Martin that my wife and I really enjoy uh span 10 seasons about 15 18 years because British TV you'll get a season and then it'll it'll take two years till you get a new one. Well it's a very popular show here in the U.S. among watchers of British TV well NBC has decided to do an American version just like they did with the Office where you had the British office and then they did the Steve Carell office here in the U.S. There's a show now called Best Medicine and they're about 10 episodes into it. It's really really well done I highly if you enjoyed Doc Martin the British show you will enjoy Best Medicine. Takes a couple episodes to get going but they're into like their tenth episode now and it's really really good so I highly recommend that. In addition if you have Netflix there is a six or seven episode TV show with just one season that's all it's going to be it's a contained story. It's called His and Hers and it's the actor John Barenthal is the lead male actor and I particularly have enjoyed a lot of his work so when I saw this I was like okay I'll give it a try very good and man at the end it has some twists that you know I'm a pretty good TV watcher and I can see stuff coming absolutely blindsided me some of the twists at the end. So again if you're looking for something to watch Best Medicine his and hers on Netflix.

Mike 2:11:28

Well I got another one okay it's it's still Q1 and our sponsors have all been kind of in a renewal period. Model paint solutions we got squadron we got kit mask bases by Bill and Bill Moore's World of Armor looking forward to helping these folks promote what they got going on in 2026 and it's it's all going to be good. We support people we like and we like all these folks so patronize them folks.

Kentucky Dave 2:11:54

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

Mike 2:12:16

Well, we're getting close to the end, man.

Kentucky Dave 2:12:18

Yeah.

Mike 2:12:19

We're not already there.

Kentucky Dave 2:12:20

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

Mike 2:12:23

Well, Dave, as we always say, so many kids. So little time. And uh see you at the bench, man. See you at the bench.