Jenn

This is what I look like all fucking winter bc the shop is cold. And yet I must sew.

Bryan: I didn't realize the Friends theme was a whole song. I thought it was just an opening.
Me: Yeah, that's normal. Smallville's OP is a whole song. Or House MD's.
Cole: Those are random and aren't the most well known examples of that.
Me: What's a better one?
Cole: Spongebob.
All of us: What?

Shop talk today:

Is Love Shack by the B52s because a reference to "that movie with Anne Hathaway" and also is it "a conspiracy to inflate the value of boat houses"

Shazz: I didn't do shit this weekend.
Me: We're crunching tonight, right? Since we're leaving on Thurs.
Shazz: Oh yeah.
Me: We have to pack Weds night so I guess we have 48 hours.
Jules: You're stressing me out.
Shazz: I haven't even finished patterning my coat.
Jules: My camera bag isn't here yet.

Despite not going to Katsu this year a bunch of my friends and I have been “crunching” anyway. I’ve made great headway on stuff I don’t need until May! But it’s v. funny to go “fuck, we leave for Katsu in five days, I’m not going to make it” and a friend go “you have 120 hours, you can do it.”

Ah, what a great way to pay tribute to a team member’s horses: by “painting” completely different horses!

Also a real illustration would likely have been sketched out in full before adding that big banner, so where does the pond at the bottom come from? The horses’ bodies vanish and the perspective on the pond feels wildly off. Why would someone who could paint that cleanly make such silly mistakes?

I feel like they’re aping a realistic illustrative style I’ve seen on 85326853 horse girl books growing up but it has that plasticy AI “polish” to it that reveals mistakes? What fuckin horse person would draw a bridle like that? The hardware and places where the leather connects makes no sense.

The market is already saturated beyond belief and public disinterest is high. AI also isn’t making much in the way of useful models yet in this realm. I think once it catches up (and I’m largely convinced it never will) it’ll be over, onto the next craze.

YEAH lol it’s bad out there it’s all slop.

They could also be ordering them in bulk! 🤪 It’s bad. Retail is in SHAMBLES.

Yeah, there’s a bunch of those now — companies that would rather pay cheap mall rent than endlessly schlep to and from diff pop up markets.

But also I think it’s foolish to base a business on owning machinery when you can’t design your own products. You will never do anything unique. Nothing is yours. It’s like owning a restaurant but the kitchen can only microwave frozen Costco foods.

Supply needs to be recoupled with demand. Stat.

“People have to make a living.” This doesn’t entitle people to make a lousy product, scam people, or fill the world with unwanted junk, most of which will RAPIDLY end up in landfills.

I just functionally disagree with the subscription model that crops up everywhere now because it’s predatory. It is especially predatory when it encourages people to sink money into not just the subscription, but a business.

It does take skill and talent to make models that print reliably and look good, I don’t mean to discount what they’re actually making, but I think it speaks to some level of… ethical flexibility to sell “right to make money off my stuff, if you can” instead of just selling a product.

Nobody wants the stuff, but it’s not really about people wanting the stuff. It’s about convincing people to buy a flexible dragon or an owl dice tower or Pikachu dressed as Deadpool. It’s about getting hundreds to thousands of people to pay a monthly subscription for the dream of small business.

It’s created this impression that anyone can start a business by buying a few 3D print file subscriptions and a few $200-300 printers. However, because anyone can do it, and work-from-home side-hustles are in high demand, it doesn’t take long for supply to completely overwhelm demand.

A lot of the 3D printed slop at cons is actually just an extension of how so much of 3D printing has become a kind of MLM business model. The 3D artists who create the bulk of the flexi-whatever models out there sell print rights as a monthly fee, so print farm businesses pay them continuously.

(This hasn’t even ever happened to me or my files, to my knowledge. I’m just being a hater because I’m tired of seeing slop at cons lol)

Like, don’t 20938423 cons already have rules against proxy-ing or selling others goods anyway?

I feel like conventions should simply ban tables in Artist Alleys from selling 3D printed goods made from other people’s files, even with permission. If people aren’t supposed to sell enamel pins or jewelry off AliExpress, then why should anyone be allowed to sell prints from someone else’s files?

I hate it soooo much!!!!

Now now now that kind of ambition is for people paying $400 or something a month for their premium subscription palate

Textured this Monoco staff while Kat and I yapped about our immaculate taste in video games. Proud of it.

worth noting that the second rich people stopped being afraid of mobs tearing them limb from limb, they stopped building libraries and opera houses and stuff and started ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of society instead

There are new machines being invented all the time, but yeah, my assumption is a lot of it is still technically handmade, just in factories in China where it can be sold profitably for $1.98.

Yuppp. And a lot of those crochet flowers are produced wholesale now because they’ve gotten trendy, so they’re at every craft fair. Idk. I’m glad some artists selling 3D templates and patterns are getting their bag but it’s not exactly “handmade” for me at that point when it hits mass production.

Every time I see something seemingly new, I think oh, this is unique, maybe this is their own work, I google “[animal] dice tower” or whatever and BAM 30 people selling the exact same one.