November news

Heyo folks!

Big workshop update to start with: pretty much done with the shuffle! Took two months of hard work, but now at least all the essentials are in place. The last bits that need fixing I'll just handle as we go along.

To sum up the prior workshop setup in a simple descriptive sentence: a cramped osha maze (see picture evidence above!). Now, on the other hand, the entire workshop is getting genuinely nice. No more stored materials/tools occupying valuable workspaces! No more 'multiple small improvised workspaces'!

Now with the new storage room helping offload things... I know what materials and tools I need to have handy for the suit project. I can actually design the exact workspace I need on one table and keep the space requirements down. All the 'occasionally needed' stuff can hang out in the storage room up the street. 

This goes double for the 'media studio' room. I can keep all the gear here and easily accessible, plenty of open space, and have an actual aesthetic going decoration-wise. Admittedly said aesthetic is 100% "basic Ikea-stuff" at the moment, but we'll fancy it up as we go along. Bonus points for being able to fit an actually comfortable computer working area and a comfy bench in here too.

Now, what's left to do around the moving/revamp? Well...

* Organization in the storage room. Right now it's mostly "just shoved in there" to get it out of the workshop. I probably need to spend a day or two moving stuff between shelves/boxes, applying labels etc.

* The steel work table needs a particle filter system. Latex airbrushing, plastic sanding dust, etc. I'll whip one up myself once I've had a bit of time to mull over the design. Might slap a shelf on top of it too just for space utilization.

* The 3d printer alcove needs a cleanup and overview. Besides fitting the laser there, I can probably stow the printing accessories better. Not overly happy about having the coagulant dip sharing space there either, but haven't figured out a better place for it yet. On a related note, I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd probably have a printer workspace in there. That's scrapped. I'll just use the main workshop table instead. Steel surface, easy cleaning, good lighting and soon ventilation. Should be all I need for the resin prints.

* The studio room needs decoration. Wall paint touchups too, but I've got 2-3 areas where I could fit fairly large wall decos. Details TBD eyy? On a related note, gotta' improve the photo-background-holder. Rollups of some sort maybe?

* Camera upgrade. Phone's kind of okay for stills, but video/streaming/lens-switching to accomodate e.g. wide-angle indoor lenses? Yeah, no, really doesn't work for any of that. I'll snag something next weekend after the salary shows up. Besides that I think I'm pretty much set for media gear. 

As for actual media, details very much TBD still. I'd like to figure out a way to do regular streaming / mini-shoots, both for the fun of it all and pragmatic suitworks branding/monetization. There's a decent chunk of effort required for regular suit-ups, but I'm mostly concerned about the wear-and-tear and repairs I'll need to do. Honestly unsure whether I can keep it going indefinitely or if I'll hit a limit of how much the current suit prototypes can take. 

All the more reason to finish up the new suit rig, ey? It'll be good practice and durability testing either way, so I'll probably try for something like "every second tuesday evening" to get going. Content, idk, I'll figure out more around that 'til next update. There's always all the 3d-modelling I need to do for hood/suit molds and tooling, could just as well do it on a suity stream :)

-------------------

Workshop shuffle aside, how's the suit project doing with all of this going on? Still in catchup-mode, but it's looking pretty good if I may say so myself. Current plan order:

* black restock: DONE
* patreon drop: DONE
* workshop shuffle: DONE
* brown hoods: switching the hood rig to brown late next week and doing a mid-sized batch of them. A good reason to finish the particle filter system too, as I'll need that for the airbrushing.
* (lighter skin tones on hold - I THINK all the problems are from me adding too much thinner to the vat. Will have to let the vat evaporate to thicken it again. No clue how long that'll take.)
* Suit rig

With other words: a bunch of brown hoods, then back to suit rig work!

There's probably something to be said for the overall priorities when getting back into things too:

* The suit rig will probably go through an iteration or three. Considering doing a chamber test with a horizontal gravity-fed cast to start with, and then upgrade my way towards standing + pumped latex. Will think deeper about it when the brown hoods are done.

* I really, really need to figure out the resin printing tech for the molds that I mentioned a few months back. I've got plenty of ideas to improve the hood designs and/or try out stuff for the full suit molds, but the time needed for one-offs is too much. It's okay enough in total if I do batches of 5-10 molds at once, but that's a different usecase.

* There's a slew of paperwork to shuffle. I can probably move the backlog off Jira to something cheaper and/or sharable, do some nifty bookkeeping/shipping system integrations for the shop, etc. Not quite as glamorous as the suit work, but it frees up time and money for said suits!

* Lots of backlog-stuck fun things like nose-tubes etc that could use a bit of work. Dunno', might do an overview and see which things I can finish quickly. A bit of low hanging fruit cleanup could be good.

--------------------

Feels like I'm getting into the swing of things again! Anything I missed or glossed over? Drop me a line! And as always, you all know how much I appreciate your support! Warms my heart to know that I'm not the only one who wants to make the world a little bit suitier :)