Adam’s back from two weeks of travel and catches us up on his time as an artist in residence in Colorado making a bronze Maltese Falcon (and collaborating with Tom Sachs!). We also talk about the influence of Akira on its 30th anniversary, and Adam’s release of the plans and patterns for his EDC TWO bag. A big episode before we head down to Comic-Con!
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Adam embarks on one of his most ambitious builds yet: fulfil…
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Adam recently completed a build of the royal St. Edwards cro…
Making
Viewers often ask to see Adam working in real-time, so this …
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Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
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One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
Making
Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
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When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
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Adam tackles a shop shelf build that he's been putting off f…
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Time for a model kit build! This steampunk-inspired mechanic…
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Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
is there supposed to be a video for this? i don’t see one.
Video is uploading to YouTube now! Will be live in an hour.
Please be aware that Colorado is LARGE and there is more than one way to drive over the Continental Divide, or as Adam calls it “the Continental Gap”. One is Berthoud Pass which is what I think Will butchered at 5:54. But no one would drive over Berthoud if they were going from Aspen to Denver. Adam most likely drove over Independence Pass, or took a different route taking I-70 and went through the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel, locally known as just “Eisenhower” or “The Tunnel”, to cross the divide. Also, neither of these 3 routes gets anywhere close to the lookout or the hotel in Estes Park that is associated with The Shining. That would be Trail Ridge Road that goes through Rocky Mountain National Park.
I hate to be the “well actaully” guy but between Will’s complete butchering of Berthoud and the Shining discussion, this Coloradoan just had to chime in.
Everything that is easily distributed digitally is ripped off immediately by people hustling for any dime and there are a lot of them. I see this with all my 3D models I happily share on thingiverse of youmagine under noncommercial share a like license. Idiots sell them on eBay straight-out or offer prints off them without acknowledgment all the time. Even claiming it is theirs. Nightmare if you need to make money with your designs. So the best approach is to sell physical objects and having some hurdle for copy cats.
adam, i appreciate you publicly unpacking your thoughts. the more i had this in my head for the past days, the more i was sure that was where you were coming from:
you’re a maker of things, and that’s how you approached making the plans. and that is, of course, absolutely legit. i can also imagine that it’s hard to let go of control over the thing. when you are particular about how you want things to be made, giving someone a pdf for printing out or transfering by hand is a lot less control over what they are going to work with. and that’s not even approaching the loss of control that comes from open-sourcing the patterns. anyway, i see where you’re coming from.
the other side of the argument, to my eyes, is that when you sell patterns, what you’re really selling is the idea, not its physical manifestation. when the main line of inquiries about the patterns concern the results of that decision – selling pattern-as-thing, needing to make the thing, transporting the thing across the world – that becomes a distinction worth thinking about.
i’m glad you’re more open to the thought of selling a pdf. but don’t think selling paper patterns made to your specifications of quality and beauty is a silly or ludicrous move.
pricing wise, there’s many ways to go, i feel, and (pretty much) all of them good.
i know of an open source pixel art software project that has free (both gratis and libre) access to the source code, also for you to download and compile yourself, but if you want a ready-made binary, like a windows/mac installer or a linux package, you need to pay a fee. that could map to the distinction between a digital file for self-printing vs a ready-made, no-mistakes, adam approved paper pattern.
there is charityware, like vim, one of the two big old text editors for programming. vim is free for everyone to use, but if you enjoy it, you are asked to donate to a charity close to the heart of its lead developer.
there is pay-what-you-want, like in the humble bundles and the museum norm mentioned. the obvious advantage is its openness to different financial situations.
truth be told, i’d pay you 15 USD for the pdf. it’s a more than doable price.
also, regarding buying from your shop: do you have an objection to also accepting paypal? credit cards are not as ubiquitous everywhere as they are in the US, and they are just one more barrier of entry.
I completely understand the desire to keep things in the physical realm. Thing is that it limits access to people who can afford it. I complained about the cost of shipping but I’m also lucky that I can just say ‘to hell with it’ and pay the money. It’s not Adams fault that USPS charges $50 to send a large envelope internationally but it certainly kills the idea that by selling plans you’re making it more accessible. A $15 paid download does.
Still waiting to hear y’all talk about “Solo”, which I really enjoyed.
I wonder if the amount of requests is simply because of the Creative Commons Sharealike. Having that license is like saying “I want to Share this and let everyone have it! Let’s see what we can all do with this as a community!”. But not having the files available was saying the opposite message. Having someone get the paper version, and scan it and upload it sounds to me like a copy of a copy, with the usual inherit inaccuracy inserted. The paper versions being sold are obviously from a digital file already, and the original digital would be more precise.
The more the plans get out there (from being cheap and easy to get), the more bags will be made by the community. Which will probably also drive up sales of those patches even more… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_model
If I was able to get a free digital copy to print out and cut up and make a bag, I would likely find that i had appreciated it enough to buy something or donate money to show my gratitude. Or as Will pointed out, if it’s good looking enough as an image, i would likely frame it and hang it next to the framed Premium Membership posters I already have in my shop.
And maybe another idea… perhaps have the free download available for Tested Premium members?
You need to stop feeding that Tribble.
Adam thanks for mentioning Nanette, I watched it yesterday and it is an incredible show. I want to watch it again, there is so much to unpack.
So I watched the EDC Two one day build and thought it’d be a cool project for a friend of mine and I as he’s just gotten a new sewing machine. I’ve even got plans to customise mine to add a sleeve for my work Surface Pro and as it’ll replace my flight bag a Savage Industries “Pilot” patch would be great. Having plans sent to Europe is presently prohibitively expensive. I’d be keen to have a PDF and I’d pay appropriately for it, I’m sure this applies to the rest of the tested community as well and we’re probably your target market.
Some advantages of making it a PDF that perhaps you might not have considered. It could be printed directly onto card at local printshops, separating the files could allow for printing on standard sizes A1 or A2 (depending on dimensions). It’d also allow easy size adjustment for longer, larger, smaller or thinner EDC’s.
Also as of right now the paper plans are sold out on your website.
Great discussion on the digital distribution aspect of the EDC plans.
There is this traditional bag used in rural areas in Brazil that I thought would be great to reinterpret as the EDC. I went to the site to buy the plans but international shipping killed it. Also, there is a chance Brazilian customs would charge me double, making a 15$ purchase cost almost 120$. Not even kidding.
If the shipping was cheaper, and it was labeled as a book or something like that, I would have already bought it. I would love to have the physical plans, the physical object, (and I probably wouldn’t cut it, just transfer the pattern to save it). It’s a beautiful object in its own way, but the PDF is a safer, and cheaper choice for me.
15$ bucks is still expensive for any Brazilian (we are not rich), but I would pay that for the PDF.
Adam, I have plans for a set of folding wings I drew up a few years ago…extend and fold pretty well. I’d gladly share them if you like.
Great show guys! Enjoyed Will and the rest of the Tested crew as usual! Keep up the great work!
Hi Guys,
For the EDC plans, I personally would purchase both the paper and digital versions. My idea for pricing would be something like $10 for digital and $15 for both. I have fond memories of making a duffle bag in home ec. back in middle school and I’m looking forward to trying my hand and sewing again.
Thank you.
Plans sold out bummer!!!
The exterior of the Shinning hotel was filmed at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. It’s 40 minute drive from Portland Oregon.
I was thinking about Adam’s coding patch idea, and I would love to recommend a circular patch using the trademark black and bright green of a command prompt. The background and main circle of the patch is black, with binary code in bright green along the outer edge of the patch. Then, in the center of the patch is a bright green coffee cup. That would incorporate the desire for a coffee cup and the terminal into one design.
I found “Nanette” premise extremely powerful and moving, but I felt the show was somehow unresolved, never really scratching the surface of pain and coping mechanisms.
Hannah Gadsby is charming, smart, funny, a great storyteller with the ability to tap into people’s feeling, and yet the show added up to less than the sum of her strengths, partly because the content is so powerful that the structure is rendered superfluous, sometimes distracting. People with lesser skills could have told us similar stories, with a similar effect.
“This happened to me, and now I’m angry, and I reclaim my voice” is definitely a message I needed to hear, yet it’s not a very challenging message. Many groups of people, today, are asking us to deal with their anger, many angered towards each others. And we’re asked to pick a side and we do, when it means shutting down those who are violent and campaign against someone else’s rights. But I’ve stopped trusting anger as a vehicle for change: as a society, we have developed skills and platforms for listening and understanding. A great amount of people is perhaps distracted, but not blind or lacking the will to listen, and we are actively using those platforms to move forward, improve, refine our sensibilities.
Nanette never acknowledges that, keeping the audience (who’s listening, and feeling the pain) into a distant, uncomfortable, enemy zone. This, I think, is where the great ability of Hannah to reach and push the listener fell short and never fully expressed its potential.
Why not sell the plan as a dxf autocad file instead. Then makers can cut the template themselves on a vinyl cutter or the fabric on a laser cutter. This way if it gets copy, and it will no matter what, it stays more a ‘maker’ item.
Hey Tested peeps!
If you are ever in the Raleigh NC area and want to know more about how bronze sculptures are cast take some time to go the North Carolina Museum of Art. They have an amazing collection of Rodin sculptures and a display of small sculptures that show the entire process. It was so nice to already know about the process while Adam was posting pictures and describing what he was up to. Can’t wait to see the final product of the Maltese Falcon!
I didn’t even know that the plans for the EDC bags were physical. I am waiting for payday and am fully prepared to spend $15 for a PDF. I would also love to be able to scale plans up and down and see how they work.
A kit for the EDC bags would be amazing. I’d be in for one without question.
I just submitted my EDC TWO plans for printing! (AU$13 for 160gsm B0 at https://www.officeworks.com.au/print/print-and-copy/posters-and-plans)
A small piece of feedback: I know that you were not intending these plans to be made available by PDF when you made them, but a suggestion you might consider for any future PDF editions is that the paper size be a standard sizing like A0 or B0?