#WIPWednesday, Looking Ahead to 2024

 

Happy New Year, everyone! I don't know about you, but I've had a heck of a week here at the Murder Basement Workshop. I have a "to-do" list that isn't really long, but it's a lot of labor-intensive things I need to do before I can start building again.

So what needs to get done? What am I planning on working on throughout 2024? What events am I planning on hitting? Well, this week's "Work in Progress Wednesday" post is going to cover that, since I didn't get anything actually built this past week.

So, let's get started. Remember, you can click a photo to be brought to the photo album for this week's post.

Workshop Projects

Dang, where do I begin? The Murder Basement Workshop is kind of a wreck. I haven't organized all the new kits I've brought down, there's still a fine coating of orange dust everywhere, and I now have a combo belt and disc sander I need to set up to create even more dust. The goal for the rest of this week is to at least wipe down my workbench and the shelf underneath with a cloth and soapy water, so I can set up the sander and store it. The next task is to organize my "to do" shelf, move old kits that I'm not going to touch in a bit to some shelving away from my workbench, and organize the stuff I am planning on working on.

Moving up to the office, where I do my Troxell's Trading Post shipping, my costume storage, and I have my printers, the first thing I need to get done is figure out the under extrusion issue that popped up on my Neptune 3 Max. Once that is complete, I need to reorganize the workstation around both it and the Bambu P1P, to get rid of things that just ended up there because, well, open flat surface. You know how that goes, right? Speaking of getting rid of things, I need to list both the CR-6 SEs and the Anycubic Photon and Wash/Cure station up on Facebook to both get them out of the house and into someplace where someone will hopefully use them, and to raise a bit of money for either the Bambu A1 Mini with a .02 nozzle (detail pieces, replacing the resin) or the Bambu AMS for the P1P so I can offer up some multi-color prints over on the Trading Post. In addition, the costume closet and bookshelves by it have become a tragic mess since the beginning of the pandemic, and I need to get that all cleared out so I have more storage in the closet, plus space to put shipping materials and stock where it's not just piled on top of comic books, which are piled on the 3D-Printer workstations!

Building Projects

I have a few different categories of projects I'm going to be working on. First off, I have commissioned work. The very first item on that list is a pair of Bo-Katan Kryze blaster pistols and a blaster belt I need to complete for a co-worker who has been immensely patient with me. Once that is done, and I've taken care of the aforementioned Max, I have a Bo-Katan helmet to print for another friend, plus a Jedi Temple Guard mask, some Doctor Doom armor, and a couple other dinky things.

Next, I have a ton of stuff I'm printing and building under the guise of "Props for Cosplay" talk prep. I've shown some of these before, items like the lightsabers, but I've also been printing like a madman and picking up paid files when I have the extra scratch. This means, as seen above, I've got:

• From Star Trek
• Star Trek Discovery Phaser Pistol
• Star Trek Discovery Phaser Rifle
• Star Trek Picard Phaser Rifle
• Star Trek Voyager Compression Phaser Rifle
• Star Trek First Contact Phaser Rifle
• From Star Wars
• Mandalorian IB-94 Blaster Pistol
• From Fallout 3
• AEP7 Laser Pistol
• AER9 Laser Rifle
• From Aliens
• M41A Pulse Rifle

As much as I'm trying to not make everything a firearm, they are some of the most recognizable prop pieces out there. I'm hoping to do some stuff like lighting up the Discovery and Picard rifles, as well as the Fallout 3 rifle. The Pulse Rifle will be built and shown off with the resin kit I need to build, and the Nerf version, to show off the different prop options that are out there.

For my Ko-fi supporters, if I ever get them, I've got a few projects for that, as well. However, you need to be supporting me on Ko-fi to get the information on those. It's only $3 a month, folks!

Finally, there are the personal cosplay items I want to build. I really need to make my Ghostbuster costume again, as well as my X-Wing Pilot. Once the aforementioned Max is fixed, I also want to start sizing and printing my own Heavy Infantry Mandalorian/ Paz Vizsla. This will be more of a focus after the talk in Anderson this coming May, but I want to get the ball rolling while I'm finishing phaser rifles and the like.

Events

I'm hoping to safely get out of the house more in 2024. Of course, I've mentioned Anderson numerous times already, so you know where I'll be on May the 4th. I'll be there giving a talk about how to make and incorporate props into your cosplay, as well as showing some stuff off for the Star Wars Day (Observed) celebration.

If you do the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio, I will be there as part of the Lore Link crew, promoting our new TTRPG Campaign Management Tool. Not only will I be promoting, but we're discussing having some dice tower giveaways, sponsored by Troxell's Trading Post.

I'm also planning on attending VoltCon 2024, which has no date yet, but will probably be sometime in October. Kat and I will be tabling again as Troxell's Trading Post, and I'm hoping to have some other stuff to show off, similar to how I had the Optimus Prime helmet displayed last year.

Another item on our agenda is the Ohio Renaissance Festival. Kat loved hitting ren faires when he lived in California, and I've been promising to bring him to this one on his fall break. We're hoping to have some manner of costume for the event, though it looks like the available theme weekends for us are Vikings (ugh) and Romance.

Other than that, I'm not really planning on attending much in a "professional" way. I might hit some conventions with the family to just, you know, go to a convention.

Troxell's Trading Post

Along with my push to get a complete Starfleet armory running, Troxell's Trading Post is going to be a big focus in 2024. I'm curious to see if I can fund the hobby in a market that's already saturated. My main goal this year is to relearn leather crafting. I've got so much leather scrap with my tools, I just need to start practicing. Then I can get a wallet or two, maybe some dice trays, up on the shop.

I'm also looking to get more movie prop replicas and cosplay stuff printed and up. I'm a merchant-level patron for at least three different makers of prop and costume files, and I need to get some clean pieces printed out and up on the shop. The kicker is that I'm only selling items on the site that I have "in stock." I've had enough grief with printers to know that if I take a print-on-demand order, the printer will kick out on me and I won't be able to fulfill it. I'm not doing that, because I've seen it happen too many times and I don't want to contribute to the problem.

Finally, my ultimate goal (other than, you know, turning a profit) is to get the shop and blog off Square and Blogger, and put it on my own site. Then hopefully I can have a bit more control over shop layout, and shipping, and all that stuff that I really don't have unless I give Square even more money than I already do each sale.

Okay, and that's all for right now. Sorry this hasn't been edited down, but as of right now, I've had about ten to twelve hours of sleep so far in 2024, so my brain isn't quite braining properly. 

If you've read this far, you are awesome and mighty. I'll see you all on here next week, hopefully with a cleaner workspace and some progress on a project or two! Until then, remember to take good care of yourselves, and each other. The world sucks out there, try not to make it suck even more. In fact, if you can, try to make it suck a bit less.

Tony