📙 #090 - More tools popping up, and too much HOT
Sending cards, making pots, time-lapses (of a sort), swiss army knife tools, deadlines and too much writing about too little stuff.
HELLO! I AM MELTING.
It’s too hot, I am grumpy, this is gunna be a short one, with a bunch of photos then we’ll get back to normal service.
Carrying on from last newsletter’s “Pottery Plotter Print Pipeline” where I got my hands on a clay plotter and went deep into making and exporting SVGs and GCODE pot shapes, I printed and plotted out of a whole bunch of cards for the Patreon gang.
And then a heap of Riso prints too; these photos can’t do justice to the fluorescent pink.
I have a new (self-imposed, made-up) thing now, where any excess get filed away for four months and then get put into the shop; if I haven’t already sent them off to people.
I say “the shop” like it currently works, which it still doesn’t, but perhaps it will in four months 🤷♂️
The idea was to have them all cut out, and then turn them into an animation, but I ran out of time, so here’s a poor-mans-time-lapse instead.
Contains FLASHING IMAGES.
Here’s the 3d clay printed vessel, that I also would have added to the time-lapse if it wasn’t so hot.
(we don’t talk about the gloopy pots)
# GD STUDIO
“GD Studio lets you design generative artwork for pen plotters. Pick a pattern, shape it with live controls, add text or SVG elements, and export a plotter-ready file.”
This, popped up the other day, Marco sez…
A few months ago I picked up an iDraw H SE A3 and my first plots were mostly mathematical patterns. While working on those, I realized I wanted a single app where I could use sliders and settings to directly influence the final drawing. There are websites for specific patterns, and there are plenty of code examples available, but I wanted everything integrated into one macOS app.
Since I am an iOS/macOS developer, I built that app myself, with some help from Claude for the mathematical models.
Now I do like tools popping up that make designs for drawing machine, I like that software developers are using their skills to make these tools available - you can buy the full version of GD studio for €24.99 - being able to sell stuff is cool!
I have slightly complicated feelings about it all, for various reasons, but I generally fall on the side of making things easier for people to get into pen plotting the better.
And it seems more “here are lots of different algorithms all in one place” tools are popping up all the time, for some reason.
# A NICE BLOG POST
Three Months with a Pen Plotter: From Burning 14 Servos to Plotting 115,000 Mona Lisas
“a 100 euro plotter and 14 burnt servos”
# ALL THE NEWSLETTERS, ALL THE THINGS
I absolutely suggest that you do not write weekly newsletters, or rather don’t write newsletters weekly, unless you really love writing newsletters, or, you do shit-loads of stuff every week.
A little how-the-sausage-is-made.
I keep a daily journal, in addition, at the start of each day I write down what I’m planning on doing, at the end I write down what I did. I post a daily photo to the notes section of substack. I take a whole bunch more photos and put them into Lightroom and then - not as often as I’d planned - my website, which I still need to redesign, again.
I’ve just started posting not daily Reels to Instagram - I’ll tell you how that’s going in a future newsletter - and of course, the videos over on YouTube; I just uploaded the Introduction to Module 3 and Anatomy of a Line videos, as part of the Drawing Machine 101 course.
I also have a page in Obsidian called “Things I’ve spotted for the next newsletter”, snappy I know.
So when it comes to writing this, I first check Obsidian, my journals, the list of things I’d planned on doing and actually did, then all the photos and videos as proof that any of these things actually happened.
Sometimes, there’s, nothing.
It’s surprising how easy it is to spend a lot of time being busy, doing stuff, good stuff! And not really having much newslettery to show for it.
ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S FREAKING HOT.
I’m glad I don’t write a weekly newsletter.
🤔
So imagine my surprise that I’m now writing regularly over on two other newsletters.
The first one for the Riso studio I co-run (this one is a lot better than that first line suggests btw)…
…and the second for DeepKeep, all about keeping things deep (into the future and sometimes also underground), and keeping things right, which I also co-run…
One newsletter for each of the three pillars of my career live; Work, Riso & Drawing Machines.
I can only hope that by writing all these thing you can learn from my mistakes!
# THE END
I’m semi-joking of course, I LOVE that I now have x3 the deadlines for getting stuff done, but boy can I tell you how to be super organised, productivity podcasts have got nothing on me.
Today is the peak of this heatwave; 33℃, tomorrow it drops to 30℃ then 26℃ with a chance of rain, I hope you’re doing okay wherever you are.
The next, hopefully cooler newsletter will get to you on Thursday 9th July, 2026.
Love you all
Dan
🧡