Retro Robot Heads

I’m working towards my first Kickstarter campaign. The plan is to start with something small and easy to fulfil, to use as a learning exercise as well as establish a track record.

So, I’ve collected a bunch of designs I did for retro robot heads, which I’ll make in 3D, with stls the end goal for backers. They’ll be in 28mm, for gaming figures, and larger scales- 54mm/1:32/1:35, and maybe 1:24- for sci-fi figures. There’s at least another page of rougher designs that could also be cleaned up and made into stretch goals.

The next step is to polish these further, then I’ll have to pick one to make as a demonstration of the final versions. With luck, I’ll have the Kickstarter up and ready for pledges by the end of the month.

The One Way Racing Club’s first logo

Join the One Way Racing Club for scale car modellers. This logo is inspired by Japan’s Kanjo racers, and it has a bit of an attitude.

The design is available on various items from Redbubble. I’ve ordered some stickers to see how they come out. Once I have a few more designs, I’ll probably look at getting a batch printed up to sell from my shop.

Comrade Trump?

It has the feel of the sort of story spun by conspiracy theorists, but a former KGB officer has claimed Trump was recruited by them in the 1980s. Codenamed ‘Krasnov’, he was one of many businessmen they went after.

Whatever the truth, the orange buffoon is definitely doing the sorts of things a former KGB man would demand of an asset. I don’t know whether being long compromised would be any worse an excuse than being a shallow coward. The harm he’s causing is the same, either way.

https://bylinetimes.com/2025/02/21/donald-trump-was-recruited-by-the-kgb-under-codename-krasnov-claims-former-soviet-spy-chief/

A future for Bond?

I’m working my way, slowly, through all the Bond films, and have just reached the Timothy Dalton era. So I’m interested in the franchise’s future.

As is a billionaire property developer, who is challenging for control of the copyright.

I would suggest that Bond’s history of killing billionaires means he shouldn’t be controlled by one. But the film rights are already co-owned by Bezos, so it’s too late for that.

Get ready to join the One Way Racing Club

The One Way Racing Club is entirely made up, but it’s also what all my car builds belong to. I’ve been meaning to create some logos for it for a while, so today, I sat down and scribbled a few ideas. I’m going to develop them further, and hopefully there will soon be a pdf for you to print out decals and add your cars to the club. Maybe there will even be full size bumper stickers.

More sample designs over on my Patreon page, for members of every level, including free.

An open (AI) letter to my MP

I just used TheyWorkForYou to send a version of the following to my MP-

Dear Andrew Gwynne,

I completed the Government’s recent consultation on AI and copyright, so I am perturbed by the claims in this Guardian article –

The key paragraph is probably this one-

‘“What I say to MPs is, if you are members of a government that has put all its chips on growth, why is that same government undermining creative industries that bring £126bn to the UK economy and is giving away for free the property rights of 2.4 million people who work in those industries? The creative industries impact every constituency, region and nation,” she said.’

In the preamble to the consultation, it was rightly noted that the creative sector generates hundreds of billions of pounds. I did not see a figure given for AI, not even a prediction. AI is currently losing billions. It is an industry that is already dead. The only hope it has is that it is given the ability to steal from an established, and clearly underappreciated, sector.

I hope you will vote against giving more power to those touting AI, who will not return anything of value to the UK in return.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Pattinson

Undercover Girl 2

Patreon subscribers got to see this post early.

I’m not planning an Undercover Girl comic, honest. It’s just that as soon as I dropped the gun into the 3d model in Clip Studio, I knew it had to be another drawing of her.

But if there were an Undercover Girl comic in the current climate, she would be a trans woman. Her (previously unnamed, I think) department starts recruiting top agents kicked out of other agencies by bigots, and runs a campaign against fascists in the USA. They might begin, jokingly, to say they work for Domestic Enemy Interception (or Intervention, and, when appropriate, Inhumation), even though that’s so obviously on the nose.

Probably not something that I, as a cis, white male, could write. But the character is public domain, so someone else could run with it.

I’m playing with ways to do art, whilst I wait for a story to suggest itself. Right now, the process is- set up the scene in Clip Studio with its 3D models. Convert that to a toned raster image. Print out a pale blue version to pencil over. Create an inked page from the pencils using a light box. Scan this back into Clip Studio and convert to vector. Convert the shading layers in the raster image. Add colour/patterns to taste.

Any project I run with will likely be grayscale, rather than colour. But Starr was coloured last time, so I had to do the same this time.

Jennings beers to get another renaissance?

Good news from the Old County.

Jennings was the local beer when I was growing up. My uncle worked for them for years. Sometime in the nineties, they managed to turn around a reputation for middling brews, and started putting out top beers, including one of my personal favourites. (Snecklifter, if you’re looking for a crate of alcohol to send my way.)

Then there was a corporate takeover, the Cockermouth flood, and other setbacks. But now it’s been announced that Carlsberg are selling the name and the site to local businesses.

In the same way that I grew up in the Lake District, but didn’t make it to the Keswick Pencil Museum until the day after my 50th birthday, I have never visited the Jennings brewery. I will have to remedy that as soon as it is possible.

https://www.petebrown.net/2025/02/05/jennings-brewery-saved/