A Complete History of PrintABlok… for now

On my discord, user Pranatic asked: How do you decide what [printablok] (sets) to make?

To which I said “The short answer is ‘whatever I feel like’. The long answer… well, the long answer could be a 10 minute video all by itself.” I just don’t know if it would be a video anyone would watch. But in case that video never gets made (very likely) I’ll just catalog here the complete history of printablok… for now.

Of course, the decision making process for anything we do in life is a culmination of, well, our entire life up to that point. But I’ll try to avoid various tangents such as my growing up as a weeb before the internet. But I would be remiss not to acknowledge that it wasn’t all me. There have been many people along the way who have had influential contributions, and I will do my best to call those out along the way.

So, starting at the beginning, I suppose any 3D printing story of mine couldn’t really go back further than about the early 2000s. Back then I had I had aspirations to be an animator and was going to art school to learn computer animation. Well, I actually had aspirations to be a teacher, but I figured if I worked as an animator for a few years then I’d be more attractive when I applied to be a teacher. (Hold on, don’t get ahead of me.) A few years into my art education I found out that despite assurances to the contrary when I started my degree that my art school was unaccredited. So that wouldn’t help me be a teacher. Also, I discovered that being an animator was actually way more competitive than I thought. Finally, I learned that you could just go to school to be a teacher. I honestly didn’t know that was an option. I was an idiot. I still am an idiot, but I was then, too.

Fast forward about a decade. 2011. I’ve tried out the teaching thing, didn’t work out, and now I’m working as a software developer (did you know people actually do that for a living? It’s not just a fun thing people do on the weekend while going to art school! Like I said, I was an idiot.) I hear about this cool project some people are doing called “3D printing” and the RepRap project. The idea immediately clicked with me.

But I was a father with a young family and I felt I couldn’t afford the $800 in parts and more than a weekend to put together a RepRap. That’s what it took to have a 3D printer back then. But I did have some skills in making 3D models that I wasn’t doing anything with. Of course my training was in animation, but I figured the skills would would transfer, which they did. So I start doing 3D modeling for 3D printing and uploading my untested models to this new website called “thingiverse”. Nowadays, if you don’t have a test print, no one will give you a second look, but back then it wasn’t too hard to get noticed because there weren’t a lot of people uploading there. So while I didn’t have a 3D printer, many people in the 3D printing community 3D printed my projects and taught me a lot about being a designer for 3D printing, without my having a 3D printer myself yet.

One of the projects I uploaded during this time was a lego compatible Arwing from StarFox. (I actually modified the 3D models from StarFox 64.) However, like I said this was before I had a 3D printer and this particular project didn’t gain any traction. No prints. No attention. No nothing.

Fast-forward another decade or so and I have a few 3D printers, a moderately successful youtube channel, and hundreds of 3d printable 3d models under my belt. Some of the relevant projects to this story included tiny low poly spaceships and modular cars. You can see the seeds of PrintABlok projects already being planted.

Then, everything changed when the Lego Nation attacked.

One day, for no apparent reason, Lego does a DCMA takedown on several of my projects that used lego compatible studs, including the Lego Arwing. Now, again, no one ever printed those models. Heck, even after I got a 3D printer I realized that 3D printers are crap at legos so I never printed. And while, at first, I was like “Yeah, whatever, I guess they have the right”, I made a video about it and the community pipped up to say “well, actually they don’t” and I realized I had been a victim of DMCA abuse. I’ve got a whole playlist about this if you want more detail.

So I responded the way any other creative person would do. I started by making a lego compatible block that was designed for 3D printing. After succeeding with the prototype, mostly, but realizing it would take a lifetime to apply that design to the existing library of lego bricks, I put that project aside and started working on my own all new interconnecting blocks for 3D printing.

And thus, PrintABlok was born.

Now, as I said, my YouTube channel was only moderately successful, but I had discovered that I could supplement my income with kickstarter campaigns for models for 3D printing. (Also, a great outlet for my creative juices) I had already run 3 successful kickstarters. The first was to produce and ship physical copies of the Royal Games of Ur to people, and that one taught me that I do not want to deal with shipping. But shout out to Robert Ihnatisin who helped me with the design when I was too lazy to tackle it myself.

Then, a friend of mine known online as Makerblock made a suggestion that would set my course from then on. He suggested a purely digital kickstarter. No physical nothing. And he even suggested the subject. Dinosaurs, but low poly so they’d be easy to model.

The Low Poly Dinos kickstarter was a whirlwind. By the end I had modeled 35 different dinosaurs with scenery, variations, and other accountrimon adding up to over 80 unique STLs delivered. And how did I come up with all those ideas? It wasn’t me. The backers of the kickstarter would suggest their favorite dinos and I learned so much about paleontology in that quick month as a result. I had no idea there was such variety in the ancient world before Low Poly Dinos.

I decided to give another go to kickstarter fund raising, but I didn’t want to get pigenholed into angular boys toys, so I decided my next kickstarter would be soft and round. Unfortunately Chibimals proved to be less successful than Dinos had been (though they still hold a special place in my heart and I will revisit them.. one day).

It’s about this time that I invented PrintaBlok. I figured if Kickstarters did well with boy toys I’d go back to boy toys. And for my first PrintABlok kits I’d take that Lego Arwing that got DCMAed and and make it PrintABlok Arwing. And since I’m making it modular, why not do a whole bunch of spaceships! Like my low poly spaceships, but modular.

Unfortunately, there was another company about this time launching their own block-based spaceship building system. So to avoid stepping on their toes I looked for another idea that would work with the modular parts idea. I honestly can’t say there was any particular point of inspiration for mechs in general, other than my buddy Robert Aram introducing me to the mech warrior video games, and them being cool. But whatever the point of inspiration, Mechs would be the first PrintABlok kickstarter.

Mechs turned out to be as successful as the Dinos. PrintABloks were a hit. But more than that, after that first PrintABlok kickstarter I had a whole bunch of ideas that PrintABlok could be applied to. Many of them came from the community who backed the kickstarter.

Here’s the video at the end of the Mechs kickstarter where I outline some of them (time stamped for relevance): https://www.youtube.com/live/QcheyjgsZLs?feature=share&t=1623

As well as PrintABlok Mechs did, and with so many possibilities in my head, I decided my next kickstarter would also be PrintABlok and I decided to focus on articulation, so beast mechs seemed like a good next step. While that kickstarter was successful, it wasn’t as successful as Mechs, but COVID19 might be to blame for that.

I still had a lot of ideas for PrintABloks, and the next year when it was time to think about another kickstarter, the company that had make blocky spaceship and the reason why I didn’t make spaceships my first PrintABlok kickstarter, they started doing mechs. So I figured I was now free to do my spaceships (though I pointedly avoided looking at their models, just in case). And while the Skyforce are less articulated, I decided to step up the detail in my modeling, and I really like the result.

Of course, outside of Kickstarter there was PrintABlok development happening as well. Electrobloks and just generic bloks that could still be used to make all kind of amazing builds.

By the end of Skyforce I had accomplished many of the ideas outlined at the end of Mechs… and had a whole new set of ideas to explore. What if I could make tiny little pilots and add them to the build? What if I took some of the Mechs sets and fleshed them out with more like them and turned them into a whole family of builds?

I’ve already started exploring some of these ideas, and plan to explore more in the near future.  My recent development of a new ball and joint hinge was in service of exploring more robos and better mechs. But even if I explore all the ideas I have now, I’m sure I’ll have more. Heck, already in the back of my mind I’d like to explore extending PrintABloks to less boy toy areas like imaginative doll houses and the like. My discord continues to provide awesome PrintABlok ideas, and I’m sure will continue to do so.

Some people spend their entire life looking for that one great idea. I can’t say PrintABlok has made me rich, but it’s certainly kept me busy. But the idea for PrintABlok’s next steps didn’t all come from me. It’s all of you who see in a little block and 6 funny shaped holes a world of possibilities.