Pretzel Prints designs some of the most unique 3D models out there — creepy skulls, a skeleton you bury in a working sand garden, flexi bones — and she does something almost nobody in this space does on purpose: she keeps her best files off the public platforms. In this episode we get into why. We talk design theft, staying an artist inside the 3D printing world, Prusa loyalty, and the wild range of stuff she makes when she's not at the computer — glass blowing, thatched roofs, rocket stoves, and one very cold night in a shelter she helped build by hand.

This is the Asylum Life Night Show, where we sit down with the makers and creators we love watching and get to know the real people behind the work.

Find Pretzel Prints: 🔗 https://pretzelprints.com (and her Linktree for every platform + Patreon)

You've probably already printed one of Karen's ducks. Nate ran a plate of 25 Uncle Sam ducks off the printer for the 4th — every one of them came off a model Karen Chau designed. So when she sat down with me in The Padded Room, I wanted to get past the ducks and into how she actually thinks.

Turns out the ducks are the easy part. Karen came up through 2D design — she's been on Zazzle since 2013, does mascot commissions and small-business sites, and carries a real UX brain into the modeling app. It shows in how deliberately she works: she sketches every model in GoodNotes before she ever opens the software, and she keeps her prints support-free on purpose. We get into the captain duck she just finished, a goose bike-horn built around a printable "Squeaker," her favorite functional print (a maker-chip holder), and a no-glue negative slot she's genuinely proud of for mounting event pins.

The honest stretch of the conversation is the business side — the part she'll tell you she wishes she were better at. How do you take free models on Printables and MakerWorld and turn them into something sustainable? Her answer is a commercial license that lets other makers sell prints of her work, which is how her ducks end up on tables that aren't hers. We also get into the "duck pond" overlay she's vibe-coding for her own Twitch stream — usernames spawn colored ducks, raids parachute in — and the community sculpting game night she's putting together.

This is the show where we sit down with the makers and creators we already enjoy watching and actually get to know them. Grab a seat.

Find Karen Chau:

• Website: karenchaudesigns.com
• Twitch (where she goes live): twitch.tv/karenchaudesigns
• Socials: @karenchaudesigns (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Threads)
• Models: MakerWorld @KCD3D · Printables
• Support: Patreon + Ko-fi, linked from her site

Watch more / join the community:

• Asylum Life: AsylumLife.com
• Discord: discord.gg/asylumlifemakes

Vic told me a rule he set for himself back when he was starting: the filament had to pay for itself or he didn't buy filament. Two rolls off Amazon was a stretch. So the business didn't really start as a plan. It started as the only way to keep printing.

That worked. It worked well enough that he ended up making a video about how 3D printing had killed his hobby — the thing he did for fun was now the thing he owed people. So he went and bought a resin printer that is not allowed to be content. No videos about it, no answers owed to anybody. First thing off the plate was a massive Darth Vader he'd been wanting to do for a while.

We went back through the whole path. His brother called and said he was going to spend his tax return on a 3D printer, and then didn't, and Vic did — an Ender 3 he had to assemble, which he hated, which he gave away to a friend. Resin after that, an Elegoo Mars 3, and custom D&D figures for people's campaigns. That Mars 3 is where 3D Prints by Vic actually started. There was a big filament printer in between that he calls the wrong choice, and then the Bambu Lab X1C, which has over ten thousand print hours on it and has never had a nozzle or a fan replaced.

The part I keep thinking about is what he's built around HueForge. A Learn tab with free tutorials and cheat sheets on it, a seven-episode masterclass, a filament database built specifically for transmission distance because the manufacturers don't test for it, and a margin calculator for the subscribers who sell their prints. His words for why he keeps building tools: if my designs aren't good enough for you to stick around, what can I make that is?

And he told a story about a show where two of his own Patreon subscribers had booths selling his designs. He walked in braced for it to be awkward. About halfway through the first day they were sending customers to each other, and all of them made more money.

Find Vic: 3DprintsbyVic.com · @3dprintsbyvic Come hang out: discord.gg/asylumlifemakes

Live life to the fullest. Grow in wisdom. Show what you've learned generously.