AI, Maker Tools, and a Rabbit With a Right Hook

How modern tools, online fabrication services, and AI put factory-level power back in the hands of real builders.

Independence and agency aren’t only about solar panels and self-hosted servers.
Sometimes it’s a two-dollar sticker you cooked up yourself instead of plastering someone else’s brand identity on your gear.

Autonomy starts small.
You don’t really own something until you’ve put a little of yourself into it.

A few months after hip surgery it was time to get back in the saddle again. Literally.

This time on a brand-new KLR-650 that stopped being stock the second I rolled it into the driveway.

Brighter brake lights.
Skid plate.
Hand guards.
The usual upgrades.

But it was still missing something.
Something that said there are many like this, but this one is mine.

So I had a dumb idea.
The good kind.

Make a logo that matched the bike’s personality.

A rabbit that hits as hard as the KLR’s 652 cc thumper.

Not a cute bunny.

A rabbit that looks like it just tore out of the underbrush with bad intentions and a mean right hook.

Something that says, “Yeah, this is mine. You got a problem with that?”

And once I had that picture in my head, I wanted to see it for real. So I did what any builder does when an idea won’t leave him alone. It was time to get out the tools and put something together.

In days of old I would sit down, pull out the pencils and paper, and start sketching.
Rough lines. Bad proportions. Erased mistakes.
Slowly turning the idea into something that could actually live on the side of a bike.

But modern problems require modern solutions.

So instead of burning through another stack of paper, I decided to employ that AI thing everyone won’t shut up about. Not to “create art” or whatever people claim it does. I just wanted a faster way to hammer my rough sketch into something usable. A power tool for drawing.

So I fed my rough sketch into the machine and started cranking on it. Line weight, posture, proportions, attitude. Nudge this. Sharpen that. Fix the damn ears. It was the same old process I’ve always used, just faster. Like having a junior apprentice who never gets tired and doesn’t argue about doing another revision.

AI isn’t the sharpest tool in the box. Sometimes it gets it perfect, and sometimes it dives straight into the rabbit hole of stupid like it packed a lunch for the trip.

But I wasn’t about to sink a week into this little dalliance. I’ve got a lot of projects on the docket, and frankly, I’d rather be out breaking in these bionic hip joints on the bike than burning daylight babysitting a digital rabbit.

So I sparred with GPT for about thirty minutes or so, trading stupidity and brilliance in equal measure, and eventually our beloved Thumper clawed his way out of the chaos.

Now the next question was how to turn this stream of bits into something I could actually stick to the fairings.

So I asked the great and powerful Oz who could make decals that wouldn’t bail out after a week or two of wet riding.

I would’ve preferred to give the business to a local print shop, but the turnaround was longer than I had patience for, and most places don’t get excited when you show up wanting a handful of weird, one-off decals. I just wanted to get this project done and move on, not become someone’s problem of the day.

The “great GPT” suggested a few online vendors that actually handle odd-shaped decals. The whole process started to feel a lot like how I spin up PC boards for my projects.

I was snapped back to reality and my preference for keeping the work in the USA, ideally with someone who isn’t busy turning our money into weapons that could end up pointed in our direction.

The best it could do was StickerApp, which, to be fair, wasn’t a bad suggestion. Their corporate office is off in Sweden somewhere, but at least the U.S. production happens in Maryland. And as the ancient Greek philosopher Mediocritès once said — ehh, good enough.

I uploaded the PNG, picked the finish, hit approve, and fifteen custom die-cut stickers showed up in the mailbox a few days later for about two bucks apiece.

If you want the rabbit, I parked the PNG file are on GitHub, with the rest of my projects. Have at it.

This story wasn’t about slapping a rabbit on a fairing. It’s about the ridiculous era we’re living in, where a builder can run KiCad for boards, SendCutSend for metal, and an AI for art, and end up with pro-grade results without ever leaving the shop. We’ve got a modern toolbox full of miracles, and half the time we forget to appreciate just how wild that is.

Because underneath it all, this isn’t about decals, software, or fabrication services. It’s about how these tools give the little guy the kind of power that used to belong only to factories and corporations.

And if you stick around here long enough, you’ll see that this rabbit is just one small example of a much bigger mission: putting real capability back into the hands of real builders. No gatekeepers. No permission slips. Just tools, grit, and the stubborn desire to make things that actually work.

If that sounds like your kind of trouble, you’re in the right place.
Pull up a chair. More projects are coming.