The following is a recent addition to the @HyypeHQ written interview series. The conversation gives insight into one of the leading CC0 Artists within the Noun Ecosystem, @Greta_Gremplin.

Anaroth: Gm, has Art always been a large part of your life? Or is it something that happened as a result of NFTs?

Greta Gremplin: Since I can remember, I liked to doodle, and I always loved art. While I studied science initially, I later changed my major to design. I had an innate love of the creative process, and I always loved to create Art. I was always the kid that got picked to do the posters for school activities and I doodled incessantly. Instead of listening to my teachers, I was making funny cartoons or caricatures of the teacher.

Anaroth: What is your motivation behind the Greta Mashup Club?

Greta Gremplin: I entered the crypto space because of NFTs, ever since my friend told me about what was happening I found myself fascinated in the space. Being here eventually led me to discover Nouns, and then Noadz, and I found myself hooked on CC0. Collecting didn’t feel like enough at this point and I began to think of doing a collection of my own, a small one, but I didn’t know were to start.

When Greta entered the Twitter space, is was just a prank to Dr.Bullfrug. I thought he needed me, and i’m so in love with him. First for his brains, then for his Adonis body, he toke me by surprise, hypnotized by his manly musk, that scent of swamp, oh dear, I’m getting hot just thinking about it… anyway!

I started doing some quick sketches with mash-ups from the Noadz holders and they absolutely loved it. The confidence in their reaction led me to ask if I should make a collection and the community again showed me incredible support and encouragement. Special thanks to Mr.Noadz who helped me a lot, although at first he didn’t trust me because I am so madly in love with his enemy Dr.Bullfrug. The Noadz community was so supportive that I gave the first MashUps as free mints, and thus began the collection of Mash-Ups.

I’m still very excited by the possibilities, and friendships this project brought. My goal is the same, keep doing weird and mad things and help CC0 collections thrive. One of my goals with this collection is to be a compendium for all CC0 collections, while also exploring and showing the extreme power of CC0. With CC0 the possibilities are endless, and if one of us thrives we all grow.

Anaroth: Do you find yourself thinking about future career opportunities differently since you entered NFTs?

Greta Gremplin: Yes, but i will always do what i’m doing now. I love my IRL work, although since covid, and because i’m a freelancer, its more difficult to get a steady income.

Anaroth: What has been one of your proudest moments in your Art career? What did you learn from that process?

Greta Gremplin: Every day someone contacts me for a piece, i’m proud. Every piece I create I learn. However, the proudest moment I had was when Dr. Bullfrug acknowledge my work. it was so sexy! To have the person that inspired you to join the space acknowledge my work meant a lot. The second moment I feel very proud of was when Sr. Noadz invited me to do a 1/1 for his collection. I really enjoyed being able to give back to the community.

Anaroth: Where do you get your Artistic inspiration from? Who are some people in the space you look up to and why?

Greta Gremplin: I get my inspiration on CC0 from Mother Fucking Master Excellent Super Gremplin. Cartoon Network shows like Adventure Time, Gumball and other oldies like Samurai Jack, Rugrats, and a bunch more all serve as a source of inspiration. While I don’t feel like I know a lot of people in the NFT space, I have immense respect for the Nouns, Cryptoadz, Noadz, and there’s a lot more i like and follow. All i can say is Dr.Bullfrug is the best and I love him!

(if you are reading this… baby tonight is the night ;))

Anaroth: What is some of the best advice that you have been given from someone in the NFT space? What advice would you give to someone entering the space now?

Greta Gremplin: Be careful anddon’t trust every link. Do you due diligence and double check twitter handles… and then double check again. Only follow Me, Dr. Bullfrug, and Hyype (so you can read this amazing interview) the other things aren’t so important.

Anaroth: What are you currently working on that would would like people to know about?

I have plans to release a limited collection based off of the Rekt Cats from the Dippening of 2021. I also look to bring noun culture into current events and the market conditions led me to the idea of creating Rekt Nouns. No one has seen all of them yet, the first was raffled away to a Greta Mash-Up owner to continue to support and thank those that have supported me, the others will be auctioned off starting at .1 Eth over the coming days and weeks. As I said before, I fell in love with CC0 and the nouns ecosystem, and enjoy being able to focus my work to bring more attention to collections I love. Also no promises, but I have seen the Lil Nouns… and they have my attention, I don’t know what that will turn into, but I see you Lil Nouns.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

When you connect your wallet now on Hyy.pe, your ENS is your default onboarding username. You can choose to use your ENS name as your hyy.pe username or have a unique username localised to hyy.pe.

We did this to support wallets who do not have an ENS name yet, but would want the same degree of user-friendliness when it comes to profile discovery. Both hyy.pe usernames and ENS names can co-exist in the same interface.

Where do the ENS names show up?

1. On your hyy.pe profile - If you have an ENS name set, it will be displayed by default instead of your wallet address.

2. On NFT details page - If the NFT owner or NFT minter is not on hyy.pe and has an ENS name set, that is displayed instead of the wallet address:

3. Profile discoverability - If you have an ENS name set to your wallet address and your hyype username =/= ENS name, then all 3 links will point to the same entity. For example:

• By wallet address - hyy.pe/0x59a5493513bA2378Ed57aE5ecfB8A027E9D80365

• By ENS name - hyy.pe/DCinvestor.eth

• By Hyype username - hyy.pe/DCinvestor

All of the above lead to the same profile page

4. API endpoints - Now it is possible to query lores written by a specific author. Detailed documentation on how to make the query is here . All of these following queries are valid and showcase ens compatibility:

api.hyy.pe/api/v1/lores?skip=0&limit=50&ens=dcinvestor.eth

api.hyy.pe/api/v1/lores?skip=0&limit=50&userName=dcinvestor

api.hyy.pe/api/v1/lores?skip=0&limit=50&walletAddress=0x59a5493513bA2378Ed57aE5ecfB8A027E9D80365

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

Anaroth: Can you share a little about the transition you made as a creator from drawing to animation? I feel like that had to be such a powerful unlock.

Cashie: I have been drawing since I was a kid, and growing up is hard, there are so many paths to choose. I made the choice to drop my drawing career and find another path because I had this feeling that I wasn’t good enough. Then this friend of mine invited me to an animation workshop, and from there I learned a lot about animation. After months of attending the workshop, finally I had a chance to have a freelance job for a 2DFX artist in the animation industry. I honed my skills there for about five years but due to the pandemic and the impacts that it had I quit that job. I decided to take a gamble on this NFT world as an animator from the start. It turned out to be a great decision, and I am happy to have the opportunities I do.

Anaroth: How did you discover NFTs? Do you find yourself still collecting today? Any grails you wish you had?

Cashie: I had this friend of mine that introduced me to this play2earn game called Axie Infinity last July 2021. I was shocked because I had no idea that you could really earn money playing a game. From this entry point I learned about a lot of NFT games, from Cryptoblades and some other BSC Smartchain games and things that ultimately went to zero. It happens to the best of us.

That being said I learned a lot about liquidity and coin trading from my time in that space. How I was able to leverage Pancakeswap and stuff. It had been a lot of fun learning and understanding this new knowledge. However, because things didn’t pan out, yeah I became real broke after that. This is when I decided to lay low from Play2earn and start doing some of the Art contest from NFT projects. From there I found myself getting to know projects like BAYC, Doodles, Cool Cats and others. I was late! I wish instead of investing in Axie back during that time of July, I should have minted some BAYC or some Doodles and other bluechips, but I was late. I already saw them around 1 ETH and I didn’t even have a basic grasp of what it was. That’s why I was afraid of investing that amount of money, but I wish I did! If i could just go back in time, damnit what a real life changing opportunity that would be. Haha!

Anaroth: I know you get a lot of commission requests, what advice do you have for Artists that are looking to do more commission work? When and how do you allow yourself to say no?

Cashie: Low prices can be a good weapon for being a commission related artist for startups. Just letting the world see what you can do with those prices, eventually people will start questioning you why your prices are dirt cheap. I swear, someone actually said exactly that to me. That’s when I knew my work was able to be priced higher than I had been. This also allowed me to start picking who I would want to work with.

Saying No can be hard sometimes. For me, if it is hard for me to imagine what it would be and the schedule is real tight, I’ll definitely pass. I find unwanted commission work could burn out a weeks worth of energy in a single day for me. Be mindful of yourself and stay in stuff you can handle. Do not gamble with your mental health, it is too important.

Anaroth: When you reflect back on some of your favorite pieces of artwork, is there a central theme that you feel connects them?

Cashie: Every moving element is my other form of inspiration, just a fire in a candle can get the juices flowing in my creative brain and start seeing the beauty of it. Waves of ocean would, ripples in a glass of water, the rain, the cigarette smoke. It all mesmerizes me, and keeps me inspired.

For now I cant feel that central theme, since i worked on a lot of 2DFX and animation design on clients such as Disney, Warner Bros, Nickeldeon, MLP and others. There we are forced to alter our design to what the client wants. That’s why I have this wide range of style, but don’t necessarily feel like I have a signature design / style yet, and I do wish I did.

Anaroth: Has your NFT commission success changed the way you think about opportunities in your future?

Cashie: One day, I will find myself as a signature artist too. It is my dream. I aspire to be my own Beeple or Gxngyxng, Deekay, Burnt Toast, or some other 1/1 Artist’s out there. It’s my goal now, and I will keep pursuing light in the dark.

Anaroth: Who is someone you would like to collaborate with and why? Have you reached out to them to do so?

Cashie: Gxngyxng of Ghxst and Deekay are my dudes of inspiration! i literally stare at the blank sky and think on how to be like them. Once I build my foundation of being a 1/1 Artist, maybe then I will finally have the courage to come up with plans on collaborating with them. It would be really special to have that opportunity.

Anaroth: How do you overcome a creative block? How does a deadline impact your creativity?

Cashie: For me I find taking a rest, or watching some awesome anime is always a good move for me to recover from a creative block I have. A deadline doesn’t impact my creativity very much, because before I start the commission, it is already finished in my head. It is kind of pre rendered in my brain. I will just need some coffee, and some good music for me to start kicking.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

The following is an amended transcription of the @HyypeHQ Artist Spotlight with @JasonNaylorNYC & @AnarothsNFT on May 20th, 2022.

Anaroth: Welcome and thank you for joining us today. It’s been fun chatting with you throughout the week, but I am looking forward to learning more about you and your work. To help kick us off, could you share a little about yourself and your journey within the Art world so far?

Jason Naylor: I'm very Brooklyn proud, I live in Williamsburg and my apartment looks at the Williamsburg Bridge, which is amazing. It's my favorite view, I'm sitting in my little office looking out at the Williamsburg Bridge and feeling blessed. I love how the view of the bridge and what I can see out my window changes so much based on what's happening with the sky. I am fascinated with the colors of the sky, how you can have so many different colors happen in one day, and how the view is never truly the same?

My work focuses heavily on spreading vibes and positivity, and I do it using bright colors, bright messages, and bright themes are always found in my work. I would say my Art is both traditional and digital. Traditional happens with Spray Paint on large scale murals, like as big as I can get. My digital work stems from my iPad and Apple Pencil along with some occasional After Effects work that gets translated to NFTs. The general mission of my work is to spread love and positivity, I try to paint, talk, and make Art that is very uplifting, but with an edge. I really enjoy the juxtaposition in my work with the edge that comes from Street Art, Graffiti and Spray Paint, but gets juxtaposed with uplifting, wholesome vibes of positivity. That’s the niche that I have found for myself in Street Art and Physical Art, but then there is this new digital medium for me. With my NFTs I have evolved a little bit to explore the darker side of my themes and a little more balance of light, dark, and recognizing that life isn’t always so positive.

Anaroth: You have had success is previous forms of your Art, what was it about NFTs that made you want to branch out and try another medium?

Jason Naylor: I have had a long journey and it's been really exciting, it's like every time there's something new I get really excited about it. While I love painting, I love spray paint, and I love using my hands, I also love the variety that my career brings me. This ability to go back and forth between the physical and digital. Before NFTs I was using digital tools to generate all my sketches, anything that I was sketching for a client, planning for a wall, a mural, I would just do it digitally because it was so easy. Both for my process and the client process, it made things so easy. It is great to be able to sketch my own ideas quickly, but then presenting ideas, get feedback, edits, that whole process digitally makes the most sense.

When I discovered NFT's it was a perfect fit because all of a sudden there's something that I can do with this digital Art. For a while, unless it was an illustration job where I had to hand over digital files, my digital files were really only for my own purposes. I was using digital work to show the work before I painted, or to plan the work but not make the work. It was a couple of years ago that I had started investing in Crypto, and I have always been interested and excited by technology. While I wish I had started sooner, as soon as I discovered Bitcoin I started investing there, and helped me on my journey to NFTs. I remember reading about Ethereum maybe right around when pandemic started, early 2020, and found a rabbit hole that took me to SuperRare. I applied for SuperRare, and got accepted pretty quickly. I think at the time maybe it was less competitive although I will allow myself the credit of saying I was accepted quickly on my merit. So I find myself on SuperRare figuring out this NFT thing, and I had no idea what it was, to me it was a new place to put my Art up. I am the kind of guy that if you tell me I can put my Art there I am going to do it.

Anaroth: Thank you for sharing, the curiosity you speak to is such a great skill to have. Who are some of the people that have been influential in your web3 / NFT journey so far? Is there a specific lesson you have learned that stand out to you?

Jason Naylor: Yea, so going back to the early days… which is weird to say since the early days is about a year and a half ago. But before I minted anything I was already on SuperRare and was just trying to understand what the hell was happening. I remember watching on IG where people were posting about their NFT drops, and two Artists were killing it right out of the gate. One was Matt Gondek and the other WhIsBe, both were my friends and I was following them on socials. The reason I say both though is they simultaneously came out of the gate with these big NFT projects. I remember thinking, ok these guys are doing something right, I need to try and learn something from them.

What I took away from WhIsBe was the way he did the marketing portion of his drop, and that wasn’t an aspect that I had really thought through yet. If you know WhIsBe’s work it is all about this Gummy Bear called Vandal Gummy. He had these different iterations of the bear and one of them was a skeleton of the bear, but instead of actually showing the skeleton of the bear he showed this video of this scene with flames and hype and stuff. But you didn’t get to see the piece, it created this great sense of FOMO. The lesson I took away though is it isn’t just about making work, and then showing people look how cool my work is, there’s real strategy. I wanted to plan and really think about how I wanted to build interest in my work, without necessarily showing my work.

I started to mint some of my own pieces at this point, and making some videos about my work, but didn’t show my work. Fast forward a little bit and I want to shout out one other Artist, EfDot, a solid guy with great work. He came in a little later to the game, unlike me who is like I am just going to throw this out there and figure it out. I’ll pivot where I need to, but thats my overall tactic. I could see EfDot off to the sidelines a little, just observing, asking questions, and trying to learn. Then later on he came out with this really planned strategy of how he was going to position himself in the space, and has had some amazing success. I couldn’t be happier for him, it shows that there is more than one way to prepare, and it was a really interesting strategy that worked well for him. Those are some of the people that have helped me in different parts of my journey so far.

Anaroth: Now that we talked about some of the people that have played a role in your NFT journey I would love to hear a little about the NFT project you are working on now.

Jason Naylor: The project is called City of Angels, it’s more than just a PFP project because we are working on building a marketplace where you can collect IRL and NFT Art. We are looking to curate Artists on the marketplace that allow them to do Physical and NFT drops together. One of the strengths I have with my experience in both the web2 Art (Physical) and web3 Art (Digital) is being able to tap into both, and I want to make sure other Artists can do that as well. The marketplace for City of Angels will unlock the potential for vinyl toy drops with accompanying NFT authentication and much more. The way you will get access to the marketplace is by owning the City of Angels PFP, but as I said earlier that is just the start. I am super excited about this project, we’ve tailored it to have a mission that aligns with my own. The Angels are my baby, which I have created like minions to carry out my own mission of spreading love and kindness. The Artists that we collaborate with in the marketplace also will be making a difference in the world, it’s not just about hype, but the impact that we are making. Take a look at the website, roadmap, and white paper for all the details.

Anaroth: Earlier you mentioned how you have this natural curiosity to pursue new technology, looking ahead what ways do you see the technology allowing you to create differently?

Jason Naylor: It is interesting how fast the technology changes and grows, but also I find it interesting how quickly I have been able to keep up, learn, and grow with it. In the beginning of creating an NFT itself, maybe with a little animation, mint, then list and that used to be a big. Then utility enters the equation and as an Artist that isn’t a common factor. Investors love utility, of course, but from the Art point of view no one has ever been like if you show me a photo of this painting you get free coffee for life. That shit doesn’t exist, so adding this idea of utility to my Art as an Artist that’s pretty massive. I want to provide my collectors with something that is meaningful. So when I look down the line what I am thinking about is how can I use new technology to make projects that are exciting and fresh.

Like making a project where collectors create the Art during the mint process so it isn’t as much of a grab bag random generation. I really like that idea, say take 500 pieces in Mr. Potato Head fashion, you go on the platform and create the one you like and mint it right there and then that combination can’t be used again. While I know other projects have done something similar, the idea of taking my work, my themes, and have it be this magical unique on platform experience for my collectors is amazing. Since things move so fast it isn’t so much a 3 - 5 year plan as it is me always looking to take advantage of emerging technology. To succinctly answer your question I want to make the Art more exciting, more interesting, more valuable, that's where I want to go.

Anaroth: As someone with no artistic talent, I always like to ask what an Artist does when they feel creatively stuck. Can you talk through your Artistic process and how you overcome creative blocks?

Jason Naylor: To be honest my process is pretty formulaic, I think the luxury of a formulaic process comes from doing the work for a long time. At this stage I have been doing this for 15 years, so it starts with an objective of what I want to create and then I will think on that. I really love working out in the morning, I’ll hop on the bike and do a workout and I will be thinking about things and an idea will come to me. Now when I say formulaic it’s not about what I want to communicate, but how and where. My work always centers good vibes, positivity, kindness and related things. So for me it is very much visualizing another version of the same type of message. Sometimes I will think about what things should look like while I am not making things, and then when I sit down at the iPad I already have a rough game plan that I had built before the fact.

That is where the formulaic part comes in, I have a very distinct and preset color palette that I use. All the digital colors I use match the spray paint that I use in my murals. My drawing process is very whimsical and organic. I like to draw big shapes and put colors on the page and start to block it in. It's almost like sculpting the piece a little bit and then i'll just keep refining digitally. When I go to paint, the challenge of getting the design onto the wall depending on the scale of it I often use either a grid system or a projector to get all the work up there. After I have the outline it is very similar to the process I mentioned before where I start blocking out the colors of the spray cans, and chiseling down the shapes until it looks the way I want it to.

I think in terms of advice and honing ones process, It’s hard to tell someone how to hone their craft, the best advice I can give is to keep doing it. Do the process each day, do the drawing exercise each day, do it so often that it becomes like muscle memory and you’ll start to see patterns in your work and that will become your formula. Now when the formula isn’t working, to answer the second part of your question about being stuck, my best tactic is to just walk away. For me I love to just get in the car and drive, or if it is nice out, hop on my motorcycle and just ride, thats the best thing. It takes so much focus and attention to be safe on a motorcycle that it totally clears my mind. I will take a 20 - 30 minute ride and come back and can feel totally reset.

Anaroth: When you reflect on your Art career can you share one of the moments that left you feeling really proud of what you created?

Jason Naylor: I feel good saying that I think I have a lot of those moments, but let me share two with you. One more general and another a little more concrete. In general I feel very proud when I complete a mural, I get this massive feeling of accomplishment. Part of that feeling comes from the unique challenges that I encounter in the creation process. For example, the other day I did this piece in a courtyard in front of a hotel and it was so windy! The wind was channeling through this courtyard and it was almost impossible to get the paint from the can onto the wall. When it is complete though, I can stand back and have this feeling of I can’t believe I got through that, it’s a true sense of accomplishment. There is almost a feeling of surprise that I finished the piece, as though I didn’t think I could do it, but knew I could. It is like this magical moment every time I finish a piece and see my work. I have made it a habit that when I finish something I take 20 minutes to sit and appreciate my work and what I accomplished. I stand back and just soak it in, not right up at the wall, a ways back, just admiring what is complete. Allowing myself to enjoy the feeling of yea, I just did that.

In terms of a specific piece that I am proud of I think back to my first mural in Manhattan on 16th and 6th Ave. Before this I had never used spray paint as a medium, and the wall I painting on was this really craggy brick. I had always used bucket paint for my murals in the past, but because of the type of wall spray paint was the only option. It took me about 10 days to paint this wall, in hindsight it should have taken me a day or two. But in the course of that 10 days I was able to figure out how to use spray paint well enough to complete the wall. That specific wall has a special place in my heart because first it was the most challenging, and there was so much growth in that 10 day period. Second because it is so monumental to get a mural in Manhattan, it is not easy to have that opportunity.

When I reflect on that wall there were just so many wins to that one wall, my break so to speak. That is definitely one of my most special moments in my career. Another quick thing I would like to add is I think that at times we as Artists can be cavalier about the work we create. It’s so precious while you are working on it, but when it is done its almost like on to the next one. I have learned to try and reposition this in my mind where every piece you finish is a major accomplishment. If I don’t appreciate the work that I made, how can I expect someone else to find value in it? Enjoy, appreciate, and feel proud of every piece you complete.

Anaroth: You mentioned earlier on in our conversation about how central the themes of love and positivity is at the heart of what you do. Do you ever have a desire to explore some of the darkness, or duality from the positivity in your work?

Jason Naylor: I think this is a really relevant question because I do see that I often focus on the silver lining so to speak in my work. There is this idea of toxic positivity and I like to bring that up, I happen to be a very upbeat and positive person, I am always the guy who sees the glass half full. So for me to see the bright side of things is very comfortable and common. But what I think has allowed me to focus so purely on that with my work is the fact that my life has not always been rainbows and butterflies. I have had a lot of dark times in my life, and while I won’t go into those now, I do find that having these dark times in your life, these difficult times, it give you a really clear understanding of the good in your life. I feel like I have a really clear understanding of the light that is in my life because of all the darkness. I’m not saying oh my life has been so hard, my life has been like everyone else's life, there are difficult things, there are shitty things, and there are great things.

If you look back at my work 15 years ago, it hasn’t always been so bright, colorful and vibrant, it has been an evolution. When I first moved to NYC 15 years ago that was very challenging for me, and my sketchbooks reflect that. I didn’t really see that at the time, but my drawings, my Art, my sketches were all very dark at the time, tortured, misunderstood and emo. It was this punk emo thing, and I love it, and I should totally bring some out sometime. When I reflect on that Art it was a reflection of who I was at the time. The big picture here is that the art that I am making now is a reflection of what's in my heart and who I am. I don't wanna be toxic with the positivity, and I don't believe that saying you are happy 100 times will make you happy, but my work is a reflection of me, and I am a very happy person right now.

Now having said all that I do like to explore the balance in things, and what I love about the NFT world is that the audience here seems to embrace the balance of the dark side of things. While I love putting very positive things on the street because of that juxtaposition that I mentioned, in the NFT world I think bringing a little bit of the darkness and providing balance is really exciting for me. I'm painting a mural next week with the Bushwood Collective, which is an international mural festival, and the piece I am planning is very much about the undertones of life. The piece is going to show how the dark things that are in life make the sweet sweeter. Long story short though, I think this space has a lot of room for me to explore the balance of things.

Anaroth: Earlier you mentioned how some of your friends approached the NFT space, for those that have been watching and waiting and are feeling like this is their time to get in, what advice would you give them?

Jason Naylor: I think that the best thing an Artist can do is be true to themselves. Do what feels right, trust your gut, and be true to who you are. If you are watching the space, watching other Artists, it is easy to be like ok I need to tailor my work, modify, and adjust to that style. You can see someone who is successful and it is natural to think that your path to success will come from emulating theirs, and this is totally not the case. I am not just saying this, this is advice that I have to take too, knowing that your path is your own unique path. I think that is the best advice I can give, not just for NFTs but for life as well.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

The following is an amended transcription of the @HyypeHQ Artist Spotlight on May 13th, 2022 between @AnarothsNFT & @KrisK_NFT.

Anaroth: Welcome, and thank you for coming to talk with us today. I have been looking forward to learning more about Bull Market Girlfriends since we planned our conversation. To help people understand a little more about you could you share a little about yourself & your project?

KrisK: Hi, thank you for having me, I am KrisK, artist behind the Bull Market Girlfriends project. The project exists as a collection of 2,500 portraits of women from all over the world, all nationalities, in an effort to show the beauty of all women. Something unique is how I create the portraits, I use a singular line without lifting the pen. Not for the entirety of the piece but for each of the layers, so the visage would be with one brush stroke, the neck, the hair etc. After all the layers are complete I fill them in with our computer generated palette colors, which I really feel lends to the each piece feeling unique and having a Pop Art theme in the look of them that exists throughout the collection.

I do have to say though, even after all this time I still have a feeling of imposter syndrome. Like it has been some time but I still question myself. Yes, I am an Artist now, and our project is growing, but deep inside there is still this feeling of “I just like to draw”.

Anaroth: I appreciate you sharing that, imposter syndrome is very real and a common topic within conversations I have had with some other Artists, and I always appreciate the vulnerability. I read that you see this clear distinction between knowing you can do something, and the act of actually doing it. Can you tell us a little about your discovery of NFTs and how you transitioned from knowing about them, to creating them?

KrisK: I feel like I have always been a creative person, all my life from three or five years old I remember being creative. The creation would be with everything around me. My clothing I would remake myself, the furniture wasn’t safe from me. During this early time, I remember photography being something I enjoyed a lot. Another point of vulnerability for me is I am nervous with Twitter Spaces, if you asked me to sit and draw something it wouldn’t be a problem. However, sharing and talking through those things can be challenging, but that is also how we get better at things.

Anyway, I had always loved creating and drawing, but had a bigger desire to become a more well known Artist, and my husband Martin was really supportive of that. I remember the second day after he sold his business he came up to me and said “Ok let’s make this project.” He had always been the one that was more into Crypto, but he told me about NFTs and how that was going to be the way for me to explore my creativity further. I had never seen or used an iPad before, I hadn’t heard of NFTs before, but I had my mentality. Learn it, do it, boom. That’s exactly what I did. When I think about NFTs I feel like they offer great exposure for an Artist. A lot of people get to see your Art, if it was a physical painting it would be in a gallery or someones home. But with NFTs your work can be seen all over the world. The digital realm also offers a community, where now collectors and Artists are finally able to talk to each other, be closer, and that wasn’t as possible before. Martin has also been a big help with the organizing of the project and allowing me to focus on creating.

Anaroth: I know you do commissions and collaborations within the NFT space, How do you go about choosing what to say yes to and focus on?

KrisK: Collaborations are one of my favorite things to do, I always find myself looking forward to working on them. I dropped a piece just last week with the Artist EarlyWorm. The piece had been ready for a bit, but life got in the way and pushed it back, so I was happy to have it come out. Another piece coming is with the first female Artist I have worked with, all of my collabs have been with great Artists but I am happy that ArinaBBart is the first woman I collaborated with.

In regards to commission work, we have something setup on our website. People are able to reach out if they are interested in a commission and depending on the time I have available to me I can choose to engage or not. I remember at the beginning of Bull Market Girlfriends I was just way to busy to be able to offer time to any commission work. Afterwards after we built up or processes and I did have some more time I was able to go back and filter through them. I think being honest with your community is really important here, and that’s exactly what I shared with my community.

I personally feel that when someone is seeking you out for a commissioned piece it is a great form of recognition. Someone saying they like your work so much they want to get something personal and custom. I have one collector who reached out to get a Bull Market Girlfriend of his wife, then printed it and has it hanging in their home. To me this is mind blowing to have people that care so much for my work that they want to display it in a way they are proud.

Anaroth: I know you touched on it briefly, but tell us a little more about your affinity to portrait based Art.

KrisK: When Martin and I were talking about pursuing Art full time we knew I had to find my style. Something that would allow me to stand out from others around me. Before doing this project I had been drawing sketches and such, like I said I have always been artistic, but didn’t have a signature style. I don’t have a shortcut for finding that, it took a lot of time. I tried so many different forms and styles, but in the end portraits felt the most attractive to me, something I could see myself pursuing.

I hope I am articulating myself ok, I speak five languages and sometimes it is all a bit of a mess in my head when I translate things. But back to your questions around portraits, I knew even though I was passionate about them I needed to do more to stand out. That is where the singular line thought process came to be, allowing my work to have something unique that adds to the collection. I had done so many types of portraits and when I did the single line method it was challenging and hard. It attracted me to want to master it. When Martin and I both agreed that this was something special it became a natural starting point for the project. Martin has been so helpful, and the project wouldn’t be where it is without him.

Anaroth: I saw that you have really enjoyed being able to travel and create. Do you find that the culture of where you travel creeps into your work?

KrisK: I honestly don’t feel that it impacts what I create, but rather it gives me the freedom to travel which is one of my favorite things to do. Though I can say that after we started this project I wasn’t traveling much because I was creating so much. But more than anything I see traveling and creating as a sense of freedom.

Anaroth: I think it is important to reflect on some of the proud moments that you've had as an Artist. Would you mind sharing what one of those moments is for you?

Krisk: I think as a whole being able to be an active Artist. I’m so proud to say I am an Artist, this is what I do everyday, to create, and to have people experience and hold my Art will never stop feeling special. I’m humbled every time someone collects a piece of work I’ve created, every time someone shares their experience of my art. Every collaboration I do is a proud moment, to connect with another Artist, to create something inspired by their work, and them by mine, is such an exciting and beautiful process. It’s surreal to think that people have paid over $100,000 for a piece of my work, but in a way that ties back to that feeling of imposter syndrome. I can see my achievements, I can talk about them, but sometimes it just doesn’t feel like me. That being said I am so grateful for the place I find myself in, and couldn’t be more proud of that.

Anaroth: What is some advice you would give to those that are looking to create in the space now?

KrisK: Ok everyone says this, every Twitter space I am in I hear it, but community matters. The advice that I would give is to build your community, focus on them, give back to them. The most genuine advice I could give to someone who wants to create in this space though would be to create what you love. It’s difficult for me to articulate questions related to advice, words are not my best form of expression. I know what I want to communicate, but the way I do that is through my art. But I know that isn’t my strength, but it happens to be Martins.

Anaroth: As we close out this space what would you to share regarding any upcoming events you have planned?

KrisK: I am really excited for what is coming. We are going to be having a mint event where both initial sales and secondary sales go to a charity. We are in the process of finalizing those charities now. At the same time as the mint event we will be launching our Decentraland gallery. The construction has been completed, it’s across six plots, a beautiful architecturally designed building, I can’t wait for people to see that too!

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

The following is an amended transcription of the @HyypeHQ Artist Spotlight on May 6th, 2022 between @FrankyNines & @AnarothsNFT.

Anaroth: Thank you for taking some time and talking with today. While you may be most known in this space for being the creator and Artist of SupDucks, you have had a lot of amazing life experience that has brought you to this point. To kick us off, could you share a little bit about your career so far to give us some context?

FrankyNines: Yea, about me. I don’t really know how to label myself. I am an Artist, designer, graphic designer who's been in this space from an early time. I started my career around mid 2000ish in Silicon Valley in the gaming industry. Before then my interests started in Street Art, then learned how to build websites, and worked to put myself through college. After college I worked for Zynga and other gaming companies, started building my own apps and do my own development. As I built my own things I also started collaborating, growth hacking, breaking stuff, and building viral Art apps. I've kind of been like a multidisciplinary artist, developer, designer.

Then in 2017 I started to get into blockchain working for a company that was creating identity Layer wallet in the UK. That's what injected me into Ethereum and the Ethereum technology space. I was working in the industry and I saw Crypto Kitties and it made sense to me. I ended up jumping on the NFT bandwagon and started working with Dapper Labs for about two years. Afterwards, I bounced around the space working and becoming a prominent Artist within it, minting things on different platforms. I had done a lot of brand design work for some of the larger projects in the space and the evolution of that brought me to where I am today.

Anaroth: On your website bio it talks about leading design and engineering teams. What are some learns that you had trying to lead two very different types of people to bring a project or design to fruition?

FrankyNines: You know it’s interesting, because I was / am an Artist first. I got into Street Art, graphic design, and taught myself before I really knew what I was doing. This was when I was really young, like a teenager. Back then, having a tumblr, geocities, or a myspace page and being able to customize it was the beginning of teaching myself about design. I've always had a knack for trying to figure out how things work, being talented on the Artistic side, being able to visually communicate what I am trying to express and then code it truly set me apart. The ability to execute on both fronts, being able to work with both types of teams has been a skill. Like you said, an Art team, production, team design, team UX, and even a development team are quite different, and it’s rare that you can find people that understand it all. For me, knowing how to design and code has helped me bridge the gap.

When it comes to designing a product or application you have to have a more logical understanding of user behavior. Once you build up those formulas, then you can start to translate Art into code. I think that’s the beautiful part of why I am so passionate about the things I do. The fact that I can take visual stuff and break it down to a more logical math based complex system, translated through code, and then use different frameworks to be able to achieve that. So when looking at multiple teams I am able to speak both languages and have the best chance to share my vision. When I think about the previous work I did in the space it really set me up with a solid foundation as I worked on SupDucks. The best way that I can explain how I am where I am today is that I have been practicing for a long time. I think with any individual, when you are constantly trying things, learning, and then take that learn and apply it to the next thing. Constantly evolving, constantly changing, and thats the same with SupDucks as a project. I have pieces and experiences from my past that I can constantly pull from. Whether it was level design for an MMORPG, designing app buttons for iOS, all those little tips and tricks that i've picked up along the way all stack into my design thinking and process. It all lends to how I am approaching this project and how I want to move it forward.

Anaroth: Where was the space was a year ago versus where it is now? What did you see the space needed a year ago versus what do you see it needing now?

FrankyNines: That’s an interesting question. Let’s see, a year ago we are still pandemic … ish. I think there was some series of events that happened that escalated this movement. The technology and the boom and stuff, people working from home, the increasing interest in crypto, there's been a lot of different stages of the evolution of where we're at right now. Before PFPs and games and stuff like that there was a really big NFT art community. Art was the big noise, with SuperRare and Known Origin Artists dropping artwork that didn't have utility, function, or license rights. Just Art. Then we moved to a new phase of PFPs and it changed the spectrum a little bit. Now you have people who own this piece of Art, have rights to license it, and are part of a larger community. This change of focus to being able to build something with the community, with DAO’s, Games, and other events has been the big shift over the last year. But that’s also just a small part of the larger Web3 ecosystem. There’s still DeFi, Crypto and a lot that happens that isn’t flashy, but still making a very large impact in terms of the volume, energy and money being moved around.

Anaroth: In your opinion, like what are some of the biggest benefits and I suppose, pitfalls of having a project so publicly tied to you as an Artist?

FrankyNines: This type of industry, where there's a lot of anonymous actors, where that anonymous nature is built into the space as a whole. People like the idea of being able to own Crypto or NFTs and not have their identity be present. You know there are KYC layers, but people that do go to share their identity, or start to be more of a face and open themselves up to be like Yo! This is who I am. I think there's there's a separation there. Now to answer the question about being an Artist in that kind of scenario, it’s tough. I remember I was on a call with some colleagues of mine and sharing that this is a different type of influencer. Being an Artist in this space, being a creator in this space, letting my identity out being associated with my project, there is an amount of caution I have. I don’t know who my fans are, some of them I have made amazing connections with, others will be my friends on IG or Twitter or whatever.

But some of those supporters they don't want their identity shown, so you have this anonymous layer that can be kind of weird sometimes. Like if you look through a big whale wallet on OpenSea, you’re like who is this guy? You don’t know anything about them, but you can see they are moving hundreds of NFTs at a time. So as the person who is the face of a project, I have people supporting me like that and to be perfectly honest, it is a hard situation to navigate. At the same time though there’s this chunk of people that exist in the space that are cool to connect with and build real solid relationships. Then there are other people where I have to say to myself, I just don’t know who you are.

Anaroth: Has the experience of creating and building SupDucks changed the way you think about what you would want to create in the future?

FrankyNines: For me, I see SupDucks as a value that I am building that has evolved over time. First it was here’s this cool character, we’re making PFPs, and we have this cool discord group. Now, it has evolved into a brand, we are making a cartoon, we have community activation and association. These characters we have created are now like digital influencers, and the project as a whole continues to evolve as we go further down the timeline. Reflecting on the past, what I have done is really focus on building SupDucks and SupDucks IP. As an Artist, the opportunity exists to just create a bunch of stuff, I could have gone out and created SupDogs, SupMonkeys, SupFrogs, SupDucks and done a cash grab, but I didn’t do that.

What I have done is hyper-focus on SupDucks and I want to build my Mickey Mouse. I want to build my Springfield and The Simpsons, my Rick & Morty, I want to build THAT! I think that as the industry changes, my level of thinking on where my focus should be also starts to change. I think that’s one thing specifically with me where I have to say I hate roadmaps. Don’t get me wrong, roadmaps are great for putting out milestones of things that you want to achieve. But you don't know what's going to happen, and you need to be flexible to be able to adapt and change to scale. For example, if I thought that the coolest thing was making it so that SupDucks are peoples PFPs and that’s all the focus was. I make an incredible experience for that over two years, but it turns out that two years from now people aren’t looking for that. You have to ask yourself, how much time did I waste by not being flexible? With the IP and understanding of what i've built, being flexible to change, and just being invested in this specific project and keeping my focus here is just really really important.

Anaroth: In the broader vision that you have for SupDucks as a whole did you always want YouTube, music, and media all to be part of the project? Or is that a reflection of what you were just talking about in regards to being flexible over time?

FrankyNines: For me, I think the benefit of understanding how technology works and how tech is built helps me frame things. In tech, when we look at a web3 boom or a mobile boom there’s a proprietary technology that’s developed that becomes very high value. Algorithms, social networking layers, we saw that with instagram and twitter and snapchat. The like button, the face filters, those types of things are what lots of projects and teams focus on. A thought process of we are going to build and secure this technology. I am choosing to approach it differently, because if we are being realistic it is not hard to make an NFT contract. There's youtube videos for it, the reason why people can spin up collections so fast and do rug pulls is because it's not some secret code hidden from the public. It's open source and on blockchain. A lot of contract code is on Etherscan, you can fork it and build a version of it.

So for me, media plays into where I seek to build value for the SupDucks brand. When you think about brands and media, they compliment each other. I think the content that we create whether it's our live streams, skits, educational videos, Art videos, having these things all associated with the brand helps build long term value. I think by approaching a project in that way you don't put yourself in a box, right?

Remember that there were a few years where everyone was on vine, then instagram, these things have waves. So when everyone is “over it” so to speak, not being too tied to the technology as much as being tied to the brand can be good. The idea of building things that have long term value that can scale for me is the approach of how I see the future rolling out. The media and content that we are creating is building the trust and validation of the knowledge and history that we have. Communicating through our content pipelines and media, I think is the right move for me specifically, and just being in LA right? The epicenter of Hollywood, there's opportunity here where the SupDucks IP can become the next generations Simpsons or Family Guy. I think that media content, just training and building those muscles, and not being so tied to the platforms but focusing on building the brand so that it fits into the platforms is the strategy.

Anaroth: How is it that you go about deciding who you choose to give your time to? In collaboration or an interview what are some things that stick out to you that gives you confidence in it being a good use of your time?

FrankyNines: You know, thats really really tough. I try and reach out and respond to as many people as possible, but sometimes I miss it you know? If anyone was following along this past week with my little hiccup things happen, but to be realistic my DMs are full on IG and Twitter, my email is constantly being blown up. I’ll skim through things, and sometimes things catch my eye. I can reflect for a moment and recognize that yea, I have time for this, let me explore that. For me, the type of interactions that I want to have are the ones that are going to be the most positive, that help me understand how to further the innovation that I am doing now. So I can’t get to every interview, or every twitter space, but I try to get as many as I can, when I can, because I do believe it is important. If you look at a person with influence, A Kanye West or Elon Musk, someone who is really at the top of their game, just imagine how many people are trying to get in contact with them.

I do take two to three hours out of my day to respond to DMs and go through my social media and it is work. A lot of big influencers, or large accounts usually have a social media team that is doing all that work for them, because some of it is noise but some of it is value. There’s no algo for going through your DMs to see what’s legit and what isn’t. There's also the security aspect, like who's really trying to have an interview and wants me to click a zoom link, versus who’s trying to send me a phishing zoom link to snatch my wallet. I have to have nine eyes on the back of my head, and on the front, and the side, at all times.

Anaroth: I think every Artist, Writer, Creator, has gotten to a point where they just feel stuck. In your life, when you have been stuck what has helped get your creativity flowing again?

FrankyNines: One of the biggest things as a creator, an Art block, that's the one that frustrates me the most. An Art block is me having paint, I have a canvas in front of me, and I can't paint anything. One of the exercises I do is that I just scribble, I go crazy, I just pretend I am a little kid finger painting. When you have a creative block, or an Art block, really what it is is a frustration or a lack of confidence in what you could potentially create. So you find yourself overanalyzing, overthinking, and not just letting the juices flow. The way that I have found to break that is by making a mess, seeing what that mess looks like, and discovering something really cool in that mess. I see a splash here and it reminds me of x and it inspires me to do something else. Finding ways to inspire yourself to letting go of the state of being in a block where you're overthinking something is important.

Also, just taking the time to breathe. I think I haven't done that this year as much as I used to. Where I would just go jump on my motorcycle and dip off on a freeway and hit the mountains somewhere and disappear for a week. I used to do that all of the time. That was always something that was really healthy for me, sometimes you got to get some fresh air, put your feet in the sand, and touch some grass. You actually have to do that, it makes you feel human. Being outside can do so much for your mental health, but also taking care of your body too. Getting exercise, drinking green juice, not jamming away on energy drinks and fast food. And it’s hard, I know when I am stressed out my eating habits and my health goes down for sure.

It’s important to prepare your body in a physical healthy way, so your mind will open up in the same way. I was talking to my girlfriend the other day and was sharing how if you keep a horse in the stable and it can’t run, that energy just builds up and when you do let it out it just wants to run run run run run. Sometimes you just have to do that, it's like a sore muscle in your back when it knots up, sometimes you just have to smash it and let it out and let it flow. I think that analogy can apply to a lot of different types of frustrations. Whether it's a creative or a development or a product thing or a relationship thing. Sometimes you just have to let it flow to open up and then look for what the best parts within it. You really are attached to your body as much as you are your mind. Working out, releasing that frustration, cleansing your body, and putting good things in it really does help, and it’s easy to disregard that. But it will help you clear your mind as much as clear your creativity.

Anaroth: As we close out could you share some times where you recognized your success over your career, and some of the views you have on what is ahead for you?

FrankyNines: If something gets you down and you give up, you lose that opportunity. But if you just keep grinding through it, and you're like well i'm just gonna take another scar. But once you hit that point, and that reward opens up, you're like “Yo it was worth it!”. I think that with projects or things that i've done in my career or with SupDucks now where I am still in it, still passionate, I know if I keep moving with this good things are coming. I have had this happen to me in the past, this whole NFT thing, and the opportunity that I was given, the knowledge that I was given, and everything that I have built up today was from all of my past experiences.

I learned how to design websites, I learned how to do production Art, I worked for game companies, I worked in media, I did all of that stuff. The time was right when this industry started to really pop, I was already in it, and that was my reward. I was like yo I’m in it, this is amazing. The ten to fifteen years of hard work and I finally figured it out. Those aha moments come, and there will be more of those, and that is what I expect. That’s also a cool thing too, knowing that there will be more aha moments down the line. We are constantly going to be pushing the limit, whether it be tech or creativity or just the way that civilization and humanity runs we are constantly going to be pushing forward.

SupDucks I engage pretty much every day. I'm in the discord or i’m working on it. However I also am advising other projects and teams and things like that. I constantly do that because I think for me personally, having to go through putting myself through school, teaching myself a lot of this stuff, to working in the industry, to knowing what it's like to be an artist or a creative. All the struggles that you have to go and being able to see how locked down a specific thing is. Whether it be the music industry, or fashion there will be an upgrade to these industries, and I have my hands in a couple of those projects currently. That once those are announced, it will be like oh snap! So I think there's that for sure. I don't want to say too much, but I really am passionate about trying to change industries, and trying to empower people and creativity and trying to really push the limits of the technology and upgrade us. That's kind of like my mission, when I try to find my life purpose I am thinking what impact did Frankie Nines have while he walked the earth?

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

Anaroth: Welcome and thanks for taking the time to chat today. To kick us off, please introduce yourself, your work, and a little about your career so far.

BearBrains: I'm Natebear, otherwise known as BearBrains in the art space. I started my career doing a lot of illustration and design work, like i'm sure a lot of people did. The kind of things you do to make some money as an Artist. I’ve spent time doing Art Conventions like Comic Cons and Art Fairs, selling prints, pins and things like that. This had really been my Art life for the last ten or eleven years until I stumbled into the NFT space. I remember seeing a headline that Nyan Cat gif had sold for a lot of money and thinking to myself, hmmm I am making a lot of animated gifs. That's something I could do, maybe not for that much money, but it's a marketplace and I really love making animations.

That love for animation made me feel that this might be the right spot for me. I dove in and started creating this past year and it has definitely opened up a whole different way of working. Before NFTs I would think about where am I going, and what work I need to have for that event. If I was going to an anime convention, how am I making a few anime related drawings and prints and referencing the relevant material to that audience. With NFTs though, it has allowed me to rethink my process for creating art. If it is about the IP that you own and the characters you are creating I started to focus on who are my characters. What is my starting point to create this? What is my voice within this space? Questions like these helped me really rethink my approach to creating in general. That is actually what has been the best part of the journey, being able to tap back into that part of myself.

I found myself not really thinking about the market so much in my creations. I'm not pondering about trends. I'm just thinking, well I've got this collector base that resonates with my own passion points. It has afforded me the ability to create the things I love and have an audience that embraces that. It's not like I'm trying to fit copy into places, I just want to make something, there's no specific message that I'm tied to, I feel like I have a new sense of freedom. A feeling to just go for it, and I feel incredibly lucky to have found an audience that wants to support me in that.

Anaroth: I love that you touched on the feelings that your work can convey. Looking over your work prior to this interview to me I had a Saturday morning cartoon type nostalgia. Can you share some of the inspirations and influences behind your work?

BearBrains: Yea, I actually really like weird ephemeral type of illustration. If you wanted to imagine something like Beatrix Potter and how those illustrations make things look and feel older than they are. Pulling from drawings like storybooks like 19th century kind of stuff, there's some mystique to me that feels other worldly. I’m trying to draw that into my stuff as much as possible, but i feel like this style I’ve developed is more like you said like Saturday morning cartoon. I am working on getting there but am actively looking to infuse a feeling of mysteriousness into the work I am creating.

I enjoy having fun with my art, like when you can have like a sprawling image and just place details within the art that people discover. Like with my bicycle day piece it was 24 drawings but each layer was a little different. They are all tracking on the same motion of this character pedaling the bicycle but they are all different illustrations. I'm just putting all this weird detail in there, and I wonder if anybody's going to see it and then when it was released people found all sorts of details! They were pausing the video and taking screenshots and asking about little details they found. I am glad that stuff like that isn’t lost on people, that people take some time to look. In this age of social media it is easy for people to just scroll and go past your work, you always are trying to think of things that may be bite size. But with NFTs, this art is something a collector with have in their wallet forever. That is this extra little incentive to want to infuse the art with richness, more detail, more things to appreciate in a second viewing.

Anaroth: I want to shift topics to a talent of yours. Animation is one of the most sought after skills within the NFT space right now. What advice would you offer to those that are looking to market themselves as an animator? Where would you recommend someone to get started in animation if they haven’t before?

BearBrains: So the first thing that I thought was that I see a lot of stuff that's kind of copying XCopy, and I feel like it's getting done to death. So I would say one, don’t do that. It’s a cool effect but as far as animation goes there are some other places to start. As far as learning animation itself, I would really say its important to hit the books. Look up the twelve principals of animation to help build your foundation and understand how things track in motion. For me when I look at tutorials or things I find myself skipping over parts because I know how to do them, but I recognize for someone starting out how helpful things like that could be.

There’s some basic things like squash and stretch that are very helpful, so I would say do not overlook those. Even if you are not doing cartoonish work squash and stretch is good example of the things you will do to create natural motion. Unless of course you don’t want natural motion, then don’t do those things haha. You can feel it in an animation where it feels organic and touched by somebody's hand, adding subtle touches. The other thing is planning it out, the easiest way to animate something is put an object on one side of the screen and then draw where it's going to end up. Then you can draw everything in between, the timing may not be perfect, but at least you’ll know you can get from point A to point B. Taking steps to add key frames, and focusing on layout of the animation will add to it as well.

As far as marketing goes, I feel like there is a huge opportunity to collaborate with other artists. There's so many artists that have built up a career doing static images, doing paintings, doing murals, doing comics or whatever that have never really considered doing animation before. In this space you there is a demand to catch peoples attention, to have your timeline standout. You may want to branch out and pursue something different than how you have been portraying your work. If you have animations skills, know that there is always potential for collaboration.

An example of a collaboration I did earlier this year was with PopWonder. I knew him from the early clubhouse days when we were starting out in NFTs so we already had a relationship. I came to him and said I had this idea to see what his stuff looks like animated, and asked if he would be into that. I basically pitched him and laid it out with exactly what he would need to do. He took the time to put his own interpretation on it, but I wanted to make sure he had the bones of what I was going for, and that he wasn’t starting from scratch. I think a piece of advice is if you want to work with someone make it easy for them to work with you, have an idea of what it is you are offering.

Some advice to consider when you are thinking of who you might want to collaborate with for me is am I inspired by this persons art? Can you see what you would want to create or are you struggling to formalize an idea? What is the audience overlap and new audience exposure. Even if you and the other person have the same number of twitter followers you won’t have the same ones. The win win is that collaboration will allow both artists to grow their audience, bring exposure to new styles. Lastly it is important that you get along with the person. I think twitter has made it a lot easier because you can reply with a comment saying you like their art and strike up a conversation. The conversation you have should focus on constructive thoughts, not critical. That you actually looked at their art and had an opinion about it can go a long way in establishing connections with new people. Lastly, you will get better at talking about your art and how you articulate things, it just takes time. In the early clubhouse days I remember being in rooms where you are practicing shilling your work to people that may or may not be collectors. But I am far more comfortable talking today than I was a year ago.

Anaroth: I love that call out you had at the end there regarding perfecting how you articulate your work. When you can take nervous energy out of the equation and are left being able to share your authentic self, your work will always benefit. You have shared some solid advice throughout our conversation so far, could you share some of the best advice you’ve received in your art career?

BearBrains: Yes, the first thing that comes to mind is set aside cash. Reflecting I should have taken some Eth profits when it was at its peak that would have helped with some taxes. Brian Romero is an artist that I looked up to when I first got into the space, he always seemed to have a really calm demeanor. He is this successful commercial artist that made a transition into NFTs and taking time to identify long term trends vs hype were some lessons I took away from him. There was a level of strategy to how he structured his drops and when that has allowed him to have this as a career.

Anaroth: Before I give you the chance to share all thats going on in your art world right now, I wanted to ask if you have any advice or tips for overcoming the feeling of being artistically stuck?

BearBrains: Because there is so much going on in the space sometimes I feel like I actually need to slow myself down. There’s so many projects that I want to get out. I think I have ten or twenty concept sketches for PfP Projects if I wanted to pursue something like that. For me I feel like I have too many ideas I want to work with, and it is a lot more about deciding which ones to pursue. I think where I feel like I get the most stuck is when I do my daily GM drawings. I often question myself because i’ll look and see that I have drawn pizza, the sun and coffee all like twenty times. What else is a good morning picture?!

When I do get stuck, I find myself going abstract and start scribbling on the page, making shapes. It’s reminiscent of staring at clouds where the shapes start to look like things. Letting my doodles and scribbles lead me where I feel, and often that does lead to the most interesting or most pleasing work. Another classic way to help when you are feeling stuck is to change things up. Try a new 3D app, a new way to storyboard, but let yourself step away from focusing on finishing pieces and focus on learning something new. Challenging myself to work with tools out of my normal tool set. When stuck get outside, explore a little, if you have an active imagination like me you will find yourself inspired by the details around you. Inevitably all those details I see will help me and inspire me to create something based on what I have seen.

Anaroth: Lastly I wanted to give you some time to share what is going on in your art world. What do you want people to be aware of that you have coming up?

BearBrains: I feel prepared for this one, I actually made a Twitter thread earlier today for all the things I have going on:

• April 30th the Auction for Crypto Ass Pigs goes live.

• I have a new piece up as part of the MetaVision Exhibit in Hong Kong so be sure to go check that out if you happen to be in Hong Kong.

• There is some of my work on display for the Animated Reality exhibition. They have an exhibition that's in real life. There's a screen with projected images and they have two Metaverse galleries. One on Oncyber, and then one custom built like Unreal Engine like Back Alley with a bunch of graffiti and pictures hung up in like this futuristic city, it is really fucking cool. While that is desktop only right now I believe an app is coming. You can see some of my work there as well.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

Anaroth: Gm and welcome, thank you for spending some time with us today. To get us started could you introduce yourself, and share a little about your Art journey.

JYXDI: My name is Jyothee, and I am a Toronto based artist. I have been painting for about 15 years of my life, started up any when I was ten and then I got into NFT last year in August. I entered the NFT space with Dual Soul, a collection about spirituality and unity. If you browse the collection you will see the face is halved, one being of a girl, the other of an animal. I made this as an expression of the fact that energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred. Themes of reincarnation were important for me as well, my goal has always been to be able to teach people about spirituality through Art. Having a medium like NFTs has really allowed me to pursue that even further and I will always be grateful for that.

To give a little more perspective on my background with Art I started painting around 10, but drawing started when I was 2. I would be scribbling all over the walls of my home, and my parents just let me be. At 10 there were some art competitions in school, and that was my first time painting and I got first place! I was like oh shit! It let me feel that this is something that I could be really good at. I have been painting for 15 years now and have probably invested about 10,000 hours in my craft.

Another experience I had was being able to judge an Art Battle in Toronto. This is when a group of painters come together and take 15 minutes to create something each. Then the audience gets to vote on their favorites and the Artists can win prizes and recognition. Judging was a really unique experience seeing other people compete, but also an impossible challenge. How each person sees Art is different, and that's kind of why it contradicts when you try to teach Art because there’s also different ways of learning. With Art you can learn techniques on how to create, but knowing techniques doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to truly put your mark on something.

Anaroth: Thank you for sharing and adding some context. This is a good transition into my next question. You have had success collaborating with projects and brands in the past, what advice do you have for someone looking to collaborate or build their own brand?

JYXDI: Yea, honestly when I was starting up as an Artist I would reach out and send my Artwork to big brands. Simple things like hey check out my work let me know what you think and how we could collab? Sometimes they get back to you, sometimes they don’t. When I think about my biggest collab I think it might be with 40, Drakes producer, I did a custom pair of shoes for him. This meant a lot because it was right after I dropped out of school in 2017, and it was crazy that someone like that would reach out to me for something custom. I also was able to work with Coach for the Michael B Jordan Naruto Collection and actually they reached out to me for that. That was crazy to me, at the time I had a little following on Instagram, like 160K, and Michael B Jordan saw my work and selected me.

Most recently in NFTs my latest collaboration was with Gutter Cat Gang. I actually reached out to them, saying hey I love your community I want to work with you. They reached back out and we landed on the banner drop, and an auction drop as well. Honestly I love the community and everything that it stands for. Doing collaborations with NFT projects literally brings so many people together, I get introduced to new people, and I really appreciate that.

Anaroth: One of the things I really heard in your answer there is having the confidence to just send your work out. It feels like that confidence you have in yourself and your craft has and will continue to serve you well. Doing some research before our conversation, I read that there was a small amount of time (3 months) before you were able to support yourself from your brand. What advice do you have for people in the early stages of brand creation?

JYXDI: Yea I was in secondary university for Math and I just felt that secondary school wasn’t for me. Whenever I went to class I would fall asleep in my lectures, I just felt like something was always missing. That something was Art, and I realized this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was worried that I may not be able to support myself on the art alone initially but I would just stay up until 4:00 AM painting, go to bed wake up and paint some more. The work to build my brand came from the countless hours and consistent release of content. Having something new I could post each day was important. I think most importantly though, when I was creating it didn’t feel like work, it just felt like passion. That’s something that I really like because you gotta fall in love with the process at the end of the day. If you don’t love the process you just won’t enjoy it as much. So, whatever you pick, make sure it’s your passion and that you fall in love with the process. If you fall in love with the process opportunity is limitless. Even if you reach the sky, the sky is not the limit, the process will take you further.

Anaroth: I love the relentless optimism in your answers. When you think about the future in the space, what are you looking forward to being able to create? What advice do you have for people creating?

JYXDI: As an Artist I used to have a lot of utilities for my project; then I realized Art is the utility. As an Artist it was important for me that the DualSoul collection Art be presented well. It is an all one of one collection, I hand drew all of them and I have an incredible appreciation for our community, it is amazing. As an Artist you don’t need to worry about a roadmap or utility, just create. When you create consistently the right people will come find you, come find your work, and support you. You should also be aware of bad actors. As an Artist last year I had an incident where people came and said they have Naruto license, and they finessed me and 15 other artists. We actually put in the time and work to make these pieces of Art, but we didn't get paid. Thank god the minting didn't happen because we all stepped down right before. This just serves as an example that Artists can get rugged too. So protect your time and your work.

As a collector though. Do your own research! See who is running the project, take some time to learn more about them before purchasing. Are they organized, and do they have a strong community?

Anaroth: Your passion for your art comes through so genuinely. I want to take a moment and shift focus to some of the values that you associate with your Art. Could you share some of the central focuses and themes that exist in your craft?

JYXDI: Ever since i was growing up my dad always taught me when you create you're actually using your right brain. That’s what I always stood for, reminding myself to balance both side of the brain. He also taught me chess when I was 4, sharing that this is for your left brain, the logical side. So in life and in Art I try and balance both.

While Art allows my creativity to flourish, I also look to balance the logical part of me and participate in chess tournaments. It’s not something I talk about on Twitter but it’s something that I do all the time, a hidden talent of mine. Chess is so much fun, and it has actually taught me a lot. When playing you are always thinking three steps ahead and you automatically start applying that in life. You start thinking three steps ahead before making any decision in life. So the theme I would share is really balance and finding a way to engage all of me. Mental health is also so important, body, mind, and soul you need to balance all three and that’s what I stand for as well.

Anaroth: When you reflect on your Art career as a whole can you share an experience that you are proud of, and what else you have going on in your world right now?

JYXDI: Yea, I wanted to do my first solo show in Toronto last year, and couldn’t because of the vaccine rules. I ended up moving the show to Miami in early April just a couple weeks ago. It feels like one of my biggest accomplishments because of the adversity of having to go to another country to make this a reality. I am so happy that I did though, I had about 1,400 people come through and show support while I did live painting while my Art was hung up. All the pieces were glowing under UV light, with live music, and it was all really dope. It definitely feels like the biggest success of this year so far.

I'm almost done the collection as well. I just have a few more mirror souls left and they're all gonna be auctions. It'll probably be done by May 2nd, after that I'm actually working on an anime series. It's called Spirit Gates, and I'm still working on the artwork. I'm expecting it to be released by end of May or early in early June.

Anaroth: I feel like you're so humble. Like yeah just have this animation thing coming out soon in a couple of months no problem. I threw his wildly successful event down in Miami because I couldn't do it in my country, no worries. It's fantastic that you have this very freeing thing, you know where you're supposed to be, and I think you exude it in everything you do. I think that's a really genuine gift that you have and I wanted to say thank you for taking some time and spending it with us.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

This is an amended transcription of the conversation from April 15th, 2022 Artist Spotlight with @Mumbot & @AnarothsNFT on @HyypeHQ. Tune in Fridays to catch the artist spotlight live on Spaces.

Anaroth: To kick us off, could you share a little about who you are and what you work on within the space?

Mumbot: Hello everybody I am Mumbot, I am an Artist, Storyteller, World Builder, Toy Designer, and Creator of Mumbot World Brand. I have been in the NFT space for over a year now making NFT's, onboarding, building, trying to come up with new ways to create cool stuff and innovate in the space. I'm also a community leader and founder of the Ghost Club.

Anaroth: I appreciate that you mentioned the Ghost Club, that is where I would like to start our conversation. You have this really unique community full of amazing talent that you've created in the Ghost Club. My question is, how did the club begin? What was the vision that you had for it? Lastly what do you see the Ghost Club evolving into as you spend more time in this space?

Mumbot: The Ghost Club actually started in the midst of the pandemic early on when I was still living in Thailand. During this time everyone was really cooped up and isolated and I was looking for a way to connect with other creatives. I created a Clubhouse Club, before I even had any friends in this space, called The Ghost Club. I wrote in the description that the purpose of Ghost Club was connecting with the global creative community. A place for productive sharing of process, resources, tips, onboarding, education, support and good vibes. I wanted to start off with a strong foundation based off of those intentions and am proud of the fact that we continue to grow thanks to that same foundation.

That growth does change us a little, when I look at the last four or five months, the community has really started to become a very powerful, inspirational, amazing place for people there. It's mind blowing, and it wouldn't be that great without all the people in it. Being helpful to each other, being supportive, uplifting others. That is all how it started and to see it grow from that with the things we have coming has been really exciting.

Anaroth: One of the things that really drew me to Ghost Club initially was the willingness to help other people get started in a different sense of onboarding.

Mumbot: Yea I think that shows in the process of onboarding artists and also how we are connecting people's communities and collectors. That just makes everybody happy, everybody so far has been really loving that. We have a Directory and we have an introduction channel where you can learn more about each artist. Not all artists are great at talking about themselves, like in an audio chat app like Twitter Spaces or clubhouse, it is something I went through as an artist. Because of the experience I had I created some support consultations with artists who are extremely shy. Having a focus of coming up with ways to support them, or give them tools that they could use. Even down to simple things like tweet structures, best practices on how to use Twitter and Discord.

We have a lot of people now collaborating within the community which was / is one of our goals. We wanted to inspire people to collaborate and connect within Ghost Club. We take steps to host weekly spaces, and activate conversations and discussions daily within the discord as well. We have the live stream where people are doing everything from building a video game, to painting toys and drawing on procreate, or even drawing analog, or painting a giant oil painting. We had Steven Daily yesterday painting a giant oil painting while Killer Napkins was de-molding his new 3D sculpt that he sculpted in 3D! We also have plans to organize and curate events with the Ghost Club, and maybe even some merch.

Anaroth: I feel like sometimes people forget that an Artist is a person too. Having other people around you that understand the things you're going through can have a powerful impact on your creativity. As an artist you feel heard, you feel listened to, you're like oh you get it! Being able to offer that to people also allows you to increase the willingness of someone to be vulnerable and share. When that share is met with a response of let’s connect and share resources, let’s consult and have a conversation it encourages more of that same behavior. So kudos to you.

In your intro you mentioned how you are world builder and storyteller. What's some advice you would give to someone looking to build a story and narrative versus someone who's looking to construct an entire world?

Mumbot: One thing I have always done and had an interest in is telling a story from beginning middle to end. To create standalone stories with characters that have depth. Building up a character that has a story, has a backstory, and then has a current story. So there’s an overarching theme within the history of the character as well. I don’t even know if I describe it well it just feels like something that I do.

In the sense of building a whole world it’s interesting because I like to have an overarching storyline where everything, all the characters individual storylines and connections tie together. They even have their little own little mini ecosystems within a larger ecosystem. That's just really enjoyable to me and I like creating challenges for the characters. I would recommend having some central main characters, at least one, if you can't have more than one then have one and begin to build around that. Afterwards add some smaller side characters that each have their own little mini stories as well. It doesn't have to necessarily be tied in with the main overarching epic story. It allows you to explore other avenues but still be within the same world. To recap, building a whole world I would definitely start with that central character and then build outward.

Anaroth: Sometimes the simple advice can be a really powerful removal tool for roadblocks in creativity. Sharing steps like creating an Arc, and developing the beginning, middle and end of story can have lasting impact. One of the benefits of world building and building a narrative within that world is it gives you the freedom to have separate characters that only share a commonality of the same world. But also gives opportunity at a later point where you choose to connect the dots in the world if you would like.

However, to the next question. Can you share a moment within your career that you're just incredibly proud of? It is important to reflect on our wins just as much as it is to reflect on our struggles.

Mumbot: For sure. It would be a combination of producing my own toy, from the illustration, to the physical sculpture I made with clay, to the silicone mold making process, casting it, then bringing it to Japan and self producing it with the factory. Then last year, finding out that I won the Designer Toy Awards Breakthrough Artists of the Year. I'm not one to think that awards are a goal for me to win, I would make the toys and do all the things with or without an award system. However, actually receiving that award and having Ron English handing it to me like physically was a pretty amazing feeling. Afterwards, different people I really looked up to in the toy world kind of telling me like hey like I voted for you, you deserve this. Having recognition and knowing that other people also were like wow! People who I think are deserving of awards and haven't won anything but telling me I was so happy to see you won that award.

I mean I get a little choked up just talking about it, it really meant a lot to me. I didn't even really think would affect me that way, but then when it did, I was like you know this is why award shows and awards exist because it does mean a lot to people. Even just knowing I was nominated for something can mean a lot. I was also nominated for Best Non Plastic Toy and was in a grouping with artist like Kaws and these other amazing legends. Just being nominated I was like holy shit, this is fucking awesome! It always feels good to get recognized, and I want that for every artist.

Reflecting a bit on successes I do want to call out the benefit of the relationships with other artists. One of the things that we share in our artist friends group are our failures. Sharing the things we got wrong, where we messed up and that is HUGE in a space that is moving so fast. One thing that you can tell about people like Pop Wonder and LurkLovesYou, and Brian Morris, they're still going to be doing good things for a long time, because they have already been doing good things in real life before NFT’s. So finding your group of people, sharing your vulnerabilities, and having a willingness to help others understand where you went wrong is so powerful. I incorporate that a lot in my onboarding process, I tell people what I did wrong, and what I learned from the experience.

Anaroth: Wow, thank you for sharing. That is an achievement your should feel proud of and I am glad that it had such an impact on you. My next question involves the very fast moving technical space we live in. Do you have any tips or strategies to stay on top of all the evolving tech that's happening right now?

Mumbot: Honestly, I consume sooooooooo much NFT content. My family's used to it now, but I have been in this space now a little over a year, and i was consuming very little content before I really dove deep in. I had started paying attention to what NFT's are a couple of years ago but I just didn’t do any deep diving until 2020. When I started to deep dive it was really a lot of podcasts, talking to a few of my friends who were also in the same mindset as me, just really wanting to educate themselves. I'm in twitter spaces listening a lot, and I participate when I feel like I actually have something valuable to say. There are times where I'm just listening because the people in there know they are talking about, and I just need to listen and learn. Then there are times where I'm in a space where I am like oh no, this is something I need to speak up on. There are a lot of people in this space that are listening, and I strongly disagree and I feel like I need to offer a counter perspective.

That surprised me about myself as well just so you know, because if you knew me last year I was so shy. I had a lot of anxiety and could barely speak in these spaces. But like I said I have been participating deeply in this space I don’t even want to try and count the hours of time invested.

Anaroth: Thanks again for being vulnerable, I still get nervous before these conversations for no reason whatsoever. I think that nerves are related to the importance of the event. If you care about something you should be a little nervous about it, and then you can kind of settle in after it starts. I wanted to touch on one of the behaviors that I feel like you've discussed a lot throughout this conversation but haven’t actually said the word. That is curiosity. You have this curious nature to want to discover how to do other things.

Mumbot: You just helped me learn something by saying that, because I didn't even really recognize what it was that personally inspires me to onboard people. There is something in someone else that makes me want to help them, if I sense that deep curiosity, that initiative that creates a feeling of yes I want to help them!

Anaroth: Lastly before having you share some of the things going on in your own life, I wanted to take a moment to ask you to share some advice for those getting started in the NFT space.

Mumbot: I feel lucky because when I entered this space I was exploring all the weird things. Like the banana that was taped to the wall, that was an NFT. The animator who kicked a hole in his wall and then put a frame on it, took a picture, and turned that in into a NFT. These digital artist who are real artists building in a digital world that hadn’t gotten a lot of attention from the fine art world are now in a position to shine in a new way. I also had some friends in early 2021 who were doing some NFT things and got some backlash and that caused me to do some more research and was pointed to an article by Sterling Crispin titled The Sky is Not Falling. This article provided context and data that was a game changer for me and put some of my concerns into perspective.

I think if I could wish for anything for those people that are new to the space, it is that they have the tools to have hard conversations. Helping them not only avoid conflict, but to also help educate others about the mistakes they shouldn’t make. I think theres an opportunity to share all of the good that NFT’s are doing in the space right now. How it is changing lives for people who haven’t had something like this before. It’s important to be confident, to believe in yourself, but you can’t be confident without the information. Always do your own research, this is the motto of the NFT space and it goes for everyone. If I am telling you something, you should still go do your own research. The reason behind this is that what might work for someone else, may not be right, or may not work for you.

One of the things that I always like to share as well is sometimes in NFT land, doing something no one's ever done before could be everything. Coming into the space especially while I was in Asia, living in Thailand, and not a lot of people were onboarded at that time. At that time a lot of people who were onboarding other people were creating a formula. Thats good an all, and it’s helpful to have some guidelines, but at the same time you are going to have a percentage of people just following this formula and not getting seen. Flooding the market with an adorable squirrel with sparkly eyes, and then another one that has ice cream on its head. There’s only so far something like that can go, so I always share with people as they enter, do not be afraid to try something completely new.

The idea of doing something new has contributed to the success of BAYC and what they chose to do with IP and licensing. Even if you weren't a fan of the art or you weren't a fan of PFP projects, everyone pretty much agreed it's pretty interesting that they give the licensing rights.

Anaroth: I have to say it has been incredible to get your insights today. Thank you again for sharing with us and I wanted to give you the opportunity now to sharex what you have going on right now in your life.

Mumbot: I have a couple of projects that are collaborative, I see my buddy Sergio Vega in the audience. He is the musician we are working with for the hourglass reversal audio visual experience NFT Project. It is a modular audio visual experience that follows my character Aughostus on a journey through time. It's really cool project we're really proud of it, it has different music on every single piece.

I have another collaborative project with Diego Bergia. It's a collaboration of his Throwiez collection, he does this really cool thing called Throwiez (think pixel animation meets graffiti). Our collab last time was featuring my character Aughostus in a dungeon setting, and this one we're really excited about as it is Aughostus and his bff Skully B in a graveyard. There will also be other levels and a boss level coming up.

I have a sketchbook collection drop coming up as well. I do that collection to give myself a chance to explore my process and share it. I like to allow people to see what some of the pieces look like without being super polished. I might leave the blue pencil lines on the piece before I clean it up. Also sharing pieces that would never see the light of day, doodles I made on a paper bag, sketches that I just want to share. The collection itself has some actual utilities that are going to be revealed at a later date.

I have a collaboration with Cyrus James Khan which is the anniversary of our genesis collection from a year ago called Mycellium on the Block that was bundled with a physical toy that I hand painted. Two of those are actually owned by Gary V. Cyrus and I are really excited with what we have been working on. It’s built in unreal engine and is a completely web3 powered 3D immersive metaverse experience. This is an actual proof of concept and we have a lot of amazing things planned for it. That is pretty much what I got going on right now, VeeCon coming up, NFT NYC, and all the things we plan to do with the Ghost Club.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

I'm not just here to sell some pieces and then do whatever else, I'm here because I'm doing this forever.

-Pop Wonder

Anaroth: Welcome and thank you for joining us. To get us started I would love for you to share your journey within NFT's and a little about who you are. Afterwards, we will move into some questions to help give our readers and listeners some perspective.

Pop Wonder: Yeah, I'll just dig into how I got started with this and art in general. I had been a working musician for my whole career, with art and drawing being something that had been more on the side. One day I figured that music wasn't quite cutting it, even though I was working a lot, I wasn't quite making the income and the moves that I had wanted. I started adding in some graphic design on the side. Doing designs, posters, logos, and things like that for my friend's bands or businesses that approached me. That was really cool to go back to the visual art side of things from when I was a kid. I put effort into getting my illustration chops up and kept pursuing illustration.

In 2020, when all the tours got cancelled, I created this PopWonder World Universe. I had more time then because I wasn't playing every every night or going on tour. After about a year of building those illustrations and my experience up, a buddy texted me out of the blue one day. He shared that people are creating NFT’s and thought that I could do it. Next I went to twitter, checked out SuperRare and OpenSea, and was like oh yea, I am fully into this. Ever since then, that was the beginning of last year, i've just been super into every aspect of the ecosystem.

Anaroth: Thank you for sharing a little about who you are. I have been in some of your spaces recently and one of the common things I hear you reference is the benefit of the artistic community here. Could you share some of the experiences you've had working with other artists that have shaped the confidence that you have today?

Pop Wonder: Well, we can start with LurkLovesYou who right when we got into NFT's started the lowbrow art collective. This was a morning chat on clubhouse while we were all working and getting going for the day. These rooms were really important, all these amazing artists were coming through, and then eventually becoming friends. For them to take me in and treat me as one of their own gave me a lot of confidence, and I think some legitimacy. People think if i'm hanging with them maybe i'm good enough for whatever, so that was huge.

We all were entering the NFT space at the same time, it's almost like our little class that we have. I encourage new people to find those people that are your crew, where you all are helping each other out. Even the very basics of the technology we were helping each other and we still do with MetaMask, OpenSea, Minting whatever issues we are working through as artists. The knowledge and experience of everybody together was very helpful in the beginning when we were all trying to figure that out. As far as artists go, the people I found myself working and collaborating with were these established artists. It was inspiring for me to be working alongside them.

Anaroth: You mentioned how the proximity of other artists was giving you confidence and inspiration. Could you share a little more about when you reached the point of having a lot of confidence in releasing digital art, and knowing that it was gonna be successful?

Pop Wonder: When I first started putting up 1/1’s I did sell a couple pretty quickly, but then there were weeks where I wasn't selling any and they were sitting there. It would take some sort of event or exposure for them to sell at times. Even then after some success I would put another one up, and at this point I am turning down graphic design jobs, I am wanting to do NFT’s only, and it would just sit there. Your mind starts wondering oh maybe I should have taken that logo job. Then I did my first edition, I remember pacing around my backyard the entire time after it dropped. Watching them start to sell and I remember thinking ok this is even more doable. The point is that I was always looking for a working class situation with this. When I saw the first article about NFT’s and that someone made 400K in a drop and I was like, well maybe I can make 400 dollars and that would be amazing.

As I saw the success of the edition pieces, recognizing it would take me a couple weeks to sell out, I was like OK well I think I can keep some income flowing. As long as NFT's are still popular a year from now, I will probably be fine. When I did my first Gutter Cat Gang remix, I was not confident that those were going to sell, I didn't know if anybody cared or wanted those. I only made seven of the first one, and then they sold out in like 3 minutes and i was like OK, people are into it. Even if it's just working class like I said, I'll be fine.

Anaroth: You mentioned that you started turning down design jobs as you focused on your own art. What advice do you have for artists on understanding how to select the right projects to collaborate on?

Pop Wonder: I definitely don't say yes to everything, and yeah, it's it's been the most challenging thing. Dealing with the idea of letting people down, or saying no to people in that regard can be hard. What does get me engaged in a collaboration first off is if I know the person, and we have been in the trenches together. That's basically happening as soon as i have the time to do it. The other thing is if they have a very specific thing that they do, or a very specific NFT collection like Crypto Climates, Made by Megan she hit me up and I did not know her. But when I looked at the collection, it's successful, and also it's a very specific thing. It's an isometric chunk of land that she does in different styles and different variations. I was like oh I can make my own isometric chunk of land easily, I already basically know what I’m gonna do. That's really the key, if I can wrap my head around it immediately.

So if you're reaching out to artists, don’t just be like hey, wanna collab? Have an Idea. Another great example here is BearBrains. He sketched an animation, we got on the phone for a second he said all you have to do is do your thing over each frame, and to me that just clicks. I'm like OK yes, and it was dope what he made, and it worked perfectly with my style. Those are the kind of ways for me, basically, if you make it very easy for me then it’s a better chance. But come with a vision.

Anaroth: There is a theme of muted, bright, vibrant colors that exists through a lot of your work. Could you talk a little bit about some of central themes and and what guides that similarity throughout your work?

Pop Wonder: When I was starting the whole thing I wanted to set up some constraints to make sure that it was cohesive. My influences of what I want to draw is a mixture of cartoons from when I was a kid, punk rock and skateboard art, but where the cartoony part takes over. The thickness of the lines, and how they taper off that I always noticed in comics and cartoons. In regards to the colors you mentioned, I use Cyan Magenta and Yellow and then mix them together. If you look closely, the bright green on the character which is called Poplins, is made up by having full yellow and then putting blue dots on top of it. But then the way the colors mixed they turn green and then you step back and you see it's like a bright green.

So basically my whole color palette is already predetermined, and it does make for a very cohesive look over all the pieces. Like the one that's at the top here Joyride, that's yellow with pink dots on top and turns red. It’s one of my go to color combos and I have a few go to combos. Then the subject matter of the art I was straight up just like yeah, Aliens but with goofy smiles, trippy outer space stuff and flowers. I was actually drawing a ton of flowers when I was trying to do pattern design, and that just kind of worked its way into my art. Basically, all of the things that I liked, I wanted to be a part of what I was making.

Anaroth: One of the things that I really enjoy asking artists isn't necessarily about a struggle that they've had or something that they've overcome, but rather would you mind sharing one of the moments in your art career that you're incredibly proud of?

Pop Wonder: I think this one's easy for me, it's when I was asked to be on the Duncan Trussle Family Hour Podcast. This is a podcast that was very inspirational and influential to me. I’ve listened to it weekly for years and then I got to be a guest on it. That is probably my proudest moment. Oddly enough I got to go see Duncan last night here in LA and got to meet him in in real life and that was like ok alright, I’m good now.

Anaroth: What advice do you have for people entering in the NFT space now as an artist? How they should define success?

Pop Wonder: The first advice that I give people is to be on twitter, to be coming into spaces like this, following artists that you like and value their opinion. If you're already established as an artist, if you already have your own voice and style that's great. But that's the next thing that I think is really important. If you've been kind of going back and forth between different things for a while and trying to figure it out I recommend picking something and going for it. That allows people to have something to expect from your work, if they liked the last piece they might like the next. But you got to be OK with some people seeing your whole style and being like, yea it's not for me. The people that do gravitate towards it though, they are going to just gravitate towards it so much stronger.

Also something I might have been overlooking this whole time, but I kind of was thinking about it. If possible, having some sort of story or symbolism in your piece that makes people feel a certain way. It isn’t something that is easy to do, or manufacture, but if you can it is a powerful thing to make someone feel a certain way. You can do that through super technical ability, getting somebody to go oh my god look at that! They are zooming in and looking at all the details. Or, you can just do it with some sort of concept or story told in the piece, because story is the most timeless thing we have and it’s not going anywhere. Story does speak to humans more than anything, so if you can have a little mini story in your piece, I think that's really big. I haven't really talked about that, or thought about it too much until recently.

Lastly, as far as grinding it out in the NFT space, put some stuff up, post about the work you are doing, and stay true to your style and personality. Put effort into making friends with people, share your opinion and collaborate with people that value the content you make. Prioritize that you are an artist first in the space. There's some people who I never even realized they were an artist. While I collect in the space and enjoy talking about projects my profile picture is art that I made. My bio on twitter is all about my art, I think it is important to make it clear to people that the art is what you are here for. PopWonder was taken on Twitter, so I did PopWonder NFT, but i’m actually glad I did that because it’s clear what I am doing here. I'm not just here to sell some pieces and then do whatever else, I'm here because I'm doing this forever.

Anaroth: Lastly I would like to give you a couple minutes to share with everyone listening in, and who reads this article later, what are some of the things you're working on right now? What do you want to make sure people are aware of?

Pop Wonder: Ok cool I am working on a project with WeinBagz & TerraNaomi that is generative project for music and art. You'll get a randomly generated piece and it the tracks fit together and everyone has a different combination. I am just one of a bunch of artists that are working with that project but am super excited for it. It's been months in the making but it's all culminating to happening right now. I have something else I am waiting to put up until after LA so we can have a spaces to talk about the art and then setup the auction. Other than that, I have various collabs coming out, and stuff i've been Gutter Cat Gang and their Football Team.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

With the ability to add multiple wallets to your profile, the number of NFTs your profile can showcase increases. In order for you to easily select the NFTs you want to showcase in your profile, the search now enables you to quickly go through your entire collection.

Selecting a Profile picture

1. Go to https://hyy.pe/edit/photo and there it lists all the NFTs you have across all your wallets

2. Search for the NFT you want to set as your profile picture, it shows up in the results and you can select that NFT and hit “Save”.

Building your Squad

1. Similarly, when you go to https://hyy.pe/edit/featured, you can see all the NFTs which are part of your squad.

2. You can search for the NFT you want to add in your squad, it shows up in the search results — you can select them and go to the next step to edit the arrangement.

Creating new lore

1. Click on the “Post” button on the top bar and initiate what kind of Lore you would like to contribute

2. Once you are on the next step, it presents you with all the NFTs you can write lore about.

3. You can search for the NFT you want to share Lore about, it shows up in the search results — you can select them and go to the next step to the editor.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

The following is a transcription of the conversation with @3D_PrintGuy during @HyypeHQ Write Way Artist Spotlight on March 25th 2022.

Welcome to the Write Way Artist Spotlight, where Artists share insights, perspectives and inspirations throughout their career.

Anaroth: Thanks for joining us today. I would like to start off with a question around building confidence as an artist and overcoming some of that initial self doubt. How do you see artists building confidence and how has your own willingness to promote your work evolved along your career?

3D_PrintGuy: That's a good question actually. I think for the first part where you mentioned how a lot of artists, especially new artists, undervalue their own work. Not necessary a lack of belief, but they don't see the value in their brand as an artist. I think that could possible stem from digital technology these days. If you're a new artist or someone in high school or even elementary school where do you look for art nowadays? You look for it on social media, you look for it on Instagram, Twitter and then you follow a thousand artists. Artists you don't even know, but they are most likely professionals, and have years of work and experience under their belt. The most popular art is usually the best looking art, and the best looking art is usually done by the best artists.

As a young artist you are bombarded daily by these masterpieces, so what do you do? You compare their art to your art. You can come to this realization or thought that all your art is terrible compared to these other people. But these people on social media are masters of their craft. I feel like a lot of new artists can feel like their art isn't necessarily stacking up, and then even as they do improve, when they do get really great, they're just constantly bombarded by this beautiful art from other people. It can really sort of mess with ones psyche or perspective. I guess it is a bit like Instagram versus Reality. You don't look at your art the way you look at other people's art. And then you instantly think yours is undervalued, or you actively undervalue your own art.

That's how I was at the beginning, you get that impostor syndrome, or you compare your art to these other people's. Like, my 3D models don't look half as good as these other peoples! Little do you know that these other people were in the industry for 30 years already. They're masters in their craft. As I have gone through my career I find that a goal of my art that I create is personal progression. The idea that my current piece of work is always better than my last. This allows me to take the perspective of my work in a timeline. If I look back at my first art piece, I was like oh my gosh that's terrible, but now I realize I've actually come quite a long way. You naturally start to build up that value of self worth in your own mind. You can say you are a better artist than you were was five years ago. I believe that type of value overtime builds up and compounds into confidence.

Anaroth: That was great insight. To help people have more perspective on who you are please you share your own art journey, and how you have gotten to where you are today?

3D_PrintGuy: I've been in the animation industry for about 15 years now. I started doing 3D art in high school where I made some terrible 3D animations in my courses. I was told that artists don’t make any money, and I would starve to death out in the real world. So I went to university for computer science and just before I was about to take a job at IBM, I sent out an application to Pixar. When that got accepted, it changed my life forever. I realized there that you can make a career out of being a professional artist. They aren’t on the streets selling canvas prints, they’re in a big studio using cutting edge technology to create masterpiece art. After Pixar I moved on to some other studios such has Sony, Netflix and Disney. Reflecting I would say I started off as a 3D modeler, that was my specialization.

In the beginning if you are getting into the industry it’s hard to make it as a generalist, especially when you're fresh out of university. You need specialize in a certain department because that's how it is in big studios. I started out as a 3D modeler then moved onto texturing work, I was the guy who just makes the model puts some colors on it and sends it down the assembly line. Eventually I started a youtube channel because I had all these stories that I always wanted to tell. Going back to my high school days I made the short films, so I realized I really wanted to have a creative outlet. After work I would make these little animations, and then I started to grow and discover new expertise, hence actually the name 3D print guy. I had made youtube videos of me making 3D models and texturing them and that was pretty much it, just spin it around and call it a day.

Then i realized, oh it's a lot more fun to just make a little animation with these 3D models! I slowly built up my skill set of being an animator, I wouldn't say i'm like a super duper ultimate master class professional animator. I am very good at 3D modeling and texturing, and then i'm OK at animating. I guess that is the humbleness I always try to exude. After the youtube channel I started building up my skill set and wanted to do more. I wanted to be more of a generalist and started doing more animations, then eventually my youtube channel just completely flipped the switch from 3D Modeling, to full blown animations. As I moved into the NFT space I wanted to bring that idea of these short story animations to life.

Anaroth: I think there's a lot of joy that can come from working with someone to provide something that they couldn't have done themselves. I've seen you do some really amazing commissions and wanted to take a moment to highlight that experience. What advice would you want to give to artists who are thinking about, or have started doing commission work?

3D_PrintGuy: I think the main thing about commission work is the collaboration. The main reason a collector or a client commissions work from an artist is because they enjoy the art and the artist so much that they want to be part of the creation process. For example if they just wanted the end result, they would buy a print or some kind of product the artist is selling. A commission is different, it’s like you are purchasing the opportunity to collaborate on a project with the artist. For artists who take commissions, I think it's always important to give the collector the opportunity to have as much input as possible. Input doesn’t mean you accommodate every wish, you as the artist will clarify what you can and can’t do, but the act of communicating is at the heart of a commission.

An artist should also maintain some boundaries in terms of the art style, keep in mind the person commissioned you because they love your art and your art style. Some collectors when you give them a lot of runway they aren't used to the creative process. When you when you tell them they can do anything they want they may come back with too much, and can make the piece unrecognizable from the original intent. This goes against the idea of the commission to begin with, ultimately I think it's really about finding a balance between the two parties through dialogue.

Anaroth: Earlier you shared that you built your skills around texturing and modeling, can you share how you continue to push yourself to learn more within the realm of 3D animation and different aspects of your craft? What resources do you find yourself leveraging?

3D_PrintGuy: Resource wise, a lot of youtube actually. There's always some kind of animation course. Anyone who wants to learn right now there are a lot of free resources that you can leverage. Some are product specific for software like Blender, but for pure animation YouTube is a great starting place. There are some paid courses, but I feel like those are if you want to get into the real nitty gritty and expert / professional grade animation. If you are looking to make some starter animations YouTube is a great starting point.

In regards to bettering myself, the mentality I subscribe to is the idea that every art piece or project you create challenge yourself to try something new. For example, originally when I was doing youtube videos I told you they were 3D models and would spin it around. I decided my next art piece should do more animation. I didn’t feel I was very good at rigging or character animation and I wanted to improve. The best way to improve is to create an art piece based off of that technique so you can learn how to apply it in a future situation. You can’t get complacent especially in the digital art space, everything is usually moving so fast, new technologies coming out every day. I mean, if you showed me a blender 3.0 demo reel of what that software can do like 10 years ago it would have blown my mind. I had no idea that we'd come this far, so I find that especially in the digital space you should always keep on top of your techniques and skillsets.

Anaroth: I love that you mentioned the leap in technology that has occurred. Where do you see art and animation going in the years to come?

3D_PrintGuy: I think one benefit of this sort of accelerating technology, especially NFT art technology, is that it is making art creation available to a lot of people who didn’t see it as accessible previously. More people are being exposed to art, investors who would never even think of investing in art now begin to see value. From a career perspective, making art is a more viable option than it was previously. It used to be you'd think oh what kind of studio can I get hired at straight out of university situation? Now kids can just pick up an iPad, install procreate or something, and start making art. They can post it to Twitter and immediately get feedback from artists all across the globe and improve their next piece. If you're a high schooler and you make some art and post it, you might have someone from Pixar come and say great work, heres a suggestion for an adjustment on your next piece. That is something that I just didn’t think possible five or ten years ago.

I've made this analogy before, but I find that NFTs are bringing back the old world art masterpiece industry. Before, in the 1600s some rich Italian aristocrat in your town would give you some gold coins and then commission you to create a Michelangelo's David or a Venus de Milo. In web2 you would just spend months creating a digital masterpiece, but what could you do with it? You could put it on a poster or something, but in order to pay your rent you couldn’t really focus on such things. Now in Web3 you can focus on creating these digital masterpieces. It's almost like a renaissance where there’s resources and time and a dedicated following of collectors. The advance in technology allows a crypto investor on the other side of the globe to snag up your masterpiece and support you as an artist. I find it's bringing back this old format where artists can choose, they don't have to necessarily jump into a studio situation. Artists can choose to create a very intricate, complex masterpiece, and actually have somebody collect it.

Anaroth: I'd like to learn a little bit more about some of the work that's really important to you. I find that every artist has a piece or two that has some sort of extra emotional value or sentiment. Is there a piece in your collection that you feel really proud of, and could you share a little bit of a story behind it?

3D_PrintGuy: The one that I am most proud of to date I guess isn't really in a collection of NFT related pieces, it's sort of a relic from my youtube animation days. I created a sci-fi three part series, and it was based on Among Us the game which was a super popular game at the time when I made it. Really it's more of a an amalgamation of all my favorite 80s sci-fi horror movies like Aliens, The thing, and Lovecraftian stories. I am proud of it the most because it was such a large departure for my regular work, if you look at the timeline of all my uploaded youtube videos it's like completely different than what I had put out before.

My previous work was more cartoonish and vibrant, I wanted to again challenge myself to do something new or explore new techniques. With this animation I was really interested in engaging with realistic lighting, cinematography, and longer form storytelling. When I finished this three part gritty sci-fi realistic horror series I was just really proud that I was able to do it. The animation became pretty popular on youtube and it solidified my motto of avoiding that analysis paralysis, if you want to try something new, just do it. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but at least you tried and learned.

Anaroth: Lastly before I give you the opportunity to share what you are working on right now could you share any tips for organizing your day? How do you put yourself in the right mindset that allows you to be productive in how you create?

3D_PrintGuy: From an organization standpoint I don't really have too much of a set formula for what I do. A lot of times my thought process for creating an art piece starts with thinking of the major themes and work from the top down. Thinking what kind of story you're trying to tell through your art piece. It doesn't even have to be an animation it could be a still image and you're still telling a significant story. For me my projects always start with what story am I looking to tell? What features or what events will happen in this story that reinforce the themes? Then I drill down more into specifics, so if it is an animation what specific characters will be present? What kind of style? What kind of mood will keep reinforcing this theme? The idea is to have an overarching theme at the top and you keep reinforcing it every step of the way throughout the narrative. I think that commitment to dive deeper into the details is what makes a great art piece.

Anaroth: Thank you for sharing your process, while it may not seem like much from your perspective it might be just what someone needs to overcome a creative block they are having. I appreciate you taking time to share your perspectives with us and invite you to share anything that you currently have going on in your creative world.

3D_PrintGuy: I had a great time having this little chat, I love to always talk about artistry and the overall what I think of this space. What I am working on now is a bit under wraps, but i am working on a series I want to call it “A slice of life” type series. I'll be taking characters from different NFT spaces and tell a story of the day to day life they live. It is still in its infancy, so there's not too much to say about it. Some recent work that just came out was my work over with Blockworks, they asked if I could collaborate with them and created some 3D animated PFPs.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

Below are thoughts and perspectives from BigHatLevi on their experiences in web3, collaborating, and bringing ideas to life.

Anaroth: Tell us a little bit about your career before and after NFT’s?

BigHatLevi: Before NFTs I was studying at a university for my computer science degree — in software. It’s very important to have a substantial portfolio when applying for developer jobs, and I saw an opportunity to add something unique to mine in the form of a NFT project. This project was “Lamb Duhs”, and was successfully launched in August 2021. At the time I was inspired by developer focused communities and the open source learning environments being fostered there, it invoked a vibe reminiscent of what we as a collective today have defined as the web3 ethos — community governance and mutual growth. I admired what I saw being done here so much that I actually made it a part of our initial roadmap to open source the code for our launch and share what we learned from our experience with the community. Funnily enough, to even further solidify the pairing with what you could call the collaborative developer inspiration — the title of the collection is a pun of the word “lambda”, commonly used as a term in computer science. Even today, I can trace back the fundamentals of my web3 technical understanding back to this initial project, and I would recommend anyone looking to get their hands dirty to do the same — it’s an incredible experience that will teach you so much as you work through creating all the components and piecing them together!

Anaroth: Sometimes we only think of inspiration in forms of artists, but those that help build are often inspired as well. Who / what has been a source of inspiration as you continue creating in the space of NFT’s?

BigHatLevi: I have quite a few sources of inspiration, most of them I work with on a daily basis — I would say the two people that immediately come to mind are @_0xbEEF, my brother and co-founder of Lamb Duhs / Duhverse, who works another job on top of all the software related web3 shenanigans we get ourselves into, and @ArtMcArty, my good friend and co-founder of Asteria Labs, whose work ethic impresses me every day as we continue building our company!

Anaroth: What have you learned about collaborating with artists? How do you approach working with a project artist now, vs when you first started? What’s changed?

BigHatLevi: I’ve learned every artist is different, and every scenario is different. It’s important to tailor the approach a little differently for each one, and that can include a lot of variables that starts with figuring out what the quality/speed ratio of the asset creation process looks like, how much creative freedom is/should be involved, management styles, and even payment methods. If I needed to encapsulate it, I would say the most important thing you can have when working with artists and people in general is flexibility and open mindedness, I think it would be prudent to assume rigidity in a working environment like this likely won’t lead to the most desirable of outcomes!

Anaroth: While projects may have overlap, maintaining their identity is always important. How do you organize and structure your day that allows you to be present where the communities need you?

BigHatLevi: Identity is very important, and we’re proud to say that each project serves its own purpose. With that said, we haven’t been able to form a solid thesis yet in systematically dealing with the chaotic environment we’ve found ourselves in. While we do sequence the major projects in an order that makes sense, our day-to-day workflow consists of wearing many different hats in an elaborate juggling act of tasks. However, I suspect this is somewhat typical of start up companies, especially so when factoring in the level of complexity we work with every day — I look forward to moving towards smoother and more stable operating conditions!

Anaroth: Can you share one of your proudest moments in your career and what it taught you?

BigHatLevi: I think the proudest moment of my career so far was the launch of Lamb Duhs. The project taught me a lot of things in a short amount of time — these things include software development, community building, and social media marketing. It taught me I was capable of leading a team and coordinating them together to achieve something extraordinary as a collective force. It was some of the most intense personal development I’ve ever undergone, and its success gave me a sense of confidence and accomplishment I didn’t have before that I believe has contributed significantly to who I am today.

Anaroth: What advice do you have for those looking to build their first project in this space? What advice do you wish you had the first time around?

BigHatLevi: I would advise people looking to build that they should be prepared to be in it for the long haul, and to treat their project as a business with a strong vision, mission, or objective that is capable of serving as the backbone on which the project can really focus and lean on for the forseeable future. Without that foundation, you don’t have much of anything past a short term marketing hype play.

Anaroth: Tell us a little more about what you are working on at Asteria?

BigHatLevi: Over at Asteria we’re currently working on Lamb Duhs PX, a fully animated pixel art collection serving as an expansion to the original. We’re planning on having LDPX play a big role in accessing the P2E component of our upcoming NFT Worlds build, and we’re excited to show off more of what that will look like over the next couple weeks as the launch gets closer and closer. If you’d like to check us out and learn more, you can find us over at http://duhverse.com. To everyone that made it this far, thanks for reading!

We are excited to share our first integration with the broader NFT Market Ecosystem. Starting today, all lore from any supported NFT collection on Hyy.pe will also be accessible directly on the X.xyz marketplace.

What is Hyype?

Hyype is a social and content platform for NFT collectors and artists. NFT collectors and artists can share background and stories attached to their NFTs on Hyype. Hyype gives you greater control on displaying your NFT collections, and communicating with communities directly.

What is X?

X is a multi-chain decentralized NFT marketplace that is owned and operated by the X community. Governance is provided by the X DAO with voting rights given to users who have staked their X tokens for the veX governance token. They are a community that celebrates self expression and inclusiveness without any prerequisites to participate.

Why is this significant?

Adding NFT content on Hyy.pe is a great way for Artists, Collectors, & Collections to build a world that expands beyond the boundaries of your community. Spotlights on the background and intent behind your most prized NFTs breathe new life into their significance.

It enables others to see the bigger picture and elevates the discovery experience of finding new art and new communities.

What you see today as an NFT

Hyy.pe helps you enhance the NFT experience with depth

How does it work?

When you share a lore for your NFT on Hyy.pe, it’s accessible via our API endpoints to be displayed wherever the NFT and the collections are visible.

Example

Below is an example of how the NFT details with contributed lore looks like on Hyy.pe:

NFT page on Hyy.pe — Tasty Toastys #1179

… & here’s how the lore appears on the X.xyz NFT pages

NFT page on X.xyz — Tasty Toastys #1179

This is just the beginning. Hyy.pe and X.xyz are committed to building rich NFT experiences and will continue to work together to make this better by actively listening to the community’s feedback.

Philosophical Foxes - https://opensea.io/collection/philosophicalfoxes

The Following is an amended transcription of the conversation with Mario Gabriele from March 11th during the Hyy.pe Artist Spotlight.

Makers, Engineers, Writers, other types of Creatives tend to need big blocks of unbroken time to do their best work.

Anaroth: Good Afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. To get us started off, could you please share a little bit about who you are, and what you are currently working on?

Mario Gabriele: Happy to be here, as you mentioned I am the founder of the Philosophical Foxes and The Generalist. The Generalist came first, I started writing it on the side while at my last job in venture capital back in 2019, but transitioned to full time in 2020. Prior to that I had a bunch of different careers in tech and beyond. The one constant was that I always liked to write, and was super interested in storytelling. Before I was ever writing about tech or anything like that, I was working on my novel for about 8 years, and that’s still something I often spend my mornings doing. I’ve always been interested in how to make stories for people to tell. Philosophical Foxes ended up coming out of those two interests in technology and stories. After studying the NFT space and writing about it in The Generalist I started to have an idea for what I thought could be a different type of project, and a very different kind of story than what we have seen so far. I’m obviously super excited about the things that are yet to come.

Anaroth: You shared how you had this moment to invest in yourself and The Generalist back in 2020. Can you share a little bit about the thought process as you made that choice?

Mario Gabriele: Reflecting, I am not sure that I knew it was going to be a success, at the time it definitely felt like a bit of a leap of faith. I also think that we tend to be risk averse, or at least I used to be. It seemed like such a massive risk to leave my job to continue building a newsletter. Thinking what are you doing leaving this nice job to do something that at first glance might seem trivial. I certainly didn’t know it was going to work when I left, and it wasn’t until I turned on an actual business model in 2020 that I got a little traction. In June of 2021 the business was in a self sustaining place, and to me that was the moment that I was like wow you know I think I can do this indefinitely and it feels very much like this is part of my life’s work. I think it is really easy to self gatekeep in a way, thinking that you won’t be able to do something, or perhaps that you might need more experience. I believe there are plenty of other people who can do that for you, but I think it is very important to not do it for yourself.

Anaroth: Collaboration plays a large role in the space for creating. Can you share how you have learned to collaborate effectively, and what advice you might give to others?

Mario Gabriele: It’s a topic that I am very interested in, last summer I wrote a piece articulating a theory I had around multiplayer media. The idea was that creativity is increasingly becoming a team game, just like open source software projects can be created relying on hundreds or thousands of contributors. I think we are now entering an era in which coordination of that kind is possible for creative works. I really think that NFTs are the best instantiation of that. There is no better way that I have found to align an ethos with a group of people so quickly and create the resources and enthusiasm necessary to do that kind of storytelling.

Reflecting on lessons learned, I would say they have mostly come from The Generalist so far since I have been doing it for a longer time. One of the unique parts of The Generalist is that we often do multiplayer pieces. There are times where instead of me just writing a piece , I will instead bring in as many as 20 other contributors. We all write a different section, I edit for clarity and concision, but the result is something relatively unique. A piece that feels like one, but has the thinking and the brain power of 20 different people. In terms of the lessons learned from that, I think it’s really the need for an orchestrator who can pull those different strands together. Otherwise, I think it’s a little tricky to take it from exploration to a finished product. It doesn’t have to be the leader of the whole project either, a lot of the best NFT projects have these emergent leaders. One of them in the Philosophical Foxes has been Chris Gage, and he is doing what I would consider our first universe extender as an experiment.

The other lesson is that you have to define the parameters of the game that you are playing. It is not useful to say to someone “Create Anything” that is a very hard thing to act on. I do think that it is very useful to say, here is the game we are playing, here are kind of the rules of this game, and here is what you might want to do. Here, that statesman figure / orchestrator acts almost like a Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons. Where you’re saying, here’s the story I hope we tell together, but really the decisions are yours to make.

Anaroth: How has your time at The Generalist changed the way you think about creating?

Mario Gabriele: I would say that there are a lot of direct applications on the business side of things. The fact that I get to study great high performing companies most days of the week is very useful while trying to build a company. I would say there are some lessons that I am constantly trying to apply. In terms of creativity, the biggest thing The Generalist has taught me is the value of a strong shipping muscle. The fact that I was working and continued to work on a novel that I started in 2012 is perhaps an indication that by default my shipping muscle is weak. The thing that forces you do it is having essentially public schedule and building the accountability mechanism of other people that expect something from you. I would also say how important it is that you share your thoughts and ideas publicly. There is so much learning, connection, and opportunity that opens up the moment you start to do that, and it only compounds as your audience and influence grows. When you find a way to lower that barrier to create, you really start to see some interesting things happen.

There’s something about having a new medium without established tastemakers and gatekeepers that makes it a lot easier to speak up and share. In some respects any theory in crypto can be laughed off one way or another, it’s almost like a sector full of heretics, but in a positive way. The fact that there isn’t someone to say that’s a good NFT or that’s a bad NFT from a place of central authority makes it easier to posit new theories or suggest things. The fact is we are all still in the learning phase for all of this.

Anaroth: One of the things that I always like to ask people is to take some time to reflect on something you are most proud of and celebrate an accomplishment. What moment / moments stand out to you in your life?

Mario Gabriele: That is a lovely and generous question to get to ask people. Honestly yea, The Generalist and Philosophical Foxes are definitely the things I am most proud of. I would put the novel in that camp, but with the caveat that I haven’t shipped it publicly, but I have written it now five or six times. I am very proud to have finished it. In some respect, the word pride suggests that the project is over, or at least that’s often how we use the word. I don’t necessarily feel pride as much as I feel a real optimism and drive to keep pushing it forward one way or another.

Anaroth: Inspiration is an interesting topic I like to touch on in these conversations. Who is it and where do you to for inspiration to guide your focus throughout the day?

Mario Gabriele: Guiding your focus, that’s a very interesting way to frame it. I don’t know if I have an answer to that specific part, but in terms of inspiration more generally I would say I take 99% of my inspiration from fiction. I think fiction is just an incredibly rich source material for lessons about life, or for prompting you to think in a way work does not naturally guide you. Within the world of fiction my favorite writer is Nabokov. I think he is the greatest writer that has existed so far, from a sentence construction and craftsmanship perspective. Inspiration for the foxes has origins in the work that Nouns does, Corruptions and then sort of further afield things like Sleep No More which is an immersive theater experience that I think has some great characteristics.

Anaroth: Productivity and creativity don’t always go well together, how do you structure your day to be productive?

Mario Gabriele: The biggest tactic or technique that has been useful for me is mentally adjusting to the idea that I am on what Paul Graham terms a maker schedule, rather than a manager schedule. The differentiation he makes is a manager is not necessarily needing to get into states of deep work that often. The cost to a manager of taking a 30 minute coffee meeting or phone call is relatively low. It doesn’t require a huge amount of buffer time to effectively get into the state in which you can do the deep work that is necessary. Then, Makers, Engineers, Writers, other types of Creatives tend to need big blocks of unbroken time to do their best work. Trying to write a piece and having your day broken up by 30 minute call is not really possible, you will effectively make zero progress.

It’s the same for Philosophical Foxes, when I am trying to think through the next phase of this project, the sort of stories I hope to tease out, thinking about what primitives need to be introduced to the ecosystem; having these one to two hour spells doesn’t do a lot for me. What I try and do is keep most of the day open as much as possible, so I can just go straight into writing, research, and storytelling mode. Then towards the end of the day around 5:00PM or 6:00PM I can get through emails and respond to messages and take any meetings that are necessary. That’s been the biggest shift, and has been a little uncomfortable in the sense that you do often feel guilt or emotional pressure to do things that deprioritize that unbroken time. It can feel really tempting to break it up. As time goes on, I’m able to be a little more disciplined in recognizing that the cost of breaking up that time is not just the time it takes for that meeting that is interrupted. It’s like five times that amount because of the lost productive time such an interruption causes.

Anaroth: What a gem of information to bring my questions to a close, thank you for sharing that perspective. Before we close out our conversation I’d like to give you the opportunity to share anything that you are currently working on or looking forward too.

Mario Gabriele: Philosophical Foxes is one of the things I would say as I had mentioned I’m most proud of, and most excited about. In many respects it feels like the truest manifestation of my interests and passions. It’s an NFT project that is playing with the boundaries of what an NFT can be as a character. Specifically the way that we are doing that is other than focusing on the external traits of an NFT, we’re building around internal ones. Things like what emotional baggage of fox has? What virtues they might have? What philosophy they adhere to? What secrets they might hold? We can use all of that as a jumping off point for on-chain storytelling. It is an interesting place to start in that it already takes you several steps further into actual character building. For people to create stories of their own, I think you need that primitive in the ecosystem.

In the coming months and I very much hope years, the focus will be on introducing new primitives into the ecosystem. When I say that I mean, what are the other sort of story legos that you need to build on chain stories? An example would be a dilemma, so you have these Foxes begin to make choices and accumulate a history or a backstory. Another might be the notion of connections. How do you introduce the idea that one Fox is related to another Fox? Or enemies with another Fox, and how does that play out? That’s one theme, the second is to create these master stories that we are all living out together. Obviously I hope that every Fox creates their own story, but theres also this super story we are living through together. For season one that super story is how Foxes learn to sleep. It culminates in this end of season finale where a hallucinogenic mist spreads across the foxes world and they begin dream. So right now we have Foxes that think we will soon have Foxes than can dream. I think dreams open up an entirely different landscape from a narrative perspective.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

Prana

The following is an amended transcription of the conversation with Archan Nair from the Write Way Artist Spotlight on March 4th. Read below and discover some of the passions that drive Archan and his work.

Yet it unlocked a discovery that for me, creating is meditation.

Anaroth: Prior to our conversation today I found myself doing some research on dualism and philosophy based on some of the inspiration you mention on your website. You seem to have a unique awareness to disconnecting.

Archan Nair: I listen to a lot of people who completely disconnect, they just completely avoid going into a certain area, say avoid social media. But I think we all have different ways of disconnecting. For me, I think it’s really important to be aware of every moment. I believe that the more aware we are about how we perceive life, our thoughts, our emotions, lends to a sense of balance. I think it’s more important to seek out things inside of yourself rather than focusing on disconnecting outside. I see disconnecting outside as a temporary fix, but when you seek the answer within yourself, when you focus on the thoughts feelings and emotions of the moment the external no longer has the same impact on you. I think it is so beautiful how we all have such interesting and different ways of disconnecting.

Anaroth: I’ve heard you mention the idea of ritual a few times when we talk and I wanted to expand on the importance of making time for something in your life each day that gives energy back to you. Can you share a little bit more on rituals and what they mean to you?

Archan Nair: When you’re working on your craft I feel it’s very important that you create a disciplined lifestyle, a disciplined focused practice. I see it as a crucial practice for an artist or creative person to delve deeper into their craft. By that I don’t mean that you have to have a rigid practice or strict structure to your day, no you can be flexible. But are you aware of the things that are taking you away from your priority of art? Do you have time in your day where that is truly and always the focus? For me, I have started waking up early in the morning 4:00 or 4:30 and just sketching for an hour and a half or so. No devices, no distractions, just the morning and my thoughts. Then after I start diving into catching up on things, and focusing on my artwork or paintings. I’ve been doing this for the past 12 or 13 years now, and it’s amazing the kind of flow states you can get into. It really taps you in, creates tremendous amount of mental focus and clarity. This is the reason I call it a ritual, because it’s very sacred. It’s not something which is an outdoor activity, it’s an inner activity, it’s the way I connect with the divine, source, god, consciousness, whatever you want to term it as. Almost like a dance, you’re completely zoned out, but the same time you’re completely tapped in. It is a process of learning, a process of discovering yourself, and the reality you are a part of. A process where you’re just unfolding and learning and going deeper towards discovery.

**Anaroth: **One of the things that I feel is different about NFT Twitter is how encouraging the community is. Giving people a feeling that they are capable of more than they thought. Can you share some views on community and its role in the space?

Archan Nair: I think community building part is such an integral element of creative exploration. I feel community building and being part of communities is like energy or fuel for people who are really creative. It motivates them to be able to explore more, and connect with like minded people. To be inspired and inspire others. One of the most curious things about the human species is our ability to learn, and to go deeper. When you find your tribe, your community, you have a platform to share and showcase where people you have not even met will motivate you and push you toward greater heights. Even today I feel like that is such an integral part, I would not be here doing what I am doing now if it was not for the community.

Fueled

It’s amazing how the universe has designed our civilization to be so cross connected. If you look at how the Internet is, or how the blockchain is, they’re all part of a network. Then you can see that we’re all nodes of that network and how we’re all connected. While we may not be able to see it, we can feel it with our energy, our spirit, our activities. I think that is what communities are about, single nodes, then becoming these clusters of nodes which basically are communities.

Anaroth: Everyone talks about community and I want to dive deeper into the feelings behind it. When you find people that you may or may not even know and they’re encouraging you to be a better you everyday. That’s a really positive form of attention. What a lot of these early groups of people often have in common is this hyper focused point of origin that everyone can rally around. When you have that, all of those things that would normally be a barrier for you to connect with someone, they aren’t there.

Archan Nair: I think about that positive attention and think of young artists or even artists that have been creating for a long time. Some go through a lot of self doubt in terms of their craft. A lot of ups and downs and comparing themselves to others or their work. But when you have a community, when we are not so isolated, when we know we can talk to people and be around people. It gives us a lot of clarity and it can break all these shackles off you. Things like division, self doubt, judging ourselves, and all these different labels which we identify with. Of course you need a lot of like internal introspection and contemplation as well, it can’t be just getting the outside information. You need to take time to process it internally as well.

Something you were talking about right now is just so beautiful. When you are part of these communities they can really breakdown all these notions or stories which we have believed, but can really hinder our growth as a human being. When I saw growth, I mean growth as whatever we are doing in life through our relationships, our craft, our business, whatever it is.

Anaroth: Can you share a memorable moment in your art career and why it stands out?

Archan Nair: I think the one I clearly know about and remember is back in 2016 when I took up on this journey where I wanted to create an artwork everyday for a year. By day 290 I thought I broke my back because I was stressing out, just sitting and working like crazy. I went to the doctor and they wanted me to go and get surgery, I couldn’t stand, sit or move, it was very painful. I was clear that I didn’t want to go in for a surgery, for one I am afraid of a surgery I don’t want anyone to touch my back. So I discovered another option of bedrest and physical therapy.

What was running in my mind was, I really need to complete this art series. I don’t want to get to the 290th day and stop. Friends and family came to install a studio of sorts around my bed. For the next 60 or 70 days I was painting while laying flat on bed. What really happened during the process was that the 291st day was basically going back to scratch. By the time I finished the entire project, I realized that this entire experience was so crucial, and so transformational. The entire year and specifically this injury to my back was extremely important and crucial because what really happened was I tapped into a flow state. I began to focus on just creating, and not focusing on the other things in my life.

Yes, the quality of the work went down in those first few days because my body wasn’t used to creating that way. Yet it unlocked a discovery that for me creating is meditation. A way to dissolve the things that may be distracting myself from awareness. The experience was so deeply moving and transformational that I tried to recreate it again, but I just felt that there’s no need for it to happen again. I really understood what the creative process is. We’re just basically vessels or instruments of the universe, and it’s just expressing itself through us and we just need to let that happen as seamlessly as possible. I have learned that meditation is not a practice that one must force on themselves. For me meditation is merging the mind with the source. We practice being aware of external sources and objects all the time, training our mind to look outward, so it can be challenging at times to break that down and look inward.

Duality of a Never Ending Story

**Anaroth: **You’ve had some successful partnerships with big brands. The beginning of our conversation has been a lot around openness and your your ability to explore where you want your creation to go. Do you have any advice for artists who might get approached by a large corporation or a large brand that allows them to feel good about the art they’re creating on behalf of that partnership?

Archan Nair: I started working with brands back in 2006 or 2005 and I remember until about 2012 or 2013 I used to struggle a lot working with clients. There were a lot of rejections, artworks that got made and the client was not really happy with. Or I was not happy with it. I think most of the problem for me was not understanding what my clients required. They were mostly moments where I was trying to make them agree on something which I wanted to do. Or something which I perceived should be a specific way. I realized that it is really important to understand where your client is coming from and what they want. Are they looking for something that is truly your style and authentic to you as an artist? Or are they looking for something that is more commercial and this distinction is something you need from the get go.

You cannot overcome all of this through listening to others, you have to experience it

One of the things I like about working with clients is you get to learn a lot. Whenever I do client projects I am usually simultaneously working on personal artworks. I realized that when I create personal art I usually don’t step out of my comfort zone. I try and do things which I really love and enjoy, but working with clients have been important aspects in my journey because they really made me do things which I really did not want to do. This is where I have learned a lot of new things. Trying something which I felt was really cheesy or something in my mind I would see not workout, but because the client wanted this I had to do this. But in trying those techniques or trying a new direction, experimenting with it I discovered that there’s something fresh and new which I could implement in my art and my personal journey.

When I started working with brands after this I looked at them as training exercises where I can learn something new. I have seen a lot of evolution of my art journey come from this. By not looking at commercial brands or clients as projects but truly an opportunity to experiment and learn has been a crucial distinction.

Anaroth: Who or what is it that you find is inspiring your work now?

Archan Nair: I think there is an abundance of inspiration around us, not just a specific artist. When I reflect though, I really enjoy the idea of the blockchain and programmable art through smart contracts. I also really enjoy nature and being on hikes, and I will search for these places where light and shadow interact. But I don’t want my work to mimic what I saw, I want my work to be how I view light and shadow. My version. I feel that’s something which really fascinates me, I’ve been studying this for the last three years really deeply. I love going into walks in nature and just observing light and shadow. I find ourselves infused with inspiration all the time. It is more about how we take that inspiration and manifest it into something else.

When someone says hey I don’t feel inspired, it’s an excuse. How can you not be inspired? That’s absolute BS. You are constantly inspired it’s just that there is this filtration system which is working on you. You don’t recognize it, it’s so subtle that your mind plays a trick on you saying that hey i’m not inspired. You are! You just have all these judgments and preconceived notions of outcome that get in the way.

Encoded

**Anaroth: **What advice do you have for people who are looking to truly start their journey of creation?

Archan Nair: I think the priority is what you want to do in your heart. So if your heart in your core being as a creative person is to make a lot of money and make like a lot of sales or whatever it is then you aren’t looking it at the right way. Money and materialism are the side effects of the time you invest in your craft. It will come back to you in a natural way. Your focus should be on your inner journey, and to ask more about who you are, and why you are the way you are. When you expand your craft you expand your consciousness. The key is not to focus on ten different things, but to truly focus on one, and spending energy on finding the right one.

I feel that new artists often have self doubt, comparisons and judgments. I think that it’s very natural for everyone to feel this way, but no matter how much mentorship one has, no matter how much they listen to other artists. At the end of the day they have to venture out on their own, because it’s their journey. Only through that creative process will you be able to come up and overcome those self doubts. You cannot overcome all of this through listening to others, you have to experience it. It is only when you experience, when you fall again and again that you realize where you make minor corrections. It is a constant work and it takes time, and thats also how your craft develops. As an artist it is important to experience doubt, fear, hesitation, and challenges. It is how you will continue to evolve, grow and improve.

I’ve been looking at looking back at my work back from 2005 2006, my early early work. One of the most amazing things I love about those artworks is that they aren’t my best work. They’re not really good in terms of the work, but I see how i was making them. There was no refining, it was just experimental because I didn’t know what I was doing. I look back at that rawness, and wish I could replicate that madness, rawness and lack of refinement. When I think about what I would want to tap into now, it’s that feeling.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

Inside Mutant 8521

The following is an amended transcription of the spaces conversation on February 28, 2022 with Brian Morris.

Anaroth: Welcome, thank you for joining us today, I would love to start off by having you share a little bit about who you are, and your journey so far?

Brian Morris: I’m Brian, a Chicago based digital artist. I actually just had my NFT anniversary this week, I’ve been in the NFT space for 1 year. During that last year I have been able to focus on my art. Prior to now, I was a Creative Director and Chief Creative Director at some large firms. I stepped away from the executive creative gigs to focus on making things that I truly love and do them in a way that I truly love to do them. In essence I feel like I’m just a vehicle for making images at this point, thats my job and its pretty amazing.

Anaroth: How do you overcome the blank page? What advice do you have for people just trying to get started?

Brian Morris: Well the first thing to do is just to get started. If you don’t know where to begin, this sounds kind of corny, but you can begin anywhere. You just have to figure out which spot is right for you. For me, I am productivity based. My career has been focused on designing and delivering large projects. I am always thinking about how do we get to the end goal, and then work backwards from there. As I looked at my creative process when it came to art and making images that I enjoyed making, I spent a ton of time literally just looking at my schedule. I wanted to see where in the day I was the most creative and where I was the most productive. So when you ask where do you start? It depends what you need to start on, it depends on how your day and rhythm works, and where your head is at at any given point. Then aligning tasks with that.

A lot of my friends here know that I get up super early. I usually get up around 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. That’s when I start to draw, I do pretty much all of my drawing from 3:00 to 7:00am. It’s the quietest time of the day, no kids running around, it’s dark, it’s quiet. I can listen to conversations on clubhouse to keep my brain going, or music, or what have you. I’ve figured out that is the time for my brain to come up with new ideas that aren’t clouded by all the other responsibilities of life. The other thing is that I don’t ever really try to start with a blank page. I always try and start with something, the previous days work, or even something completely unrelated. You need to have a starting point, and from there you can go anywhere.

Anaroth: When you reflect on your career so far what has been some of the best advice you have received, and who gave it to you?

Brian Morris: This is a tough one, you know I have learned so much this past year. However, I think that’s just it, I have learned to shut up and listen. And I have been able to learn from everybody in this space by doing so. That’s honestly the best advice I could give, just listen and learn from other people’s successes and mistakes. Maybe you won’t have to go through those same pains. When it comes to making art, the best advice I have is the same that my Mom told me when I was a kid. Make what you love. You are not beholden to anyone when it comes to making images, you can just make whatever it is you want to make. Over the years, I have seen that come through the art, you can tell if someone is faking it or if they aren’t as invested. While making things that people appreciate is important, I think you can see it as a veneer on the work at times and if it’s missing that level of authenticity.

Anaroth: Your current collections are small or 1/1s. How do you decide what to say yes to? Do you have a set of criteria you use when selecting who to work with?

Brian Morris: Actually, Pop Wonder who’s in the room right now, he told me this once and it really stuck with me. I was doing some derivative apes and they were gaining in popularity. I was starting to get lots and lots of requests and I asked him, how do you figure out what you do and don’t want to do? There’s just so much now, and I really don’t want to do all of these. Pop Wonder shared:

What projects do you feel like are going to make you the the happiest? Which ones are you going to look back and say, hey I did that with appreciation, or what is going to help get you to your goal?

Just knowing you don’t have to do everything, that was really, really helpful.

Love…

There are a lot of teams out there right now looking for artists. They aren’t just hitting me up, they are hitting everyone up. If you have a style that is unique you will be hit up by a ton of these people. Whether they want an artist for their derivative project, or their 10,000 piece collection. I think what you have to ask yourself, is if you really want to commit yourself to it? I say this because this isn’t like making a poster and then you walk away and never have to look at it again.

If you are building a project, building a collection that is your name, that is your commitment, that is your baby. Don’t sign up to do anything that you are not proud enough to help raise, and build value for, beyond just drawing the damn thing. That advice really solidified my focus a lot, I knew I didn’t want to do a gigantic collection. I wanted to focus on making the best images that I can. That meant being extremely thoughtful and being able to take a week, two weeks, a month, six months to work on something if it is going to make it better. After 20 years in design and leading teams across the country, I lived by deadlines. I don’t do that anymore. I try to live by knowing what is the best quality of work that I can make.

When I transitioned from my corporate life and focused on my art I essentially removed all deadlines from my life. If you are a fan of Cheech and Chong there’s a line in one of the movies where Tommy Chong goes:

I’m not into time, man.

When I was younger, I was like huh, that’s a funny joke. This guy doesn’t believe in time. Now though, I am there. Fuck time. Do what you need to do when you need to do it. When you feel like the best time to do it is. I know that is a luxury right now, but I am soaking it in as much as possible. I am seeing results in my work that I didn’t anticipate, and I think it is because I didn’t put restrictions on myself.

I’d also like to add, during the last year and a half you have had people working from home, and there is no clear beginning or end of the day. A lot of us were working 80–90 hours a week. What is interesting here is that you know you can get up on a Sunday morning at 2:00 AM and work on a powerpoint deck, because you’e done it. Once you kind of free yourself from those shackles of time, and you recognize you are capable of working at all hours of the night, it’s freeing. I know I am capable of pushing so hard on something and making it bulletproof for a presentation. You can apply that same rigor and mentality to creating images, while also being kinder to yourself in the process.

Anaroth: What has surprised you about Art in the Web3 world? Has it changed the way you think about creating moving forward?

Brian Morris: Oh for sure! I think a year ago, when I minted my first piece I was like oh great, I can sell my JPEGS. This is fucking awesome! But now, a year later all that experience design that I have been doing for the last 20 years around building sites, apps, and tools for people to use in their day to day lives that are all digital. My mind has always been rooted in identifying how I can create a great experience for people, whether they are customers, employees, or patients. I’m super energized now because like lightning, we’ve moved to this place where its not really only about the art. It is about giving people something that they can rally around, engage with, believe in, be part of. These are all the same tenants that we would use in experience design. But now they are manifesting in this Wild West style space and I am really excited about what is coming.

I am thinking a lot about how we can create experiences around the act of making art. Taking the act of making art to the Metaverse, and creating a studio space there that people can come visit and be part of. Not just look at pictures, but actually engage with artists. I’m really excited about what that opens up for us. I think it is also important to share a little about the states of art. Pop Wonder and I have talked about this, as well as others, but there are different states of art. There’s the state of art where you are making the art, then theres the state of art where you have finished creating, and then the third state of art is someone experiencing it.

Music though, has a fourth state, the performance state. A musician, they write the song, record the song, and people listen to the song. They have all the three states. But, there’s also that act of going out and performing that song live, people can experience it again, but in a more authentic way. Hearing it being played by the very people that wrote it, performing it and having you remember what made you love it the first time. You get to have a whole new level of experience with it. I think for a lot of visual artists that has been lost outside of painting on secret walls, or some of these jam sessions. I think the Metaverse open up that possibility for all of us to invite the world into that typically very quiet act of sitting painting or drawing. A new arena is literally opening up a whole new state of art for visual artists.

Anaroth: I think it is really important to celebrate successes. Can you share a time in your artistic career or life you are incredibly proud of?

Brian Morris: The biggest one is actually not a painting or a drawing, but it’s Volkswagens. A couple years ago I challenged myself with rebuilding a car from the ground up, nut and bolt, by myself to the extent possible. I did have to sub out some things like paint work, but it was a challenge I gave myself. Literally one year to the day I was driving that car and it’s better than if it rolled off the line in Germany. I am extremely proud of that, I learned so much. Every day was a fucking challenge, I never had the right tool, I had always worked on American cars so a German car was different. I literally didn’t have a fucking metric wrench anywhere, it wasn’t part of my tool kit. So yea, I challenged myself with that and I am really happy with how it turned out. So happy in fact that I am in the middle of restoring a second one now. Yea, that’s the thing I am most proud of because I took something that was in boxes that I pulled out of a barn, and now I drive it proudly down Lakeshore Drive in Chicago.

Brian Morris X Gabe Weis : Open Up

Reflecting on the process of the building the car too, I recognize it taught me patience, because it’s easy to fuck things up. When working with something mechanical you can thread a bolt, or any number of nightmares. Two second jobs can turn into a three day job if you rush. But that car taught me patience, to slow down and do things the right way. That car was actually the practice car for the one that I am restoring now. I literally said this is the one i’m going to learn on, but i think patience has manifested in me when i draw now. Like if it isn’t working I just walk away for a day. It’s ok, because if I rush it, it isn’t going to go down the road straight.

Anaroth: Lastly tell us what you are focused on, and what you would like people to know about you walking away from this conversation?

Brian Morris: I think I want people to know that I focus on doing things right, making sure that I am as happy with the work as possible. I am really focused on commissions at the moment. I enjoy that process of making something for someone, knowing it is going to land in good hands that are appreciative of it. I have found that is what makes the best work come out of me. I am giving a talk with Chicago Graphic Design Club helping folks get a little more knowledgeable about NFT’s and / where to begin. What questions should they ask to take the next steps forward. I’m really excited about getting more folks rolling in this amazing wave we are all riding right now.

Anaroth: Thank you again for taking time to share your perspective, thoughts, and best practices with our listeners and readers. This has been the Hyype Write Way Spaces, thank you for tuning in.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

I feel like the luckiest guy in the world a lot of the time, having relationships with these artists.

Shroom Heads

Anaroth: Thank you for joining us today on the Write Way Artist Spotlight. For those not familiar with you or your work, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Galbraith: My name is Richard Galbraith, just Galbraith on Twitter. I studied Journalism as a kid, and when I went to off to Uni I immediately wanted to become involved as music journalist, I was fortunate enough to do quite well. I was the music header of the universities magazine, while I was there I set up my own music magazine. After I graduated I was trying to break into that same type of industry and I kind of accidentally fell into social media and Web 2 back in 2006, 2007. Hence kind of signing up to all these social media platforms early on. I just signed up as Ric Galbraith, this was before there was talk around being Anon & Doxed wasn’t even a word back then. Most people just signed up as themselves to a lot of platforms.

I started off as this creative copywriter and built a skill over the years into becoming good social media strategist. I worked for Royal Dutch Shell, and Lego. Mostly I was based in London, but all the time during the course of this professional career, which paid the bills, and it was fairly enjoyable. It provided me with a with a nice life, I got to travel a lot, and I got to work with some really interesting people. But all this time my real passion and driver was writing. The career path I took progressed from being a copywriter into being a strategist, and that was fine. It facilitated me still having a creative side. It allowed me to be a storyteller, but more in a marketing sense. I found myself carrying on with my writing in in the evenings over a very long and extended period of time over the last 15 years.

I had my first novel out in 2009 and that was funded by an English Arts Council Grant which I was really proud to get a hold of. This was the start of my collaborative cross-media journey. I got five bands and five artists to create original music and art based around five themes of the novel. Two thousand word extracts based on Love, Madness, Anger, Jealousy and Desire, they went off and created something original from. In the end we had a 72 page Art Book, FiveTrack Music Album, and Novel with a seven day interactive Art Literature and Music Exhibition based in East London. It was amazing and was my first real foray into cross-media and I loved it. I’m relatively good at at producing as well, so that helped facilitate the cross-media focus. It can be difficult to organize people or actually be able to interact and engage with them. That just set me on this path with my writing where I did a lot of my own stuff, but also enjoyed the cross-media.

Almost 10 years later in like 2017–2018, with 3D Render artists gaining traction on Instagram. I started noticing these amazing artists who were utilizing Instagram as a platform to increase their profile and show off their work. I started thinking, maybe they would like to collaborate? Maybe I could write stories based on their work? Maybe they can create work based on my stories? I kicked off with this project called Concrete Operational, which is when I first got talking to Beeple and I reached out to him. I was like I love your work can I write stories on it? He was like yeah dude, that sounds amazing! His gave me access to the drop box and then that got me some attention, I really enjoyed writing those stories. Because of this collaboration / relationship with Mike, I was introduced to NFTs in late 2020. My first one that I bought was a Beeple in December 2020 and then the rest is history.

Concrete Operational

I’ve been involved in the NFT space as a writer, as a storyteller, and as a narrative developer for the last 12 months now. Working with some of the best digital artists in the world and enjoying it a lot. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world a lot of the time, having relationships with these artists.

Anaroth: How do you go about building the world first? Are you thinking about your characters and then how they interact with the world or vice versa?

Galbraith: It is an interesting question, it’s something that I’ve been able to do with Stefan because of my background in novels. The Neon Concrete series that I did with Beeple and another digital 3D render artist called also Ozhichige comes to mind as well. We ended up doing 13 short stories which ranged from 2000 - 8000 words over a period of about a year and a half. This world developed out of it, which I ended up calling Major Prime. A cyberpunk megalopolis where all of the stories ended up happening. That kind of just happened organically as part of the experimental process of doing that collaboration and developing that series.

That gave me a good grounding and footing alongside my novel writing when Stefan approached me. He was like:

“I have this idea called Cycle of the Shroom. It is the precursor of an ongoing short story series of Shroom Heads and I want to develop this world. But I don’t know really how to do it, how to bring it together in narrative and I’m hoping you might be able to help me out with this.”

This is my Bread and butter, I can absolutely do that! So where do you start with that? I mean, Stefan had a few ideas:

• There’s this gang called Shroom Heads and they’re in this city and cyberpunk world.

• There are these mushrooms that grow on dead bodies.

• People eat them and escape from reality and how bad this place is.

For me when I am starting something like this, it’s all about motivation. You’ll hear writers whether they’re doing a sitcom, a cyberpunk book, a fantasy novel, or whatever. They are always asking what’s the motivation for the characters? Once you’ve have motivation you can build the world out around it, and then start filling in all of the details.

So we’ve got these Shroom Heads. I have this guy called Pinky who’s the head of the gang. His motivation is to become the drug dealer kingpin of the world. He has this special way of growing psychedelic mushrooms on the bodies of dead people. Semi-dead people, that he keeps alive to grow the mushrooms. He wants to be the lead gangster .

Then you have roles within the gang. One is his Lieutenant, his left or right hand man / woman. They want to be his protector, but also want the gang to do well. Then there’s young people or newbies who come into the faction or the gang to try and work their way up the ranks. Or maybe just as a way to get off the streets. You can start filling in all the characters from that, and then the world naturally expands around that. I always had this idea in my head for ages, and have been a little bit obsessed with the Bermuda Triangle. I always wanted to make a replica of the Bermuda Triangle. The idea of what the Bermuda Triangle is into something else, and make it a bit more sci-fi, a bit more cyberpunk. So then I got this NEO-Budapest Triangle. Full of rival gangs that that are trying to supply this mushroom. What happened before then? How did we get to this point? And then you want to add a little bit of context and a little bit of history around that world.

Trope

Then you utilize tropes. Tropes are there for a reason, and you don’t want to be like too trope heavy, but they are there because there are certain dynamics and rules to storytelling that people enjoy. The reason people go back to Marvel or Pixar movies or certain types of Writers is because they use these tropes that people can recognize. You might have an anti-hero, or heroes journey, you might have a world such as the Neo Budapest Triangle? Where there was some sort of big colossal incident, and then that incident created this new world. Thats what happens in Akira, Tokyo gets gets blown up, and then you have this new Neo Tokyo that comes out of the ashes of this old world.

This NEO Budapest Triangle, a colossal city that managed to rise out of the ashes of the old Europe. There’s many different facets to it, obviously, and one is developing characters and what their motivations are. Then you have an environment which either suits their motivations or in some ways actually conflicts with their motivations to give them a struggle. That’s what a good character has, this story arc which contains struggle or conflict. You then get to resolve that conflict at the end if you’re writing in a linear fashion or novel. With Shroom Heads and Cycle of the Shroom, we don’t know when it’s going to end. We want to do all of these things, and we’re just having an immense amount of fun with it. At the moment we are building out this world and exploring it. Doing the background for 100 characters is a bit of a task, and building out this world with intricate stories, background and history is also quite a big task, but it’s also a lot of fun.

Beeple MEGATROKPOLIS x Neon & Concrete

Anaroth: With that amount of detail and your larger body of work, what advice do you have for people to stay organized?

Galbraith: From a very basic standpoint, have a strong and regularly updated set of To Do lists. If each project needs its own To Do List, then each project needs its own To Do List. Trying to remain organized with everything in your head, rather than written down is extremely difficult. I’ve found over the years, and have experienced myself, that people who don’t write things down get a little bit chaotic. They can be a little bit disorganized and forget about things. The thing is, if you’re trying to keep so much stuff in your head, it actually negates or hinders your ability to be creative. You want to free up as much of your mental capacity to be creative as possible. By writing everything down you don’t have to remember everything about the motivations of characters or details of the world. You can focus on creating rather than trying to remember exactly what needs to be done.

Learn how to prioritize your work, and that’s a really good start. It’s an ongoing struggle, theres so much going on at the moment and I am getting so many DM’s from people. I wanna work with everybody, thats the crazy kind of situation that I’m in at the moment. People coming to me with legitimate and amazing collaborations, and I’m having to prioritize what I do with with that. That’s a struggle because like I said, I do want to work with everybody, but there’s only so many hours in the day.

It can be quite easy to get overwhelmed in this space, and I’ve seen a number of people over the 12-14 months that i’ve been here, on Twitter, essentially an entrepreneur as well as a as a creative or an artist. It’s difficult for people to manage and juggle and people get burnt out. Try and offload as much out of your mind into writing things down. It gives you the extra mental capacity to be creative and focused on the things that you want to focus on.

Everybody falls down at one point, you can only run on cortisol and coffee for so long, some people manage it well. Some people have challenges with it, and I kind of come out in the middle. I’m OK most of the time, and then I’ll just be like oh shit! I actually am feeling that I need a bit of space at the moment. I’ll step back from Twitter and discord and everything else for a couple of days. Read my book, have a couple of beers, go for a couple walks ,and do some training. Things to clear my head and then I can come back into it. Not letting yourself get burnt out and trying to enjoy the process is important. There’s no golden ticket to to learning how to prioritize. It’s really difficult and you have to set your own rules. Obviously if you’ve got more of an office job where you something’s coming from your boss, you’re like, OK, I need to do this, because if I don’t, I’m going to be in trouble with with my boss. I hope that kind of answers the question.

Anaroth: When you think about the evolution of story within web3, what are some changes that you expect to see?

Galbraith: Innovation, the whole space is innovative because it’s all so new. However, what Alpha Centauri Kid is doing, for me, is really innovative the way he’s telling a story via blockchain rather than just having lore on a website. The arc you know, Intro, Conflict Resolution, and how a story is told. What is contained in the story won’t change very much, because again, there’s reasons why people go back to certain tropes. Having a certain way of telling stories because we like it, we engage, we recognize it. But how do we use Web3? Telling these stories is what’s going to be the really interesting part, how a smart contract facilitates a new paradigm in entertainment. You can go into this world and follow a trail of bread crumbs via, the Ledger and and via the blockchain. Maybe it involves some sort of investigatory kind of challenge that you have to do. If you find one thing, then something else happens, and if you mint something over here then something else happens over there. So for me, that’s kind of really where the evolution comes in.

Like I said, story probably won’t change that much, but the use of the technology is where it starts to get really interesting. This is why I’ve sat on my third novel that’s part of a trilogy. I want to try and utilize Web3 to get this published and read. I don’t want to just mint the novel as an NFT. It’s going to be an innovative use of the technology in itself, beyond if you buy this you can read this book. How do I use the the this technology to to bring the book to life in a way that’s not been done before? Storytelling is taking a bit of a moment in finding a new platform to tell stories through. Which hasn’t really been explored before, and I think that is really interesting.

Ethertales

Anaroth: Is there a specific universe or time period of your career that you look back on as a favorite?

Galbraith: I feel like with the original novel, that collaborative media project back in 2009. That was a moment of actualization for me. When everything came together and we had the launch night in London. Hundreds of people showed up, they’re all looking at the art, listening to the music, reading the excerpts, and buying my book. There was a band playing, I did a reading and it was a really amazing moment. I was quite young, 26 or 27 at the time, and it was a very proud moment for me. I’ve been fortunate to have had some other similar moments, moments of actualization where you have a confluence of things and activities and work. The blood, sweat and tears kind of come together and you do something that you are extremely proud of.

March and April of last year was was really phenomenal. I was able to get the project onto Makers Place which was always a goal for me to have a project on a curated platform. I was proud to be able to do that. I’ve got a half decent body of work now and it just been a long kind of journey. I do have some really really nice moments that I’ve been able to be proud of. The Neon & Concrete series, there was never really a solid end to that. I might still go back to it if I get some time in the future.

The Beeple stories did very well on Reddit. The first time that I broke 10,000 reads on the platform Medium was really nice because I had been struggling to get an audience and readership for a while. It just felt very validating. Within the NFT space I wrote the first Punks Comic, which was a really amazing project to have been involved with right at the beginning. I got a lot of kudos for that which was great. Now I’m working with Loopify writing the the the Arcadia trilogy. So when that is finally completed and released, that’ll be a really amazing thing.

Punks Comic Issue #01

I know I am very fortunate to have had these really amazing moments with all these amazing artists over the years, and actually in the last 12 months as well. There’s actually a few things I’m working on in the background at the moment, which I can’t really talk about because I’m figuring out what my role is going to be with with these artists. A couple of really amazing and prominent people asked me to come on as a writer for them because they’ve seen my work. They’ve seen how I understand and engage with the community. There’s been a lot. I’ve got a bit done and I’m very lucky to have had the opportunities that I’ve got. At the same time though, there’s a lot of hard work. I won’t let anybody say that it was a fluke because I’ve been trying to do this for 20 years now. I wouldn’t want to single out one single one because they all meant different things to me at different times, and in different stages of my writing career.

Shroom Heads

Anaroth: Lastly, what’s important in your life right now? What are you working on? What do you want people to know about?

Galbraith: We’re really building out a long term IP here with Shroom Heads, we’ve got a lot that we that we want to do, including this ongoing series of stories which is in the NEO Budapest Triangle called Cycle of the Shroom. The characters from Shroom Heads are in the Cycle of the Shroom storytelling, which is then, hopefully going be a graphic novel and maybe an animation later on.

I’m working with Baka Arts on Ether Tales as well. We’ve got some new stuff coming out in the near future. Baka is regarded as one of the leaders in the spaces. I’ve been helping him develop the Ether Tales world for the last 12 months, and we’ve got some new stuff coming out around that. Then there’s my own projects. Tales from the Glitch, I’ve been working on the next drop for that, and with some really amazing artists who I be able to share a fairly soon. We’re in the process of developing our own smart contract and website for that.

With Punk Fiction, I do actually work with the punks that we produce the stories around to try and bring their personality to life and into these stories. So they’re a collaboration in a slightly different way. I think those are probably the big things at the moment. I’ve got a bunch of other stuff baking away in the background, some collaborative pieces which are coming up i’m really excited about but can’t really talk about at the moment.

Anaroth: Thank you again for taking time to share your perspective, thoughts, and best practices with our listeners and readers. This has been the Hyype Write Way Spaces, thank you for tuning in.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

I feel like the luckiest guy in the world a lot of the time, having relationships with these artists.

Shroom Heads

Anaroth: Thank you for joining us today on the Write Way Artist Spotlight. For those not familiar with you or your work, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Galbraith: My name is Richard Galbraith, just Galbraith on Twitter. I studied Journalism as a kid, and when I went to off to Uni I immediately wanted to become involved as music journalist, I was fortunate enough to do quite well. I was the music header of the universities magazine, while I was there I set up my own music magazine. After I graduated I was trying to break into that same type of industry and I kind of accidentally fell into social media and Web 2 back in 2006, 2007. Hence kind of signing up to all these social media platforms early on. I just signed up as Ric Galbraith, this was before there was talk around being Anon & Doxed wasn’t even a word back then. Most people just signed up as themselves to a lot of platforms.

I started off as this creative copywriter and built a skill over the years into becoming good social media strategist. I worked for Royal Dutch Shell, and Lego. Mostly I was based in London, but all the time during the course of this professional career, which paid the bills, and it was fairly enjoyable. It provided me with a with a nice life, I got to travel a lot, and I got to work with some really interesting people. But all this time my real passion and driver was writing. The career path I took progressed from being a copywriter into being a strategist, and that was fine. It facilitated me still having a creative side. It allowed me to be a storyteller, but more in a marketing sense. I found myself carrying on with my writing in in the evenings over a very long and extended period of time over the last 15 years.

I had my first novel out in 2009 and that was funded by an English Arts Council Grant which I was really proud to get a hold of. This was the start of my collaborative cross-media journey. I got five bands and five artists to create original music and art based around five themes of the novel. Two thousand word extracts based on Love, Madness, Anger, Jealousy and Desire, they went off and created something original from. In the end we had a 72 page Art Book, FiveTrack Music Album, and Novel with a seven day interactive Art Literature and Music Exhibition based in East London. It was amazing and was my first real foray into cross-media and I loved it. I’m relatively good at at producing as well, so that helped facilitate the cross-media focus. It can be difficult to organize people or actually be able to interact and engage with them. That just set me on this path with my writing where I did a lot of my own stuff, but also enjoyed the cross-media.

Almost 10 years later in like 2017–2018, with 3D Render artists gaining traction on Instagram. I started noticing these amazing artists who were utilizing Instagram as a platform to increase their profile and show off their work. I started thinking, maybe they would like to collaborate? Maybe I could write stories based on their work? Maybe they can create work based on my stories? I kicked off with this project called Concrete Operational, which is when I first got talking to Beeple and I reached out to him. I was like I love your work can I write stories on it? He was like yeah dude, that sounds amazing! His gave me access to the drop box and then that got me some attention, I really enjoyed writing those stories. Because of this collaboration / relationship with Mike, I was introduced to NFTs in late 2020. My first one that I bought was a Beeple in December 2020 and then the rest is history.

Concrete Operational

I’ve been involved in the NFT space as a writer, as a storyteller, and as a narrative developer for the last 12 months now. Working with some of the best digital artists in the world and enjoying it a lot. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world a lot of the time, having relationships with these artists.

Anaroth: How do you go about building the world first? Are you thinking about your characters and then how they interact with the world or vice versa?

**Galbraith: **It is an interesting question, it’s something that I’ve been able to do with Stefan because of my background in novels. The Neon Concrete series that I did with Beeple and another digital 3D render artist called also Ozhichige comes to mind as well. We ended up doing 13 short stories which ranged from 2000 - 8000 words over a period of about a year and a half. This world developed out of it, which I ended up calling Major Prime. A cyberpunk megalopolis where all of the stories ended up happening. That kind of just happened organically as part of the experimental process of doing that collaboration and developing that series.

That gave me a good grounding and footing alongside my novel writing when Stefan approached me. He was like:

“I have this idea called Cycle of the Shroom. It is the precursor of an ongoing short story series of Shroom Heads and I want to develop this world. But I don’t know really how to do it, how to bring it together in narrative and I’m hoping you might be able to help me out with this.”

This is my Bread and butter, I can absolutely do that! So where do you start with that? I mean, Stefan had a few ideas:

• There’s this gang called Shroom Heads and they’re in this city and cyberpunk world.

• There are these mushrooms that grow on dead bodies.

• People eat them and escape from reality and how bad this place is.

For me when I am starting something like this, it’s all about motivation. You’ll hear writers whether they’re doing a sitcom, a cyberpunk book, a fantasy novel, or whatever. They are always asking what’s the motivation for the characters? Once you’ve have motivation you can build the world out around it, and then start filling in all of the details.

So we’ve got these Shroom Heads. I have this guy called Pinky who’s the head of the gang. His motivation is to become the drug dealer kingpin of the world. He has this special way of growing psychedelic mushrooms on the bodies of dead people. Semi-dead people, that he keeps alive to grow the mushrooms. He wants to be the lead gangster .

Then you have roles within the gang. One is his Lieutenant, his left or right hand man / woman. They want to be his protector, but also want the gang to do well. Then there’s young people or newbies who come into the faction or the gang to try and work their way up the ranks. Or maybe just as a way to get off the streets. You can start filling in all the characters from that, and then the world naturally expands around that. I always had this idea in my head for ages, and have been a little bit obsessed with the Bermuda Triangle. I always wanted to make a replica of the Bermuda Triangle. The idea of what the Bermuda Triangle is into something else, and make it a bit more sci-fi, a bit more cyberpunk. So then I got this NEO-Budapest Triangle. Full of rival gangs that that are trying to supply this mushroom. What happened before then? How did we get to this point? And then you want to add a little bit of context and a little bit of history around that world.

Trope

Then you utilize tropes. Tropes are there for a reason, and you don’t want to be like too trope heavy, but they are there because there are certain dynamics and rules to storytelling that people enjoy. The reason people go back to Marvel or Pixar movies or certain types of Writers is because they use these tropes that people can recognize. You might have an anti-hero, or heroes journey, you might have a world such as the Neo Budapest Triangle? Where there was some sort of big colossal incident, and then that incident created this new world. Thats what happens in Akira, Tokyo gets gets blown up, and then you have this new Neo Tokyo that comes out of the ashes of this old world.

This NEO Budapest Triangle, a colossal city that managed to rise out of the ashes of the old Europe. There’s many different facets to it, obviously, and one is developing characters and what their motivations are. Then you have an environment which either suits their motivations or in some ways actually conflicts with their motivations to give them a struggle. That’s what a good character has, this story arc which contains struggle or conflict. You then get to resolve that conflict at the end if you’re writing in a linear fashion or novel. With Shroom Heads and Cycle of the Shroom, we don’t know when it’s going to end. We want to do all of these things, and we’re just having an immense amount of fun with it. At the moment we are building out this world and exploring it. Doing the background for 100 characters is a bit of a task, and building out this world with intricate stories, background and history is also quite a big task, but it’s also a lot of fun.

Beeple MEGATROKPOLIS x Neon & Concrete

**Anaroth: **With that amount of detail and your larger body of work, what advice do you have for people to stay organized?

**Galbraith: **From a very basic standpoint, have a strong and regularly updated set of To Do lists. If each project needs its own To Do List, then each project needs its own To Do List. Trying to remain organized with everything in your head, rather than written down is extremely difficult. I’ve found over the years, and have experienced myself, that people who don’t write things down get a little bit chaotic. They can be a little bit disorganized and forget about things. The thing is, if you’re trying to keep so much stuff in your head, it actually negates or hinders your ability to be creative. You want to free up as much of your mental capacity to be creative as possible. By writing everything down you don’t have to remember everything about the motivations of characters or details of the world. You can focus on creating rather than trying to remember exactly what needs to be done.

Learn how to prioritize your work, and that’s a really good start. It’s an ongoing struggle, theres so much going on at the moment and I am getting so many DM’s from people. I wanna work with everybody, thats the crazy kind of situation that I’m in at the moment. People coming to me with legitimate and amazing collaborations, and I’m having to prioritize what I do with with that. That’s a struggle because like I said, I do want to work with everybody, but there’s only so many hours in the day.

It can be quite easy to get overwhelmed in this space, and I’ve seen a number of people over the 12-14 months that i’ve been here, on Twitter, essentially an entrepreneur as well as a as a creative or an artist. It’s difficult for people to manage and juggle and people get burnt out. Try and offload as much out of your mind into writing things down. It gives you the extra mental capacity to be creative and focused on the things that you want to focus on.

Everybody falls down at one point, you can only run on cortisol and coffee for so long, some people manage it well. Some people have challenges with it, and I kind of come out in the middle. I’m OK most of the time, and then I’ll just be like oh shit! I actually am feeling that I need a bit of space at the moment. I’ll step back from Twitter and discord and everything else for a couple of days. Read my book, have a couple of beers, go for a couple walks ,and do some training. Things to clear my head and then I can come back into it. Not letting yourself get burnt out and trying to enjoy the process is important. There’s no golden ticket to to learning how to prioritize. It’s really difficult and you have to set your own rules. Obviously if you’ve got more of an office job where you something’s coming from your boss, you’re like, OK, I need to do this, because if I don’t, I’m going to be in trouble with with my boss. I hope that kind of answers the question.

**Anaroth: **When you think about the evolution of story within web3, what are some changes that you expect to see?

**Galbraith: **Innovation, the whole space is innovative because it’s all so new. However, what Alpha Centauri Kid is doing, for me, is really innovative the way he’s telling a story via blockchain rather than just having lore on a website. The arc you know, Intro, Conflict Resolution, and how a story is told. What is contained in the story won’t change very much, because again, there’s reasons why people go back to certain tropes. Having a certain way of telling stories because we like it, we engage, we recognize it. But how do we use Web3? Telling these stories is what’s going to be the really interesting part, how a smart contract facilitates a new paradigm in entertainment. You can go into this world and follow a trail of bread crumbs via, the Ledger and and via the blockchain. Maybe it involves some sort of investigatory kind of challenge that you have to do. If you find one thing, then something else happens, and if you mint something over here then something else happens over there. So for me, that’s kind of really where the evolution comes in.

Like I said, story probably won’t change that much, but the use of the technology is where it starts to get really interesting. This is why I’ve sat on my third novel that’s part of a trilogy. I want to try and utilize Web3 to get this published and read. I don’t want to just mint the novel as an NFT. It’s going to be an innovative use of the technology in itself, beyond if you buy this you can read this book. How do I use the the this technology to to bring the book to life in a way that’s not been done before? Storytelling is taking a bit of a moment in finding a new platform to tell stories through. Which hasn’t really been explored before, and I think that is really interesting.

Ethertales

**Anaroth: **Is there a specific universe or time period of your career that you look back on as a favorite?

Galbraith: I feel like with the original novel, that collaborative media project back in 2009. That was a moment of actualization for me. When everything came together and we had the launch night in London. Hundreds of people showed up, they’re all looking at the art, listening to the music, reading the excerpts, and buying my book. There was a band playing, I did a reading and it was a really amazing moment. I was quite young, 26 or 27 at the time, and it was a very proud moment for me. I’ve been fortunate to have had some other similar moments, moments of actualization where you have a confluence of things and activities and work. The blood, sweat and tears kind of come together and you do something that you are extremely proud of.

March and April of last year was was really phenomenal. I was able to get the project onto Makers Place which was always a goal for me to have a project on a curated platform. I was proud to be able to do that. I’ve got a half decent body of work now and it just been a long kind of journey. I do have some really really nice moments that I’ve been able to be proud of. The Neon & Concrete series, there was never really a solid end to that. I might still go back to it if I get some time in the future.

The Beeple stories did very well on Reddit. The first time that I broke 10,000 reads on the platform Medium was really nice because I had been struggling to get an audience and readership for a while. It just felt very validating. Within the NFT space I wrote the first Punks Comic, which was a really amazing project to have been involved with right at the beginning. I got a lot of kudos for that which was great. Now I’m working with Loopify writing the the the Arcadia trilogy. So when that is finally completed and released, that’ll be a really amazing thing.

Punks Comic Issue #01

I know I am very fortunate to have had these really amazing moments with all these amazing artists over the years, and actually in the last 12 months as well. There’s actually a few things I’m working on in the background at the moment, which I can’t really talk about because I’m figuring out what my role is going to be with with these artists. A couple of really amazing and prominent people asked me to come on as a writer for them because they’ve seen my work. They’ve seen how I understand and engage with the community. There’s been a lot. I’ve got a bit done and I’m very lucky to have had the opportunities that I’ve got. At the same time though, there’s a lot of hard work. I won’t let anybody say that it was a fluke because I’ve been trying to do this for 20 years now. I wouldn’t want to single out one single one because they all meant different things to me at different times, and in different stages of my writing career.

Shroom Heads

**Anaroth: **Lastly, what’s important in your life right now? What are you working on? What do you want people to know about?

**Galbraith: **We’re really building out a long term IP here with Shroom Heads, we’ve got a lot that we that we want to do, including this ongoing series of stories which is in the NEO Budapest Triangle called Cycle of the Shroom. The characters from Shroom Heads are in the Cycle of the Shroom storytelling, which is then, hopefully going be a graphic novel and maybe an animation later on.

I’m working with Baka Arts on Ether Tales as well. We’ve got some new stuff coming out in the near future. Baka is regarded as one of the leaders in the spaces. I’ve been helping him develop the Ether Tales world for the last 12 months, and we’ve got some new stuff coming out around that. Then there’s my own projects. Tales from the Glitch, I’ve been working on the next drop for that, and with some really amazing artists who I be able to share a fairly soon. We’re in the process of developing our own smart contract and website for that.

With Punk Fiction, I do actually work with the punks that we produce the stories around to try and bring their personality to life and into these stories. So they’re a collaboration in a slightly different way. I think those are probably the big things at the moment. I’ve got a bunch of other stuff baking away in the background, some collaborative pieces which are coming up i’m really excited about but can’t really talk about at the moment.

**Anaroth: **Thank you again for taking time to share your perspective, thoughts, and best practices with our listeners and readers. This has been the Hyype Write Way Spaces, thank you for tuning in.

Don’t see your NFT community listed on Hyy.pe? 👀

We are expanding to as many collections as fast as we can. We are actively seeking partners in the NFT community, and if you would like to work together, please join our discord and reach out!

Docs: https://docs.hyy.pe/getting-started

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/cbHN3V7wvf

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hyypeHQ

THE PRINCE by JakNFT

Regarding expectations, set none, but do set goals for yourself. — JakNFT

Thank you @JakNFT for taking time answer some questions for our community at Hyype. This written interview continues our spotlight series, bringing access to creators within Web3, and empowering our community with advice. Let’s dig in.

Anaroth: What advice do you have for people to get beyond the limitations that keep them from believing in their ability to create?

JakNFT: Everyone has the ability to create. Just make that first stroke on the canvas and see where it takes you. Even if you don’t know what you’re creating at first, you can discover that later in the process. Many of my favorite pieces began from a place of no inspiration. Later in the process I found the inspiration and discovered what the piece was meant to be.

Also, if you practice your art every day, even if it’s just a few strokes, you will inevitably improve. Consistency and repetition are key. Lastly, don’t be afraid to make “mistakes” when creating art. Accidents, mistakes and experiments often lead to profound discoveries and the development of new techniques.

Anaroth: What is it about glitch art that captured your attention, is that still the same thing that captivates your attention for it today?

JakNFT: Besides the eye-catching aesthetic, glitch art initially captured my attention and fascinated me because it is an entirely digital art form. You cannot print a piece of glitch art, hang it on a wall and achieve the desired effect. It must be presented in a digital format. I found this profound, and felt compelled to try it out. Another aspect of glitch that I love is the ability it gives the artist to bring life into a piece of art. Many pieces I’ve created can feel alive when looking at them such as SPILLER, CYBER JAK and the more recent METAMASK and THE PRINCE.

Glitch art is not the only thing that captures my attention. I look at and appreciate all forms of art. There is an abundance and variety of art to enjoy in this modern renaissance.

METAMASK by JakNFT

Anaroth: How has the marketplace for NFT changed your thought process around how and what you create as an artist?

JakNFT: The NFT marketplace is extremely dynamic. Trends come and go rapidly. While sometimes it’s good and fun to play into relevant themes, memes and trends, I’ve learned that developing a unique style and mastering it is the best way to stand out in the market while staying true to my artistic vision. It’s also very important to create the art that you really want to create, even if the market appears to demand something different. There is power in being authentic and creating what you really want to express. Authenticity resonates.

The question of scarcity vs. abundance is also something the NFT marketplace has made me consider and has impacted what I create. An artist usually needs to create and spread an abundance of work to build a strong community of collectors and progress in the NFT space. Yet, artists are often told the marketplace demands scarcity. This presents a conflict. I’m constantly trying to balance scarcity and abundance, getting my art into more collectors hands and growing my community, while remaining cognizant of scarcity. It’s not simple.

ARTIST by JakNFT

Anaroth: Who are some artists you draw inspiration from? Do you end up seeing elements of their work permeate your own?

JakNFT: As I have progressed in the NFT space there have been many artists I’ve drawn inspiration from and elements of their work may permeate my own whether or not I am conscious of it.

For example, when I first began creating glitch art I was initially inspired by the godfather of the genre — XCOPY — and studied his work. John Karel’s skeletons influenced some of the character choices in my first glitch works and inspired me to create several “skelly” themed pieces. Towards the end of 2021 I studied Basquiat and blended what I had learned about glitch with a neo-expressionist style. Elements of Banksy and other anonymous street artists may permeate some works I’ve created that have a graffiti style to them. The intelligence and depth that ACK applies to many of his pieces inspired me to add more hidden details and additional layers of meaning in pieces like METAMASK, my Superrare genesis. Recently I was inspired by the simple genius of Sartoshi and created a few glitchy meme derivatives of a Zombie mfer PFP I collected, because they’re just fun.

With that said, although many different artists have inspired me, most of the time I’m not pro-actively studying other artists or consciously drawing inspiration from a particular person. I’m influenced, consciously and subconsciously, by everything I encounter in my day-to-day life and usually just allow my intuition to express itself on the canvas in whatever way feels most natural in the moment.

KEKCHAMBERS by JakNFT

Anaroth: What has been one of the positive surprises with your interaction with the web3 space?

JakNFT: The amount of real frens I’ve made along the way. I’ve developed many incredible relationships with other artists, collectors and just cool mfers. Even though I may never know who most of these frens are, or meet them in real life, that doesn’t seem to matter at all.

XCOPY PASTE by JakNFT

Anaroth: How do you define success? What advice do you have for artists entering web3 about setting good expectations for themselves?

JakNFT: Success is being healthy, happy and always trying to do good. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

Regarding expectations, set none, but do set goals for yourself. Every artist’s journey is unique. What worked for someone else, may not work for you. Determine what you’d like to achieve in Web3, outline how to get there and keep moving towards your goals. If your goals are ambitious, there will inevitably be challenges along the way, and things may take longer than you had anticipated. Just be patient, stay focused on your goals and keep moving towards them.

Anaroth: Thank you for taking the time to share insight and perspective with the Hyype community. Check out our Medium to see more artists sharing their thoughts and strategies to empower you to create. If you are interested in being featured in a spotlight reach out to @AnarothsNFT on Twitter.

SPILLER by JakNFT