*special thank you to thompson mfer for helping me edit. *

intro

leading up to 4/20/2022, many people had speculated that the creator of mfers, sartoshi, had something planned for holders, and it turns out they were right.

on 4/20/2022 at around 12:10 am, the creyzies 10K pfp collection (9966 to be exact) was born. sartoshi announced from his twitter account that the creyzies were airdropped to all mfer token holders.

*it’s worth noting that the creyzies are the official companion collection to mfers. The project is in the public domain; feel free to use CREYZIES any way you want.

ok, if you have read this far, you’re probably wondering where the idea of creyzies came from and how the art was drawn. let’s take a deep dive with the legendary creator, pablo esteban sánchez rijlaarsdam or “rey” for short.

mfer, where did this creyzies idea come from?

the concept for creyzies began to take shape early in 2021. initially, sartoshi and i had considered collaborating on a piece, but it wasn't until i came across a comment from a mfer named greedyblock that inspiration struck. having previously created two mfer derivatives for my "PortREYts" collection, i found greedyblock's comment about "wild m'fing rumours" surrounding a weed serum being concocted by me to be intriguing.

this idea reminded me of the bayc mutant serum, and i began sketching out some concepts. after sharing my sketches with sartoshi, we ultimately decided to move away from the serum concept as it had already been explored. the team at westcoastnft liked the idea, and work on the creyzies (then known as sick mother fuckers) began.

how was the creyzie art drawn?

at the time of creation, i had only just begun to explore the realm of digital art. In 2021 i created an alter ego called "zcopy'' as part of the ultraloweffortpunks collection. these early zcopy pieces were my initial forays into the world of digital art. all of the works were created using an outdated version of photoshop and the trackpad on my 2017 macbook pro. when it came time to develop the creyzies, i decided to employ the same trackpad technique, primarily because I had yet to discover other methods for creating digital art.

how long did it take you to draw all the layers?

completing the creyzies project on time proved to be quite a challenge, and i must admit that i missed several deadlines along the way. i should note, however, that much of the credit for the ideas behind the collection goes to the community itself. from the initial concept to the decision to drop the collection on 4/20, we improvised and adapted as we went on. the idea to launch on 4/20 was so compelling that i made it my primary focus, working tirelessly and burning the midnight oil to ensure that all traits and 1/1s were completed a week before launch. All in all, it took me about six to seven weeks to create all the traits.

Few people know how much time you put into the drawings and the obstacles along the way.

undoubtedly, the entire process proved to be a fun but arduous task, not only due to the deadline, but also due to some personal challenges that i encountered during the months of february and march 2022. I took my laptop wherever I went, tirelessly working away on the trackpad in cars, buses, planes, parks, hospitals and beaches. sometimes i would continue working even while on foot, propping my laptop on a skateboard and using it as a makeshift table. another hurdle that i had to overcome was the incessant overheating of my computer, which often resulted in black lines appearing on the screen and, on some occasions, even a complete blackout, which could be quite scary at times.** **

does the creyzies collection mirror all the traits of the mfers collection?

that’s correct. the entire creyzies collection mirrors every single mfer trait, from the hoodies and top hats to the watch types and 1/1s.

what is your favourite trait in the collection?

I´d say the hoodie. it´s badass.

as the artist/creator, what does the crezyies collection mean to you?

the creyzies collection holds significant meaning for me as it embodies several essential values, including collaboration, community, cc0 art, freedom of expression, and blockchain technology. bringing this project to fruition was indeed an incredible experience, and i am immensely proud of what we achieved and all the positive feedback we received during the surprise launch.

what was sartoshi involvement?

from the beginning, sartoshi was an integral part of the creyzies project. he provided invaluable feedback, assisted in selecting the name, and even offered advice on how to avoid stress in the web3 space. sartoshi's work and actions have served as inspiration not just for me but for countless other artists within the crypto art community as well. without his assistance, the creation of the creyzies collection would not have been possible.

how was your experience with the collection launch?

the launch of the creyzies collection was absolutely CREYZIE! we released 10,000 nfts in the early hours of 4/20, and after getting some rest, i woke up to total nft pandemonium. however, the most fulfilling part of the experience was the comments from the community expressing their gratitude and joy. these heartfelt messages will always be cherished in my mind and heart.

I heard the launch almost didn’t happen due to technical issues.

as the clock struck midnight and april 20th began, i found myself on a call with santana from westcoastnfts and communicating with sartoshi via chat. they were remotely guiding me through the contract deployment process, which had to be executed from the creyzies wallet. being in a location with frequent power outages, i felt anxious as the airdrop began. If my memory serves me right, we had to airdrop 4 batches of 2500 Creyzies, one batch at a time. santana emphasized the importance of keeping my computer on during this critical period, as any disruption could have spelled disaster. each batch took about 3 minutes to deploy, and i was praying that the power would stay on. fortunately, everything went smoothly, and the creyzies lived to tell the story.

who is doc x-rey?

doc x-rey is the mad scientist responsible for creyzies.

this is part of his story:

in the olden days of nfts and bull markets there existed a mad scientist named doctor x-rey. he had always been fascinated with the idea of creating new life forms, but he lacked the resources to pursue his dreams until he discovered the world of cryptocurrency trading. dr. x-rey became heavily involved in the world of degen crypto trading. he invested in numerous cryptocurrencies and nft projects, soon becoming a master flipper. he managed to gather the funds necessary to pursue his mad ambitions and soon created his own laboratory. one day, while surfing through the internet, the doc stumbled upon an nft project called mfers’. the mfers were a cc0 collection of unique digital creatures that collectors highly sought after. dr. x-rey was intrigued and decided to experiment on the mfers in order to create his own creatures: the creyzies!

what does the future look like for creyzies?

initially, creyzies did not have a concrete roadmap. however, as time progressed, i began consolidating all the ceyzie events, and that's how our roadmap came into existence. The guiding principle behind it is simple: we create and we never stop.

extra

How did I (masterchan) end up on the pilot helmet??

i wanted to include some easter eggs and nods to the crypto/mfer community in the creyzies collection, so i decided to include a few characters and friends within the traits. masterchan is a real creyzie mfer and supporter of the community, so I decided to add his name as a graffiti tag on the pilot helmet.

thank you

rey, i want to thank you for taking the time in your busy schedule to do this interview and giving fans a deeper insight into the journey of the creyzies

thank you for everything you have done for the creyzies & mfers community.

mcx

the end

special thanks to thompson mfer for helping me edit this article.

Intro

welcome, I'm masterchanx a.k.a mcx and pictured above is my og mfer #697 on the left and on the right is my modified version of the same mfer (you will mostly see me in this form).

who

who the fuck is sartoshi? this is a tough one — i will try my best to answer. depending on how one finds out about sartoshi, one’s journey may have a different starting point. to most, sartoshi will go down as a legendary twitter-shitposter — possibly the best, one could argue. i would tend to agree with this pov, but my opinion is obviously super fuckin’ biased. in this article, i won’t focus as much on his memes as many of them still live on through the community.

*see sartoshi’s perspective on memes “Sartoshi — The Mind Behind the Memes” by breezy mfer

*a big thanks to vrmfer for helping to preserve the two screenshots below.

sartoshi is most well known in the web3/nft community as the creator of mfers, a 10k PFP collection launched on Nov 30, 2021 and sold out in 10 mins and 69 seconds.

here is a link to the original mint site: mfers.art for those that wish to see it.

it’s important to note that this collection is cc0 meaning the art is in the public domain and free for anyone to use.

At first glance the clean and simple lines seemed as if these mfer-stickmen were viewed by some as “low-effort art”. the community could see the genius between the hand-drawn layers to every last detail put into each trait. sartoshi uses his clean lines and flat palette for simplicity but adds detail and depth by working within the levels of opacity. sartoshi was truly a master of “less is more” and this can be seen in both his tweets and his art.

i think it was brilliant how sartoshi was able to capture the power and instant recognizability of a smiley face. something that needs no language to be understood and thus has no boundaries.

check out another article by breezy mfer for a deeper dive on this “The rise and rise of mfers.”.

want to know more on origin of mfers? “what are mfers” by sartoshi is a must-read.

how about a/s/l?

sartoshi is a very private individual and to my knowledge, no one knows sartoshi’s age, sex or location. based on the content sartoshi tweeted, and from my personal interactions with the legend, my best guess is that sartoshi is probably a dude. as such, i will continue to refer to sartoshi as he/him for the rest of this article. i also believe he probably lives in the eastern united states, probably new york, and is somewhere between the age of 30 to 40 years old. i could be wrong and sartoshi might be a team of 69 ppl, who knows…

what does sartoshi do irl?

through our conversations, i learned that sartoshi is a classically trained artist (think paint brushes and real paint) and had been creating art for about two decades (i’m going purely off memory here).

favourite snack and drink?

i recall on a few separate occasions that sartoshi tweeted about cheetos and sprite (specifically the mcd’s fountain version) this mfer was definitely a soda connoisseur! i personally found it hilarious every time he tweeted about his go-to snack combo. i’ve also come to realize this may be a clue to one’s geographical location based on what they eat (some sherlock holmes kinda shit).

*some “photos” of sartoshi

i will post real examples below

Other photos of sartoshi 👇

what

ok, sartoshi was an artist that drew stickmen and created viral memes. but what else did sartoshi do?

prior to creating mfers, sartoshi created a collection of 500 one-hour animated GIFs that grow generative ASCII-art bonsai trees in june of 2021. i think only a handful of mfers know this fact and if you go through the sales data you will see he had some big names support him early on.

*ASCII-art bonsai trees here for you mfers to check out.

one month later in july of 2021 sartoshi launched his foundation collection and minted some cartoon art that was an immediate twitter success.

i’ve posted a few of my favourite ones below. the top two are actually post-mfers and the bottom two are pre-mfers.

wen

so I guess this is the part where I talk about how and wen I met sartoshi?

i picked up my first mfer on dec 2nd, 2021, which was three days after the project was minted. at the time i had no idea who the fuck sartoshi was and only picked up the pfp for two reasons. first, I resonated with my mfer #697 and, second, because the price of .3 eth was “affordable” at the time compared to other nft’s. (i paid double the floor price because #697 was the one for me).

the mfers art style was definitely not love at first sight, but perhaps i can write more in- depth if i ever decide to drop “who is masterchanx”

after picking up my mfer i struggled like a mfer trying to find the community discord. i looked over the opensea collection description a few times to make sure i didn’t miss any details, however, all i found at the time was a link to sartoshi’s then twitter account. i fired off my first tweet at sartoshi and the rest is history.

oh remember that twitter ama I mentioned earlier on? here is how it started 👇

where

you are probably wondering by now where the fuck is this sartoshi that i keep going on about? well on may 30, 2022, 6 months and 181 days after the launch of mfers, sartoshi tweeted “rckvirrlkvdvirgvimevezvk” and most mfers thought he might have fallen asleep on his keyboard and just typed up jibberish. well, it turns out it was a caesar cypher, coded message and luckily, some smart mfers in the community were able to decipher the code. (dm me on twitter if you were that mfer) and the message read “the next era” — whatever the fuck that meant.

the next era

over the next few days, sartoshi dropped a few tweets mentioning the date 6/9/2022.

i dm’d sartoshi and thought the tweet above meant 6/22 as in june 22nd and he then sent a tweet, later on, to clarify it was 6/9/22 and also sent another to clarify the time 12pm est.

no one other than maybe the westcoastnft devs (the team that did the dev work for mfers) had even the slightest idea what this was all about.

there were many rumours and theories in the community about what would be unveiled on 6/9.

finally on the day of 6/9/2022 at 12 pm est sartoshi announced “mfers next era & end of sartoshi”.

*click the link to get the full story.

sartoshi had decided it was his time to move on and passed on the mfer contract to the community via the unofficial mfers multi-sig wallet. sitting on the multi-sig is what one mfer (L3xc.eth / Lim a.k.a westcoastnft co-founder) dubbed the sartoshi seven

it was a bittersweet moment that some of us saw coming eventually, but not that soon. and thus began the start of a new chapter in the mfer story.

wtf

so if you have come this far you may be asking why the fuck am i writing about someone whom i’ve never met, have no idea what they look like, where they live or if they are male or female etc?

to me, i consider sartoshi a dear friend, a mentor, and a brother. through sartoshi’s artwork, memes, and friendship i’ve learned a lot and it’s helped me get through one of the most challenging times in my life.

i can imagine that sartoshi has touched all of the mfers reading this article in some way or another. i feel that, as a friend, it’s important to help sartoshi preserve his legacy and story not only for the mfers of the present but also mfers in the future.

not everyone will agree with the way sartoshi exited, but i choose to remember sartoshi by his impact on not only myself but the overall web3/nft community. and i will continue to celebrate his wins.

quotes

luckily before sartoshi closed his twitter account I was able to grab a few good screenshots of my favourite quotes from him. i hope sartoshi’s wisdom can help inspire and guide mfers going forward.

the end

if you wonder why i wrote this whole article without using caps it’s because mfers do what they want

this is the way mfer

p.s we miss you sartoshi