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How to make a living selling NFTs ? With Bryan Brinkman
134 Plays2 years ago
Bryan started making art on the internet when he was just a teenager, from there, he kept experimenting until he broke into mainstream media. He spent years working on shows like Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
His life took a complete turn when he discovered NFTs. He went all in and they completely changed his life. Learn how he got to where he is, the decisions he made and how he kept his feet on the ground throughout it all.
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Transcript
Introduction and Artist's Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Polymath Experience.
00:00:03
Speaker
My guest today is a digital artist most in this space have at least heard of.
00:00:08
Speaker
He's an Artblocks curated artist and his art has sold at Sotheby's among other places.
00:00:15
Speaker
I just found an estimate of the value of his work currently on the market which was at 1600 ETH or 2.75 million which was mind-boggling.
00:00:25
Speaker
Yeah, tell me about it.
00:00:27
Speaker
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
00:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, he's not just a great artist, but he's also a supporter and a benefactor for other artists.
00:00:35
Speaker
And this is starting to be a recurring theme for this podcast, but he's an all around great human.
00:00:40
Speaker
And Cherry on Top is also a little bit of a degen at times, which we always love.
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great intro.
00:00:47
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:48
Speaker
Welcome to the show.
00:00:49
Speaker
My pleasure.
00:00:49
Speaker
Glad to be here.
Journey into Digital Art
00:01:03
Speaker
I love to start where it starts and it's more specifically around art.
00:01:10
Speaker
When did you start making art?
00:01:11
Speaker
What did it mean for you in the beginning?
00:01:13
Speaker
Well, if you go way back, you know, I took like oil painting classes when I was in like grade school, like private classes or whatever.
00:01:21
Speaker
But I didn't really take to that.
00:01:22
Speaker
I wasn't really into it.
00:01:24
Speaker
And it wasn't until I got to high school where I started learning the Adobe suite and started making, you know, stuff in illustrator and Photoshop and video editing.
00:01:33
Speaker
And I got really into Adobe live motion, which made flash cartoons.
00:01:37
Speaker
And so I was making cartoons for websites like new grounds back then and kind of upload them and people would leave comments and rate them.
00:01:44
Speaker
And if they did well enough, they stayed on the site and if they were bad, they got removed.
00:01:48
Speaker
So it was this kind of fun challenge.
00:01:49
Speaker
And yeah.
00:01:50
Speaker
And so, you know, from that,
00:01:52
Speaker
At the time, I was looking to be a graphic designer, and I got accepted to two colleges for design.
00:01:59
Speaker
And then I realized I preferred storytelling, and so I got into two colleges for animation.
00:02:06
Speaker
I ended up choosing to go to college in Philadelphia for animation, the University of the Arts, which is a great school.
00:02:11
Speaker
My logic there was, when you learn animation, you learn animation.
00:02:16
Speaker
the soup to nuts workflow.
00:02:17
Speaker
So you learn illustration, you learn animation, you learn editing, you learn sound.
00:02:21
Speaker
And so you come out of the system with a large skillset.
00:02:26
Speaker
And I became kind of a jack of all trades by the time I graduated.
00:02:30
Speaker
So my early jobs were working as kind of, you know, an editor, a motion graphics artist, a website designer, you know, all these things.
00:02:37
Speaker
And, you know,
00:02:40
Speaker
throughout my, my, my career, I kind of took on any and every creative project I could, whether it was making music videos or concert posters or gallery show work.
00:02:50
Speaker
Um, and then, you know, working my day job and, you know, television, whether it was animated series or toy commercials or late night, uh, comedy shows.
00:03:00
Speaker
Uh, so, so, you know,
00:03:02
Speaker
That's all to say my career has always been kind of multifaceted in a jack-of-all-trades way.
00:03:09
Speaker
I think that gave me a real leg up in the web 3.0 world when I joined because I had all these different experiences between social media and animation and tech and all these other things.
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was going to say when you were describing that Adobe tool and site, the dynamic of trying to capture attention online and keeping that attention is extremely relevant when it comes to Web3.
Evolution of Storytelling in Animation
00:03:36
Speaker
And so that must have taught you a lot for what you're doing today.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
00:03:41
Speaker
I mean, thinking back on like my early Adobe stuff, it was a lot of
00:03:47
Speaker
It was not very exciting stuff.
00:03:51
Speaker
When you start making animations, the first thing you usually do is make some comedy stuff.
00:03:56
Speaker
It's like Warner Brothers type goofy slapstick stuff.
00:04:01
Speaker
And that's always a fun way to go.
00:04:03
Speaker
But then you start to go, okay, well, it's easy to get a laugh.
00:04:06
Speaker
How do I get, you know, a serious emotion out of people?
00:04:09
Speaker
And then you start to like experiment and you're like, how do I tell stories that are more emotional in that sense?
00:04:14
Speaker
And I think that's, by the time I got into like the NFT world, I was able to kind of use both aspects.
00:04:22
Speaker
I've, I've,
00:04:23
Speaker
I don't have a lot of comedy in my NFTs, but I do have that level of storytelling and kind of emotional journeys in the work.
00:04:32
Speaker
But I use my Twitter for my comedy stuff.
00:04:35
Speaker
I feel like there's some comedy in it.
00:04:38
Speaker
There's definitely emotion because I was looking at your website as some of the making ofs and...
00:04:46
Speaker
it really captures you because it's even I not being American, I can relate to some of the stories that you're painting because it's, it's a new pop way because pop culture, it seems is the way you're describing your art.
00:05:01
Speaker
It's a pop puppy.
00:05:03
Speaker
I don't know how you say it way of painting those pictures that I think are really relatable to a lot of people.
00:05:10
Speaker
It can seem
00:05:10
Speaker
almost a little bit goofy from the outside or like very flashy.
00:05:14
Speaker
And then when you dig a little bit deeper, there's real depth to it and it just grabs you by the feelings.
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:21
Speaker
And I think that might tie back to my background in like animation at college.
00:05:26
Speaker
You make these short films for festivals.
00:05:29
Speaker
And you, you know, if you do a short that has no dialogue, no spoken language, you can then send it to a festival in Germany and it will resonate in the same way that it would in America.
00:05:43
Speaker
And so I think a lot of my work in that sense doesn't have English language in it.
00:05:50
Speaker
It's trying to be universal.
00:05:51
Speaker
I think that, you know, that was just amazing.
00:05:53
Speaker
byproduct of back then trying to reach as many global audiences as possible with the visual storytelling.
00:06:01
Speaker
And you're also an internet child so of course you were imbued with that universal component to it.
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah it is kind of crazy to think that when I was a kid the internet was brand
Web 3.0: Opportunities and Challenges
00:06:16
Speaker
new.
00:06:16
Speaker
I mean
00:06:17
Speaker
They had it.
00:06:17
Speaker
The army had it years before.
00:06:19
Speaker
But like thinking about AOL or CompuServe or like some of these old things, it is interesting to think about like how I've grown up with the Internet.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's kind of fun.
00:06:30
Speaker
It is.
00:06:30
Speaker
And when I hear you or I had Alex Frey on the podcast, the founder of Next Decade, and when I hear your guys' stories,
00:06:39
Speaker
You were pioneers.
00:06:42
Speaker
You've actually used that technology and you used it to grow and you used it to learn things and you used it to actively participate.
00:06:50
Speaker
I was just using MSN trying to talk to girls.
00:06:55
Speaker
and playing pool and using like the first versions of blogs and being very terrible at them.
00:07:02
Speaker
And it took me literally 25, well, no, like 10 something years to actually start to understand.
00:07:09
Speaker
So I'm a little bit jealous of you guys.
00:07:13
Speaker
I mean, there's some nostalgic and fun about how weird and open the internet was back then with like chat rooms where you could just talk to anybody and everybody and AOL Instant Messenger and like,
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, it was kind of funky.
00:07:27
Speaker
It was very unregulated and wild back then.
00:07:31
Speaker
And I feel like that's kind of what's fun about Web 3 is that we're kind of back in this Wild West world again where there's no real – everything's changing and everyone's learning it together.
00:07:45
Speaker
It's very much a – it feels fresh again.
00:07:49
Speaker
It does.
00:07:49
Speaker
There's that.
00:07:50
Speaker
And there's, I think the financial component, which is so great in one side of things is also kind of pushing our back against the corner because it brings out the greed in people.
00:08:06
Speaker
And so it creates that imbalance.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:10
Speaker
That's interesting.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:12
Speaker
I mean, because our space is so financialized, it
00:08:17
Speaker
I don't know if that's the right word, but yeah, as much as, you know, it's like everyone's trying to make money, but how do you do it in a ethical way?
00:08:26
Speaker
You know, a way that isn't scamming people.
00:08:29
Speaker
I don't fault anybody for trying to make money.
00:08:31
Speaker
I mean, that's most people are,
00:08:33
Speaker
hurting in this economy and all this stuff and everybody's trying to make money.
00:08:36
Speaker
But yeah, I think that's the bottom line.
00:08:38
Speaker
It's like, how do you go about trying to make money?
00:08:42
Speaker
Are you actively improving the space or are you making it worse kind of thing?
00:08:47
Speaker
But again, I'm getting nostalgic here for what I used to do when I was a kid.
00:08:51
Speaker
I remember there was this website, Hollywood Stock Exchange, and you would buy stocks, fake stocks in movies or actors.
00:09:01
Speaker
And based on how their movies did and how they did, you would make
00:09:05
Speaker
For a kid, it was like stock market light.
00:09:09
Speaker
How did I miss that?
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds amazing.
00:09:13
Speaker
I don't know if anybody remembers that, but it was kind of a fun way to like, you know, I don't know.
00:09:19
Speaker
I've always been a fan of Hollywood and the movie industry and all that stuff.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:09:27
Speaker
I can imagine.
Creative Processes and Constraints
00:09:28
Speaker
And then you kind of touched on it by, I'm jumping a few questions here, but by
00:09:35
Speaker
what was it like Saturday night live?
00:09:37
Speaker
I saw that you, you participate in, in Jimmy Fallon as well.
00:09:42
Speaker
They were really fun experiences.
00:09:45
Speaker
They were very difficult.
00:09:47
Speaker
I would equate them as like Ninja warrior for motion graphics, uh, where like you go into work and then it's like, we need this special effect made, or we need this Dr. Seuss illustration made and you have an hour to make it.
00:10:03
Speaker
And so you're just like,
00:10:04
Speaker
working as fast as you can trying to make something that looks good enough to put on tv and also something that will get a laugh um and so i appreciated that every day there was a new set of jokes a new uh bit that needed an open a new music act that needed a background or something and
00:10:22
Speaker
it kept me very fresh with my skillset because it's like you, especially with the shows like that, it's a lot of parody.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so it's like, we're going to do a parody of a Gatorade ad.
00:10:32
Speaker
And so then you start to like, okay, well, how do, what does text look like in Gatorade ads?
00:10:36
Speaker
How do I emulate that text effect?
00:10:38
Speaker
You know, and it's like, it's a lot of looking at things as inspiration and then trying to replicate it in an interesting, like alternative way.
00:10:45
Speaker
You know, I worked at those shows for,
00:10:48
Speaker
about eight years total and i you know i don't know i don't really use a lot of my skills from there in the nft space which is kind of funny like i don't do visual effects on video in this space even though that's like something i'm pretty good at but i i wanted my my work in the space to feel i don't know be uniquely me uh but maybe no someday maybe i'll play with that but uh i think that's always kind of the fun aspect of the space it's like
00:11:15
Speaker
There is no set rules for what my art has to be.
00:11:17
Speaker
I can try anything.
00:11:19
Speaker
Most people will be supportive of it.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:23
Speaker
And most people are in your situation, for you specifically.
00:11:29
Speaker
And that touches base on something that I find fascinating when it comes to art, which is you're describing two people.
00:11:36
Speaker
side of things where one, you're completely free to roam wherever your own creative process and inspiration drives you.
00:11:45
Speaker
And the other side, which I find extremely interesting is you're under insane pressure with, I'm assuming extreme deadlines as well.
00:11:57
Speaker
And you're still managing to be proficient in your art.
00:12:01
Speaker
How do you do art in such circumstances?
00:12:05
Speaker
Um, that's a good question.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's not always easy.
00:12:08
Speaker
It's sometimes it feels like you're trying to squeeze juice from a rock or something, but there's, there's kind of two ways the space works.
00:12:14
Speaker
Sometimes, uh, you have just an idea and you're like, I'm going to make a piece and then you make it and you're like, where would I put this out?
00:12:20
Speaker
Would it be on what platform?
00:12:22
Speaker
And then the other time that happens probably more often is,
00:12:25
Speaker
is someone will reach out and say, hey, we have this platform.
00:12:28
Speaker
This is its interesting angle.
00:12:30
Speaker
Do you want to make a piece of art for it, whether it's a video game or generative art or any of these?
00:12:35
Speaker
And then you kind of have a box to work within.
00:12:39
Speaker
And then...
00:12:40
Speaker
that kind of will help inspire the creative process because you go, okay, well, this platform strength is say a text message based minting platform.
00:12:49
Speaker
So I'll make a piece that talks about text messaging and alerts and notifications and all this stuff.
00:12:54
Speaker
And so some, you know, the other option is just me sketching ideas and making stuff kind of loosely and then figuring out where that lands.
00:13:02
Speaker
But yeah, there's kind of, there's kind of just two lanes to that, but yeah,
00:13:07
Speaker
being my own boss is not necessarily my biggest strength.
00:13:11
Speaker
Uh, I get distracted very easily, you know, especially when it comes to creativity, you have to kind of follow your creative juices.
00:13:18
Speaker
And it's like, even, uh,
00:13:20
Speaker
You know, if all of a sudden you find inspiration on something, you have to kind of chase that for a little bit and set aside the other thing.
00:13:26
Speaker
It's a lot of just time management and not overwhelming myself with deadlines.
00:13:30
Speaker
I've gone through waves where I do that, where I have like too much to do and then I get miserable.
00:13:34
Speaker
So I've gotten a lot better at saying no and kind of pacing myself.
00:13:38
Speaker
Good for you.
00:13:39
Speaker
Good for you.
00:13:40
Speaker
And it actually takes me back to my previous next question.
00:13:44
Speaker
You're in flow.
00:13:45
Speaker
You seem to be, you're successful in your own terms, both subjectively, because you're creating great art that is your art, and also objectively, because you're having success on the market.
00:13:58
Speaker
Do you remember at what point you felt you started to really thrive?
00:14:03
Speaker
And do you remember the choices and the lessons you learned?
00:14:08
Speaker
that got you
Transition to Full-time Digital Artist
00:14:09
Speaker
there?
00:14:09
Speaker
I will say I suffer from imposter syndrome.
00:14:13
Speaker
And so I never really feel like I've made it.
00:14:17
Speaker
I always feel like I'm not doing enough or whatever.
00:14:22
Speaker
But the point where I felt I could pursue this full time was January 2021.
00:14:31
Speaker
that was around the time I put in my notice at the NBC jobs.
00:14:35
Speaker
And there was a few things that happened in a row that kind of made me feel like,
00:14:42
Speaker
confident in that choice which was i just on my art blocks drop in january i just done like two other drops um and then i lined up my next nifty gateway drop for june and and then a few other things happened but i was like well i have this big nifty gateway drop in june i i should put all my effort into making that the best it can be kind of thing and there was also a point where my art was starting to have secondary sales that were mind-blowing at the time it was like
00:15:11
Speaker
you know, and one of my additions on Nifty sold for like $10,000.
00:15:14
Speaker
And I was like, you know, at a certain point you have this feeling of, you know, if these people believe in me, it would be weird to not believe in myself, uh, to the same degree.
00:15:28
Speaker
Uh, and so, and so that was, that all kind of played into me saying, okay, I got, I got, you know, I had saved up enough money for like a year of salary, um, from sales.
00:15:38
Speaker
And I was like, well, you know,
00:15:41
Speaker
we had just gotten the show back from COVID and was back in the studio and I felt like it was a good place.
00:15:47
Speaker
And I was like, well, I'll give this a try for a year and see how it goes.
00:15:52
Speaker
And if it doesn't work out, I can probably go back and work in TV.
00:15:56
Speaker
But if it does work, it's a chance for me to be an artist full time, which has always been the dream.
00:16:03
Speaker
And so it ended up working out well.
00:16:06
Speaker
And then I would say like a week
00:16:09
Speaker
I was working at SNL and they put a script out that was about NFTs.
00:16:15
Speaker
And that was a real eye-opener of like, oh, this is a publicly known thing now.
00:16:21
Speaker
It's not just a weird discord bubble that I'm in.
00:16:25
Speaker
So there was a lot of things that kind of happened in that month or two that just kind of gave me the confidence to try doing it full-time.
00:16:34
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:16:35
Speaker
Congratulations.
00:16:36
Speaker
It paid off.
00:16:37
Speaker
Did people at work know how well you were doing in Web3?
00:16:43
Speaker
Yes and no.
00:16:45
Speaker
Well, I think so.
00:16:49
Speaker
Some of them did.
00:16:51
Speaker
Jimmy was very supportive and congratulated me.
00:16:56
Speaker
Jimmy as in Jimmy Fallon.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:59
Speaker
Hopefully I hear, I hear a lawnmower outside.
00:17:01
Speaker
Hopefully it's not bad.
00:17:03
Speaker
Well, the NimBuds I did for Artblocks, I did that as a collaboration with my buddy Manny, who me and him both worked in the VFX department at SNL.
00:17:14
Speaker
And so because of that, everyone at SNL knew me and him were into NFTs.
00:17:18
Speaker
And that was why when they had that bit, they put our work in the background and they asked us for advice on how to show NFTs and stuff.
00:17:27
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I think, I think most people were, you know, most of the people on the show had no idea to be honest.
00:17:36
Speaker
Um, but the people that I worked with understood that it was going well and they were supportive of me.
00:17:42
Speaker
How are they, how was it perceived back then for them?
00:17:47
Speaker
Was it like, Hey, like this is super cool and this is serious and going places or is it, there's an interesting wave and we need to surf it and, and, and extract whatever there is to extract as long as it lasts.
00:18:02
Speaker
From those shows.
00:18:04
Speaker
From people on that side, you know, like we're in our little niche of weird nerds.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
Um,
00:18:12
Speaker
Well, I mean, I don't think those... Well, SNL did do an NFT of their NFT bit for charity.
00:18:21
Speaker
And it came with tickets.
00:18:22
Speaker
And that was cool.
00:18:23
Speaker
For the most part, it was like their social media teams understood.
00:18:27
Speaker
But for the most part, it's such a different industry there that I don't think they really necessarily saw it as something that they needed to integrate or care about.
00:18:37
Speaker
Because those shows are...
00:18:40
Speaker
or marketing machines, essentially, for bands and movies and all sorts of other stuff.
00:18:46
Speaker
But it was cool, you know, a year or so after I left, seeing Beeple go on The Tonight Show.
00:18:53
Speaker
I thought that was...
00:18:55
Speaker
a real breakthrough moment, not just because of NFTs, but because the fact that an artist was a guest on a late night talk show, like that hasn't been the thing since like Salvador Dali in the seventies or something, you know?
00:19:08
Speaker
So like, I was just like, this is crazy.
00:19:10
Speaker
The fact that, you know, a digital artist can be on the same level as a, you know, a celebrity is really cool.
00:19:16
Speaker
So I thought that was a really neat moment.
00:19:18
Speaker
It's such a crazy era we're in.
00:19:21
Speaker
I was actually going to ask you about that.
Future of Decentralized Platforms
00:19:23
Speaker
You having been in that industry, if you think that NFTs and decentralization and decentralized organizations will ever reach that kind of place, that kind of level, you know, like what is rug radio going to become?
00:19:39
Speaker
Is it going to be the future of NBCs and those kinds of things?
00:19:43
Speaker
Do you think that's possible?
00:19:44
Speaker
I don't know.
00:19:45
Speaker
Maybe.
00:19:46
Speaker
I don't know.
00:19:47
Speaker
I think that's, I've,
00:19:49
Speaker
So like that idea that reaching that level is the goal, I think is a dated idea because, you know, rug radio would much rather be Mr. Beast than be NBC.
00:20:03
Speaker
You know, and I think what the future holds for the most part networks and a lot of these things will become content creators in the same way that anything else is on Tik TOK.
00:20:14
Speaker
And so if anything, I would say those legacy networks are going to move into our area versus us moving into their area.
00:20:22
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:20:23
Speaker
Or it'll be a mix of both.
00:20:25
Speaker
What's Lily Singh, who became a host of like.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, she was the third slot late night.
00:20:33
Speaker
The third.
00:20:34
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:20:35
Speaker
Well, there's Fallon, Seth, and then Lily Singh had her show after the after Seth.
00:20:39
Speaker
But she went from like YouTube to network.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:42
Speaker
It didn't last too long.
00:20:45
Speaker
I think they had like two seasons.
00:20:46
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I think that's the interesting thing is we haven't seen a lot of YouTube people make that jump.
00:20:53
Speaker
And it's like she was stronger in her native format.
00:20:56
Speaker
And I think that's the same problem.
00:20:58
Speaker
I mean...
00:20:59
Speaker
I don't think it's a problem, but it's like everyone this week is like, Pachy Penguins is in Walmart.
00:21:04
Speaker
And it's like, that's cool, but it should be at Walmart should be in this space, you know?
00:21:09
Speaker
Um, but you know, I think it's a little bit of both, but there's this funny thing that happens in our space where like, for instance, with art, um, like you mentioned Sotheby's at the beginning for, for an artist, this space right now,
00:21:24
Speaker
Our end goal is getting out of the space into the trad art world in a weird way, which I don't think should be the goal, but there just isn't a prestige place yet for us to aspire to in the space.
00:21:38
Speaker
And so I think that's, we're just seeing a lot of that right now, especially in this bear market of our end goals are,
00:21:46
Speaker
going backwards versus building the future kind of thing.
00:21:50
Speaker
But, you know, I don't think it's necessarily bad.
00:21:52
Speaker
I appreciate being in Sotheby's and stuff.
00:21:54
Speaker
I think it's, it's very validating.
00:21:56
Speaker
It impresses my grandma, but I think, uh, I don't know if we've quite, you know, that, that shows me that we still have a long way to go in terms of building the fact that,
00:22:08
Speaker
we keep aspiring to go to the past things.
00:22:12
Speaker
But I think it makes sense.
00:22:13
Speaker
I think it's also a natural thing of when you're an explorer, when you're a pioneer, an innovator, you still want to have things that it's not like you're going from a completely, from one old place to a new place and that there's nothing in between.
00:22:32
Speaker
And so while you're making that journey, you know,
00:22:36
Speaker
it's comfortable to have something else to fall back on.
00:22:38
Speaker
When you're an artist, diving deep and succeeding in this space
00:22:45
Speaker
although you also have the validation of money, which is not something that is always the case, but it's nice to have legacy sources of validation, either as an individual or as a space as a whole, because it's a way to instill confidence in ourselves.
00:23:03
Speaker
It's a way to instill confidence in our communities.
00:23:07
Speaker
The level of support Pajie Penguins has got for going into Walmart is
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:14
Speaker
He's extremely valuable, I think.
00:23:16
Speaker
For sure.
00:23:17
Speaker
No, I think Luke is doing incredible stuff.
00:23:19
Speaker
He's building the blueprint for a lot of people, which is really cool.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:23
Speaker
The execution is like, I can't even imagine.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:27
Speaker
It's insane.
00:23:27
Speaker
They're, they're so good.
00:23:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:31
Speaker
I'd love to go a little bit deeper into like you and your story and your success and making art in this space.
00:23:40
Speaker
And one of the subjects that is really important that you brought up when we're preparing this conversation was the notion of supply.
00:23:49
Speaker
Because supply in the digital realm is really important.
00:23:53
Speaker
And so it's really important for an artist to understand.
00:23:56
Speaker
How do you personally approach the notion of supply for your art?
00:24:00
Speaker
And do you think there are hard truths or
00:24:03
Speaker
Do you think it's more to each their own and do whatever comes to you?
00:24:09
Speaker
I tend to look at my release cadence as like, I'll do a one of one here, a one of one here, and then I'll do a low edition, higher priced release.
00:24:21
Speaker
collection and then maybe I'll do like a noble gallery, which has like a hundred plus additions at a cheap price.
00:24:29
Speaker
I think it is important to hit different price ranges, especially in a bear market.
00:24:33
Speaker
It's much easier to make sales that are affordable versus like trying to sell a one-of-one, which, you know, I have the one-of-one sale this week, hopefully it goes well, but we'll see how it goes.
00:24:43
Speaker
But I do think, you know, there's different collectors want different things and you have to keep kind of growing the
00:24:49
Speaker
your your supply slowly and thoughtfully but yeah i think the the thing that usually boils it down to me is what is the amount of supply where it might not feel special to hold it and usually it's in like a couple hundred editions once you're above that then it doesn't feel cool to own it just feels like maybe it's like a
00:25:14
Speaker
a utility token for something else in the future or something, a burn token or, you know, so that, that's why I haven't done like open additions or anything.
00:25:22
Speaker
Cause I, I worry that if I sell something with like a thousand additions, it'll just become, you know, sold for a couple bucks, you know, which is fine, but you know, I don't, I feel like it would be a disservice to the collectors that have trusted me to like be thoughtful with my supply.
00:25:42
Speaker
So yeah.
00:25:44
Speaker
I've often said I would rather do 100, 100 edition drops than a 10,000 edition drop.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
00:25:53
Speaker
Do you think there's validity in the... I think one of the arguments when NFT collections were launching their secondary collections, like Mutants, the Bardays and Elementals, is that...
00:26:09
Speaker
and Bean Suzuki as well.
00:26:12
Speaker
One of the rationales is you're opening up the community and so you're starting to kind of layer.
00:26:20
Speaker
Do you think that's a rationale that is true and that can be applied when it comes to art and artists?
00:26:26
Speaker
I do think it's true in some cases.
00:26:28
Speaker
I think the mutants certainly expanded the collector community of the apes, but we've also seen it
00:26:37
Speaker
with elementals totally jar people's opinions.
00:26:44
Speaker
So it has to be done in a way that feels right.
00:26:46
Speaker
And I think the thing that the mutants did that was right was that subjectively the mutants are ugly.
00:26:52
Speaker
They're gross.
00:26:53
Speaker
They're not, they're not cool looking.
00:26:56
Speaker
They're, they're nasty.
00:26:58
Speaker
And I think that allows them to be in this secondary tier.
00:27:02
Speaker
What I've seen is a lot of projects are,
00:27:05
Speaker
So like the, you know, they put out the secondary tier and it's as good as the first.
00:27:10
Speaker
And then you create a weird system where it doesn't have, there's an imbalance.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:15
Speaker
It's a man.
00:27:16
Speaker
It's a really tricky thing to navigate.
00:27:18
Speaker
And what also really worked for mutants was that they were free for board apes, right?
00:27:24
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:26
Speaker
And that's a huge thing because it, it, it instills more confidence.
00:27:30
Speaker
Whereas, uh,
00:27:32
Speaker
Like the case of Izuki, because it's obviously very front of mind for us, the elemental drop would have been a hard build to solo.
00:27:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:42
Speaker
No, I think Yuga's done a great job, but now they've almost gone too big.
00:27:47
Speaker
They have so many games and so many tokens and stuff.
00:27:50
Speaker
that it becomes a little too disjointed.
00:27:52
Speaker
So I do think that you have to limit yourself.
00:27:55
Speaker
But I think they created an ecosystem where there's just an expectation of things that are gifted to you, which, hey, you know, I had a bored ape.
00:28:06
Speaker
I appreciated all the cool stuff they gave me.
00:28:10
Speaker
I bet you did.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's really an interesting dynamic because I don't consider these brands as really Web3.
00:28:19
Speaker
Because for me, Web3 means that having tokens, you have ownership over the network, you have...
00:28:25
Speaker
some level of ownership towards the governance and all that.
00:28:28
Speaker
So for me, they're 2.5, like a new way of, of, uh, stakeholding in a, in a company, but it, it, it raises very interesting questions of can the centralized team do whatever they want and, and let that community in a state of expectation and a hope of hopefully what they're doing works out.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:52
Speaker
I think,
00:28:53
Speaker
You know, maybe this is a spicy take.
00:28:57
Speaker
I think the Bored Apes mistake was that they raised a bunch of capital and got a bunch of investors that expected them to do a bunch of stuff that they, you know, when you bring that kind of level of money in, that's when you get tokens that don't make sense.
00:29:12
Speaker
And that's when you get all these other weird things.
00:29:15
Speaker
I see that happen with a lot of popular PFP projects as they bring in a VC funding round.
00:29:21
Speaker
And then the vibes instantly change to this is a business and we have to make money.
00:29:26
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:29:28
Speaker
Well, I'm rocking a clone X. So who, who can, who can talk about this more than I, it's still, uh, it's still, uh,
00:29:38
Speaker
Not a sore subject, but it's still an interesting point of conversation because I do think that CloneX will be a success because in five or 10 years, people won't even be talking about Web3 anymore.
00:29:51
Speaker
Having a CloneX will just be having a membership card to a really exclusive brand that gets you some of the coolest luxury nightly clothing.
00:30:04
Speaker
Exactly.
00:30:05
Speaker
And so I don't think it matters down the line.
00:30:07
Speaker
I do believe in this, but it's still like I'm kind of a purist at heart still.
00:30:12
Speaker
I do really care about decentralization.
00:30:15
Speaker
And so the fact that they're so clearly disregarding their community, not really
Ownership and Market Dynamics in Web3
00:30:22
Speaker
listening to what they have to say and like keep on keeping on going the way they want to go is not sitting 100% right.
00:30:32
Speaker
They look so cool, and their clothes are insane.
00:30:35
Speaker
I think Artifact is doing cool stuff.
00:30:38
Speaker
The Clone X, I haven't really followed.
00:30:39
Speaker
I know they have a new character world coming out soon, but the fact they got Murakami was huge.
00:30:48
Speaker
I think them selling to Nike kind of created a whole... put them in a different category.
00:30:56
Speaker
Put them in a clothing category versus a community PFP category.
00:31:00
Speaker
But
00:31:01
Speaker
I'm not too deep in the artifact world, unfortunately, but I do appreciate what they do.
00:31:08
Speaker
I like the shoes they put out, especially the artist collab shoes they did early on.
00:31:11
Speaker
Those are really cool.
00:31:13
Speaker
the space strips.
00:31:14
Speaker
They do really understand their community.
00:31:16
Speaker
They understand the creators around them.
00:31:18
Speaker
They want to have a, they're, they're very mindful about certain things.
00:31:21
Speaker
You can't take that away from them.
00:31:24
Speaker
And they seem not too mindful about other things.
00:31:26
Speaker
And I, and I think it's just because of the new corporate environment they're in now.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:32
Speaker
But anyways, one thing that's really interesting and that's probably very, like you're a really good marketer as well.
00:31:39
Speaker
And, and that's really important for artists.
00:31:43
Speaker
But it's hard to do because if you're a very good artist, it doesn't mean that you're a marketer.
00:31:47
Speaker
And sometimes wanting to be a marketer takes you away from your art and you're lost in between.
00:31:53
Speaker
When you talk to new artists who are finding their footing, what does that conversation, what role does that conversation play in it?
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:04
Speaker
Well, I do think marketing is a part of the art because it,
00:32:09
Speaker
It's how you present your art and how people internalize it or whatever.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah, when I talk to artists, I usually give this advice.
00:32:18
Speaker
If people go on YouTube, I have a thing called NFT in America.
00:32:22
Speaker
If you search that, I did a whole 15-minute talk on advice for artists.
00:32:25
Speaker
But the big thing about it was dividing your time three ways between being creative, promoting your art, and connecting with people in the space.
00:32:33
Speaker
And you have to do all three of those equally.
00:32:35
Speaker
And yeah, a lot of people...
00:32:38
Speaker
try to bypass one or two of those things.
00:32:41
Speaker
But really, you have to build trust.
00:32:44
Speaker
And then you have to market your stuff effectively.
00:32:47
Speaker
And it goes a long way, like throwing your art on a fake wall image or something lets people understand that it's a piece of art that could be hung or something.
00:32:57
Speaker
I think it's the least fun thing to do, especially when you have to like write like an artist description or like, you know, come up with a name for the piece, you know, making art is fun.
00:33:07
Speaker
Describing art is a pain in the butt.
00:33:10
Speaker
I think it's definitely important.
00:33:12
Speaker
And you, what I've found is when I don't do it, people don't figure stuff out on their own kind of thing.
00:33:20
Speaker
So you have to kind of hold their hands and say, well, you know, this piece represents this, you know, does this.
00:33:25
Speaker
And then, and then they,
00:33:27
Speaker
it goes to this thing I talked about in that speech, which is it's all the art of show and tell.
00:33:32
Speaker
And so when someone collects a piece of art, like I'm, I think I'm going to collect a piece in the next few minutes.
00:33:37
Speaker
And the, you know, the thing I'll do next is I'll tweet about it and I'll say, I love this piece.
00:33:42
Speaker
But if that artist gave me information on how they made it or why they made it, that gives me so much more information to tell while I'm showing.
00:33:51
Speaker
And I think having that,
00:33:54
Speaker
information, like you mentioned, like my making of's, like those went a long way early on, not just in terms of kind of sharing my process, but it validated how I made it and that I made it, you know, that I wasn't just stealing art from the internet and minting it and stuff.
00:34:09
Speaker
And so as an artist, it's really important for you to kind of show your receipts to a degree, especially in this new age of AI.
00:34:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah, more than more than anything, it's going to be more about people and about communities for sure.
00:34:23
Speaker
This is so valuable and so simple as well.
00:34:26
Speaker
Is it something that came naturally to you and then you looked back and thought, that was the recipe for my success?
00:34:33
Speaker
Or is there any one of those three that you had to really figure out?
00:34:39
Speaker
I think it came naturally.
00:34:40
Speaker
When I joined the space early on, I mean, the space wasn't big when I joined.
00:34:45
Speaker
It was, you know,
00:34:47
Speaker
January 2020.
00:34:47
Speaker
And so it was like a discord.
00:34:51
Speaker
People would meet up in crypto boxes and be cold.
00:34:53
Speaker
And Sarah Zucker and Matt Cain and all these kind of OGs.
00:34:57
Speaker
And I would look at them and learn from them.
00:34:59
Speaker
I would see them collecting other artists' work, becoming a part of the other artists' journeys, looking at how they went about marketing and how they went about doing the auctions.
00:35:09
Speaker
Back then, there was no auction timers.
00:35:12
Speaker
So it was like you had a tweet and you'd say, I have a new piece.
00:35:15
Speaker
In 24 hours, the top offer will be the winner.
00:35:18
Speaker
And then you'd say, there's 10 minutes left.
00:35:20
Speaker
There's one minute left.
00:35:20
Speaker
And you'd say, all right, this one's winnings.
00:35:22
Speaker
And then you did it all.
00:35:23
Speaker
It was all manual.
00:35:25
Speaker
But I learned all that from watching like Coldy because he had this Coldy method, you know?
00:35:30
Speaker
And so it was a lot of learning from other people.
00:35:33
Speaker
And I still do that to a huge degree.
00:35:37
Speaker
Every drop in the space you can look at and learn from what does and doesn't work.
00:35:41
Speaker
And that will save you your own mistakes.
00:35:44
Speaker
And so a lot of people are like, oh, you're so hyper aware of the space, Brian.
00:35:48
Speaker
And it's like, well, it's,
00:35:51
Speaker
You have to learn from other people all the time.
00:35:54
Speaker
Again, like Luca, we're all learning from his successes.
00:35:58
Speaker
That will then influence more success.
00:36:01
Speaker
So yeah, I think that's just the general feeling.
00:36:04
Speaker
It's just we all make mistakes and we learn from those, but it's more of just kind of being hyperactive and aware of the space is a strength.
00:36:14
Speaker
And it feels like a big part of your awareness around this is also because you're in the shoes of the collector as well.
00:36:23
Speaker
So you know what they're expecting, you know what's needed, and you can observe that from both sides of the coin.
00:36:32
Speaker
Yes, yeah.
00:36:33
Speaker
And again, it goes back, I learned from, I think, Sarah Zucker, because she was...
00:36:40
Speaker
saying you know when i make a sale i immediately take x amount of that sale and use it to go buy another piece of art from another artist and like that mentality is just a great mentality uh and it trickled you know all success trickles down that way but again it was just from learning from others there wasn't a lot of resources back then there wasn't youtube videos on like what is an nft you know that didn't come out until like later that year or whatever so
00:37:06
Speaker
It was a lot of just DMing people, joining discords, going into crypto voxels and just like kind of immersing yourself in it, which was great because like a month or two after I joined the space, COVID happened.
00:37:18
Speaker
And I was like, I got no social life anymore.
00:37:20
Speaker
I'm just going to go hang out in crypto boxes with these strangers and become friends with them.
00:37:23
Speaker
That worked out well for you.
00:37:26
Speaker
What was your, you're a real early user of NFTs.
00:37:31
Speaker
What was your first interaction with NFTs and what did you do you remember your aha moment, your the thought process of, all right, this is going to be important.
00:37:42
Speaker
This is something I want to get involved in.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:45
Speaker
I wouldn't say I knew it was going to be important.
00:37:47
Speaker
I just thought it was interesting.
00:37:50
Speaker
I collect art from Killer Acid, who's Rob.
00:37:53
Speaker
He's an awesome artist.
00:37:54
Speaker
I've collected his work for like a decade.
00:37:56
Speaker
He was one of the first artists on SuperRare.
00:37:59
Speaker
He had posted like an Instagram about a piece that it was on auction.
00:38:04
Speaker
And I was like, oh, he's able to sell an animated GIF.
00:38:07
Speaker
What is this about?
00:38:08
Speaker
I didn't know you could do that.
00:38:10
Speaker
And I didn't know what Ethereum was.
00:38:11
Speaker
I didn't know what NFTs were.
00:38:12
Speaker
And I kind of
00:38:14
Speaker
looked around super rare for a couple days or a couple weeks tried to learn about nfts and then i was like okay i'm gonna apply to super rare and see if i can get on this seems to me it was a continuation of like tumblr or like and you know anytime there's a social network app that is art focused i try to join and i make art and share it and
00:38:35
Speaker
That's just always been my vibe over the years.
00:38:38
Speaker
And I just thought this was the next wave of digital art communities.
00:38:42
Speaker
My NFTs were selling, I think, for about $200 for my one-of-ones, which I thought was incredible.
00:38:48
Speaker
And the fact that I could sell animation, I think that was the thing that was the unlock.
00:38:53
Speaker
That was the aha.
00:38:54
Speaker
Because for years, I'd done gallery shows where I
00:38:58
Speaker
Drew things in Photoshop, printed them out, painted them, did all this stuff.
00:39:01
Speaker
And I would turn my digital art into physical art.
00:39:03
Speaker
And then with this, I was like, I can work natively in the format I've always loved working in.
00:39:08
Speaker
And I can make that art, you know, you could never sell animation before.
00:39:14
Speaker
And so it very quickly like clicked where I was like, this is, you know,
00:39:20
Speaker
a world that allows me to make fun gifts essentially.
00:39:23
Speaker
Cause there wasn't video on super rare at the time it was all animated gif.
00:39:28
Speaker
Uh, and so that there was a fun challenge there of like making two to three second loops, you know?
00:39:33
Speaker
And so, yeah, I think, I mean, the aha moment was when my first one sold and I was like, Oh my gosh, there's, there's interest in me doing this.
00:39:41
Speaker
This is really cool.
00:39:42
Speaker
You know, this is so cool.
00:39:44
Speaker
I get this picture of, uh,
00:39:47
Speaker
you haven't
NFTs and New Opportunities for Artists
00:39:48
Speaker
been primed for it your whole life, like starting with Adobe, being that type of art social network platform thing.
00:40:00
Speaker
And then you like upscaling your skills for years and then boom, this movement started and just like blows everything wide open.
00:40:11
Speaker
Thinking back on like early on, well, one,
00:40:15
Speaker
Working at those shows where I had an hour to make a piece or two hours to make a piece with SuperRare, I was like, I'm going to give myself a week and I'm going to make one piece a week.
00:40:24
Speaker
And that was my challenge.
00:40:25
Speaker
And I did that for the first nine months.
00:40:27
Speaker
And it was just a way for me to learn new tech, new stuff, experiment, do weird stuff.
00:40:33
Speaker
And because again, I feel like when COVID happened and everyone went into lockdown, everyone's like, well, I'm going to better myself in some way, whether it's exercise or all these other things.
00:40:43
Speaker
I was like, well, I'm going to try and learn new technology stuff and
00:40:47
Speaker
3D and watch tutorials and learn all these things.
00:40:50
Speaker
And so a lot of those early super things were me just trying to like get better technically at stuff.
00:40:56
Speaker
And those were just my experiments of kind of messing around.
00:41:00
Speaker
I need links because I want to pick up one of those pieces.
00:41:05
Speaker
If any of them are still affordable.
00:41:08
Speaker
When did you make your first $200 sale?
00:41:09
Speaker
That would have been February 2020.
00:41:13
Speaker
And when was the Sotheby's $95,000 sale?
00:41:16
Speaker
It was like a year and a half later, which is crazy.
00:41:20
Speaker
It's insane.
00:41:21
Speaker
It was.
00:41:22
Speaker
And that was my first super rare piece resold at Sotheby's.
00:41:26
Speaker
Can you explain that one?
00:41:27
Speaker
I didn't have the time to dig as much as I could, but it seemed really interesting.
00:41:33
Speaker
It's called Explode.
00:41:34
Speaker
And so, you know, as my entrance into the space, I was like, you know, super air was filled with grungy, grimy art from X copy and cold and all this stuff.
00:41:44
Speaker
And I thought that was all really cool and very like cyber punky, but I was like, maybe I can go at this with a more pop colorful angle.
00:41:52
Speaker
And so that idea was like here, you know, these clouds are like thought bubbles.
00:41:58
Speaker
And so it's like,
00:41:59
Speaker
it's an explosion of like ideas and stuff.
00:42:02
Speaker
And so it was kind of like, this is my entrance into the space is like, and it had, it had those kinds of colors, those rainbow colors.
00:42:09
Speaker
It had 2d animation and it had a gif loop.
00:42:12
Speaker
And when I applied to super rare, I made three pieces.
00:42:17
Speaker
That was the only one I actually meant to the other two.
00:42:19
Speaker
I like threw out.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:22
Speaker
It was like, I think that, that just kind of was the vibe I wanted to put out of like,
00:42:28
Speaker
I didn't see people doing traditional animation in the space.
00:42:32
Speaker
I didn't see people kind of, I don't know, having the cartoony.
00:42:37
Speaker
Later on, I saw people like Joy.
00:42:39
Speaker
I would say he was like doing poppy, colorful, cool stuff way before me.
00:42:46
Speaker
But he was not super rare, so I didn't see him right away.
00:42:49
Speaker
But I love his work.
00:42:50
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:42:52
Speaker
There's this picture on your website of you with like music video, pop culture, TV, crypto art of all the subjects that basically run through your mind and that you have to focus on.
00:43:04
Speaker
Do you see the one I'm referring to?
00:43:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:43:09
Speaker
Listening to this.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, that was my that was my original like, way of
00:43:15
Speaker
just kind of describing all the weird things I did.
00:43:17
Speaker
I ended up making a new version of it later on that was like way more complicated.
00:43:21
Speaker
Cause I was like, I, this is what I was doing a year ago.
00:43:23
Speaker
Now I'm doing all these things, but yeah, no, I think that that was the fun aspect was, and I still do a lot of these other weird side things.
00:43:31
Speaker
Like next month in New York, I'll be doing live drawing to standup comedy.
00:43:36
Speaker
which I still do on a regular basis.
00:43:38
Speaker
And every once in a while I'll do like posters for things like, yeah, even though I'm more of an like quote artist now in the end, you know, just being creative is so fun.
00:43:49
Speaker
And I think that's the beauty of where I'm at now is I just have the freedom to be creative in any way I want.
00:43:56
Speaker
And I don't have to like, I don't know, stick, stick to a path, I guess you were talking earlier and I've,
00:44:04
Speaker
For years, everyone was like, you got to do a PFP, you got to do a 10K thing.
00:44:10
Speaker
And I kept saying, I don't want to accidentally become a business.
00:44:15
Speaker
And I think if you go big like that, then you have to build.
00:44:21
Speaker
build a team around this PFP and then you have a business.
00:44:24
Speaker
And it's like, as long as, you know, that seems so not fun to me.
00:44:30
Speaker
I love the freedom to experiment and do weird stuff.
00:44:32
Speaker
And so that's why, again, going back to supply, keeping your supply low means that everything is a part of this bigger picture and you don't have to necessarily keep, you know, focusing on one project forever.
00:44:45
Speaker
Oh man, you're so, you're so aware of,
00:44:48
Speaker
of yourself and of where you want to go.
00:44:50
Speaker
It's actually pretty inspiring.
00:44:52
Speaker
Do you, are you mindful of actually, because you're basically creating a universe with every new piece that you put out.
00:44:59
Speaker
Are you mindful of that bigger picture of that?
00:45:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:05
Speaker
I think
00:45:06
Speaker
There's a lot of symbols that I use reoccurring.
00:45:10
Speaker
And then a lot of my work, I try to do callbacks to previous works.
00:45:15
Speaker
And so my next drop I'm doing with AOTM is visually connected to pieces I did in 2020 on Super Rare.
00:45:24
Speaker
And part of that is...
00:45:27
Speaker
I want to tell the story and I can frame it in a similar way.
00:45:29
Speaker
But then it also is an excuse for me to say, hey, look, there's a continuity here.
00:45:35
Speaker
And it's like the wires I have are connecting all these things.
00:45:40
Speaker
And yeah, it's like, even my wife was like, I totally forgot you made those pieces.
00:45:44
Speaker
And I think it's important, especially in the space for you to keep reminding people about the stuff you do in the past.
00:45:49
Speaker
And if I can use my new art as a way to highlight stuff from the past, it just builds this awareness.
00:45:57
Speaker
Because the whole space, you know, the stuff I did in 2020, I would say maybe 1% of the space is aware of it.
00:46:05
Speaker
Because most people joined after it and don't deep dive into that stuff.
00:46:11
Speaker
It's up to you as the artist to educate people and re-highlight these things as you continue to grow and time goes on.
00:46:19
Speaker
And I think the most, for me as a more viewer from the outside, the most important thing in doing this is that you're going to make that one person feel so special.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:31
Speaker
they're going to know these.
00:46:33
Speaker
And for them, it's going to be a throwback.
00:46:35
Speaker
It's not going to be education.
00:46:36
Speaker
And they're going to feel like, oh, I was there for this.
00:46:40
Speaker
And that's so powerful.
00:46:42
Speaker
Like I've experienced this reading books or watching TV shows or something.
00:46:46
Speaker
And the person, the character, the whatever is referring to something that you know only a few people are aware of.
00:46:56
Speaker
And it hits you in the
00:46:59
Speaker
Yeah, it does feel special.
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:01
Speaker
It's like, yeah, you have that insider knowledge.
00:47:05
Speaker
I don't know.
00:47:07
Speaker
I do think building, like when I joined the space, I,
00:47:12
Speaker
I kind of slowly built up these things that became reoccurring, whether they're clouds or diamonds or ladders or whatever.
00:47:18
Speaker
And they all have these kind of like meanings that allow me to tell a story without, again, it's all like symbols and stuff.
00:47:26
Speaker
So that, you know, if you want to learn about what it's about, you can find that information.
00:47:31
Speaker
Otherwise it's just a fun visual.
00:47:33
Speaker
And yeah, I've always kind of seen my, my colors as a candy coating, the, the, the messages or, you know,
00:47:44
Speaker
I could so see your universe become like an animated series with its characters.
00:47:53
Speaker
Is that something that would ever excite you or that you'd be interested in doing?
00:47:57
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:47:59
Speaker
I've gone back and forth.
00:48:00
Speaker
So about a year ago, I was asked if I wanted to do an animated series, which being an animator in my career, I was like, you know, that would have been my dream for a long time.
00:48:12
Speaker
But
00:48:13
Speaker
Now, I just don't think it's my dream anymore.
00:48:18
Speaker
Again, it's building a business.
00:48:19
Speaker
I don't want to be responsible for a team of 50 people working on an animated show for a year when I could just be making art.
00:48:28
Speaker
That puts me in a position where it's no longer me making art, it's me.
00:48:32
Speaker
running a show.
00:48:35
Speaker
And I think, you know, it would be fun to do at some point maybe, but at this point in my career, I think it would have derailed my momentum to do that.
00:48:45
Speaker
Cause it's like, you know, you, you work on it for a year and a half and then, and then maybe it makes it to air or maybe they decide they don't want to do NFT stuff or something, you know, it's so much risk.
00:48:57
Speaker
Again, with the self-awareness.
00:48:58
Speaker
that's really impressive i gotta say i'm i'm much more delusional i i'm much more like all right this is a cool idea let's let's do it and and not think about the like physical implications of that having worked on animated shows i see the stresses that showrunners go through and you know i think part of the problem is i just don't have
00:49:22
Speaker
a strong idea for a show right now.
00:49:24
Speaker
If, if, and when I do, it might be different, but I felt like I would be like forcing an idea out of something that I didn't really know what I wanted anyways.
00:49:33
Speaker
It's like, I don't,
00:49:34
Speaker
For the most part, I don't really have characters.
00:49:37
Speaker
I have a visual world, but I don't have a show yet.
00:49:43
Speaker
Well, I'm going to say that your own creation, your own self-portraits are really good and could be a very good...
00:49:53
Speaker
You see, that puts me, I don't know if I would want to make a whole show about me as a cartoon.
00:49:59
Speaker
I didn't want to play anything like this.
00:50:03
Speaker
I just wanted to say that it's very memorable and that it looks good.
00:50:07
Speaker
Thank you.
00:50:07
Speaker
No, I appreciate that.
00:50:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's been kind of the weird thing is people in the past have said like, oh yeah, you should do like avatars of yourself where people can play as you.
00:50:16
Speaker
And I'm like, that's kind of weird.
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:22
Speaker
Um, so I don't know.
00:50:24
Speaker
I, I, I like having my avatar as me, but I don't know if I want to make that a product.
00:50:28
Speaker
I don't want, I don't want me to be the product.
00:50:30
Speaker
I want my art to be the product.
00:50:32
Speaker
I get that.
00:50:33
Speaker
I'd watch the show, but I get it.
00:50:36
Speaker
One of the very interesting, other interesting things you were talking about was the expectations that come when you start to get some success.
00:50:44
Speaker
And I, I would love to, I was very excited.
00:50:48
Speaker
I wanted to ask you more last time, but I,
00:50:51
Speaker
How was your own encounter with that component of the psyche?
00:50:58
Speaker
In terms of like just self-awareness that I'm known to a degree, you mean?
00:51:04
Speaker
Yes.
00:51:05
Speaker
And then how does it... Yeah, because I left out a part of the question there.
00:51:10
Speaker
In general, I'm self-aware enough to understand that even if I am notable within the space...
00:51:18
Speaker
I'm still very much an unknown in the big picture of the world.
00:51:21
Speaker
And that's to say a blanket statement about all artists.
00:51:25
Speaker
Like, does my mom know who Damien Hirst is?
00:51:29
Speaker
Probably not.
00:51:30
Speaker
You know, you have to humble yourself and remind you just remember that for the most part, nobody knows who I am and that's okay.
00:51:37
Speaker
But you do go to these like NFT conventions and people come up and they know who you are.
00:51:41
Speaker
And that's very exciting.
00:51:42
Speaker
And it's very kind of validating and it feels good.
00:51:44
Speaker
But yeah, I don't let it get to my head at all.
00:51:47
Speaker
And I think,
00:51:48
Speaker
part of that is, yeah, I don't know.
00:51:50
Speaker
There was, there was a time when like right after that, like Sotheby's sale, I worked at an SNL and I went to the after party and it was like, Taylor Swift was there and there's all these people.
00:52:04
Speaker
And it was just like,
00:52:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I am a nobody.
00:52:07
Speaker
Even though I'm having success in my own world, I'm still very much a complete nobody compared to all of these actual famous people.
00:52:15
Speaker
So it's good to, you know, having those moments humble you nicely.
00:52:20
Speaker
Relativity is a useful tool.
00:52:22
Speaker
And does it... None of them would be like, oh, you do NFTs?
00:52:26
Speaker
No one would care.
00:52:29
Speaker
Yet.
00:52:30
Speaker
Yet.
00:52:30
Speaker
That time will come.
00:52:33
Speaker
I could bet some money on it.
00:52:34
Speaker
And when it comes to the people that do know you, does that impact your creative process of, all right, like this has done this well in the past, the next few pieces need to do as well.
00:52:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's always going to be on your
Artistic Growth vs. Market Success
00:52:50
Speaker
mind.
00:52:50
Speaker
You don't want to go backwards, but sometimes the market forces that.
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think the way I look at it, as long as I feel like the art is continuing to be
00:52:59
Speaker
to grow and continue to like get better.
00:53:02
Speaker
I don't care as much about like hitting all time highs every time.
00:53:06
Speaker
Like it certainly plays into my, my mind when I do a drop.
00:53:12
Speaker
The idea of the perception of it is a big thing.
00:53:16
Speaker
And so, you know, sometimes it's a matter of like,
00:53:21
Speaker
making sure something sells out in a minute just because that perception of success or something but sometimes doing that ends up getting you worse collectors because they're buying it for the hype and they're immediately going to flip it and stuff like that and so there's a back and forth on the the right way to do it and i think different drops work for different things and so i don't you know
00:53:45
Speaker
Like I did a drop with Unit London and that took like a month to sell out.
00:53:48
Speaker
But everybody that bought it really enjoyed it and wanted it.
00:53:52
Speaker
And so it was a better collector base than say something like, you know, a first come first serve quick sellout thing on Nifty Gateway, which immediately has like 10 listings or something.
00:54:04
Speaker
When you do these things, like you're really putting yourselves out there.
00:54:07
Speaker
It's not just posting a picture on your Instagram.
00:54:09
Speaker
It's like testing how the market is reacting to you.
00:54:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:15
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's the whole other aspect of the space is that I'm doxed.
00:54:22
Speaker
I'm very vulnerable in that sense.
00:54:25
Speaker
I don't want to ever make people feel like I'm...
00:54:29
Speaker
I don't know how to describe it.
00:54:30
Speaker
I wouldn't want someone to be mad at me, you know, because they could find me, you know?
00:54:35
Speaker
And so you have to, you have to be aware in that, in that way of like, not, not being a jerk and like all these other things.
00:54:44
Speaker
Because yeah, I want to, I want to cultivate a world where I can continue to be an artist forever.
00:54:49
Speaker
And that requires thoughtful, methodical drops that are,
00:54:53
Speaker
you know, not extractive and all these other things.
00:54:57
Speaker
And yeah, it's always in the back of my mind of like not being negative and not being a jerk.
00:55:03
Speaker
I was going to say that you have two very important pillars of you're a good ethical person and you're very self-aware.
00:55:14
Speaker
And so you know why you do the things you do.
00:55:19
Speaker
so it it can't really go wrong because you're staying true to yourself and you're staying aligned but when you start to be like for example a bull market is going to come and you're going to have new upcoming artists that are going to start like getting some form of success and they're going to have all of these opportunities thrown at them they're going to be ideas from all around the world
00:55:42
Speaker
And there are going to be new metas because each cycle has its fair share of metas and you're very tempted to follow them.
00:55:51
Speaker
And sometimes that implies selling your soul a little bit.
00:55:55
Speaker
And because that art market has serious financial implications now, you're going to get whipped
Trends and Ethical Considerations
00:56:05
Speaker
at some point.
00:56:05
Speaker
Like something's going to happen with that.
00:56:08
Speaker
Do you agree?
00:56:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's always going to be, whether it's working with a brand or whatever, there's always going to be trends that you want to follow.
00:56:17
Speaker
And the question is, right now the trend is like Frentech.
00:56:20
Speaker
I'm not jumping onto Frentech.
00:56:22
Speaker
But Ordinals was a trend.
00:56:25
Speaker
And now that Ordinals has died off, now I'm more interested in doing it than it would have been before.
00:56:31
Speaker
Because again, the perception, if I do it now, I can do it and say I'm doing this because the tech is exciting versus if I did it six months ago when everyone would have just assumed I was doing it to cash grab, you know?
00:56:43
Speaker
And so it's kind of like figuring out how to go about those things and how it'll be perceived.
00:56:48
Speaker
I love how you think because like what you were saying with open editions before, you haven't dismissed open editions.
00:56:56
Speaker
You just don't yet have...
00:56:59
Speaker
like you're aware that it exists, you're aware it's a possibility and maybe it feels like maybe one day you'll go there, but it'll be under your own terms for a very specific purpose, not because it is the ongoing trend.
00:57:17
Speaker
I appreciate open, I mean, I've bought so many open editions from artists.
00:57:21
Speaker
I find that open editions work well if the artist is emerging, small,
00:57:28
Speaker
Because then it mints out 50 to 100.
00:57:32
Speaker
If I did an open edition, I would worry that it would mint 1,000.
00:57:36
Speaker
And then that puts me in a position, again, where there's an expectation.
00:57:42
Speaker
Even if I don't say it, because artists in the past have used open editions as this roadmap of burning...
00:57:50
Speaker
people buy them with the expectation that there will be a future value.
00:57:55
Speaker
And that's what stops me from doing it because I don't want to accidentally imply future value in that way.
00:58:01
Speaker
I don't know.
00:58:02
Speaker
That's the thing.
00:58:03
Speaker
I'm, again, it goes back to that ethical thing.
00:58:05
Speaker
The ethical thing is about, you know, not making enemies in the space, but also not making enemies with the government.
00:58:10
Speaker
You know, I'm in the U S seeing how the sec is cracking down on all this stuff.
00:58:15
Speaker
You have to be very aware of how you're marketing stuff and how,
00:58:20
Speaker
that you can't promise future value.
00:58:22
Speaker
You can't do any of these things or, you know, thankfully I'm not famous.
00:58:26
Speaker
You know, you talked about fame earlier.
00:58:28
Speaker
I'm not famous enough for the SEC to go after me.
00:58:30
Speaker
They seem to be going after celebrities more, but I don't want to be on their radar at all.
00:58:33
Speaker
You know?
00:58:34
Speaker
And so it's like, you know, you just have to sell stuff as art with no expectations.
00:58:39
Speaker
And then, you know, you can,
00:58:41
Speaker
do surprise things for those people later, but you just don't market it with those things.
00:58:46
Speaker
Market it that way.
00:58:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:48
Speaker
Almost made me bring up our common quote unquote friend, but let's hit, I'm going to hit you with some rapid fire questions.
00:58:57
Speaker
Started introducing this recently, get funny answers sometimes.
00:59:02
Speaker
If you could only ever buy one NFT that you would have to hold for the rest of your life, what would it be?
00:59:08
Speaker
I own it, but I would say Gazers, the fact that they change every day forever.
00:59:13
Speaker
It's a great NFT for long term.
00:59:16
Speaker
I don't even know about that.
00:59:17
Speaker
I'll have to look it up.
00:59:18
Speaker
That's Matt Cain's Art Blocks project where it's a moon and every day it cycles.
00:59:23
Speaker
And over time, it'll become faster and more complicated.
00:59:27
Speaker
And it's an NFT that 40 years from now will look totally different than what it looks like now.
00:59:32
Speaker
It's very cool.
00:59:34
Speaker
Oh, that sounds awesome.
00:59:34
Speaker
How did I miss it?
00:59:36
Speaker
I'm going to look it up right after.
00:59:37
Speaker
It's pretty pricey now, but yeah.
00:59:40
Speaker
I didn't mean to buy.
00:59:41
Speaker
I meant to look at what it is and what it implies.
00:59:44
Speaker
If you can only buy one crypto for the rest of your life.
00:59:47
Speaker
I guess Ethereum.
00:59:49
Speaker
It's the most versatile.
00:59:51
Speaker
Makes sense.
00:59:52
Speaker
Not Billy?
00:59:53
Speaker
Billy.
00:59:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:55
Speaker
I like the Billy logo.
00:59:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:57
Speaker
It looked good.
00:59:57
Speaker
Who are your top three favorite people that you vibe with the most in this space right now?
01:00:03
Speaker
Sarah Zucker, she has the best vibes.
01:00:05
Speaker
Dave Krugman's got great vibes.
01:00:06
Speaker
He's, again, he's a curator of vibes.
01:00:09
Speaker
He puts together events and they're just really, really lovely.
01:00:13
Speaker
Vinnie Hager, I think he's got great vibes.
01:00:16
Speaker
I think every time I see him, it makes me smile.
01:00:19
Speaker
And he's prolific in terms of how much work he puts out too.
01:00:23
Speaker
Two very good qualities.
01:00:25
Speaker
Who are your top three favorite digital artists emerging who people need to know about right now?
01:00:32
Speaker
Well, I just bought a piece today from this artist named Luis Daisy.
01:00:36
Speaker
I think his work's phenomenal.
01:00:38
Speaker
And an emerging artist, Emily Edelman.
01:00:40
Speaker
She's a really great generative artist.
01:00:42
Speaker
Great person.
01:00:43
Speaker
She's like blown up.
01:00:45
Speaker
Alamo, big fan of him.
01:00:47
Speaker
Great.
01:00:47
Speaker
Again, great vibes.
01:00:48
Speaker
Great art.
01:00:49
Speaker
Awesome.
01:00:49
Speaker
Thank you.
01:00:50
Speaker
What's something about you people online don't know?
01:00:52
Speaker
I don't know.
01:00:53
Speaker
That's a good question.
01:00:54
Speaker
What secrets do I have?
01:00:56
Speaker
Most people don't understand that I play a lot of video games.
01:00:59
Speaker
I'm big into Fortnite and Rocket League and FIFA and all those things.
01:01:03
Speaker
And sometimes when I tell people that, they're like, you play video games?
01:01:07
Speaker
I'm surprised.
01:01:10
Speaker
I saw that Counter-Strike 2 just came out.
01:01:12
Speaker
Is that something you play?
01:01:14
Speaker
It looks good.
01:01:14
Speaker
I'm a big nerd when it comes to graphics, so I was watching videos of the water effects in the game yesterday.
01:01:21
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that.
01:01:22
Speaker
I saw that too.
01:01:24
Speaker
But yeah, I used to play.
01:01:28
Speaker
I was big into Counter-Strike when I was in high school.
01:01:31
Speaker
I was big in the Day of Defeat, which was like the World War II expansion or whatever it was.
01:01:37
Speaker
Part of me is like, yeah, maybe I'll try it.
01:01:39
Speaker
And then I'm like, I will suck so bad.
01:01:44
Speaker
It'll bum me out.
01:01:45
Speaker
I'm just not.
01:01:47
Speaker
I play, I play a lot of shooters.
01:01:49
Speaker
I've been playing payday three recently, and that's been pretty fun.
01:01:51
Speaker
Competitive shooters.
01:01:53
Speaker
I'm not, I'm not good at, I'm okay at Fortnite, but I have to play no build mode, you know?
01:01:58
Speaker
But, uh, yeah, that, that's where I will say, uh, as I'm getting older, um, it's a lot harder to compete with these kids, uh, with their reflexes and stuff.
01:02:11
Speaker
I can't.
01:02:12
Speaker
So, uh, you know, that's why I like rocket league and stuff like that, which is a little more, uh,
01:02:16
Speaker
It evens out a little bit.
01:02:17
Speaker
Man, I was looking at the... This video came up of the story of the Fortnite World Tournament.
01:02:26
Speaker
So it explained... Like, there were two or three main characters, like Kings and Booga.
01:02:32
Speaker
I was literally watching this two or three days ago.
01:02:34
Speaker
Like, top world players.
01:02:37
Speaker
I don't play.
01:02:38
Speaker
I wish I... But I don't get into games as much as I did when I was younger, and I miss it, and I wish I could, but my brain just doesn't want to anymore.
01:02:46
Speaker
But I still I'm interested in the world of gaming.
01:02:49
Speaker
The reflexes, the speed at which like their brains work.
01:02:55
Speaker
And it's almost like their autonomous nervous system has been wired to play video games now.
01:03:02
Speaker
And that everything just happens intuitively.
01:03:04
Speaker
It's nuts.
01:03:06
Speaker
It's nuts.
01:03:07
Speaker
I understand the no build.
01:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, I just beat.
01:03:11
Speaker
starfield which was great and so yeah i think that's the problem like what i've as i've gotten older i've my routine is i usually play like an hour or two of games at like night from like 11 to 1 or something and that's like my decompressing time or whatever yeah i i much prefer like short adrenaline bursts of like a quick game a competitive sports or something a lot of people play these like
01:03:37
Speaker
epic long games and stuff like that or like dark souls or something i'm like i can't do that like yeah i need something fun uh to give me that little rush and then i'm the level of commitment is is otherworldly i don't know how it's funny because my previous guests french one so you won't i i don't
01:03:54
Speaker
think you speak french not well not well well maybe you can try if it's if you have some basics i took french in high school that was uh that was a while ago yeah he was talking about starfield as well and was very excited about it it was a cool game i i enjoyed it i i also liked um fallout and skyrim and stuff so it was it was very much along those lines but yeah it was one of those things where i'm like
01:04:18
Speaker
Again, I get sucked into that and I play it like an hour or two a day and then I'm like talking about deadlines and stuff like that.
01:04:24
Speaker
I'm like, I can't, I can't put myself in these positions where I'm like obsessing over a game when I need to get stuff done.
01:04:30
Speaker
Not yet.
01:04:31
Speaker
Maybe, maybe the time will come.
01:04:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:34
Speaker
Do you, I don't know why I put this one here.
01:04:38
Speaker
We're kind of done with the rapid fire.
01:04:40
Speaker
I wanted to ask, do you think NFTs are dead?
01:04:44
Speaker
No, I mean, obviously not.
01:04:46
Speaker
But I don't know.
01:04:47
Speaker
I had a conversation about it the other day.
01:04:48
Speaker
And I basically said like NFTs aren't dead, but maybe the name NFT
Recognition of Digital Art in Institutions
01:04:53
Speaker
is dead.
01:04:53
Speaker
I think we're going to start saying like digital collectibles and other things more.
01:04:56
Speaker
But they're certainly dead in terms of media appreciation.
01:05:01
Speaker
but it's like that's that article came out and it's like that same week there was like a lacma announcement a moma announcement a sotheby's a christy's like all the whitney like the the digital art appreciation is very much on the rise right now and not dead at all so for me it's more of just like it's dead and i'm kind of okay with people saying it's dead because it keeps the the scammers and the opportunists out a little bit but i do think
01:05:30
Speaker
NFTs as like PFPs.
01:05:32
Speaker
Yeah, those are probably dead right now.
01:05:34
Speaker
I mean, if not dead, they're down 90%.
01:05:37
Speaker
We're still seeing crazy drops from artists.
01:05:42
Speaker
I think what Ferocious has dropped made millions this week.
01:05:45
Speaker
So it's like clearly not dead.
01:05:47
Speaker
It's still very much.
01:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting what you're saying because we're stepping away from the technology and stepping into the
01:05:58
Speaker
utility and, and yeah, the functionalities we're not talking about NFTs, but we're, or like NFTs are dead, but digital art is raising and NFTs are dead, but
01:06:10
Speaker
Web3 Gaming that is using NFTs is on the rise as well.
01:06:16
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure that in the next few phases, we'll start to see more and more applications that are utilizing the technology where you don't even feel like you are.
01:06:25
Speaker
My first guest was Tara Fung.
01:06:28
Speaker
She's the founder of CoCreate.
01:06:32
Speaker
And they've just come out.
01:06:33
Speaker
They have a tech stack that allows NFTs
01:06:37
Speaker
basically communities to use the tech and create applications that are so seamless for users.
01:06:44
Speaker
And they've put out an example where you go through claiming and minting and I think there was another utility.
01:06:52
Speaker
You don't once have to open your MetaMask.
01:06:55
Speaker
You don't have to pay for gas.
01:06:56
Speaker
You don't have to do anything.
01:06:57
Speaker
You're just as if you were going on Instagram and liking a couple of photos and putting a comment.
01:07:04
Speaker
It was that easy.
01:07:06
Speaker
And I think that's the future.
01:07:07
Speaker
You'll be buying art that you know is in limited supply that you can use to track to make sure that it is not a forgery.
01:07:18
Speaker
that it indeed belongs to the artist, you won't even talk about the fact that it's an NFT anymore.
01:07:23
Speaker
I think it's going to get really interesting.
01:07:25
Speaker
I mean, you're right.
01:07:26
Speaker
The mechanisms are confusing and dangerous right now.
01:07:30
Speaker
Everyone's getting scammed.
01:07:31
Speaker
It's only going to get worse before it gets better, unfortunately, because social engineering will get better probably faster than wallet security.
01:07:40
Speaker
Especially.
01:07:43
Speaker
It's going to get weird.
01:07:44
Speaker
To that degree, I don't even feel comfortable telling people to get a MetaMask without having a whole seminar on safety.
01:07:52
Speaker
So we're not in a good place for onboarding people.
01:07:55
Speaker
But that's okay.
01:07:56
Speaker
Right now we can build and then those solutions will come and then in a year or so we'll have our moments.
01:08:03
Speaker
But smarter people than me will solve those problems.
01:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully.
01:08:07
Speaker
Well, we're seeing better wallets and better
01:08:11
Speaker
UX, it will eventually happen.
01:08:15
Speaker
I also wanted to talk to you about royalties, but it's such a tricky subject to broach where I'm sitting between two chairs of you have, in the art realm anyway, you have people that buy art for the investment that it represents and for the speculative component.
01:08:36
Speaker
And you have people that are collectors and that buy art for the art and buy art for the artist.
01:08:43
Speaker
And for the speculation side of things, I understand the market making components and like it is so inefficient to have to pay 5% or 7.5 or 2.5% every time you make a transaction.
01:08:57
Speaker
And it doesn't fit that use case at all.
01:09:00
Speaker
So do you think we can actually grow beyond that debate where both can coexist, where you have collectors on one side that will be happy to contribute a portion of their sale because they care about the artists and they want to pay that?
01:09:15
Speaker
And where on the other side, you have the speculators and the market makers that don't pay it and where it's okay?
01:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
01:09:23
Speaker
I'm unfortunately kind of pessimistic about royalties.
01:09:27
Speaker
I think, you know, maybe in the bulls,
01:09:29
Speaker
I think it's a matter of how often things flip.
01:09:32
Speaker
You know, it doesn't make sense for a Zuki to have royalties because... Or at least, you know...
01:09:40
Speaker
to a degree because they're just flipping all the time.
01:09:42
Speaker
And then, but like, if it's a super rare one of one and that only sells once every two years, that makes sense then because it's like a tip to say like, thank you for continuing to grow as an artist.
01:09:53
Speaker
You know, there's also people that argue like you should pay royalties if there's profit.
01:09:56
Speaker
And if not, then no, there's a lot of different incentivizing ideas.
01:10:02
Speaker
I'm, I'm again, pessimistic that incentives won't be as interesting as,
01:10:09
Speaker
as 10% difference of money.
01:10:13
Speaker
In the end, money is the key to everything in this space.
01:10:16
Speaker
And you could incentivize people and say, if you pay this royalty, you get an NFT.
01:10:22
Speaker
But most of the time, people will take the money.
01:10:24
Speaker
But maybe you have that opportunity for people that actually do want the art.
01:10:28
Speaker
I don't know what the answer is.
01:10:30
Speaker
It's been depressing to see the marketplaces.
01:10:36
Speaker
Blur never bothered me because...
01:10:39
Speaker
95% of my work isn't listed on blur anyways.
01:10:43
Speaker
But when OpenSea ran us around with all these things of like, make these contracts by this date to do this.
01:10:51
Speaker
And it made us all go through these hurdles.
01:10:54
Speaker
And they're like, actually, nah, we're just not going to do it.
01:10:56
Speaker
And that felt like a real slap.
01:10:59
Speaker
And so, yeah, I think it's definitely frustrating.
01:11:04
Speaker
But again, I'm very thankful that
01:11:08
Speaker
I've had a few years of royalties.
01:11:10
Speaker
I mean, it made a big difference.
01:11:13
Speaker
It's not for nothing.
01:11:14
Speaker
And especially like...
01:11:16
Speaker
NimBuds, which, you know, I sold those relatively cheap.
01:11:20
Speaker
And then they kind of ran seven months later.
01:11:23
Speaker
I made more from the royalties than I did from the initial sale.
01:11:27
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:11:28
Speaker
Yeah, it really feels like it was a huge betrayal, especially from OpenSea, because they benefited so much from those collections, from you guys as artists.
01:11:41
Speaker
And to see them
01:11:42
Speaker
like never drop a token, never.
01:11:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:45
Speaker
And still take their cut.
01:11:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:47
Speaker
And still take their cut.
01:11:48
Speaker
And, and because whether you do or you don't, they still do when you, when you use their, their platform, which is like, yeah, it makes no sense.
01:11:58
Speaker
I hope they get seriously dethroned in the next bull market.
01:12:02
Speaker
I think they will.
01:12:03
Speaker
I mean, they'll, they'll live as a Walmart of NFTs, but I think there will be,
01:12:11
Speaker
lots of other options for artists that will be, you know, so my, my general take is if you wanted to go buy my work, if I send you a link that has all of my stuff available and you can see it all and you can see what's available, um, your chances are you're going to buy from that.
01:12:31
Speaker
And, um,
01:12:32
Speaker
I equate it with like, so there's like thrift shops that are like curated to a degree of junk.
01:12:38
Speaker
And then there's garage sales.
01:12:40
Speaker
And so the garage sales, you can get things for super cheap, but you got to go around, you got to find the best deals.
01:12:45
Speaker
You got to dig through all these things, or you can go to the thrift shop and buy things.
01:12:49
Speaker
And most people will go to the thrift shop and buy something for 10 times more than they would at the garage sale because it's there and presented.
01:12:58
Speaker
And I think the same thing will be, you know,
01:13:01
Speaker
if I have a secondary marketplace and that's in my bio on Twitter, people will go there and buy it.
01:13:08
Speaker
And if there's incentives there or royalties built in there, most people will not, you know, people can go, some D gens will go find the best deal, but most people will just buy it based on ease.
01:13:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:13:24
Speaker
And also it will depend greatly on how we,
01:13:28
Speaker
grow to consume digital art.
01:13:32
Speaker
Because if that changes, if the platforms change, because you can always gamify interactions and you can verify in the smart contract if a royalty has been paid.
01:13:44
Speaker
And so if on that, let's say on cyber becomes the main go-to, it makes me think of that, the toilets.
01:13:50
Speaker
That was hilarious.
01:13:53
Speaker
That was really funny.
01:13:54
Speaker
But if on cyber becomes the norm, it's very easy for them to add something to
01:14:02
Speaker
this buyer has paid or like in that transaction, royalties were paid.
01:14:07
Speaker
And because art is still very much a status thing, it's something that you want to show others.
01:14:12
Speaker
And if you have this thing that becomes mainstream of art,
01:14:17
Speaker
yes, that person has paid the royalty, then the diehard, the real collectors, the people that care about this, will look for the sellers that are going to pay that resale price.
01:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
01:14:32
Speaker
Hopefully, let's build this.
01:14:33
Speaker
Let's manifest it in our future.
01:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, I'm noticing my video is starting to glitch out.
01:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that too.
01:14:41
Speaker
It added some cool... Yeah, it's an ex-copy collab.
01:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:14:46
Speaker
You're doing virtual effects without even trying to now.
01:14:51
Speaker
Your superpowers have activated much more.
01:14:54
Speaker
Man, thank you so much.
01:14:55
Speaker
It's been a blast.
01:14:57
Speaker
I love talking to you.
01:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, this was a great conversation.
01:14:58
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
01:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, my pleasure.
01:15:01
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:15:02
Speaker
If you have made it this far, go check out Brian, go check out his art.
01:15:06
Speaker
It'll be linked on all our socials.
01:15:08
Speaker
He's always of great advice.
01:15:11
Speaker
He makes great pieces.
01:15:12
Speaker
He gives a platform for great upcoming artists.
01:15:16
Speaker
And I've actually started to interact with a few of them.
01:15:20
Speaker
And honestly, all have been great.
01:15:21
Speaker
I love to hear that.
01:15:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:24
Speaker
And don't forget to subscribe.
01:15:25
Speaker
Don't forget to tell us what you thought about that conversation.
01:15:29
Speaker
And see you all very soon.
01:15:34
Speaker
Thanks.
01:15:34
Speaker
My pleasure.
01:15:35
Speaker
Bye-bye.