Meet the artist David Morphs

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Written by

#CLUB1BCH

1 year ago

In community: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain(7b7f)

Topics: WAX, NFT, Artist, Interview

I meet this artist recently and I got to chatting he doesn't really work on Twitter so he was a really good find if you enjoy pixel art so I got him when he was free to tell me all about his projects.

Hey

How are you?
I'm pretty good. My wife and kids took the day to visit relatives so I am having peace and quite for the day. What about you?

Oh nice so jealous will you be working on the project today?
I have made 2 more NFTs today so far. They are part of a 5 NFT blend. Once all 5 have been purchased they will be blendable for an NFT made by Celeb. It is a collab project.

It is a constellation project. I personally do not study astrology like Celeb, but my NFT are astronomy based. She may convert my astronomy and blend it to something to do with astrology.

Oh nice when you hoping to have them come out?
As soon as Celeb has her's finished I will set up the blend. I really don't want to have people buy them with hopes of blending for something ,if that something doesn't exist yet. But the first of the set is good enough in itself to be an NFT by itself without blending. So that one i may need to release by itself with no promise of a blend. It can be a cool card just to collect. And card number 5 is also fun enough that I can include it as a separate card by itself with a cool backstory. If she doesn't have her's finished this week, then next week I will put out card 1 as itself. Then if another week goes by and her's isn't ready I will put out card 5 as itself. If another week goes by without her's, I will set cards 2,3 and 4 a side and put my focus on the upcoming holidays... Thanksgiving and Halloween are ready to go, so I will be focusing on a Hanukkah and Christmas and Black Friday. This evening I am going to attempt a back-to-school NFT.

Oh nice how did your crypto journey start?
I was visiting a reptile expo and a guy approached me to talk about an NFT project he was starting to generate a new virtual currency that would be used in the real world pet trade that would be accepted by pet breeders as a form of payment to buy supplies back and forth from each other.... I bought in and then the project became an almost "rug pull." I say almost because even though it is currently failed, the owner is committed and restructuring everything to try to re-ignite it with a successful strategy... I felt loss from the project because i loved its focus on reptiles... So I started my own project based on community that shares an excitement around the reptiles and NFT art rather than the investment part of it.

Why did you choose pixel art as your form?
It is a popular theme amongst NFTs so I figured there would be at least someone who would appreciate it, though it is only one of my modalities. I also have some photography, AI and activity based projects.

So your not just a pixel art project you do all types what is your favorite form?
I suppose it depends what mood I'm in. I am totally loving this pixel art, but I have tried using other pixel styles and it isn't the same. What I am loving is the process of portraying an emotion that is recognizable within the limited moment. Like how much emotion can be created with just a few pixels. As in the photography... how much thought can be stimulated by one pose, or how long can I keep someone looking at a picture... Or in the art of telling a good joke... how long will the person think about the punch line. Even if the joke is dry and no one laughs, how many days will they keep thinking about it... or is the timing good enough to catch them while taking a drink and unexpectedly laughing while spitting milk out their nose.

When did you start creating?
Lol, I guess you could say I started before I could talk, when I created the best volume level to scream in order to get the quickest response from my mom to give me a bottle of warm milk... But I loved to create things with Lego to see how tall I could get the stack to still look legitimately like a building without falling over, around age 6. Then the same with every new material I found all the way on up... But if you started from a more intentful level of art, I would say around age 8 when I was given school assignments to write haiku, which gave me a specific goal of communicating an artistic thought with only 3 very short sentences of only 3 - 5 or 8 words. That is when I understood the concept of trying to create within a limited constraint. I tried it with photography, writing clay, dried flowers and whatever looked like a challenge of cramming a lot into small spaces... including cramming myself into a toy box... where I got stuck and my sister had to go get my mom to come rescue me, and I developed claustrophobia.

Around that time I entered contests to create crafts or literature to win contests at school. And sometimes I won! Even in college i won a poster competition with photographing and photoshopping to create as much thought as possible within that rectangle canvass.

So art is in your blood when did you release your first NFT?
The beginning of last summer.

https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/asset/1099564923948

How did the community react?
A few people laughed and had a fun time being surprised by it and that was it because it did not contain any passive income or other utility value.

When have you released since?
That one I have not released since, because I only have 3 max mint on that one and I want to wait for the right time when my collection is well known and has great value. Also... It doesn't mix well with the pixel theme and I don't want to scare everyone off before my pixel reputation is health and well established. I have mostly put out only pixel cobras recently. My previous collection of extreme photos is remaining in storage for a while. One of the highlights of my project is that I customize it to the members of my community. I have spent most of this afternoon preparing a pixel cobra for a friend who was recently sick in the hospital....

That's class . How many NFTs have you created?
108 templates that have already been minted, and probably around 10 that are still just art and not yet made into NFTs but soon will be. And a never ending supply of ideas!

How do you normally create your NFTs?
The pixel cobras are usually made in a pixel software and the file downloaded that is uploaded onto the Atomic hub NFT creator. Others are taken as photographs and then layered with other images with editing software then downloaded and then uploaded to AH... And some are uploaded to an AI program where I download the final result and then to AH. All of my AI start with my own art and then the AI just changes my own art, that way I can not be accused of selling other people's art as my own. That is an important requirement for AH whitelisting.

How long does it take to create your NFTs?
It varies greatly. On a pixel cobra I think the longest one took about 7 hours.
Some were started from a base design and only needed a few changes. Those might only take 15 minutes.

That took 7 hours.

This took about a half hour to change from one to the other. The photography can take a while. For example... I may need to prepare a set and then edit it later....

What is your favorite NFT you have created?
10 minutes to drive to the store... 10 minutes several photos in different poses... 10 minutes of shopping to get pictures of products. 10 minutes driving back home.... 20 minutes of adjusting lighting and filters on the photo... 20 minutes photoshopping to get name brands covered for legal copyright requirements... 20 minutes to develop and edit and place the instruction/information on the back image of the NFT. 10 minutes to develop the info and actually create the NFT in the AH program. So almost 2 hours for that..... BUT... I drew out the frame that i wanted which took about 30 minutes and then took about a week's worth of waiting and communicating back and forth for alterations with a photoshop expert that took my design and digitized it into a professional frame. So a couple of hours of my work but a week to actually accomplish the final result. Then another similar situation... A herping game I am building requires a variety of photos of specific animals. But it requires the cooperation of the animal itself. For example....

Here are two different parts of the herping game. One involves buying clues and then blending them together for a final result. There are some habitat cards that involve some landscape and results of the animal life of a Florida Green Iguana... Only about 20 minutes to find some trees that are full of Iguana poop, another 50 minutes of hunting for Iguanas to get a good distance photo and then about 10 minutes of chasing a good healthy Iguana to get a close-up of his whole body. Editing will be done later... But the other animal is a Florida Mediterranean House Gecko. I could find good shots of the habitat on a house with a light that attracts the bugs they eat. Took about 5 minutes. But getting the distance shot took 8 months of waiting because in Fall the weather changed and killed off most of the geckos and Winter came and got cold where they go into semi-hibernation, then through Spring they hid until some eggs started to hatch and this Summer I found a baby tail but no adults yet for the up-close shot!

I know you have done a few collabs but who would be your dream collab?
Right now my semi-realistic dream collab is Dungeon Master so I can get mining power utility to boost value and sales of NFTs... I have applied and am awaiting response.... But I don't know yet any specific projects that i would match with well enough to gain a financial profit from joining with... My dream would just be a collab with any project that sells millions of dollars worth of NFTs and would make mine worth millions of dollars too. Preferably someone that is based on pixel variant art for collecting.

Do you have a favorite NFT artist?
Not yet. I suppose I am waiting for someone that can demonstrate the full potential of what an NFT has to offer. So far most NFTs i see are just visual things that can be expressed in physical form, like drawings or pictures or audio recordings or GIFs or coupons. I consider them as great normal artists. I suppose a great "NFT" artist will be someone that can build NFTs that incorporate things that can only be done with NFT format like blends and utility. They are there, but no-one yet that makes my heart jump. I think I would be impressed when someone is able to set up an NFT project that when an NFT is a picture of an orphan that needs sponsoring and the NFT is purchased, that funding goes directly to the organization that cares for that individual child... I have currently started to experiment with that with my baby geckos that I breed. I have tried selling 1 of 1 NFTs of my baby geckos that the purchaser gets to choose a name for the gecko, and the sale price of the NFTs goes directly to buy worms and crickets for my pet geckos, resulting in a form of a virtual co-ownership of the gecko... So far I have not found anyone to participate or show interest.

Can you see yourself putting your NFTs on any other blockchains?
If they become successful on WAX then by all means I will expand to other blockchains.

What was been the best part of doing your project?
Connecting with people around the world and feeling like I have been able to show them that people care about their culture and countries.

What's been hardest part?
Being stabbed in the back by a project partner that banned me after I invested lots of time, energy and money and he decided to pull the rug on it to change it into something different. I though he was a friend but he was just manipulating me as long as he felt the value I brought to the project. After I was gone the project wanted me back, but the friendship was damaged so I refused to return to a project that had a toxic relationship there.

Is that project still live?
Yes, though in somewhat a dormant phase. I call it, "The 'Soon' Phase." When promises keep getting made but not followed through with and you keep being given regular updates about all the great plans there are for the future of the token. You know what I mean. Though I know the tenacity of the owner and that even if it is 10 years down the road and on a different blockchain and horrible quality, he will make sure he accomplishes it so he won't be a quitter.

What's your long term goals?

As far as long term goals I don't have one, I do however have some mid range goals. I would like to keep it going strong for 2 full years... I would like to create a minimum of 100 base designs for Szszsz the pixel cobra. I would like to create at least 20 AI characters that can be used in a game as battling against each other. I would like to have at least 4 different herping game puzzles completed. I would like to have my pet co-ownership project to have a complete line up for at least 1 male and 1 female adult gecko and an extension for advanced collectors to participate in breeding those 2 geckos for a total of 5 successful clutches. (2 eggs per clutch). I attempted it this year but I was still in the learning process, so I am going to re attempt next breeding season...

What your family think of your project?
As far as my family goes... They just think I'm a nut playing on my phone... So I guess I can add to my list of goals, gaining my family's admiration.

What you like to do to unwind? Sleep

I miss sleep lol . Tell us something random about you?
I lived in a haunted house. It was used as a set in an old horror movie, but in real life it was actually haunted, like truly with people levitating and being thrown across the room and stuff like that.

Not for me . Where is the best to keep up with the project?
@davidsmorphs1 on Telegram

Do you use twitter?

https://twitter.com/DavidsMorphs?s=20&t=bvDqRSQHzof7FKvRcdXcmQ
I have a twitter account, but I don't use it because it doesn't work well with random community conversation, which is a huge part of the project... random friendly conversation. Sort of like a family.

I find twitter quite helpful. Where can we buy your NFTs?
https://neftyblocks.com/c/davidsmorphs

https://wax.atomichub.io/market?collection_name=davidsmorphs
They are without doubt some of the most affordable NFTs at all. Some are as low as 0.1WAX, many are less than 1WAX. They all have limited mints and some are very limited. There is definitely something for everyone.

Oh brilliant when is your next drop?
I just put one out a few and haven't decided on what's next, but it definitely won't go over a week from the one yesterday. I am planning for a Netherlands 5 banknote if i can spark the focus for it. Banknotes take a lot of mental energy to do. Each one has a lot of decision making involved and building some connection with the culture and language of the country. People see it as just a fun pixel image, but it is so much more than that. People in the featured country who actually use the currency as cash to purchase items are likely to recognize the details and may feel honored by the details or offended by the details, so there is some risk involved in making them. The art truly is much more than a handful of pixels.

Sounds interesting . You have done a lot of collab who is your dream collab?
Right now my semi-realistic dream collab is Dungeon Master so I can get mining power utility to boost value and sales of NFTs... I have applied and am awaiting response.... But I don't know yet any specific projects that I would match with well enough to gain a financial profit from joining with... My dream would just be a collab with any project that sells millions of dollars worth of NFTs and would make mine worth millions of dollars too. Preferably someone that is based on pixel variant art for collecting.

Before we finish up is there anything you would like to add or say?
Yes,... I'd love to make sure everyone is aware that i am still looking for utility... So if anyone knows of games that might utilize my art, please turn them my direction.

Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you too, for the opportunity to talk about my project.