So its that time again and as always I love to bring artists into the spot light I have to say I enjoy this artists work so I had to have a chat
Hey how's things
Not too bad, how are you?
Good finally finished my week of nights. Did you get up to much today ?
I just finished lunch actually, I'm working from home today
Oh cool what's the day job ?
Nothing too terribly interesting. The cool level of my day job reduced significantly ever since I moved away from Los Angeles. Now I just play around with spreadsheets all day.
Ah sounds really exciting . How did you discover NFT's ?
I hate to say it, but I'm going to have the same answer as a lot of other creators who started in the last few months. I saw the news story about Beeple's $69 million auction. I had heard of him before that happened and tried to adopt his practice of creating a new piece of art every day, but man, it's really hard to do, especially when it's not your day job. I had no idea he was doing NFTs or even what NFTs were, but after hearing about his auction I read up on them and loved the idea of the technology and digital ownership. Having spent years in Second Life, I was familiar with the concept of digital ownership and was a big fan. NFTs seemed like the way to take that to the next level and make it legit.
I know the answer will always be some what be the same I think its good to ask it . Where you holding crypto before NFT's ?
I was, but I only got into crypto and stock investing at the beginning of the year, so I'm a noob there as well.
That's allowed . How did you settle on wax to list your NFT's ?
Being a noob to the whole space, I didn't know Wax existed and tried to use Rarible first. Rarible was a bad experience for me since I ended up spending $40 to mint a Broholder card with no image. Rather than keep trying again and burning more gas fees, I looked into alternatives like Mintable and somehow stumbled on Wax and Atomic Hub, I think it might have been a CryptoStache video actually. Anyway, I followed his videos to mint my first card and the experience was so pleasant, I knew this was the place for me.
And was the project all ready planned . How did you come up with it ?
It was at a very basic level. When I first learned about NFTs I thought I'd just upload some art I had already created just to see what would happen. I had created the Broholder art previously at someone's request for their D&D game, and it seemed like something fun that people would be interested in buying, so that's what I chose to go with. After I uploaded the picture, I was stopped at the next step of the minting process by the Rarible fee and I didn't have enough Ethereum in my wallet to cover it, and thank goodness I was, because between the time it took to get more Ethereum and getting back to trying the mint, inspiration had struck and ideas for a whole series of collectible parody D&D monsters had flooded my brain. Once I got to Wax, all I had really planned was a collectible series of cards, but once I saw what other projects were doing, the ideas came again and wouldn't stop.
That's brilliant how long you on WAX now ?
About ten months now.... oh wait, I just checked my first mint. According to that I started in mid April 2021. I'm not sure I trust those numbers though.
How many NFT's have you created ?
I have 87 unique templates that are currently being used. If you count all the test ones and screw ups, way too many to count.
Ah if you don't have test ones or ones you made a screw up on are you really a NFT artist lol. How do you create each NFT ?
After speaking to fellow creators, I can say that's par for the course! haha. Varmints cards or other cards with 3D elements usually begin their journey in Blender where I mix together stock models or more recently sculpt them from scratch and from there they go into Substance Painter to be textured, then back to Blender for rendering. After I have my 3D object rendered, it goes into After Effects for the card composition and extra touches, then to Adobe Media Encoder for the final video render. Photoshop is in the mix there somewhere for the 2D elements like the card design, but that's pretty much my established pipeline.
How long do they take to create ?
Between 3 - 6 days depending on the complexity of the varmint or how distracted I get by Discord.
I am guessing you enjoy it so . What your favorite NFT you have created ?
That's a tough one. The original Broholder was my first and will always have a special place in my heart, but I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished with the others. But for all of those accomplishments the one that really struck me as, wow I really love this, is the Pixel Broholder, oddly enough. There's just something special about pixel art that I didn't appreciate until more recently.
Can we have pic ?
Certainly!
Oh I did enter to win that recently . Have you done any Collab's ?
I have, I did one with Square Rooted and one just last week with The Wee Wizards/PuftCreative.
Ah is there any more lined up ? And who would be your dream Collab ?
Virtual Alaska approached me about doing one next month, but other than that, not at the moment. I do have big things that I'm working on for the Immersys space, but I can't really talk about that just yet. As far as dream Collab's go, I can't say that I have one that I'm really hoping happens since my favorite Collab's are the ones I get really good ideas for, like Wee Brew with the Wee Wizards. I think a Bro Broholder with Ken Bosak would be a fun one to do, I just haven't had a chance to make the art for it yet.
Are you working on a new NFT ?
Varmint #6 drops this Saturday 6/26 at 21:00 UTC.
Is it finished can we have sneak peak ?
It's not quite finished yet. But I'm getting close to finishing the sculpt.
Oh cool so a lot of work still to go
Not too much, the level of detail for this one should make for a quick texturing job.
Would you ever go back to Raible or look at other markets for listing your NFT's ?
Not for Deck of Varmints. As long as Wax is around, it will stay there. I might consider doing high end art pieces for other chains in the future, but it's not a definite plan by any means. If Cardano's NFT space is good, I might look into that first.
Do you have many NFT's planned for your deck ?
Right now, I don’t have an end planned. As long as people keep buying varmints, I’ll keep making them!
That's good to here so your for the long haul how do you like to keep up with the community ?
Discord is probably my favorite platform because there’s just so much you can do with it. I like seeing all the different activities that other creators have going on in theirs.
Yea of course . How do you friends and family feel about your NFT's ?
My friends don't really understand it, but I'm working on that. Finding new friends. My wife wishes I didn't spend so much time on it, but she's been supportive. My in-laws are interested in them when I have a really successful drop., lol.
Always the way lol. Tell us something random about yourself ?
Sometimes I like to walk around in public just so people can enjoy how handsome I am.
Ha ha ha . What advice do you have for new artist ?
Don’t give up. If you find yourself struggling, just keep at it and you’ll surprise yourself with what you can do.
What you do for fun when your not creating NFTs or working ?
Sleeping. But seriously, I do fun things with my kids, try to take my wife out on dates, DM D&D for friends, play video games, 3D print minis and paint them. Oh I also like to do karaoke
Do they kids like your NFT's ?
My oldest is four and she likes unicorns, so mine don't appeal that much to her yet. She does like unicorn NFTs that I've showed her though.
Ha ha ha . Any chance of a drop or a competition for the readers ?
Sure! I’ll drop a gold coin to anyone who tweets out a link to the interview and tags me.
Perfect
Where can we buy your NFT's ?
https://wax.atomichub.io/market?collection_name=deckovarmint&order=asc&sort=price&symbol=WAX
before I let you go is there anything else you would like to say to the readers ?
Be excellent to each other!
Thanks so much for chatting to me
You’re welcome! Thanks for taking the time with me!
You can keep up to date with Floyd and his collection here
https://twitter.com/floydsvarmints?s=20
And his Discord
And the rest of his links can be found here
https://linktr.ee/floydsvarmints
So if you want to earn a free NFT all you have to do is retweet this and tag Floyd and don't forget to check out his NFT's and even drop into his Discord .
Another great article 👍