E59 - It's Animated Week
00. Listen
01. News
- Books for babies
Gen Alpha may not yet have an appreciate for spectacularly done podcasts about generative art, but they can appreciate a good story (or two, or ten).
Trinity has been reading On the Day You Were Born every single night since her baby was born as a part of a soothing bedtime routine.
Will has been super into the Shapes trilogy, which tells the story of a circle, square, and triangle who are friends with playtime and adventures. We are a wholesome pair, aren't we :)
- New interview: Jamie Gourlay of Verse
Hot on the heels of our latest interview with Melissa Wiederrecht we have a new one with Verse co-founder Jamie Gourlay. We had some candid conversations around the intersection of the traditional art world and the NFT space as well as different primary mechanics (see: Open Editions, Cosmic Rays, and more).
Coming soon on 22 February! In the meantime, take a listen to Melissa if you haven't already:
- \$BLUR goes brrrrrrrrr
There were some spicy (and expensive) secondary purchases this week, and when asked "why now" , collectors talked about how they had swapped their many ETH worth of airdropped \$BLUR tokens into tezos and made some long-awaited buys.
If you're asking yourself, "Hmmm...what the heck is that," have no worries. This article on NFT Now is a decent primer on everything that happened.
- fxhash artists on Art Blocks
It has been yet another great week for artists who release on fxhash to get paid on Art Blocks. Florian Zumbrunn of Foundations fame released Tout tracé, and Mount Vitruvius launched Renders Game.
Longing by phenomena came out shortly after this episode was recorded - the subtle animation in the sky and river is phenomena(l) and is something we could follow over the course of a day. The static image in this article doesn't do it justice by any means.
In the coming weeks there will be drops by Orr Kislev (in collaboration with Alonga Rodeh) and artplusbrad.
- Here & Now
We discussed Here & Now on last week's episode, but the coin for the project is finally live. Run the project and input the Konami code for a special treat!
02. Market index update
This week saw the market continuing to go down across both tez and USD terms, but at a slower rate than before. Can't say that it means the market will pick back up, be we will continue to observe in the coming weeks.
03. Favorites and pick-ups
- Trinity's pick(up)s of the week
It is so good to see Amy Goodchild back in action and releasing beautiful (and beautifully explained) art. As always, look to her blog post to learn more about the creation of this celestial masterpiece. (Bonus points for reading the post on her adventures with ChatGPT, p5, and Sol LeWitt)
Pieces referenced -
Trinity also picked up her first de/frag this week. Great artist, great project, and an amazing piece. Press 'run' and watch awhile!
- Will's pick of the week
Modificador de eventos was the talk of the Tender discord this week as we all took many minutes of our lives to tune into this audio-visual barn burner that is constantly shifting and moving. Much like a cloud, viewers can see what they want to see. This project is (as of this episode) still available to mint and for mere 5 tez it makes no sense not to get at least one.
04. Projects of the week
- Cosmic Rays
For anyone who has been living under a rock for the last three weeks, Cosmic Rays is, awkwardly, not an fxhash drop; it comes to us via Verse. However, we loved the mint mechanics and the project so much that we couldn't not include it as one of the biggest projects of the week. Love is real and, again, don't forget to check out our interview with Melissa.
Will minted one lovely Cosmic Rays (Ray?) that features an unusual blend of blues and greens
Trinity couldn't say 'no' to some of her favorite outputs and ended up minting four instead of the originally planned two.
- RAUSCH
We were both blown away by RAUSCH - the colors, the movement, the structures are all so incredibly on point, with the ability to easily export GIFs a bonus. We believe in the project and see it being a future staple.
Pieces referenced -
- seekers
seekers is the ultimate animated project of the week and one that artist ECKER_0*_* has been looking to make for years, having it steep in their brain while they gained the skills necessary to execute. All of the marinating paid off and we could watch it go for hours. It's rare for a project to continue to jump in floor for days after the mint, and it looks like this one could be poised for take-off.
Pieces referenced -
- AERO
It has been a few months since we've seen beta staple Estienne release a project here on fxhash, and boy did they come back swinging. AERO minted quickly out at the top tier of its DA and the colorful suspended buildings were on constant rotation through the sales feed, with nearly 40% sold through.
Projects and pieces referenced -
05. Shoutouts
- Platonics
Here we have a public service announcement that two-time Art Blocks artist Phaust has a project that (as of the time of this writing) is still available to mint. If you like colors and shapes and a lil bit of grain look no further than Platonics.
06. Looking ahead
- Landlines
Colorful buildings tenuously attached by string must be the new meta. Friend of the podcast Landlines has been showing WIP for his new project for awhile now, and we'll be looking forward to an official Landlines Art drop.
- Nudoru
Nudoru has been working on this lovely landscape for a Very Long Time, and now that it's through to refactoring we think (hope?) it is on its way to the 'incoming' tab. The level of detail on this project is stunning and the people need to see the final product!
- Chris McCully
By the time you're reading this article re\:build has long since minted out and started steadily trickling through you're sales feed. Our future was your past, and we were still excited to see our former interviewee continue to grow and release new work.
- fauxjebus
The very fun Type-o-Graph by fauxjebus also released just after we finished recording this episode and we thought it was awesome looking at it in the feed, we were grinning from ear to ear after watching the outputs come through. We love the experimental 50% royalty for the minter. Don't forget to read the excellent fxtext article that accompanies it!
That's it for this week. Join us next Sunday to check in on the markets and art. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to collect this article as the best way support the show, and donations are always accepted at 'waitingtosign.tez'. Have an excellent week.
xoxo
Trinity + Will