Diving into Deep Waters
Going head first into the Tentaverse
Being welcomed into a previously unknown artistic space was daunting, but I always appreciate a challenge. The Tentaverse has taught me quite a bit about myself as an artist and how little I truly knew about the depth of digital art. Four years in an accredited art program, freelance work, and four more years of corporate-level design had barely primed me for the road ahead in the NFT art space.
After discussing the idea of the Tentaverse with the crew, I was still not quite sure what the project entailed, but I was intrigued nonetheless. I am an illustrative artist at Stoic Digital outside of my full-time design job, and was prompted to design a character prototype, the focal point being its tentacles for a unique NFT project that was going to be more than fuzzy animals in different colors. Never being one to turn down an opportunity to engage in a fun yet professional group of people in an emerging sector, of course, I went to my drawing tablet and drafted up a character. This was my first time drawing a single tentacle in my entire life.
This small character design quickly developed into a five-gigabyte file of over 210 layers over the next month and a half. At times I will admit that I felt overwhelmed, because I had never drawn at least 90% of the features listed in the spreadsheet. I decided to try my best, look at as many references as possible, and work into the night to make Adobe Illustrator do what I needed it to. Working in vector was an absolute godsend to get every line as crisp and refined as possible, down to the pixel. Let me tell you, scalable art is imperative, considering how many times I would shrink and expand the attributes until they met my standards. From all of this work, I learned that I’m capable of drawing way more than I previously thought — in quantity, quality, and subject matter.
NFT art is nothing like I have ever done before. The format of an NFT piece is so vastly different in composition and generation than my digital paintings or animations. I have never interacted with art that had been put into a generator and given random features before, so having the task to create it was quite a learning experience. Luckily I had the best team I could ask for to help me understand exactly what I was getting into.
Working with people outside of a corporate setting felt very foreign at first. I am used to a clinical, watered-down form of speaking to colleagues that comes with being in an office. Something about working with this team felt free, easy, honest, and trustworthy. I now consider them all my good friends, and I wake up excited to show them the next thing I’ve been working on. To engage in the community is humbling, as I have encountered people from all walks of life, coming together to uplift one another and share experiences. I am extremely grateful to have met people with talents across the spectrum and learn more about the wonderful metaverse.
Without a shadow of a doubt, this has been the most freeing, humbling, and enlightening artistic experience I have ever had. It showed me how confined I was creatively, but taught me that when I have the right people behind me, I can literally make anything. Watching my art become generated into thousands of different pieces and transcending the value of a simple jpeg right before my eyes creates a feeling that I wish every artist on the planet could feel.
