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VAULT3D: Miguel "Gorilla" Lopez - Sketches to Metaverse: An Animator's Tale of Resilience and Revolution in Art and Gaming
Discover the colorful life of Miguel Lopez, affectionately known as "Gorilla", as he opens the sketchbook of his past and sketches the outlines of his future in the realm of animation and the metaverse. From childhood doodles influenced by silent film stars of animation to breathing life into some of TV's most beloved characters, Miguel takes us on a whimsical ride through his professional and personal evolutions. His story is a testament to the power of mentorship, the transformative nature of Web3 on intellectual properties, and the seamless blend of art with gaming that's propelled him towards his innovative pursuits.
Next, we dive into the nostalgia of classic cartoons and video game dreams with Guerrilla Miguel, whose journey weaves through the simple joys of drawing Bugs Bunny to standing toe-to-toe with corporate giants defending his unique creation, Sporky. Miguel's vibrant narrative is a full-circle odyssey from the youthful fantasies of communicative devices inspired by Star Trek, to his current pioneering work in constructing a metaverse where those dreams take digital form. His tale is not just one of creativity but of dogged resilience, an inspiring reminder of where passion can lead when combined with unyielding determination.
Buckle up for an animated discussion on the unorthodox paths to success, as Miguel shares his audacious leap from a t-shirt entrepreneur to knocking on the doors of film, ultimately joining the ranks of The Simpsons' animation team. We recount heartwarming encounters with icons like Adam West, and deep dives into industry experiences that shaped his legacy. Alongside his ambitious business partner Meggy, he underscores the synergistic dance between creative control and innovation, charting a course for artists and dreamers that's as varied as it is rich with opportunity. Join us for an episode that's not just a conversation, but a journey through the vibrant imagination of an artist whose dreams are as animated as his career!
Miguel contact:
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/gorillamation
X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/A_Wasted_Talent
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GM. This is Boone and you're listening to, vaulted, a Web3 podcast series from the Shiller Archives. This episode was originally recorded on November 12, 2021 in features. Miguel Lopez, also known as Guerrilla Miguel, is a self-taught illustrator who's worked on major TV shows such as the Simpsons and Family Guy. In this episode, we discuss everything from how he broke out into the animation industry, the importance of mentorship, how Web3 changes the landscape for new IP, and much more. As always, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for financial advice. Boone and guest may on NFTs discussed. Now let's dive into this conversation with Miguel. We're on Miguel. How are you, my friend? I'm good, good. How are you? You know I'm doing fantastic. I just had. I had tacos about an hour ago, got some coffee and the ever so cultural GM mug, you know. So you know, here in NFT land and Web3, we like the GMs, we like the we are going to make it. We like the, you know, we like all the coals are here.
Speaker 2:I don't know that. Well, I'm glad you got your coffee, because I got a story to tell you.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, that's why we're here. So, yeah, man, thank you. Thank you for coming on. I'll tell you like I didn't tell you this before we started recording, but actually where I found you was when you came into that Twitter space is with Hunter, and I can't remember the other people's names when they were talking about that video game that they were creating in the metaverse, and you just came on and started like hey, this is what we're doing. Here's all the artwork I've created Like. And I'm just like, holy shit, this guy's coming in here with like a, with like a vengeance man, like he's coming here with the energy he's like bring it. I'm like I got to talk to this guy, like Well, I appreciate you inviting me on Rhonda.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I jumped in on that because, you know, since I was a kid, you know we were talking about this right, but since I was a kid I've always been into like cartoons, but along with video games. And I'll tell you I didn't mention the video games before, but I'll tell you when I was in like in a second grade, I was constantly drawing stuff and I was always I was a brawler, I was a little fat kid and because I was always in my notebook drawing, I got picked on and I was one of those kids that took it so immediately, was just ready to scrap. So my second grade teacher was Ms Murphy. She actually told my parents that you know that it's good that I like to draw and stuff because I got a talent, and that I should, that they should encourage it. My mom and dad always did. But at that time they were saying, you know, and she told my parents you know, your name translates in English your name is Miguel Angel. Miguel Angel, it translates to Michelangelo. It's fitting, since you draw.
Speaker 2:And I was like who was that? You know, I don't know that one. So she thought, well, it's a real famous artist and stuff about cool, cool. So how do cartoons move? So she it's like she went and found a flip book when it got me. I don't know if she bought it or stole it, I don't know if she got it.
Speaker 2:I put a book of Pluto and she showed me a little flip book for the first time. She said this is called animation, this is called animated cartoon, this is how they move, which was awesome for me to go. I finally got to see how it worked. It was very detrimental to all my books after that but luckily I drew in pencil. But every book from there on out was just trying to flip the pages, to draw little stick figures or something to move, just to see if I can do it. And you know, as I got older, you know video games came into my life and I was like dude, this is my thing. I remember the first time plugging in the rabbit antennas and putting this little boxy to switch it to you and Jeff and staff and be on channel three and that was me out on channel three kid.
Speaker 1:I was a channel three kid, yeah, so I so you know it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You're, you'll like this. So I'm, I'm. I was born in the early nineties and so my first but my first console was a super Nintendo and that was like that was my, that was my favorite one. It was actually a hand me down. It was given from somebody, like it was like at a garage sale that they just didn't like want it and they just gave it to me and plus like 50 games for it and that was like oh, dude, major, Big time.
Speaker 2:I kind of got our personal console was I think it was my cousin, and he got in trouble because he was constantly playing it and his mom had you got to throw it out, and I saw it over here. He didn't know about my house. Therefore, you know, hey man, my position, the ninth, 10th of the law, it was mine now.
Speaker 1:So it was just long.
Speaker 2:It was that little pong game. And then I remember my dad had a pool home at that time when we were kids and there was this guy that had the liquor store and we would go talk to the guy because he played pool by dad's pool. He put in a pinball machine and he told my dad, he goes, you know, and he put, yeah, he put a pinball machine at the time. So you know, this is where the money's at now. These games people put quarters in all day and my dad's like you know, I'm a pool, I get it. It's two laughs up for me. And I told him I need to let me play all the time. Just give me quarters and let me play. And then he got Astroids and then he got Centipede and see, as you know, the evolution of games started.
Speaker 2:I got into Pac-Man, so hardcore that you know I was like I got into a competition when I was like 11 or something like that. It was really early. I was like I was like 80, 80, 80, one or like that. It was a Pac-Man competition. It was the vid. Our local arcade was called Dungeons and Dragons and I remember at that time I was really.
Speaker 2:I was into cartoons. I wanted to get into animation, but I knew that animation and games were connected because all of a sudden, characters and stuff that I was like seeing were now you can control them and it was no longer just watching a cartoon. Like you can make that dude move up down sideways. And then Don Bluth came out I think it's called Dragon's Sphere, it's like it looks like that You're an option game where you're playing and you choose to go right or left, and then that's when I started thinking, man, this is it. I got to do this. So I kept really trying to like hold my skills in drawing and anime well, in cartooning, and trying to really learn as best as I could about animation. But it was at that time. It was pretty hard to find you on the internet, you know you had to go to the library.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I gotta tell you right now you know I wasn't one that you wouldn't ever find each other in the door system, the library, and that they were like you know, hey, they're giving up redonuts. Oh, I'm there. You know, I was there for that. You're right, right, you know, other than that, no, I wasn't going to show up to this library.
Speaker 1:Question-free man when it came to like the specific, like animated character, like why cartoon characters? Like what? Like? Why not something else? Like what was the dream to cartoon characters?
Speaker 2:The idea that something that was like it was Bunny, mickey Mouse and all those other ones that kind of drew me in being. I guess it was the comedy, the visual comedy of something. You didn't need them to talk, you didn't need them to, you didn't need it. All of a sudden it was like I can turn down the volume and watch funny stuff and no one's going to say anything. Now, there were six of us. My mom had six of us, but, yeah, mom, but there's a six of us. That was always loud, so she didn't mind that. The volume was so the, the, the, the colorful sounds and the, the points and the. You know all the the animal appears, you know the capals, all that stuff which is so amazing. And and then also it was kind of like remember the I don't even remember this the back when I was a kid there was a show called Batman out of West and then the intro it was an animated, like an anime version of them as the intro. And then there was like live action, and then you'd go there was pinball machines that had the characters, and at that time I heard that people were trying to make games where you would be a superhero, like that and I just I remember that that that, I'd have to say, was in the early 80s, is when I was really thinking about like cartoons, like Bugs Bunny and them. How can I make it fun so I can, like you know, drop an anvil on on someone myself who tunes where to go and chase the road runner, something like that. I was thinking about that stuff that I only because they were, they were easier to draw than like that intro to Batman. That looked very complex to me. That looked like really like wow, that's very advanced art where a Bugs Bunny and any of the Mickey Mouse were. I can see the circles and shapes which you know to this day. Even when I create characters, I, as I start, I immediately start seeing circle, cylinders, squares, as my pencil starts to touch the paper. So it was, it was easier for me to want to like build characters that were based upon the simple structures to move them in a video game world. So I thought of that.
Speaker 2:Now, when I was a kid I'm not going to lie I was hanging out with some thugs. I ran with my whole boys and they weren't, they weren't all into my. They were. They loved my artwork and they thought, right, great, one day you're going to be somebody. And I thought, cool, maybe I will.
Speaker 2:But when I would talk about, like you know, we get, we party up or something. And I talk about, hey, wouldn't it be cool if, like, like, we could get in, like in Tron, with what I'd seen, tron, and then I thought that really pushed me into the idea of being able to jump into a video game. I thought, hey, wouldn't that be cool if we could go in and like, just do a bunch of you know those, you know, put some good red shit with our friends and just get a bunch of stuff. And and they were like you know, they were like, hey, we're, we're part of the time, though, hey, bro, you need to kick back, I think. I think, baby, this is affecting you. And they didn't understand what I was talking about.
Speaker 2:And I, even prior to that, when I was a little kid, with my brother, we used to pretend with like, no, flat little, we found castanetsas, you know little castanetsas, whether it was castanets, little clackers, and we'd flip them multiple and they were like, hey, communicate, or you know, starship Enterprise. We sit there and talk to each other that way, and I remember telling my brother you know, one of these days these things are going to be real. And the first time we got our flip phones, I remember looking at it and flipping it open and I was doing that little sound to my brother. I'm like you, captain, I'm here and he's all. He's all. No way. I told you you're going to happen.
Speaker 2:And so when I was a kid, I used to dream of like, about being in video games and making my cartoons and being involved in animation and doing all this other stuff. And you know, but where I was growing up, you know, it was in the wood and I would do that. They call me gorilla for a reason. I was a big kid. I mean, in the seventh grade I was already pushing three bills. I was a five-day 300 pounds. I was a big kid. Wow, you know I was. I felt like I was sturdy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:A little sloppy.
Speaker 2:I was active moving around.
Speaker 2:I was always riding bikes. I used to try to ride skateboards. I still love skateboarding and I'll get to it. But I'm trying to build a metaverse and in it, of course, I'm going to have a lot of extreme sports and skateboarding and bike riding and stuff as part of it. But that's kind of my thing.
Speaker 2:Back then I wanted to do things and because I was so big, you know I'd never getting on a bike and trying to jump a car, it was just stupidest thing ever. You know. It was the way. It was a crazy ramp set up, but anyways, I tried it. I failed, you know. It was the effort, the attempt.
Speaker 2:I tried to learn how to all the on skateboards. I was just so big I constantly break those things. Yeah, there was big boards too. I think you're heavy and I would still busting them up and it just wasn't for me and I stuck to bikes and it was still to this day. I think. You know, if I had, like, some VR glasses and able to sit on something and feel that sensation of jumping and pulling or flying or doing some of that stuff, that'd be cool. And you know, recently we, several years ago, we saw that ready player one and when we saw that. Oh my God, it was one of those things where I thought, for sure, someone like after the my brain and said, hey, this guy dreamt this once. It's like it happened and so everyone can see it. So I was telling me, you know, it's kind of cool when that movie came out, that I was thinking that you know, I'm not the crazy person that thinks this way, you know right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I was like, oh man, like I think that that, like it tap, like one thing, that because we're like we're eventually going to start talking about NFTs here in a minute, Like we're going to like, but what I, what I really feel is so incredible about this space and how, how it like the best way I've heard.
Speaker 1:It was actually one of my first guests when I started interviewing people in Web three and he was like the NFTs are like the think of it, like the goodies when they found the lost, like when they found the hidden treasure, except except the hidden treasure wasn't gold, it's, it's what they had in their imaginations as a little kid, like we've just unlocked that and it's like this massive wave of creativity and people that like didn't know that they thought the same way but they never quite were comfortable sharing those types of thoughts. But now it's an actual, like real thing that has like like real implications behind it and real connection and real community and it's actually possible to build that with the technology. I just think it's so fucking cool, man. You know like it is.
Speaker 2:I'm excited because now it's now. It's no longer OK. I was having issue. You know like. You found me, where you found me, but I don't know my background. I'll go back a little bit. Like I said, got all the way up into high school I started getting my little cartoony aspects. Yeah, by the time I got into college I knew the college was for me. So I started a t-shirt company where I could draw my cartoons, put them on so shirts and eventually I'd probably make a cartoon and maybe a video game out of it. So I started doing long aware and that was pretty successful and that was in the early 90s.
Speaker 2:And then I'd say in the mid 90s, I really wanted to start pursuing animation Again. I was like I have to. It was like calling. I hadn't do it so and then I said I'm going to try it. So I went to a convention somewhere in LA I think it was the LA Convention Center. They had some big animation expo. I came across a school called Crane Royer Studios, which is the bunk school at Suck Balls, but that those guys, when I went there they had a table and a bunch of students were there and at that time all I had was like a what would be technically a catalog sheet was about shirt design. So I was walking around that. I walked up to this table and I said hey, what do you guys do? They said what they did. I told him I really want to get more into animation and I want to expand operations. I'd be cheesiest but I want to move into animation. And no one really at that table wanted to talk to people. One kid his name was Donald B J Shaw and he was now. Technically, I adopted him that day. He was a kid, he was like 17 or 18 years old and we started talking to stuff and he asked to keep my little log sheet and I said sure, you could have it.
Speaker 2:I know several months went by, maybe even a year, I don't know. I was moved to the West side and I remember that that school was nearby and I said you know, I'm going to go see it, I'm going to try it out and move to the West side. I was working doing graphics for like a company, doing like you know, like a yellow page. So I went to the school. It was. It was. It seemed really legit. They were telling us in a year you'd be working at a studio. We have all these contacts. I'm like cool, cool, cool as a businessman. As soon as I heard they said that contacts, I'm thinking, cool, I'm just going to get in with the people that you guys know and I'll take it from there If I don't need you guys from that. And that's technically what I end up doing. But I went there First day we were there.
Speaker 2:I walked in. I see DJ, he's excited, we bond and like I remember we had introduced ourselves the first day there and we all had to stand up and they say what did you see yourselves a year from today? Because they said they promised you, in a year you'd be in a studio. And they, everybody, introduced themselves and no one said anything about where they'd be in a year. I was the last one to stand up. I stood up and I said, hey, listen, I'm telling you all, right now, a year from today I will be at a studio, come hell or high water. And everyone kind of giggled at me. But DJ and I pointed right at him and I said that motherfucker's coming with me.
Speaker 2:And, sure enough, nine months later, well, that year to that day, we had already been. He was a king of the hill and I was at the Simpson School went under. Yeah, we would be only two. They got jobs, everybody who was in that class and stuck around. I told them. I said you guys got a bail. These guys are robbing you. I stopped paying them. They told me. They said you pay us X amount of dollars and we guarantee you this. I told them, as a businessman, I tell you what. I'll give you a deposit and I will start paying you as I learn.
Speaker 2:As, as the months were going and I was learning, I thought I didn't give him any money and so, like I'd say, like four to five months into it, they were really on my ass or like, hey, gorilla, you got to start paying us the money. I said, well, you guys need to start teaching me some shit. And they said well, you know, aren't you learning anything? I said, no, you guys have doing life drawing and perspective, I mean. So what? I get that this is important for animation, but where are these contacts? Where are these, these adventures? We're supposed to go and we're supposed to go to the studio. We didn't see one. So they? They said you promised all the shit. So I said you know what? Fuck this, I'm out. So I left and this is where my story begins the old Simpson. I didn't have any formal training at all, I didn't have a portfolio or anything.
Speaker 2:But I did tell me. They did show us where the place was and it was still. It was called a place called film Roman out in the valley. So they told us we were supposed to take a tour of the studio for the Simpsons and they gave us the address that we never took the tour. So I had the ad, so I drove over there and I walked in and I talked to the guy in a chart in G Francis and I told him I go, hey man, I'm an artist and I think I'm good enough to draw here and he's all what he goes. You just can't walk in here and just ask you. You know you can't do that. And I said, sure, I go. Look, I'm a business owner, I understand things. I look, I won't waste your time. What does it take for me to get in here?
Speaker 2:To the biggest Simpson artist he says well, you need a portfolio. I said, no, portfolios. I don't buy that. I don't think that they're going to hire someone based on images. They don't have the same shit 15 second drawings of life drawing. I don't buy it. Tell me what the real deal is. He goes well, you have to take a test. I said, okay, cool, let me have that test. He was well, you just can't have a tip. You need a review portfolio. I said, listen, let me have a test, and if I come back and I passed great, you guys got rock laid. If I fail, I'll never bother you again. And this guy, jane, laughs, he's okay, cool man, I'll call you bluff. So he gives me this test. He goes. You got two weeks to turn this test in, okay.
Speaker 2:So I walked out of the building and I stood outside and people were walking out. I was like, hey, what do you do here? Hey, what do you do here? Hey, what do you do here? Fine, and this dude walks out and I recognized him and I'm like, hey, dude, I know you. His name is Jeff Swampy-Marsh. He created Phineas and Ferb and Milo's Murphy's Law. That's my homeboy, jeff, wow.
Speaker 2:So he walks out and I'm like, hey, I know you. We lived on the West Side, so we've seen each other at a bar or something. I remember we've already seen each other. But I told him hey, you remember me, I'm Gorilla. We start rapping.
Speaker 2:I start telling him hey, listen, I have two weeks to do this test. You know anyone who knows how to do this? He goes oh, I know how to do that. Well, no shit, I go. I don't have $80,000 for art school, but I have $6,000 in my bank account right now. I'll give you $3,000 right now to show me how to do this and I'll give you another free one. I hand it and come hell or high water, whether I pass or not, he says deal. So I give him my address.
Speaker 2:He comes to my house, he's got a bar party and a drinking and stuff. You know, a week into this you know he does it every single day shows up to my house and after a week he's all dude, you got this, this is easy. So pretty much scoring the same as was is I thought it was going to be like really challenging. But you don't go in there to reinvent the wheel. You know you go in there to trace. You got to. You know you don't go and become. You don't go. Hey, I'm at New Bark, new Holberg, you don't do that.
Speaker 2:So when he showed me that, he said, hey, do it. A week later he says you're ready to go. Cool, I handled it in and I don't know, like a Friday later I got a phone call from the Simpsons right here. This is so so from the Simpsons. So can, can you come Monday? I said, yeah, sure, it was great. I hung up on him. So he calls me back and he's like hey, man, it's so, some from the Simpsons against them. Oh, hey, what's up? Dude, he goes.
Speaker 2:We never discussed to pay him. Oh, shit, I'll pay. How much does it cost? He goes no, no, we're going to pay you. And I'm all this question's over. What's going to be there? He goes nine, I'll be there at eight, bro. I showed up at eight that morning on Monday and I remember walking into HR to that guy, g Francis. I'm like, hey, bro, what's up? He's like, hey, what are you doing here? I'm like I work here now. He goes what? Yeah, I passed the test. He was all that's impossible. I'm like, dude, I'm employed here. Oh boy, I worked downstairs, I got, I got a cubicle and everything and you know, I started working on the Simpsons there. I was there for the end of the ninth and 10th season and then the little bit of the 11th. But I bounced out and went to family.
Speaker 1:I, I wanted to. I want to take a moment, I want to package out like what you? Just because here's the fascinating part about what I heard about that is that you, you're like you know, it wasn't that hard, like you know, to get this done Like and the and the. But what you did was something that not many people would think about doing is, like, number one, walking into a place to say, like I want to work here, what do I got to do to do it? And that's that's, that's uncommon. Number one, like that just typically doesn't happen. But number two is you, you press the advantage and he gave you the test, like okay, so what is it really going to take for, for for you to hire me? You actually had no clue what you were doing with that test, which, the which. The dope part is that, because I was really fast, I'm like, okay, where does the story go from here? But, like, the fascinating part is like, since you didn't know, you just stood outside and asked people like hey, do you know how to do this? Hey, do you know how to do this? Hey, what do you do here?
Speaker 1:Like most that that piece of relationship building and networking, and like just asking for help. Most people don't. They have too much pride in doing that. They have too much pride to like ask for help, to like understand how to do it. Like there's this what, what I can't describe of anywhere but entrepreneurs and creators and artists, is that there's this like drive where there's not another option besides the one that allows us to become ourselves. There's not another option and like.
Speaker 1:I don't think a lot of people really have that drive to, where it's like no, no, no, there's, there's no way I'm not going to be working here Like, and it's it's not that you deserve it or they should just give it to you, but it's like there's this commitment. There's like what that says. This is underlying commitment that you are literally willing to go to any length to like prove that you actually can do this job. And just that, just that sheer confidence and that willingness to like put yourself out there. That's honestly the most impressive part, which is wild, because a good 90% of people aren't willing to do that, you know. And it's like well, how do you get a job? Well, you fucking do things that, like, most people don't do.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, that was actually one thing they said. That's like it was pretty rare that someone coming off the street they were, I mean, so they were calling me at that time how long? How long of animation, how long, the real Oakland area. He walked on field and he had to play a little college and he just walked on because I want to be a radar for okay, and then pull you on the team and he's a superstar and I thought, well, okay, I'll do that. Now, you're right, it's a little uncommon, it was very unorthodox approach. But, like you said, it wasn't a Mac, it wasn't that I was desperate or I just didn't.
Speaker 2:I saw it more efficient to figure out by the source. Like you know, even though you go to school, you know when you get to a job they're going. Well, you need training, they do that, went to school for this. Well, you need on job training. Oh shit, I wasn't with all that shit for it. You know, none of that's going to work. So I knew that there was going to be the on job training kind of stuff, and even when I talked to swamp yesterday. So is it going to be different than this? He goes no, they're going to give you a script. He kind of explained the whole procedure. I'm like it just sounds pretty simple. Just follow instruction. They're going to give you boards and you just got to put like animated, like you got to animate that they go well, not fully animated, just keep pose, are you just like? Oh, you know. Just, you know, don't worry about him between your mom, okay, so I thought that would be pretty easy to do and it was a great job.
Speaker 2:And the entrepreneur in me had me looking throughout the studio. By the way, when I got there I was like a kid, like, seriously, that Charlie and chocolate factory thing that's true for reals. All of a sudden I'm sitting amongst what I feel is the elite. I used to watch the Simpsons in college with my homeboys and my own and my friends I'm a girl's house, sherry, and our friend Guy Kelly. He was sitting there chilling. There was girl Kelly. Guy Kelly was telling me he goes, you know, you're just as good as these guys. I think he's working at a show and I remember I was stoned. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll do it one day. The day I got hired, he was like the first person I called. They're like bro, you're not going to believe where I work now he goes. Don't tell me the Simpsons. I'm like yeah the Simpsons they're working with me now.
Speaker 2:He was crazy. So, yeah, he bragged to everybody. A lot of my friends were bragging Like hey, you know my buddies, and everyone was surprised because no one knew I was going to do that. They knew I was doing very well with t-shirts. I mean, I was in, I was international, I was in Pakistan, I was in somewhere hot topic and countless modern pop shops throughout the United States, canada, australia, japan, mexico. I was everywhere and I stopped that so I can pursue animation. And it was. It was like it was kind of it was a big, it was a culture show.
Speaker 1:It was shocking for me because I was the boss.
Speaker 2:I was the boss for so long and now I'm in a cubicle and someone's telling me what to do and I couldn't just stay in my seat. I would do my work and they're like, instead of like you know, well, I think I'll just go and see whatever work I can do. I would just take that time and start finding out. So, what do you do? Are you do boards? Oh, what is that? What does that entail? You know, I wanted to be a character designer.
Speaker 2:So I started to speak around and find, as a business owner, I wanted to know every aspect of the business I was now involved in. So, yeah, I was asking even producers, as a producer, what do you do? I mean, I'd like to know. Like I'll be picking a brain. You know, maybe you should get back to work. I'm done. Well, did you extra work? I could, but I kind of like to know more about what I'm doing here. You know I'd like and I know that it was found upon. I got into a lot of trouble. They were always like well, let me talk to you now about what you can talk to these guys.
Speaker 2:But see, when I was there, I also was looking for the advancements that were going to eventually occur. Yeah, and I was just at the Simpson floor. Upstairs was King of the Hill and they had just started pilots of family guy, but also Butterfinger commercials were being done on computer. At that time we were all drawing on paper. I went upstairs one day to go visit Swampy and as I was walking by this one open door and I looked in there, I'm like, hey, what's going on in here? And I saw these guys were doing the Butterfinger commercials on the computer. And I was already computer savvy. So I already knew I was working Corel Photoshop. I already knew I was up. I was actually doing Adobe Flash at that time as well. So I was living. I have de-vectorized work for that. So I was watching them and I was like, hey, dude, I want, this is the part of the system I want to be involved in. And so I started to see that that's where the future was going to head. Everyone was going to end up on the computer. So I kind of started thinking well, I'm going to start animating. I did do some stuff in Corel. I made a website for myself. That was done in Corel and I saved as AI files, importing it over to the splash thing and I was able to animate a program that wasn't made for animation and so I was really trying to like stay up to, you know, in the loop of what was happening in the future.
Speaker 2:But then also I was excited that after the Simpsons you know, I had an opportunity for family, you know the family. I said they were looking for new character designer and swamp. He said, hey, man, they're looking for a designer and I think you could feel those shoes. And I'm all really. He goes, yeah, I should go over there. I'm all, who do I talk to? And he goes Come on, I'm going to take you over there. I meet Sherry Dumpter. She's the executive producer. She says you know, I hear you're pretty good. And she says, yeah, here, take a test and give it a shot. And he said I had to draw. I had to draw Peter and such a costume and pose and a family, all of them in a special pose and costume, and then one celebrity, and the celebrity was the terming factor and at that time I drew Darth Maul.
Speaker 2:And one family guy and and I gave it to them. I actually, dan Smith, kept it, one of the guys is could. I keep this one Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I saw all.
Speaker 2:I used when I was a family and I became the designer or our job was to costume these characters. And I go up in the hood so immediately I drew the Kohak gangster. So I drew him up as Cholo's and homies, you know, and I know I gave that away to some kid. I some kid, and he's like could I have this on? And he's something for my dorm and college. And I'm like, yeah, I'll take it out. When I was there, I was trusted, just give it to me drawings. And Fox got a little pissed at that. He's like hey, man, you know, that's money right there, dude, I'm all. It's just their throwaways, man, they're, we've already hand in. These were just the rocks, you know, and there was a man that I get in trouble for that too, and it was pretty fun there as well. That's where I there's. The only time I really geeked out at anything was I got to work with Adam West, remember.
Speaker 1:I brought him up earlier watching Batman. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I remember going. I said, hey, man, they need you upstairs for something. I'm all right, cool. So I go up there, I get in the elevator and sure enough, there's Adam West and a whole shit. He just Adam West. And he's like, how's it going? So we, I'm, I'm, I can't even talk. I can't even talk with brother. I'm like, oh, I think I'm freaking out, man. I've seen some shit in my life and I can't. I'm freaking out with Batman. I can't believe it. And he's all like, you know, I go and I talk to the guys in the writer's room. They need me to do something. So, as I'm leaving now he's leaving. So we get in the elevator together and I was like, dude, I've been waiting for this fucking moment my whole life. I'm all to the back game, you know. And then he's like, really, that's a great name for a sidekick. I go and I see myself more of a villain. But no, I don't think I'll take it from Batman.
Speaker 2:And I was so excited and you know it was it was one of the one of the most exciting things that I got to do. There was to meet someone that you looked at. I was, I, you know, a child. They thought this, this guy's incredible. You know he can watch, he could run with bombs, he could do all you know. You know he's got real superhero to me and then to see him in real life, from what I would honor it was to meet someone like him.
Speaker 2:Just the show itself, the intro a little further along, to make my art want to move, and it's just thinking about just that little bit. You know that little things. Or playing Pac-Man or playing Defender or Centipede or anything. I was telling Meg, I'll never forget the time that I fell asleep. Now I'm sure you've had a dream where you fall or jump off something and you're falling in your shirt and you feel it. Yeah, I've never jumped off a fucking mountain, I've never jumped off a building. But in dreams of stuff I'm apparently I can lie and it feels like I can feel the sensation that you have done this before.
Speaker 2:And I was a kid I was playing joust and there was a tournament that that Dungeons and Dragons, and that I could not beat the high floor and I just so obsessed with it. That night I went to sleep and I remembered you reading that I was sitting on that fucking ostrich and I had a lance under my arm and I was. I can feel that being covering and pulsating. I'm standing on stirrups and aiming that thing at somebody else and I was like you know, like, hey, it felt so real. I remember telling my brother next morning dude, I just shit out of people last night he's already talking about I go, I am, and I was on the. He'd laugh his ass off, but it was. You know, it was one of those things to go and it never and never left me.
Speaker 2:So all the way to you know, the family guy, things that I had seen, felt and done, and all these crazy experiences, they were still pushing me into like, hey, man, there's something out there. I know the dream of mine was to drop her television, that was for sure, and I was there. And when you climb to the top of the mountain, you think, dude, I'm up here, I'm at the pinnacle of the mountain, there's nowhere to go. And you look over, there's a bigger mountain. We started climbing it recently and all of a sudden, halfway up, we met all these entity people. So like hell, yeah, this is the place to be. So you know, from from since this, the family guy, now that entities.
Speaker 2:You know it was a good transition because after I left family guy, I went to work for a company called FM rocks and there I was an art director and there is where I started to try to implement my ideas of trying to. Before this is before people had like hosted sites and stuff or yeah, so we were trying to get it so people would come to your website and you could pay to watch a video or buy the snurch and stuff like that, and that we wanted to link it with the store. We were doing all and I was trying to explain that. But you know, my visions were a little more beyond that they were prepared for. So the boss and I were starting to like no, but heads a little bit. So I said you know, I'm not going to waste my time with someone who's not doesn't want to see the future. So I bounced and I decided I went to a. Shortly after I bounced from there and I started doing more freelance work for random studios. I started doing some artwork for after the playboy they were doing yeah, they were doing a comic called barbed wire and he wanted to expand the roster. Now he put me I can't remember exactly how I met Hugh after, because I met him on several occasions.
Speaker 2:One time we had done I animated a box for a son Cooper for a project that was for her, and another time was I girls. I was a big guy, you know, I was always a bouncer and security for a lot of places, even when I was at the Simpson stuff. People would hate to use private security, I'm sure not thinking anything about it, but, hey, I already have a job, but I thought it was kind of cool. So I had a lot of friends that were dancers and you know they were, they had, they were doing things and I was, yeah, security, so I was a pretty big dude. So I lost. What was I? You have to, huh, you have to, oh, yeah, you eat. So I think you have to have one of the girls. It's my, you think to me, yeah, that's that's how I met her.
Speaker 2:You have, you have me asking to find chicks, and at that time I was, I had been introduced to think of my space. Yeah, they was like man, tom and like 14 other people. They were like there was already anybody here and I remember, like I said, hey, yeah, you know, I'm on this thing that's kind of booming now and I'm acting as thousands of people there now and I was like, cool, I'll find somebody here. So I started looking around and at that time I'm thinking of finding something Facebook. I thought it was my obligation to go beat them in person. So I tried to meet everyone, to go try to meet them. So I said you know, I've met a lot of girls on here that I've been working with. Maybe all asked them.
Speaker 2:So I had met a couple of chicks on there and I told my boy I'm looking for girls to be villains, fight barbed wire in an upcoming comic which you'd be interested, it's sure. I started talking to a bunch of chicks and they're okay and you know, they just kind of were more about like they wanted to meet. You have to know, like dude, you're not going to meet them. This is like nothing to do with him At this point. We're meeting, we're talking to somebody else and you know, and you're not going to talk to me when you're low. So so she, so she, uh, so I had a little workout they were like, wow, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 2:So I looked upon, I looked on their friends list and came across other girls and there was one little face that shined and it's this one. Come in here, look that one. And uh, I saw this girl. She had black hair and two blonde streaks in the front. She was just staring at Cameron. I thought, dude, that she looks like she could be a pretty good building. So I contacted her. She was local, we start talking, we meet up Next thing. I know, you know, we meet at a Chili's and uh, uh, right by her house, and I, I, I started talking.
Speaker 2:You know, you're, you're a lot different, you're a lot more than I expect. That's not offensive, but from all the other chicks I've been talking to, you seem a lot more ambitious. A lot of you got your shit together. It seemed a lot, it seemed pretty smart, you know, and that's saying that they were done. I'm just saying that you seem to have a little more goal oriented here. And she, I asked her one question. So you know, would you rather be in a magazine or on the cover? And she said I'd rather be on the cover of my own. And I'm also like, yeah, this, you're my partner. So we partnered up and I told her look, you know, you help me with my business and we'll, you know, we'll do things together and we'll just make this thing happen.
Speaker 2:For the last 17 years and she'd been running Wango where, which turned into girl enterprises and girl enterprises and no girl in nations though it's all it's girl enterprises all together. But she's been you know all the social media, the reason that you even heard me, because she's like, get on here. So, okay, the reason I'm here now she's here, get on here. Okay, I'm just the pencil. I've become just the pencil that when we first hooked up, she saw how many IPs I had. She's like you know, you have a lot of content. And I said, well, content is gold. You know, as long as we have this, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll be okay. And we've been just building it since we've been hooked up, we've been just building our roster and we own. Let me see, pull my water. This is my little guy Sporky. Can you see him, the little guy Sporky? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, disney came out with Toy Story 4 and they had 14 and they came after our character for a minute and I shut them down. We both said no and they were like pissed on. No one's going to Disney and say why? Why would you say no, it's like this is our character. This is.
Speaker 2:I'm working on this. I've been working on this for a long time. I'm an artist. I'm not here for the money, you know. They ask what's your price? I go it's not a price, it's it's my child. I've created it. Yeah, yeah, and to be honest with you as a child right now, he was asked to be a mascot for this semester at Kansas State, so he's literally at school. My child is at school right now. That's why I go by creation and a lot of the people that have done what Disney would like to have done with mine is they buy your property and they'll shelve it and keep your name and never, and that you're no longer allowed to work on your project. You can't work on your drawings.
Speaker 2:Now I've worked on this thing for like 20 years and there's no way, and it's just been my side project just for fun, knowing that someday I would do something with this. My idea was one time to have a cartoon and because I was playing a lot of PlayStation back then, more fraud and Tomb Raider, tomb Raider, resident Evil, stuff like that. I had liked that stuff and I thought it would be cool to watch a cartoon and just pick up a controller and just go and free roam and I would start to talk to people about being able to do that back then, when I started Sporting and it was a concept, where it first started off with it as a website and this is kind of where my metaverse now starts to build and NFTs are going to give me this opportunity is that I wanted a place where I can invite artists to come show Kinster artwork and come look at my artwork and work together and hang out and do things, but also to help me build a game, somewhere we can go and do things, you know. So this new format of NFTs has kind of been very, you know, it's new to us and it's kind of scary. I'll tell you that right now it's like all the time I can't help. Yeah, it's moving so fast, you know, it's moving so quick that you know you like just sleep on something for a day. All of a sudden you know so and so, that and that and that. What happened? You know, yeah, yeah, so and so happened, this happened. It's like man, it's a constant thing. I told me when we got on the scene of the NFTs it was a moving train, it's. We jumped on a moving train, it's moving really fast and now that we're on it, we just got to find a place to sit. And so what we're doing is like now, when we were on that, that actual was about a space we heard us, I was, I told me. When I heard of the NFTs, I thought it was great because it was like okay, you know your, your provenance, you could actually have it locked down to some blockchain and it says oh, this guy GVS at this time, and sort of what we've been doing. Since Megan and I got hooked up. She's been recording me and posting it since my space. She's been posting our characters. She put us on IMDB. Why? Because she knew that someday we're going to have to prove how far back we go, and so we've been doing this. So we've been.
Speaker 2:We've had sports for so many years and the yeah, yeah, sport is our video game, is our cartoon, and how it was going to be is where at first was going to be a website, of course, because then I thought, well, it could be a YouTube channel and people can go here and get it out.
Speaker 2:But the basic at the beginning was where it was a cartoon that you can run around in, and then it evolved. That came from the website thing that I started at FM Rocks and then now I have to explain what sport he is. It's a little character of my little guy. He comes into Crashlands into a comic book store and the website was going to be that smashed alien ship and a view of a convoy store and all these fussed up comics. The reason that we have so many IPs is that I didn't want to pay for like Spider-Man or Superman or any of that shit, so I started to make up the custodian, a more cynical man and more cynical is back in Spanish, so it was a more cynical man and things like that. You know I was making up weird things.
Speaker 2:We started to make up fake comics and I started telling my friends, hey, listen, put your comic here in a link and then people can click it and then go to you. So I wanted it to be a hub or a portal to go to other spots and places for my friends. So that concept was kind of like man, I started talking to a guy. He was a computer guy. We won't see him for a while. He was on a 10 hour standoff with the police and he's in prison forever now. But anyways, that's a side point. That guy when he was out he was really smart and he really had a shit together. He actually would do his stuff for you after and the government, because he was doing he was helping track down the predators and so he's really good at coding. He was a great, great coder but he just, you know, alcohol took the butts best of him and took his mind. So you had to rule.
Speaker 1:Hey man, I'm a recovered heroin addict. Like it's like I've been sober for eight years, Like that's that 11 over here, bro Dude, I fucking rock on man.
Speaker 2:That's sick 11 years We've been cleaning sober at least for me, makes me know over the last. But I started out. But there was a time when we were in a tailspin. You know, joe Walsh said that this one thing are the eagles that you know that like is a series of chaotic events, that random events are smashing into each other to make no sense and shit. But then you know, later on in life when you look back at that time, it looks like a finely crafted novel. You know, it looks like it had to happen. All the chaos and craziness had to occur for the ship to have to be available now. So, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a crazy thing that, jason, when I started talking to him about what would be perceived now I didn't know the term at the time, it was a metaverse I was telling him you know what I'd like to do. I was talking at the time about it. I wish that there was artists that could like, just look at me, look at my style, and say, hey, I can draw that too. And say, cool, you handle this, I'll handle that, and we work together and we make a project together, great. And I was telling him isn't there a program? Can't we write a program where it could get all of my images, study, that, get a pretty much an algorithm that would say, this guy draws in this particular way and then say I say, type in new cat. And then all of a sudden, after looking at all my myopia, cats, I have 300 and something of them. They could say, oh, okay, I can make a new one based upon the existing ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was telling him this stuff and he was telling me, oh, man, and I was telling him about how, you know, it'd be great to have a video game where I could play and go and meet somebody else. You know if it's Internet so available? And he was telling me what you're talking about you need a Zeta byte. I'm a Zeta byte, right? Yeah, what the fuck is Zeta byte? He goes, it's huge, and he was in the amount of power that you need to run, or something like that. I said, dude, there's a big glowing ball in the sky. My brother was doing solar panels. I go, bro, we can just hook that bad boy up. You know, I'm pretty sure that that. I mean that's all day. And you know we can. You know we don't have to run on the grid, we can be off grid but at least the majority of the day.
Speaker 2:So he was saying that you know, possibly could work and stuff at the time and that was like when was Jason Was playing 30th person? Yeah, it's like that. So I like maybe 10 years ago, yeah, yeah, so it's been a minute. And since then, you know, we kind of we've been in and out trying different projects to still building, building the concept that this would eventually everything we're working on right now would eventually somehow interlink. Going back to the sport, you kind of look crash, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, now what he has, when when he gets there in the cartoon he crash, lands there. He meets me, meg and all my friends with we're in silverback comics and none of us are surprised by an alien we're not finding. You know, it shows up and not not their time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And finally, like he shows up, he's like hello, stop the squishy beans. You know, my name is forky, from the planet of shark and plenty banks. I'm here to say my father is being held by a torus midstick and now will you help me? And they're like yes, so that was the beginning. And so he starts to introduce them to the tech that he has his spaceship with a smart ship, so he would turn to that ship ranches on his entry to earth and NASA toy that hit and busted his CPU. So now the computer wants a bunch of what it did when it crashed and scanned all the comics on the floor, therefore taking all the information and then asking for particular parts from each comic, therefore making it a game where you'd have to go and jump in every comment. How do you get in there? Sporty whips out his portable porthole, which he calls his little peepee, and he clings it on comics or a screens, on a poster, whatever he's able to jump in, and this to the ability to teleport in my little character.
Speaker 2:When I created him, I wanted to create something that would never get hurt or die or be injured in any way. She performed so anytime anyone ever asked me. So what's his limitations? I'm like there's no limitations to my character as long as I'm alive. There he'll be alive and there's not. He could walk on the sun. He'll just tell you it's stinky and hot and it's very loud and lonely. But he could walk on the sun and Superman can hit him with a laser beam. It'll probably just tickle on the. Doesn't bother him, it's you know, it will go right through him.
Speaker 2:He is a special type of character and creature that I thought of in. You know his parents are. They were protectors of the realm and they were chasing dark matter was, which is the villain of the realm? And red stick, red stick, commander cleaver and fancy forks. With the three protectors of the realms fancy forks and commander cleaver being sport, his parents, red stick being the godfather Then three were protecting the realm. Something occurred. I'll give a look to get to that. There's a long story, but in that realm Red stick and cleaver, crash landing on earth during a chase.
Speaker 2:That's how they end up here. Red stick is kind of a think of mega mind. He loves, like you know, he loves the flashes, pizzazz, and understands that he's yeah, he knows that he's like a superior beam, but he doesn't want. He likes to hear on her, he likes to be in a celebrity. He's like all of a sudden that roasting turdments he becomes a celebrity and then the premise is that all mascots here on earth are technically aliens. He ends up being the mascot for the cheesy chief corp and pictures yeah, so he. And any ticket yeah. So we have a bunch of different little things and of course, because I come from family guy, a lot of my characters and parody, a lot of parodies, are involved. I'm a big fan of no brooks.
Speaker 2:So, a lot of things that I do, a parodies I never really do dead on. And when I was at family guy we were supposed to draw the characters of, like I drew bugs bunny or I do the lucky charms guy. I had to cool, I did. Somebody got really a troll. I think bugs bunny was when I got in trouble for oh and Tinkerbell. I got in trouble for that because I they told me you got to be altered 25% for this to go through. And I said, okay, well, what's 25%? And they tell me, oh, you got to change that, that, that, that, oh, this many things Great. So I would just tweet just enough to make it family guy. It was the eyes, the lips, particular hand position, things like that. And you know I get in trouble all the time and I'd say, hey, man, I'm looking in the realm and I was always pushing, pushing, pushing, because I think it's funny to push it right now in our cartoon about weed buddy, the weed smoking skunk. The restaurant in there is called Indianality, considered California. You know, in and out popular. But we can't, we don't want to. You know that on the right to the user name, and like on my bear, also in the typical. He wears Mikey's because that's my name, mike, so he wears Mike's and it's in badge. So you know I do things like that and I do things, so it's awesome.
Speaker 2:In an effort to kind of be a metaverse, I always think you know I was telling me eventually it will happen that once something is alive and active, nfts are not. There's somehow somewhere advertisers are going to want in. And right now we just started. We just started making also Olympico. It's about a bear who wants to compete to be the best and the best and the best. We have him out and about. We can get him later, but any of that guy I drew him coming down a go cart on because we want to do our one of our first. We just got our realm. We bought a deed to wear in a plasma, well, then leaped in, and so we want to start building our metaverse. So the first thing I want to do is I want to build like a museum and or a gallery where I can showcase all my artwork and invite others to come in and showcase the NFTs and try to sell them Other artists that won't have an opportunity to have a place to show and I also could meet them. I want to meet other artists.
Speaker 2:When I worked at the Simpsons of Family Guy, I got to work alongside of the best Paul Wee at the Simpsons, bill Edwards at Family Guy. These guys were like I mean, man, I got to tell you, when you think you're good and you sit next to somebody like that, you're like you know, you start feeling like shit, dude, I don't know nothing. And these guys are like on it. And I mean it was when they say natural talent, that God given talent like these guys in double touch. You know, like man, these guys got it and so you would I.
Speaker 2:When I was that family guy, I always just try my best to emulate Bill. I was like watch what he did. And it was like I watch his strokes and like, but he like how his movement wasn't how he was thinking. I go, okay, I got to watch him, I got to do this and at first he was like you're doing that. I go, hey, man, just watch your style. Oh boy, you got it down. And technically he's the one that molded Family Guy into the book.
Speaker 2:That was at, you know, from when the first pilot episode and it started to evolve by the end of the first season, second season, that was kind of the lockdown. Look my third season. They took Peter's glasses off. Like when I left they took his glasses off. But when he had locked it down, pretty good, all the characters were really good, everyone that you saw that was spooked out during the pilot. First season. Second and third was Bill Edwards. After that, after we bailed I, you know, I don't know we start watching the show. I have to be honest with you, I don't think I've ever really watched my show. Only after the first time, you know, I did the one I did watching with my first ever Simpsons and I threw a little Simpson party at my house in the West Side Because when I was a kid I promised my mom that was always doodling and you know my, all my mom's friends, cousins, everyone was obviously you know the big guy getting to be a mechanic, carpentry, getting the construction.
Speaker 2:And my mom was like, yeah, you know, when you sit in her drawing, he's not fighting anybody, he's not, he's not getting in trouble, not running around with his whole boys, he's just sitting here right in front of me bothering nobody. So they would leave me alone. My parents were very encouraging. So my mom, I told her you know, mom, one of these days I'm going to make these things move and I had drawn that got. It got taken. It's got to jacked up. My mom put it in a storage thing where she thought to be safe, but it got taken. But my first drawing of the Simpsons I gave to her and signed it.
Speaker 2:I told you so, mom, and you know, whatever you might go yeah and she put it in, put it in frame right next to the drawing that I drew when I was a kid I think he was a penis gang, it was Charlie Brown and it's like and someday I'll make them moon, and I was so determined at that time to do it and I did. And you know, the drawings are irrelevant the look on my parents' face, you know to watch, like my scenes. And then at the end, like when my name was, about the credits, you know and this was before they would like switch it off to the side and roll them really fast, because after they air it one time, after that the Fox would just like, oh, no one needs to see the credits after this. And then all of a sudden they'd smash it off to the side. But the first time that it airs they run the full credits.
Speaker 2:And we were recording, you know, vhs at that time we were recording it and I'll never forget that. And then just we played it and we recorded it. We played it and get to the credits and we paused it and I just the look on my parents' face was just like there's no words, there's nothing that could ever replace that so standing in front of that studio and asking for help and just taking the chance.
Speaker 2:Look, I know it was unorthodox to do that way, but it was worth it. I took the chance. I had nothing to lose. I had everything to gain and I gained it. Because I took that chance, I took a leap. Sometimes, you know, you just got to go for it and I know that, as an artist, even to this day, may go tell you everything I put out, I second guess like to that. I don't know about this. This is a look right. Anything that I've even posted recently I've like. You know, I'm trying to like. I just, I guess, so mad and frustrated because it just doesn't look the way I think it should look. In March I transitioned Well, april Fool's actually I decided to go paperless and go digital fully.
Speaker 1:I just saw that video on your Twitter when it showed you going from like paper to digital. Like that little, that TikTok video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and everything after that's been pretty much on digital. The only thing I drew on paper was that, I think a dog.
Speaker 2:somebody wanted to see it done and they asked me a favor so it was just something weird that I used it to my advantage that dogs are not part of the closed zone. They have to go around. So everything I draw like now, anything that I'm putting it usually somehow is going to be related to an existing cartoon and or an IP that I have but that we eventually would like. We're right now we're starting to turn mint them into NFTs so we get. I'd love to have a gallery like right now. The reason that we jumped into this is because I can talk to people that do backgrounds, people that do characters and do environments, all the stuff, and maybe they don't have anything to work on right now, but I'd be willing. I'm always willing to share with what I have. I just want to make it. You know, maybe it's mad at me. She's like dude, you can't be told that stuff. I get your idea. Whatever, you know we've done I've done a lot of projects with people were still on a handshake the Alpio, the video game we have, when I worked with them, since I thought it was funny that Bart would watch it in scratch.
Speaker 2:I thought that was hilarious that they would watch it to the violin part tune. So I said you know, when I make my cartoon, I don't have something like that. So the video game that we play at Silverbat comics is Meowthia, the cat mafia, the rise and fall of John Goddow, and you're trying you have nine lives to try to take down John Goddow and it's pretty much Grand Theft Auto and cat form. So you're running around just doing a bunch of hoodrat shit and but, megan I, it's evolved to the point where you know the Grand Theft Auto people always just buttoned up the NF, the nonplay, the nonplayers, you know, and I'm not with it because it's a playable characters.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I'm not cool with them people just getting beat up randomly. So I changed it up. So I was telling her that in Sporky Realm he jumps into that game is to collect something and it's a very dangerous place. Talking about a Ray player, one that would be my planet dude. You go in there to get money, but you could also get hurt and you could also lose. So, mind you, you have nine lives and every time you die in my game you come back a little older. By your ninth life you're a really old cat and the death cat starts to follow you. And once that death cat's around you so you pretty much know it you cannot. You have to start using your wits and cannot get engaged in another battle, because you know by that time you better better have some kind of cloud Right.
Speaker 1:I love that man, I love that. So I mean, but what's what's what's wild about this spaceman? Is that, like there, you mentioned a little earlier that this space is. I think, because this is the one thing as a, there's not many things as people on a big planet like Earth that we can agree upon, but this is one of the first things that's pretty like it's it's it, we agree on it, so it's global, it's literally a 24 hour a day industry, like. It's one thing that like was mesmerizing to me because, like when I came in I'm not sure if you've heard about this story, but like when I came in, it was around the artist named. It was a digital artist and he sold this NFT, this JPEG, for like $69 million and I'm like what the fuck is this man?
Speaker 2:Oh, is that? That? Is that the guy with all the 13 years of photographs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly what I had heard and that's the one me. Yeah, I'm like what is this? Yeah, you should look into this and I didn't know anything about this.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I was, I actually wrote a, I actually wrote a Twitter thread on it, but, like it was is part of my journey into it, because I remember sitting in that clubhouse room. So I didn't have an iPhone until like about a month ago, but I had an iPad and clubhouse. You know the clubhouse is it? Do you know what clubhouse is? Clubhouse?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like it's like an audio. It's basically like Twitter spaces, but it's a zone app like it's. It's like its own app. It's actually where Twitter spaces got its idea from. But there was this clubhouse chat and there's there was a couple. There was this like this tech influencer and entrepreneur and investor and he had the buyers of this piece on that clubhouse and he also had a really big artist name Justin Blau, that was in the. It was one of the pioneers of NFTs and music as well, and they have like a couple of their co founders.
Speaker 1:It was. It was just this wild thing where this this guy named Metacovin, which the purchaser of this, of this NFT, was like describing like this, like interactive world, this metaverse, where everyone was the custodian of their own money and no government or note, no one could take anything that they created and everything was like everyone was able to find one place where they could all agree upon. And I just remember thinking like I probably paraphrase the fuck out of that, probably really very bad, but all I remember is how it made me feel like all I remember is not like that's really, at the end of the day, it's really what matters, right, like it's. It's really about the feeling that it that, it that it had, and just like okay, this is like, not nothing. Right, this is, this is something here. Yeah, this is. This is too big for me to like, not like this, too big for me for me to ignore.
Speaker 2:You know how much how much did you sell that one NFT? For 69 million, 69 million. Well, we recently had this guy who was our investor.
Speaker 2:We're trying to be our investor and we're trying to get money from these guys across and Saudi Arabia. And I was like, okay, whatever, whatever. We told him that we were getting into the NFT realm and this is where we knew that we had to kind of sever ties with the guy because we he heard to say, you know, this NFT is kind of the whole loop, it's gonna fade away. I'm a dude, if you believe that shit, then you're out homeboy. Yeah, years ago, when me and make we're working on first starting the Alpia and we wanted, we wanted to make the video game and all that stuff, we started thinking how can I find after? So we thought, well, what if we make a reality show and or like a mockument, so it looks like it like you know, like a fake, you know a reality show, yeah we talked to some people at parks and all these people and people, these guys, you know what it's a who loop?
Speaker 2:it's never gonna happen. I go to the backboard is popping right now. Man, it's gonna happen. Around now they're gonna fade away. Just not, it's not gonna happen. It's a who loop.
Speaker 2:Then the Kardashian pop off and, like all the people that I talked about, do what happened. I guess we were wrong. I'm like, yeah, we'll see this. My fault. Never, while I listen to anyone that does not taking to like, look at the future of where everything is going. You have to be too busy looking back, bro, you're gonna trip and never, you're never gonna go forward. Yeah, you're busy looking back. So I told Meg you know what, what's behind us, the whole thing. Like, yeah, I do put some to the family. That's cool, but that's not nothing to do with NFTs and stuff. I'm not gonna draw students, since I ain't gonna draw family guy here, I'm trying to get my stuff out. I'm trying to meet other artists. I want to work in collab with other artists.
Speaker 2:Right now we hooked up with this guy, sharok Bitchin bitchin, the most amazing 3D artist I've worked at in a long time. You know since, back in the barnyard. That's how long it's been since I've worked in a good ass 3D artist and this guy's in India. We found each other on spaces like this on doing NFTs. I think that guy's name is Asik. We were talking to you at one night. This guy, sharok, reached out to us. We saw his work. Next thing, you know, I wrote him into the game as he's from Mumbai. So he's the leader of the Mumbai mafia and he's in 3D. So, of course, since calling cars and deaf master, 3d just master stuff.
Speaker 1:So we did this solo character.
Speaker 2:I drew him up and he's turned him into an actual NFT 3D model of himself. We're now getting into the point we're rigging it. So we, now that we bought our, our, our, leave them. We're gonna try to run around our space for our own NFT character and see how we can invite people to come in and like see what we're planning to do. So right now, that's what we're working on. Now I'm trying, like I've been working with coders. I have a friend, his buddy works, he's got some kind of, he works with an incubator and all these guys are coders and programmers and do some kind of game I think they work on. They work on the, wherever they do at the fortnight or one of those big games Halo, one of the two but they probably like to make their own stuff on the side, like they all need a cheap environment they're never going to use and halo, they're never going to use these things that they made like a beautiful oasis looking thing and like, hey, bro, you're not going to use it. Maybe we can show cases over here, maybe you could show it as an NFT. So you know, I'm starting to talk to people like that and some people are getting a little more interested. So we're starting to build a little more relationship with the little artists.
Speaker 2:Because it's I, I was there at one time. I was afraid, I guess, at one time, to try I don't know, maybe I was or wasn't I, I could never say I was afraid to try anything in art but I knew the fear of like it's like a driving. I knew I had to do it. I was, I was kind of afraid to do it, but I ended up doing it. No, just mind you, when I learned a drive I was about 10 years old, but it was exciting, I had to do it later it was, I was shared, but it's kind of the same thing Learning stick ship.
Speaker 2:No, it was kind of like this, this kind of quick, when I get on here I hit somebody, I can't wait. Somebody oh, I don't know, I could stall that. It's just a little bit of fear, but excitement at the same time, like I'm learning something new here. But it's not to my disadvantage, I'm going to benefit from this, so. But there's some artists that I've talked to.
Speaker 2:I used to go to school with Meg. We used to go talk to these high school kids A lot of troubled kids that were like having issues, and I would tell them like hey, I was just like you, only I wasn't. I wasn't going doing good at school. I literally graduated half the credit over, and the reason I graduated was to spite my, my principal from my junior high, because that dude told me you'd be dead or in jail by the time you were 18. He told me that's my face, and I told him I go to that. Right, I go, we'll see about that. So, but I got a mock-up invitation to my graduation. You only get one sample, so you can order it. Yeah, I just took that one and I walked it over to the junior high, walked right into his office.
Speaker 2:Now, mind you, years had passed, the guy that I got to do a fist fight with this guy for a fist fight Wow, he's recalled it. So I walked into his office. Now by that time I'm like two feet taller and probably another, another pound, a hundred pounds heavier. So now, all of a sudden, like a 350 pounder walks in to 61 and all of a sudden, like I'm looking him dead in the eye. I'm like, do you remember me? He stood up for the other chair and he's like yeah, I remember you. I'm like you said I'd be dead or in jail by the time I was 16 or 15. Well, here I graduated like month and whatever it was in a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll see you there and I walked out at my graduation, as I was walking through my car, he's standing right next to my car. He's standing right next to it and I'm like shit, this guy's gonna fight and you should, all you know, could we find literally fist fight, yeah. And I thought, shit, this guy hasn't finished business with me. So you know, it's all right, we're gonna have to knock it up, let's do this. So I started walking towards him and I'm like, what's up, homie? And then he opens his trunk something and oh shit, you know, this was in the 80s. You know, back then you pop a trunk and we just coming out and I won't lie to you, back then everyone was strapped. I was strapped there and we were always strapped and my man was in the car. So like shit, yeah. So I see him pop the truck, like, oh, this is gonna be bad. And he pulls out two shock glasses in a bottle and he's all come here and I'm like, oh cool, what's up? And he's all hey, I was wrong about you. And he goes I told you that to motivate you, which is bullshit. I call bullshit on that, but he said he's good to motivate me, but it was kind of he was proud of me for graduating and he said that you know what anyone that could, you know, do what I did that he talked to my counselor and he couldn't believe. He didn't believe I was gonna graduate. He wouldn't talk to my counselor. So it's scary. He's graduating, though yeah, he just barely made it.
Speaker 2:I went to night school. I went to ROP work experience. I used to go open Gold's gym at five in the morning, but no, at four thirty, so the five o'clock thing could come in there. So I had to clean up, get everything ready for Joe, this guy, to own the place. I'd have to open the gym and then he would sign on. I'd have to be done by I say by six. Then I'd have to go to the school and go to the gym there and work out there. I had double zero period. I had all that shit so I could graduate because of this guy.
Speaker 2:He forced me to get because when they told me you're not gonna graduate as bullshit, and I knew I was gonna do it and I did I passed him to have a credit and that's how I'm very proud of and you know, the moment that that dude he did give me a drink and he called me, say, hey, man, we had a little shot and everything, and I thought that was pretty cool. And he told me goes, you know what? You have the tenacity and the ability to do whatever you want, especially when you're pushed, because you, you, no matter what obstacle has been placed on hitting you, you always either just barrel through it or found your way around it. So you know, you should really, really pursue what you want to do. And I thought, fuck, you know it's a pretty good little speech. So I said, all right, cool, and I tried college for a while. After that and I can. Honestly, I tried the military, but they have to eat me, or F-Sport, f-6, whatever you have to eat me it's only to fuck up.
Speaker 2:And they, uh, they said, now we don't want you. And I said, all right, cool. So I tried college and you know what I learned in college? That they can't teach me shit. Now I, I, I test out of every art class. They wanted me to take all these weird classes that were mandatory, like, oh these are you need this for the university? If I dude, I just, I just want to learn how to do animation, bro, I just wanted a cartoon that took. So the one thing that I did learn there was I was already, I was already printing t-shirts to my godfather. He's already doing kind of. I was just doing art reform and I started that's when I started doing my own printing.
Speaker 2:I took screen printing there at Fullerton College. Go Hornets and uh, play football there. And I was having fun at Fullerton College. It was college life. I met my wife there and that was pretty cool. She's like, oh yeah, man, but yeah and uh, it was great, it was, it was cool. Think about then how to do shirts. And again, then it's when I knew it was like I can make my characters and showcase them at least on t-shirts. And then I got into Paxon and Miller's Outpost and all these in places. It was pretty cool, you know I was.
Speaker 2:I was a lot of in place for a while, yeah, and then and then I just went on my journey and here I am at the NFT world and I look at the idea that when I first started drawing my characters for one more and all this stuff, I never thought that I would need. But I have the file, these. Well, some of them are so old you can't even open the files because they're back in the early 90s. You know, back then I was on Carrell drawing playing do so. You know, I used to do everything on the computer back then. So, yeah, some of the files got just dusted out, but I knew that I needed to start archiving a lot of the stuff. So I have our work that I've drawn, hand drawn and put in the computer since the 90s. So I said there's so much of it, there's so much of it that there's no where, there's no place I can showcase this. And then NFT world showed up. Man, I was like dude, this is our place right here. It's a game changer big time, it's like. And then watching, like we like I'm a big fan already, player one. I'm telling you, I, I see that that is happening, that's gonna happen.
Speaker 2:Um, not too long ago, when we started getting into NFTs, um, prior to that, I was reading about how Sims people that said that they were selling real estate, and there's, they parsed up the world, the 64 parses and I'm all the world, I'm, there's a sky up there. What the fuck? You know? Let's just, oh, I, let's do. I want the milk away. You know what I can? I'll take half the universe right now. You know if that's what's going on in my mind. So I was telling mega, you know what? I'm not the only one thinking this. There's no way, you know. Just, they're thinking small potatoes. They're thinking, oh, you get a little parcel of the world and you can, oh, you can, go visit India, or you can go visit the but true, but it's a stepping stone.
Speaker 1:It's, it was a stepping stone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah but I, in my mind it's like this was at the exact same time. I was hearing about NFTs, so in my mind I'm thinking, yeah, that's gonna be old, it's again. It's when you start hearing. Um, I remember when everyone was buying video tape machines for their home and they were called beta and uh. And then I, I know when I saw VHS and I said, dude, don't buy any more betas, that's it, betas out why? I said, just, dude, how many people are buying the atrex? At that time we're buying the sets. There's a big thing called an atrex. You know, there was no one was buying atrex. The AMR radio was dying up. You know evolution. Things started going when MTV came out. I'll never forget when that came out.
Speaker 2:When that came out I said, dude, this it music's gonna change yeah, when videos started coming out and then cartoon videos started showing up, like you see, the animation, the graphics motion that was happening in there, uh, the tom tom club, genius of love, that's all done in animation. Uh, as movies started to go in, even like in the 80s and 90s, there was John Cusack movie, I think called one crazy summer, where he's an artist, animator and they're doing, uh, which technically at that time was like Ren and Stempy style cartoons inside in the actual movies and stuff. So there's a lot, a lot of animation. That just never stopped in my life. And I know I knew back then in the early 80s and 90s that eventually we're gonna be tron, we're gonna begin the game and and here we are, and I think that's where NFTs are at right now. I think this is where we're. Like you said, that stepping stone of this parceling of the world is is a small stepping stone, but in the right direction.
Speaker 1:But when you see how fast everything's moving, yeah, and it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's insane, man, I mean it's display this, the space moves, that like an insane amount, but as insane rate. But at the same time, though, there's still like I still think we're, we're really, you know, like without. I mean it's kind of it's hard to tell, like, where it's gonna be in five to ten years, but, like you know, like we're still, we're still very, very, very, very early. I know it's a meme, I know it's like, you know it's people say it to shitposts sometimes but it's, yeah, it's really true. I mean, because you still look at, you know we, we have this crazy imagination and I almost look at, like this, the way, like the way I've grown, like in my own sobriety, is that, like you know, I've had this profound experience that like where I don't have to, like you know, smoke heroin off, tin foil anymore, you know, and like I've had this revolutionary way change in the way of thought, um, and then, like I've had all this crazy experience, but like the world is still going on without me, like the world's still like there's still, it's still doing its thing, and like I'm just like wait, how can you not see this?
Speaker 1:I'm every, every one that is like you know that I knew that was trying to get sober. I'm like you gotta fucking hear about this way I got sober man. Like you've got to do this and they're just like bro, like get the fuck back. Like you know, like we don't we don't need to hear that like it. So yeah, so a lot of there's a some weird parallels in in both of these worlds. It's just like we have this like incredible energy, that a lot of it's very and, to tell you the truth, like it's protected by the right people. Like there's some, while there's some. This community is really, really strong, but instead of like convincing people that it, that it needs to happen, like that's it's an uphill battle that you're never gonna win, like, where I think that we win here is just by simply showing like this is what.
Speaker 2:This is what we're doing. You know, that's what I was telling me. We have to show it's. A proof is in the pudding at this point. Yeah, yeah, you have to. It's like the only way anyone loves to see like the right blunders, like hey, that thing will fly right, bullshit okay bucket, and then it was a nice shit.
Speaker 1:We had a flu, yeah, when you see it, yeah all of a sudden it's a reality.
Speaker 2:So I know that you're, I know what you're saying and, by the way, if I didn't congratulate you guys, right, congratulations on that, bro, that's a good time. Yeah, I have a plan of mine. You're still struggling right now and and I watched as a kid he was, he was a good kid and right now he's trying his best. He's asking for advice on this and I told him. I said, bro, I don't know how to advise you on this because my journey so I tried every I as an artist when I was in high school and do a lot of things by my older cousins and I got involved in drugs at early age.
Speaker 2:So I was taught H and it went through and it was sort of like just a thing to do. We were doing it way. I mean, I was partying all the way up into my 40s and I'm and I mean you name it, I've tried it the only drug I've never talked to you just because it was offensive to me was crap, and it's because I was a coke dealer for one time and I hate to say it, I would, I would, in distribution of pioneering to tamper. This is a private clientele, I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I, I've never seen people bake that stuff and I was so offended by what they were doing to my good. I thought of you know, it's like, hey, I have a good product, what are you doing to it? I saw what they were doing and it got no while. But my journey I Got. So you know, you got to understand my, my life went to this crazy realm after me and make make him to my life. We were doing very well. We had, we were doing t-shirts, we had skateboards and we're doing a skateboard line with a lion's skateboard. We had an Costco we're doing. We're doing a bunch of cool stuff.
Speaker 2:Crazy thing happened like family, my brother, cousin, were arrested for something murder and and it was like a thing that all of a sudden it just collapsed. Everything started to collapse because I started Working out money and not paying attention to my business or investing in us. I started investing in trying to save the family name and reputation. Those two assholes were responsible. You know my cousin did do what he did. I didn't tell so. My brother served nine years and in those nine years I apparently I'm an emotional eater, I believe it up to over 555 pounds. I Was a gorilla. I was a real gorilla size dude. I was. Yeah, and at one time make it cut her finger and she was a. We went to the hospital. I called my wife as well. You know. You know makes hurt herself with. You know I'll be here with her until figure this thing out. And I hung up the phone and we're sitting in this little room and I heard myself snoring While I wait. And I told my dude, am I snoring while I wait? Yeah, how long I've been doing this she's offering for like months from a. So shorty.
Speaker 2:Thereafter we moved to the marina. We moved from the west, we're in the West. I was close to the beach and I Gold's gym was like a mile and a half away and I said you know, I'm gonna start riding a bike. I used to love riding bikes as a kid. I'm gonna start riding a bike. So I got me a beach truser first day. I got on that thing. I literally got off the sidewalk and all the spokes shot on like weapons. These are everywhere. The rinse collapsed. I mean it was. It was awful I had throwing the thing on my shoulder walking down to the bike store telling them wait, I need rims that could hold my weight. So they found me like snow tires, we found double and forced rims. So I built Frankenstein, my bike and I started riding it to the gym. And then I lost 265 pounds just riding my bike and I never. And In that bike line.
Speaker 2:So variety started to come in because I knew that I needed to change my life. I was at that weight. I started telling my wife you know, makes, here, if anything happens to me, you guys look after each other. Make knows the business. You have all the. You know. You guys know what to do. I was already making plans like I was gonna go and it's like you know. And then I started using the weight stuff. You know, I started thinking I'm not gonna leave these two bitches about themselves. They're gonna act fun without me. No way, I'm sticking around. I started to lose. I started I lost all that weight In it, but I didn't mean to.
Speaker 2:And the funny thing about that is that we were living in this building in the marina, and In there the contestants for the biggest loser, the fat camp that show yeah, yeah, yeah, they were the pre pre contestants were in that building because they didn't want anyone to die on set. They were training them for the work that they were gonna be on the show. So they wanted to make sure they were gonna die on to con camera. So they had a fat camp to qualify to go into the fat the biggest loser. So they were in our building and I was just big as those guys, so I wasn't part of the regiment. So they had restrict diets and they actually down the street together and to their little gym and they'd see my fat ass on a bike rolling past an evening, a hamburger or a donut or a piece of pizza, and I was just doing my, I was living my life and you know, I had lost all that weight and I was hanging out at Venice Beach and everyone thought I was homeless. And Then I swear to God this everyone thought I was homeless because my, I didn't want to change my clothes. Everything got sun beaten and I'd lost so much yeah, we're faggy.
Speaker 2:So I was chilling there and I ended up meeting a lot of artists down there and the guys that were defeating the walls Duggo, who is a thing you know renowned artists down there. He, unfortunately you know drugs and stuff didn't do them any favors. You and I need to sit here and have this conversation. I don't know whatever happened from these guys, but there were tremendous talents that were An inspiration for the name that we gave ourselves for our handle. A waste of talent, because when we were out there, I tell me I would just nothing but a waste of talent.
Speaker 2:Out here, a bunch of us already were hanging out painting on buses or on walls and stuff, doing the graffiti walls with people, and it was. It was kind of fun to Be out doing cool shit and collapse with other artists out at the beach and you know it was kind of thinking like, you know, maybe someday, you know, there'll be something where we could put on like the VR glasses and maybe spray paint with some virtual Walls, stuff in which now exists. You know, it's just awesome, it's a. You know, all these cool things that I thought of are happening for reals. But when I lost out that way and I was down there, I was reminded as an artist that, even though I was hanging out with, these guys were just as good as they're not better. He's really good. We're hanging out there.
Speaker 2:And there was, you know, I had a home, I had money, I know I was okay, but I just looked like they were not hanging out with them. So I treat them the pizza style, if they were my friends or we'd smoke and hang out, yeah, yeah. But one day, my buddy, we took in some, my whole, some homies. That the homeless prisoners they're friends, they're friends of friends, and so the growing Michael. But I had to murderers, literally for a while. Yeah, there were friends of mine, they weren't gonna kill us, they needed a place in it. So, anyways, we had some. I leave a little and they will, and it was great because I was trying to get them To not be homeless and trying to help them out. I thought like I was gonna kind of give back a little bit of homie love to you know, put you know things that I have to men's, the things that I've done, I made us help these guys out.
Speaker 2:Yep, and we set up a tension and we were at the skate park and he was there, was selling dream catchers and we had put inside. I made some shirts for Maui and son. It was a dog on a skateboard. He's just putting the V up and it's just as Venice Beach, california. And I thought that I told me that's our first NFT, because we started that dog and all we did was you change your name from Newport, venice beach, huntington Beach, long Beach and all stayed the same California, and it was the same dog. So technically that was our first official energy. But anyways, when we were doing that we were sitting at I remember writing my bike to the boot and they were sitting there and there were a bunch of people were looking around their stuff and on the way there I saw a director's chair. They were filming something there and someone left. The director chair broke and the backing of that thing was still really nice and tacky. It was pretty good. It had stain on it and I saw it. I picked it up and I thought I didn't have a drawing pad with me, but I knew the guys had markers and I didn't want to sit there be bored, so I'm just gonna take this and draw on it. So I took this piece of quad and I sat there and it the shape looked kind of like a fish I started to outline to. So I drew a corkfish and as I'm drawing it I colored it in and it was just drawing on a piece of trash.
Speaker 2:And this guy's all hey, that's pretty cool, bro, he goes. Do you how much you want for it? I'm on, you can have a book and they all is not. You sign it. Oh, he goes, I go, you can have, you want it. And then my boy smiley says you know, he's the drop of the census and family God. So the guys are. He just opens his wallet and just I'll just here, take this and I'm a. What he goes? Yeah, he goes, I'll pay for it. I'm a. Why he goes? Cuz your name's gonna be worse. I'm not gonna. Maybe when I'm dead he goes. No, no, he goes. You nailed the worst something he goes.
Speaker 2:As you worked on those shows I'm on, okay, and at that point it's like it was one of those weird Like wow, that name of the show, simpsons of family on that that really had had a lot of weight to it because these guys they were sitting right next to me doing some really good pieces on actual drawing papers in canvases, and this guy was willing to Paint for trash and he gave me 60 bucks. Now, mind you, I ended up spending it on weed and food for all the guys and we all ended up having a good time with it because it was I'm all dude, this is trash money. Just get trashed. So we did, and they was. It was fun and exciting, but that day was one of those days. Like you know, I told Megan to do something weird happened today. Most guy offered me money for trash and I told the whole scenario and he said something about you know the name of being attached to something that big and it's gonna have value. You will see it someday. And that day actually saw you gave me 60 bucks or something for a piece of trash. Yeah, there's value in that and and we try to, you know, we try not to leave with it as much.
Speaker 2:I tried not to make things that it's a good idea to tell people. Hey, you know, tell people that you drew for two international shows back to back without any formal training. That's, yeah, that's an accomplishment. You got to tell people how you got in there. I was like you.
Speaker 2:You know, to me in my mind, like you said, it was an orthodox on how I got in. But to me was like going to get a job at McDonald's. You don't have to go show a portfolio. To me was a job. And then, mind you, because I was a business owner, when I got there, I was right. I came in, I punched the clock, I answered to someone it was a job. So that was sort of like a Bursary of my bubble too. I was. It was like, oh dang, yeah, this is a job. Now. You know, before I was, I'd get up at 10 o'clock play, place these. You, for like four hours have my friends come over and we Print some shirts, send them out from the store, get paid. Whoo, you know. It was like even, yeah, me, go to conventions, things like that. We're always having fun at party. Now I'll send that be it somewhere at certain time.
Speaker 2:I have to, certainly have to meet a quota and all the stuff, and you know, I just it was Experiences and stuff like that that are very fun and exciting, yeah, have pushed me to where I had today, and I I would like to share that stuff with people. But sometimes I was telling Meg, you know, maybe it's gonna discourage people because but then there's no more studios in this. I don't think there is. You know, you, there's no need to have a studio when you have a Metaverse, or even like the internet. Now we collab with a guy in India on a handshake. He could steal my concept and run with it. But why? Why wouldn't do that? I mean, we're trying to like, we're trying to make names for ourselves. We're trying to do something on a totally different place. Now, this isn't TV, this isn't the movies, this is a totally different. Like you said, web grease come, and I want to make sure that I want to be. I want to be relevant and Part of something new. I don't want to just be jumping in at the last minute. What's this all about? You know, I want to be like well, come on and people over to what's happening. I want to be at the front, like we watch Hamilton. Hey, we want to be in the room when it happens, bro, we want to see, we want to be part of the. Now I'm 51, I feel like the kids still and I don't want to stop feeling like a kid. You know, you watch that ready player one and I keep referring to that thing. And the one thing about that movie that I love the most Is at the very end, when that halloween guy just turns around and just looked at the things that hey man, thanks for playing my game. That's all I've ever wanted. Now. That's all I want for someone's for me to turn around. Hey man, Thanks for playing my game, thanks for playing with me. I'm watching Squid Game, right, I just didn't watch it now. It's just like that old game. I know the big, no third gap. Hey, thanks for playing. You know, people, that's my thing. I want to play. I just want to play games and Interact with the artists and like the feeling of being an artling, like I did in high school, or being at the beach with all those guys, other artists, that we just start collabing and having fun and and just like kicking out ideas and not really giving a shit If it turns out to something cool cool.
Speaker 2:One time I was telling me this story in high school, mr Leverett. He was very, very but one of the best teachers you'll ever know yeah, he's the only. Actually, when I only interview I ever gave, I keep Pre-dose and when they asked me who was my biggest inspiration was, I said Mr Richard Leverett. I gave that 500 North Bradford, but it's a high school. You know. I gave him my address in the high school I went to and it's because he knew that if he tried to Hinder our, our creative juices, that it would. It would just come back in vitamin. Yeah, so anything we thought of, even it's Obscure, you're like, hey, I think I want to weld something today. Like, all right, well, let's figure this out, we can't do it here, let's go figure this out. You know he would go and contact the, the welding class over at the college and say, hey, my students want to try welding and we go over there. It's like that. That's what he was. So he was always trying to like, make us to. You know, baby, be a better artist.
Speaker 2:One time I was always in trouble. I was and I'd be sent to his classroom for detention and I got into a fight because someone told me that money, you know, someone had ruined the drawing I did. You were doing something and someone through paint on something I've done. So you know, we squabbed it up and and I got in trouble and I've seen this class and I told mr Leverett one time. I said, you know, I don't know why I'm doing all this shit for everybody. He's telling you mechanic or carpenter, or I shouldn't construction because I'm so big. I go that that that Haven't I ever heard of a starting artist, that you know I'm never gonna make money at this.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, yeah, I told the story for, yeah, he sat there eating a sandwich, looking dead in the face and he's all. I'm an artist and I'm not starting and I told you shit. You know I draw every day too. He was an idea, paid for it. I call you shit. I guess I could be a teacher and he goes. You know how. You know there's a lot of he was. What do you think he was? When you go to restaurants and all the thing?
Speaker 2:He's the one that showed me, like you know, you can make money making kids, many, putting t-shirt designs together, making logos for schools, make his logos for baseball teams or anything like that. He's like you know, you have the ability to draw characters. If they want, do it. And he's the one that pushed me into that shit. True story. He had me draw something that I thought he's he. I was drawing a lot in pencil and he said I want you to draw something very spectacular, something that was gonna blow my mind, something that you're gonna be very proud of. And I said, okay, cool, I went and got a photograph of my parents wedding and when they're sitting in the car they're like 57, chevy, my dad. I'm just staring a camera and I drew it and I Was really good at portraits at that time. That's all I did was just portraits. I even got a job at the mall drawing celebrities.
Speaker 1:I draw and they put me those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was doing that. So I was drawing. You know, really good, you know portraits. So I drew my parents and he thought it was cool. He was a cool, cool. So he tells me you got to frame that. I'm a shit. All right, cool. So we go to frame story here's there bros and frame. It looks really professional, nice and stuff. He's all cool. He was just leaving the class, what I? So I didn't think anything of it. Next thing, I know I'm, I wanted a ward.
Speaker 2:He entered into the contest, I want all kinds of shit and then it was all based on on what I told my medium of starting artists and even and then he had hit me with a $500 check because he had asked me to draw a tiger where Valencia Tigers, you want me to draw a tiger, a realistic kind of looking realistic tiger, tiger through a Fire ring. So I drew it, gave it to him, didn't think anything of it. I drew that fortune and I had complained about being a starting artist. Then he hit me with the best shit ever. He entered my shit in the competition. He had been asked to draw that design for the alumni, for for the alumni committee, for an alumni ceremony, and he got paid for it. He gave me the month, he gave me the check. He saw this is your money. You drew it, this is what you got, and showed me the shirts and everything that came of my one design. I was like holy shit. No, all of a sudden I had 500 bucks because mr Le Red decided to, you know, give me the job in a sense, and he just approved pay man, you know, you can make money at this. I'm like dude, this is the shit. I can't believe the shit.
Speaker 2:And that weekend we had a parade. This whole city had a parade called the heritage parade and At the backs building, the main building, where it ends, they'd have an art show. Didn't know this, but everyone's going. Hey Michael, good job. Hey Michael, good job. Hey gorilla. So are your shit? Pick stuff there the fucking guy's talking about. Mr LeVarad took the portrait I did of my parents and submitted it to the county, whatever it was, and I wanted a war and I want to like you know kind of shit. And I did no clue and it was just to prove that I can make money as an artist. But I just didn't believe that I could. You know I didn't and I talked to. Like I said, I used to talk to kids at school. Yeah, and they would have the same shit I hear.
Speaker 2:Like their parents was like, hey, man, you better start thinking about a career. And I'm thinking like you, I have a career and I'm an artist. So you know, I again looking back at all the stuff that I've done back then, man, I'm kind of excited to share with you. Bro, I'm gonna board you.
Speaker 1:This is Boring boring stories sometimes you know no dude, because what here's, here's what I, here's what I love man is cuz like, especially especially someone like you coming into this space. That specific story, like all the stories, but that one specifically stood out just because like, like, we don't ever get to evolve by keeping what we have. We don't ever get to evolve by like not sharing our story with anybody like and and there's so many people and not just like, and not just artists, but like anyone who's like wanting to build, anyone who's like not sure whether it's an artist, layer, writer like, any sort of creative has that has that same thing. Sometimes people just need to like show, like, have someone show them the door like and that's, and that's really what this space is about Like. I've never seen a community where there's so many people who are literally just willing to open the door for people. They're not gonna do the job for them, they're not gonna like do the work for them, but they're gonna open the door and say, hey, here you go. This is actually is possible like, and I've seen that more in this space and I haven't any other spaces I've been a part of. Like for me.
Speaker 1:I built my following, initially on Esports and video game content. Like I'm a big halo guy, I got like Gears of War called duty yes, when you, when you mention halo, I got really. You know they're really but and but it was always like that whole community and and web to I call it web to content creation. It's just how can I step over you to get where I need to be? Like there's, there's no opening the door, there's no like and maybe you know now that I say this like maybe they were, but it just wasn't my cup of tea, but it just it seemed so superficial like it seemed so just like you say the right things to open the right doors. Like and it's not genuine, like it's not authentic. This has been the most authentic space and why like, like you just said you in your home, he like had a, had a handshake agreement, he could go run away with it, but he's not incentivized to do so. Like that's wildest thing about web 3 in the blockchain.
Speaker 1:And I think that the conversation that doesn't get touched on a lot or that doesn't get talked about is that this is literally driving. It's not gonna solve world hunger. It's not gonna solve all the like, every problem that humans have. We still have to like we still got to deal with some shit. But this actually is a step in the right direction because it incentivizes the right behavior, because guess what? Everyone's actions are public on the blockchain. Could he go and on. Could he go anonymous, could he run away absolutely.
Speaker 1:But for being a creative and understanding how humans work, in just in general, like hiding, something is eventually gonna catch up with you and that's not a way to live. You know what I mean? You can hide, you can run like you can do that, but the guilt in the weight, in the burden, I mean shit like that's gonna catch up with anyone, no matter who you are like, whether you're an artist or not, you know. So he's actually incentivized to not do that, especially if he wants to make a name for himself. He's incentivized to do the right thing. Yeah, when and when you have that quick, look like we all got our shortcomings, we all have our biases, we all have our every, every that. We all, we're all born with that and we all have our experiences that shape us to who we are and have our own fears and doubts. But like when you remove that element, like when you allow people to be a little bit more themselves, and when you create a trustless system, it allows people to trust them more. It allows people to open the doors for more creativity, like hey, here's the door. Like this is me just opening the door for you because, like I'm like someone's opening the door for me, so I'm gonna do it for you.
Speaker 1:Like, and it's wild how like my like personal life is, so we're like I guess shouldn't say it's all. I shouldn't say it's separate, it's all one life. But like that's like why my like sobriety journey? There's so many correlations between that. Like I'm always incentivized to help the next guy because it gives me freedom, it keeps me closer, you know, and it keeps me at the source, it keeps me in the trenches, you know where. Like I like because my life gets real, my bro, my life is really fucking good today, you know. And but eight years ago it was not. And it's really easy to forget that. Like it's really easy to forget where you came from. Um, oh, yeah and yeah and that's and that's.
Speaker 1:I say that roundabout story because I feel like Especially someone like you, with with your experience, like having that Ability to open the door for, especially for some of the younger talent that's in the space, especially for some like whether they're younger, older, but like man, sometimes people just need to be shown the door like it's, and and you have like 18,000 stories to show them how to open that door you know, yeah, oh yeah, mr Murphy, with a, she showed me the animation.
Speaker 2:Rob, do it.
Speaker 2:Mr Leveret, all this exactly there's so many and and now now, even now, like what I'm learning with this NFT, nft, worlds and stuff that was learning, it seems, like you know, like you said it's, it's that space that I've been looking for, because I won't be judged by the past, yeah, whether you or I at one time might have had a little bit of problem, you know, with a little bit of this, little bit of that, you know, again, it's not gonna know, it's gonna judge us on that thing.
Speaker 2:I'm looking what you're doing and what we'd like to accomplish and say, hey, man, you want to be part of this, you want to work with us, you want to, you want to do this, and no one's gonna judge you, everyone's gonna, like you know, step forward one part of it. You know I'm having excited about where this is gonna go. I'm really stoked that you actually asked me to be part of this, bro, because I, you know, like you're right, I, I Understand that my story could help others and I don't think about it as as such, because it's my life. And you think like, oh, so what's the big deal?
Speaker 2:and especially yeah, and then when you start saying it out loud and what you know, when Meg repeats it back to someone and I and I she's like man, who's do we talking about? Oh yeah, that's me, and it's kind of a weird thing, and the journey now I'm telling you about there's nothing, it was not fun, it was a lot. You say you there's some dark times now, my brother being incarcerated, you know, being caught up in the drug scene and Holly would see that was rough, you know, because all of a sudden I had access to playboy models and you know, and producers and directors and stuff and you know, and all of them wanted to party and I had the ability to make that so and so it was. It was kind of a crazy trip. But To talk about the good stuff, you know it's always better and it's more, of course, it's more motivating, but it's the all. You can't. Also, I don't want anyone thinking that it was just all a dance all the way to the top. You know it was a song. I just stood out front, got a job and it was so fun.
Speaker 2:You know there was a lot. You know, even if a sentence like you know a job that you know there was interoffice politics and there was clicks. You know, you had the golf group, the people that were religious, the people that were doing like just music and art, people that were just the real Hurnets. There was there was some of the little nerdy geek guys that I worked at. They were so isolated, they wouldn't talk to anyone, they would eat by themselves. You know, I would try my best to talk to them and see, like, hey, bro, you know I'm cool. When I was in high school there was a lot of kids like that in my art class that were very quiet, but I would look over the shoulder and tell me, well, that's really good I had that. You know, encourage and try to talk to them and and try to like get them out of their shell. And you know, when I went back to my 20 high school, I mean, you know, make went with me on that one because my wife's like I'm going to that, have to make with you. Okay, on the 10 year, I was like a year deep into the Simpsons. I was like it was. I was like, you know, hey, this guy really did something. It's like, no, it was kind of a trick, because everyone do. I was a class clown. I was running with the whole boys and you know I was always strapping. So everyone, no one, knew what was gonna happen. The old gorilla and the fact that I ended up on the Simpson, stuff turned out okay and so. But on the 20th reunion I did talk to someone, the students, well, some of my old classmates that, when we were, you know, in the art room or I, you know, miguel, if it wasn't for you I probably wouldn't have pursued, but I did. I ended up in graphics that I know. But that's because you, you really encouraged me and you were, you know, mr. They kept saying I was mr Leverett's favorite and I'm. I take that and I'm proud of that. I'm glad to say that I'm hell. Yeah, I was teachers pet.
Speaker 2:I dated his daughter. How's that? Yeah, I didn't even know. I checked this out in the eighth grade. I was dating this chick named Michelle and I think you know I cool she's. I come with me to visit my dad and I worship that. So he, he's the soccer coach at the ice-loon next door. I'm thinking, cool, we're gonna be their next year. You know I don't play soccer. Well, they're see the guy. So go on to that. That. That. See the guy. Cool, I'll meet him right.
Speaker 2:Didn't think anything of it first day of school in my art class, I see I see him. Oh, holy shit, I'm all hey. Hey, there, mr Leverett, he's all. Hey. Hey, Miguel, what are you doing here? I'm on your art class now, I'm all. You're the art teacher. So yeah, oh shit, and I was dating his daughter at the time. I'm like, oh man, so it's like I did. I was never me to her, I was always. You know, we, we were friends, that just kind of. You know, she went that way with this way, yeah, but I, I remain friends with him and still her. I wish the president stay, and you know, this is a true story. On on his deathbed he had her come to say bye. Hmm, that crazy, wow, yeah, wow. It's still hurting because it was, I could hear it. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:It was sad because he actually he remembered of all the students on his deathbed come, not bad, pretty good man, right, and it's and it just goes to show like, where, like because I very much relate with you where it's just like it's my story, it's just who I am, it's just like what I do, and you know there's just, there's this fine line of like, confidence and humility at the same time.
Speaker 1:You know it's like, and there's there's a there's, because I feel like, especially for people Like us, it's, it's hard to like, share some of that, because we don't want it to become off as like Overconfident. But what I'm actually starting to realize, like this is just through my own journey and my own process is that, like, like I have the credibility to back up everything I say, like I have the credibility to like you. So it's like, it's not like that. That overconfidence is only when you don't have the ability to back it up. Like it's like that's when, that's it, but it, but it's just weird, like, like this weird shortcoming, this weird feeling that people have where it's just like, like I can't say that I can't be confident Because I don't know if I'm gonna live up to it, but when, when, especially after hearing your story, it's like, bro, you can, you can live up to it, right.
Speaker 2:Like you know, you've lived deliver. Mr Leverett, when I did what, the one interview that I did give, I talked about him, yeah, and I remember going to business and after that and I told him I said you know, as a teacher, I know all teachers say this shit if I make a difference in one students life, yeah, it was worse than I told me, it's me. It was me what he meant, me Grand and I was dating a dollar, but I was. I was running with the homeboys, I was like heavily in the drugs, I was fucking up a lot, I was Better.
Speaker 2:Yet I talked to my friend not too long ago and we were reminiscent about the first day of school in the seventh grade. All right, you're watching the movie, the hangover. Well, uh, yeah, yeah, okay, that happened to me in the seventh grade. And this, what happened? Yeah, we, I thought we were smoking weed. We were gonna go to first day of school and we thought we were smoking weed. My homie thought it'd be funny To make it a typical whack gifted and PCP, yep. And him tells so we start smoking and More hits into it. All of a sudden I'm like, hey, man, they smell like shit, tastes like shit, what is it? And though I man, it's a cool, it's a super cool, take it easy and and easy says that all of a sudden I'm trails, yeah, sure, and the adventure began and I I thought I went to the first day of school and said I didn't even go first day of school, said great, because we're always we. We had stole car. We ended up in a fight with pizzeria. We ended up at Dungeons and Dragons. We ended up at some weird frat party. She was crazy, was a while together. I woke up in a dumpster that day and it was at night. I ended up. It was. It was a crazy story ever.
Speaker 2:But Knowing that that's how I was back then and that what he did, by Pushing and and telling him go do this and and drop it off and and telling him go do this and and draw this and and make me do and force me To break out of comfort zones, because I was only doing a lot of graffiti. I was doing a lot of homeboy stuff, a lot of low riders, a lot of like children yeah, no writer s that you would see in lowrider magazine a lot of prison style artwork. It was, uh, what cartoon is known for? You know cartoon, uh, he's a great artist right now. It's that style, it's a, it's a prison style, look, but I've never been to jail, you know. You know, I was just. I just never.
Speaker 2:It wasn't my thing, but I saw so much of it. So many chats and people would like me to draw this, draw that. And I was drawing that at the time and Mr Leverett said you need to start breaking away and you know you can draw people, you're really good at this, you're really good at that and the cartoons. He saw that I had the ability to just bust out characters really fast and he really liked it and he thought that you know, this is probably the thing that for you, you should probably consider Uh, getting into, you know, making your own characters and stuff.
Speaker 2:So so him pushing me and then, like I said, when I got to the sentence and then had that interview and said if there was a teacher in this world that made a difference and a guy that was a homeboy that was told that would be dead or in jail by the time it was 15, this man, mr Richard Leverett, he made a difference. He changed my life and the way of thinking as an artist. He proved to me I can make money. He can prove that I. You know, with the right talent, the billion to nasty you can push it.
Speaker 2:And there, and there is no limits in art, there's no limit. Yeah, art is is, it's limitless. You know art, can you know, hey man, that painter felt in a tensler of guillie pain? Yes, yeah, but you know he died what he was doing, but there was no limit for him. You know, pushing it to the, to the point where he died a warrior's death. You know, die what you love doing. You know, if I slump over my iPad or this drawing table, it was worth it, yeah it'll be it.
Speaker 2:And you know I, you know I was fortunate enough to work in an industry and make money at it, yeah, and and it was fun and and and really cool, but it's not as rewarding as one would think. I say that because I I thought I'd be like fuck y'all, make your money, I'll talk to you, yeah.
Speaker 1:TV.
Speaker 2:There's awesome and it's not as rewarding as it is is when you're sitting at the beach and someone's watching you and they say, dude, that's so cool, I'll pay you for it, and and then, when they find out what you drew for, they give you extra cash for that. But point being is that you know there's so many artists out there that have what I. Are you gonna exceed what I have?
Speaker 1:I've seen, I've been out on twitter feeds- I've been seen this place, yeah, yeah, I, and it's amazing. It's like saying man.
Speaker 2:I and I told Meg it's like literally again Falling back into that art room where all of a sudden you're amongst a bunch of great artists and you're looking around like holy Shit, that guy scopes, that guy paints that guy, just you, that guy insist, and you know, and I want to. I want to look at you. I don't know if you, I want to do something to you and that's kind of where I'm at. I find that, you know, this is where I'm kind of. We bought this little thing, we got a place that leaked in because I want to start, I'm gonna have, I'm trying to have a place built. Right now we have templates that they have to run around, like an apocalyptic city and a jumble setting and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So we, we have a place to run around and we have an avatar, so I'm gonna try to invite other artists to come in and show them what I'd like to do. I want to set up like I have. My original website was an Aztec temple which is technically a gorilla temple, and my gorilla walks out. He hold, he doesn't talk, he just holds up signs like welcome, what would you like? Language, you know, and if you don't press anything he bleeps his chest and gets angry. And that was the original. So I want to turn that into a 3d environment and still have a 3d Gorilla, cartoonish looking character without a real live looking. You know, I still want it to look cartoon, you know right, my right, but I like yeah.
Speaker 2:I'd like for it to be a VR realm where someone could come to our location and into this temple and See it like maybe I want to be a convention hall, in a sense, and have rooms where you can have, like I can display other artists artwork and have a this artist of the month and then have a little shop where you someone might want to buy our energy and this is maybe where we can have a door.
Speaker 2:You know, behind the beads, you go, you get into the meow-pee game of your dangerous enough try, and that that game is. This is where I'm looking to hook up with. Are the artists and people that want to like? Look, I have an idea, and I know I can't build this on my own like I. There's just it's grown over 20 years.
Speaker 2:It's 20 years of world worlds in my head and I have. I, I went blind in 2014. I my retinas detached and I I was in darkness and and then I was blind for a minute and then, um, while I was lying, I had me and they had worked on Make the mouth be a part two and all that stuff and I said you know what I'm gonna play the mouth, you as a game. So I was really good at you know PlayStation stuff. So I pretended to hold a controller. It can see anything. I just started to play my game in my head and when I started to get my site back, I started to draw the cats again and we ended up with 300 something cats Like and what it is like. I said it's got that thought oh, and I wanted to draw a mafia leader for every nation of the world and Every, every, everyone would answer to John Goddow. So we're looking at with 200 nations, so each one would have a mafia. And in our world, in this cat world, you know, if you had, like you've had to deal with the Italian mafia, you go to little Italy. If you had to go to Russia and that's how it started, so we can make it, you know we're wouldn't be massive worlds with small little places intertwined. So I'm, when I was blind, I started to do this game and I finished one level in my head and I was telling Meg every day. So today I did this and I was telling her over and over again and, like I ended up, you know, fighting the seven samurai to take down Lady Mariko, and that was the last level one. And she answered you I now take a section of the borough and now, now I have clout in them and now I have an army, a little bit of soldiers and stuff. So I'm moving up in my ranks in my own head. Yeah, this is a game that I have you to write down. I'd probably like to talk to developers and writers and stuff like that. So make it. Maybe you can make it better.
Speaker 2:You know, all I did was play something in my head that was pretty much grand theft auto. I don't want to do in a bunch of dumb shit, but in doing so I figured I'd find like second high Easter eggs here, here's a random victim that has a lot of loot, here's a cop that's gonna stop you and here's the detective. I'm gonna need, like you know, really vigilantes now I need people that are gonna come fight you. If you go around being up the innocent, you're gonna get your ass attitude. And then I start telling Meg you know we should do all these cats and people, come in, you get. We, invite people into this world. You better have a cat avatar, if not you're gonna stand out. So you know that's something we're working on right now. But, yeah, you know, we're excited that that's kind of the idea right now. This is where we're at work, all the experience and all the things that I've done, even going blind, using it to my advantage to build.
Speaker 2:You know, I was still drawing in my head and I'll tell you what Meg has photographs. There's one cat in particular. So cool dude, there's a cat. It's a steam punk cat. He's a slight the steam punk assassin, a mega part, both of you or something. See if you can find that chat.
Speaker 2:But anyways, I was literally like I could only see a few inches in front of my face and I had a patch on one eye and I was sitting there just drawing and she took video or pictures me drawing it. I I Was tracing what was in my head. I really couldn't see, I think just I was like you know, yeah, yeah, like ghost lining, yeah, I draw and like in my mind I could see, okay, I did like circle, this is this. And I was just. I was trying to keep my pencil as close as I could in the paper so I would. If I was fucking up, at least I was close enough. Yeah, I was cross and a tangent line, yeah, yeah. So I wanted to make sure I was close enough. When I got my sight back and I saw it, I was impressed, the shit. I'm like I can't believe I did that.
Speaker 2:I was so impressed with myself and that I was blind and did that and you know, To my own eyes, still had two eyes. You know Meg's mother. You know she's lying, literally missing one eye. She's a tremendous artist and and that's what I was thinking I thought she can do it. I can do it. That it was another motivating factor. You see other people in the world that might have a disability or something and you think, man, there was a guy at Venice Beach. This dude didn't have any hands, he was drawing with his feet and I was like this guy was killing it. I was like you know, it's crazy, yeah the whole boy was pulling.
Speaker 2:It's like feed. This guy should be somewhere else. I mean, not, I get it the beaches where you're gonna go and try to make your money, because where you're at and you know. But in my mind that man, if I had a spot, you know, just would put this dude or his artwork, we're gonna see his shit. You know, um, jayman, uh, I was hanging with him over there at the beach. Um, he had a head injury and he's known as the dot guy. I haven't been a speech, I don't know. He's still out there, but Everything he paints is in dots, because that's what he sees. He did full portraits and pure dots and he's up close to it, like this, just tapping away, tapping away, and then he'll back away and all of a sudden he's got a portrait. It's crazy. And he's done like Jimi Hendrix and a bunch of different, like big Morris, me, stuff like that. He was doing a lot of Musicians but people would come to commission him and I was like, dude, you know, you need like a gallery, exhibition or something and there's just no places for people like that, there's no places for people that do great wall art. There's so many graffiti artists. They have such great pieces that are so intricate and beautiful. Yeah, there's no place to display it. But you know now that there's br and there's there's br walls and there's actually there's spray cans and there's stuff that you can do. There's like I saw it, it was a with a wall. It's technically. You're with a spray can that has a sensor and you're choosing with this with your hand to the touchscreen and you're actually painting on a virtual wall. It's crazy. Yeah, pretty neat, and that's man Again.
Speaker 2:Things that I thought of this as a child, you know, when I thought of jumping into Tron or we're jumping into, like jowls, any of that shit. Now the time is here and we're hit. We're ready to. I'm ready to be part of something like this. I'm ready to start working with people. Anyone who wants to help build my world. I'm always willing, like that's.
Speaker 2:We were having issues with networks and and TV people For the reason that they want your ip, they want your, they want your intellectual property and they want to own it. They want, they want to control it. Yeah, yeah, I was like, hey, dude, I made this up. Well, you're gonna tell me about my shit. I go, dude, I need to be there, I need to tell you where he's going and you tell you what's up. I, I don't like this idea of you guys owning me and what I have. So I have friends that have sold their stuff and I know that they are not allowed to draw the characters that they created Other than to promote the show right now, and even then they have to make sure that they arrive.
Speaker 2:This is a Property owned of Nickelodeon, of Disney. You know, da, da, da, da da. Whoever they owns it, they have to like that and it kind of sucks because you know, and then you created something that, like some kids are like you know, I don't, which Hartman's a great example. He great, fairly odd parents. Yeah, he's done great stuff, but you know, I don't he really can. He does his promotion. I know I don't know what he can do or can't do, but I still see him drawing some of his stuff and I think that, wow, he's probably one of the only people that I see really drawing his own shit, you know, and like he doesn't get in trouble. And I see him doing fan art either spider-man and stuff like that. So you know, he's still doing artwork as an artist and stuff and no one's giving him shit.
Speaker 2:And I was like cool, you know, maybe he had something special at Nickelodeon that when we talked to those bastards they said, like you know, once we own it, you know we tell you what you can can't draw off. If you think you can go out and just draw something for some kid, I I see I got in trouble at fox and I don't care to get mad at this. I got in trouble because I was drawing for, like, kids, like the assets to go talk to kids at hospitals or whatever. And I had a nephew who had leukemia so I went to see him and I drove some Simpsons characters and all the kids at the war and I I drew a bunch of characters and they had other brothers that weren't sick and I drew for them Stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So I told somebody at the studio that I did that and they got back and I was in trouble that hey, dude, you can't be doing that shit. You know it's got to be sanctioned that we authorized when and how you do it and where and stuff we have that we don't can't keep track of what's out there. I was like we talking about this kid asking for a favor and I just hooked it up on a napkin, bro, there's no big deal. That fox is really dick about that kind of stuff and I thought you know that's that's. That's a dick move. I mean, you're gonna deny, you know. You know some kid like, hey, can you draw me bar and say, uh, I'm sorry, I can't do that because fox won't allow me to invest. You know, I have approval.
Speaker 2:I thought that was bullshit and I thought you know why? Why is this? You know, and I looked into it, and it's because of ownership. They own the rights to the ip's and they have the right to dictate and delegate what's to be done with those properties. And I thought that, you know, this is stuff for me. And I told leg, you know, since we have a bunch of our stuff, that someday, our format, some, there'll be an arena where we'll be able to jump in. And now here we are, we're here in the tune in ft land and getting guess what?
Speaker 1:like it, yeah, dude, and if here's. Here's the cool thing about like it's in it. What's what's wild about this is that that if fox wants to purchase a certain set of rights to do something like that, like they can do it, like you would still own it, the person would own it, but you can, you can literally bake whatever rights you want into that. That owner should token Like you could, you could like, and, and here's the thing like I don't know if you saw this, um, and by the time, uh, this air is the other one will air. But, like, I interviewed a photographer, one of my favorite in the space. Her name is kath samard and, um, she actually just released a photo. It was her most stolen photo and it was uh. If you look up, like hawaii photo, you'll see it's like this road and there's this like beautiful greenery, like right, like all these trees and the mountains, and this is a single road, like passing through all of it, and that was, uh, the wildest story, for that it was sold. Not, it was, it was sold, it was stolen and used in commerce by all these other big brands. And she would always file, take down notices, like pay all this money for people to try to, like you know, get settlements and none of it ever worked out.
Speaker 1:But now with nft, is what she did is she did the very for photography at least. What she did was she minted that photo as an nft and what she did was included the creative commons rights to where it was actually minted. Someone could own the original and then the creative commons license. Anyone could use it for profit for not profit for banners. But that nft was priced at uh, it was 100 ethereum, you know, and she sold it and it's it's it's provenance. Like it's provenance. It's like this was the first nft to be minted on the blockchain to where they were that had a creative commons license to it.
Speaker 1:And the way she came up with that Is she says this on her episode but uh, it's like she's like the way I valued it at 100 eth or like around 300, 350k, was that this was the amount of money that I would have gotten from each time my art was stolen. And all this is that's what she valued at, because after five years of doing this, after countless like, it's literally one of the most popular Hawaii photos in the entire internet. Like it's awesome. Actually it's funny that you say that may yeah, we, because we have the.
Speaker 2:We had beef with disney a couple times. Yeah, I would say beef. We visit the eye-to-eye and, uh, in doing so, I recently we started this thing called sport over and my character's forky. He loves to cosplay, so he likes to dress up as all kinds of different things. So, uh, for the whole month of october, every day, I'm drawing him as a halloween in the halloween costume and we drew him as money mouse and, uh, he looks a lot similar to making and he's got a dog named puto. He's petting and uh, puto being fucker in spanish, yeah, that's so, he's petting the dog and it's. He's got a bag of money and so, uh, may, I said she's all, I'm gonna press one high. So why is it? For all the heartache they cause us. You know they had forces to have to go contact the attorney. You know they, you know so just as a joke, and they're all about money. So we did that as a joke, but we did it as a joke. You're that, that person doing that, the target, that was smart, because you know that, you know it is valued and I think that is the money she would have lost, that did lose in all that shit. Because, yeah, you know, I know that if these guys would have took advantage and use the sporky name which technically they rode the wave of it for a while Um, me and Meg were on the internet every single day trying to make sure that when someone hashtags sporky, at least our character would pop up.
Speaker 2:So every single day I was kicking out something. There's something that is sporky. I made this All this. Um, we started doing storyboards, we did a storyline, we did backup characters. I did everything we could. We started making a greedy Version of it. Um, and because we had, he comes from the planet of sharpened pointy things and lives in intensive city.
Speaker 2:I started making all these utensils. And he has a friend named fork. You know his name is spork, you know, but he's a fork, yeah, it's. They don't call him forky, you know, he's just fork. You know, yeah, it's pretty fork or something like that. And yeah, it's like you call him Fred, it's not, but he's a fork. But he doesn't look like that stupid thing that they have at Disney.
Speaker 2:Now, when we saw that, we told, like, now, we don't, we don't want to work. You know, up there, you guys, when we saw that character they wanted to show, yeah, but we didn't want to do that. They wanted to show opposed to ours and we told, like you said, everyone has, like there's, everyone has rules and regulations on how they work. Uh, disney, disney was, uh, disney's set in their ways. They don't answer to anyone other. There's, there's, you know, there's their shareholders and stuff. So they they're not going to break total call for anyone, anybody, for anybody.
Speaker 2:So when we said, hey, look, we'll work with you guys, providing that, you know, maybe you guys can do this. We have an idea was that you know what if the little girl could? Apparently, you know, she makes this little Sporky character a forky character, and I said, well, what if, you know, she sees our character on a happy wheel or something that's inspired to make it? Or why would someone who has so many toys want to make a new one? You know I didn't make any sense to me, so I was trying to give them like as an artist and a storyteller.
Speaker 2:That doesn't make any sense. If she's like, loves her toys so much, why would she feel we need to make a new one? You know that doesn't make any sense to me. So I, we got into it with them and they were saying, no, your ideas are good but we don't want them. So I, cool the fuck you guys. And well that you can't use our shit. And then we got into it with them and they cost us some money to. You know, look into attorneys and stuff. So Meg said you know we're gonna price that that money mouse. You know, as a joke, we're gonna paste it kind of high, yeah, to make for the money that we lost in attorney stuff. And you know, but then you know that girl with the photograph, I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:To be honest with you and also you're talking because I was looking at what's the most popular, most expensive um Photograph ever made or most common, the most famous one and apparently with some artists, some Photographer was taking photographs of more Morval paintings and magazine like the morbile man and stuff like that and blowing them up and because you know their print, their offset printing, so you see the dots, yeah, so when you blow it up, you can see the offset print, so you see it looks like a colorful thing.
Speaker 2:So it turned into artwork as he blew it up. Technically he did alter it by blowing it up, you know, and I will say, you know, I was telling Meg, you know, um, we got into the NFT thing and I started hearing people saying, like you know, some people are stealing people's ideas and some people are trying to mint people's artwork, that even you could even see the outline of the instagram stuff and thinking, yeah, yeah, this is kind of crazy. Yeah, you know, in a way, you know, I know this sounds stupid and crazy, but I also respect the grift. You know, when someone tries to come in and try to cross chaos, um, sometimes I think like, hey, man, you know there's, there's something to this. You know, someone's always trying to punch holes in your stuff and you need to know where they're at. So sometimes these guys are unnecessary, unnecessary evil.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, you know, you need these guys in here, but you're gonna get caught. Some of these guys are gonna get found out and stuff. I'm only. I watched a documentary recently about some lady that had bought some Pollux and and they were saying how, like, how could you not know these were fakes? Well, uh, the asian, uh, chine. This was chinese guy that was painting Pollux and studying Pollux and he studied them. It was like big university and that's what they did. That's what he wanted to do and he would be able to replicate his style so well that he tricked these professionals.
Speaker 2:People were paying top dollar for these ponies and shit and I thought, man, you know, you got to give it up for the art that the guy was able to do it. I mean gravity, the forgery and the signature Even that was still on did on that any past? You got to give it up to the guy that he was able to even replicate a signature. These guys were putting it on canvases of the era from that time and trying to use paint of that time. They were really about really trying to make it. So it was a real good. You know fake and you know, as an artist, you got it in as the dude, that did some dirty back in the day. You got to respect the fact that, hey, man, that's an art form too. A con is a is an art form and I I know that shelf's kind of bunk jumping to the nct world. But I'm prepared for and I told me, we have to be ready. We have to be ready for people to come out of sideways.
Speaker 2:When we first jumped in, we immediately started hearing people saying hey man, you're from the Simpsons family guy. Dude, I want to invest in you. I want to hear what. You don't even know what I have, bro. You know, you all of a sudden want to invest me because, like, I'm not gonna draw things and shit, I'm not gonna draw family guy stuff, rob, I'm gonna draw my own shit. So do you know what I have?
Speaker 2:So some of these people that were jumping in too eagerly kind of put me and Megan a very defensive position. We're, like you know, we've been approached by a lot of people and all of a sudden trying to lift our skirt hey, dude, buying lunch first, bro, you know, I'm not gonna just show you what I got. Yeah, I didn't know what you're about. To some people that have asked to invest in us. We couldn't find a digital footprint on for shit. You know just, they're all we're about cryptocurrency. We keep ourselves secrets, say hey, bro, but I, you're asking me to give up my life's worth for X amount of dollars and sounds cool and everything. I appreciate it, but I don't have a price for my life's work. I want to work with others to make you know.
Speaker 2:I've had a taste of success the way I wanted to taste it, in the and reaching the. You know my dream of becoming an animator for television. I would love for Another artist younger than me, another even older than me, just to feel that, like dude, how cool to be part of something really big. I am very well aware that my my name rolling in those credits. Check this out.
Speaker 2:I did drop the bulk of a show back to back since, and some family guy with no formal training whatsoever and I and swampy are the only two that I can think of right now that have our aka's in the credit when it's not halloween, my name says Miguel guerrilla Lopez On my credit name and it's not halloween, it's, it's my credit and on family guy and I believe, on barnyard as well, back at the barn. So I have aka's. That, no, we're given. So everyone knows me as guerrilla in this year, not even didn't even know my real name. They were like they're a grilla girl. You know, my real name was Miguel and it was kind of it was kind of cool. You know it's like a little bit of a secret, kind of kind of wings, but yeah, there was another secret about a 500 pounder.
Speaker 2:I couldn't hide that easy. But you know it's kind of a trip though. How you know I ended up drawing those shows and I ended up that way and I have the weird way of getting in and then having the credits that I had and you know I get it. It's, it's kind of cool and weird and, like I told you before, it was just my life, so it doesn't seem odd. But when you start saying it or it starts telling the story and say, hey, I guess that is kind of weird, that is unorthodox, that is kind of strange, but it it is kind of. You make me feel kind of. You know, I tell you right now, you make me feel pretty strong. Right now I feel kind of. I feel like I feel a little more empowered, like I. I should be talking to more artists. I want to. I want to help them. I want to work with other artists. I would love to work with anyone that just wants to say, hey, they see my artwork and say, hey, dude, I think I can draw like your shit, I don't know shit, let's see what you got. And right now, like the show on, I made that cat in his, you know, a mafia cat. For him he turned it into a 3d, a beautiful 3d version of my cat. I told him, I said, bro, if you want to sell this as an nft, go for it. Just give Meg licensing, maybe a small percentage for licensing, but it's your artwork. I don't, I don't want it. He's, he was gonna give it to us. He wanted us to sell and then maybe give him a piece. And I told no, dude, this is your artwork, anything. I mean, I feel bad even asking for a piece of it only because I have to answer the med. She's the boss and she knows that. We know we have licensing, that we have to. We have to keep a piece of our, our name to this. So he, you know, we both, you know shook, you know again, virtual handshake, he's an indian here. What's the same, we sell it. We sell it for 50, 50 cool, cool, yeah, cool, and we agree to. But we're not gonna sell it because we're gonna use it as our avatar right now within our realm. And so it's everyone invite people to come run around, check out our space and, like I said, I want to build a temple. I'd like to like for buddy that we smoke in, uh, skunk he. He's trying to put on a music festival at the bowl. It's called we, the polluza or bongaroo, and he's been tasked to fight bands and rap groups and talent to perform at the bowl Comedians, any of us, so. So that was part of the cartoon. So in our beat, in our realm now we'd like to make the bowl and I'd like to make that a value and invite rappers and Comedians and djs and stuff and throw festivals here. I'd like to people to use our convention hall or the temple as whatever they like as a museum, as as comic-con, as something you know, yeah. And then we have other locations, like right now we're working. Also olympico. He's trying to be the best.
Speaker 2:Several years ago we were doing stuff for the olympics that would have done for the 2020 olympics, but when we were doing it, we found out that you can't do anything without the permission. You can't use your name, the rings, the fire, the church, any of that year, yeah, yeah. So we said you know what? I don't like these rules and regulations. I had a character. We used to live off the 405 freeway. That exit was olympic pico. So when I tell people to get off, I'd so get off on olympico and that was the name. I made a character named oh so olympico, which is technically, in spanish, olympic bear, and so, but I stalled it differently because it's pico, based on the streets that I lived off of. So what I did was I found out what we could use in regards to using Any kind of olympic games, so they don't own the rights to any game. So we made uh also olympico, hopefully that we can make it for our vr worlds, where it's all it's a location, uh, uh, calcio, where you come to extreme sports, you know, like skateboarding, bike lighting, but at the same time you're going to be, you know, shooting, maybe flaming darts or flaming arrows, while you know trying writing a unicycle, like coming down a slalom.
Speaker 2:We're gonna make it pretty extreme. So we're trying to like make all that happen. So you know everything that we're working on now it's all about, you know, I guess for our metaverse. Now I'm trying to get it together. I really like to get this thing going. I'm hoping that by talking to you, that maybe some artist out there will be like hey, dude, I do environments. Hey, I code, I do this. I mean talking to some of the guys that I'm talking to, that actually do it like the guys that do the halo stuff. You know they, those guys are, you know they're about it, man, they're, they're all out of that. They're, they're very intense dudes and and and it's sometimes it's hard to talk to them because you know when you're trying to tell them something, and and and and you know, uh, they're one track mind. It's kind of tough, but I'm getting to learn how different people are and and they're there. Yet you know you got some coders and stuff that you know, thinking of grandma's boy. You know you ever seen that?
Speaker 2:You got that guy. That seems to be shit.
Speaker 1:You know that you know, I mean festame ever.
Speaker 2:But then you got the other guy. That just is good. They're giving out good ideas. Hey man, we change the color to this guy. We don't have to do anything more than just code. You know, change the clothing and you know that's a genius idea, but it's shot down by the spark, you know. You know, saying so, I'm seeing that that those personalities are trying to reel and out after it right now and it's kind of it reintroducing myself to that type of yeah, yeah, it's, it's yeah.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's. It's not actual art form because, you know, talking to people that are not used to socializing, but I have the brain capacity to make.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, yeah, bro, I mean, but what we're doing is art, like conversation is an art and active listening is an art. Because one one thing that I've learned and I've I knew I was on to something and then I got it validated, not that I needed it, but I did kind of need it just to for my own self-confidence. But like when, when I'm, because when I try to on when, like here's the challenge for me is like when I I would try to like I went so into the weeds with, with this industry, the nft, the art, the, the crypto, all this it and then like I'm like you know what? But let me come back to reality, let me, like you know, hang out for them. We like, talk, like, but every conversation I had, this shit would come up and I and I found myself in the beginning.
Speaker 1:The first couple times I explained it to people, it was literally just like a motion and information vomit, like there was no context or some structure, there was no. It was just like blabbing all of this shit out at once and like they're just like. Okay, I was more confused and I don't even I was. You actually didn't help me here, right, and so you know what a good cone cut you off.
Speaker 2:To that exactly how I felt. And when people said and they have cheated me, it's super, not a fucking thing, because I did not understand it at all. Exactly what, like you people were throwing it out of me.
Speaker 1:I was in a and they're throwing bits of the finance, are throwing bits of the art, they're throwing bits of the ownership, they're throwing bits of a mutable, and you're like, what the fuck does this mean? Yeah, and so one thing that I've really like that's really helped me onboard people, and it's this is for specific types of people who who've just never heard of it. You know, um, I I like to like understand who they are and I like to give them a real-life example of like something that could happen in this world, like my favorite example. So I'm a tool fan. This is like the tool army, like exclusive membership, you know, like it their favorite man of all time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mother-in-law swear to God she's seven but goes. Every tool and tool, and uh, rockstein, and uh she loves it down.
Speaker 1:Oh, she's all about it. I love that mother-in-law.
Speaker 2:It's just crazy, it's insane man. So I she don't love building like there's other people out there Just as truly dude, I'm not, I'm nuts.
Speaker 1:I think I said this to I is offline like if I, if tool ever comes out on nft, I'm prepared to give all my life, like my life savings, over to like oh.
Speaker 1:That, to me, is like is like one of the most like I like. Anyway, like what they're, I can have hold of their podcasts on my, on my in factuation with tool. But there there's a song, there's a, there's two songs and they're 10,000 days album where it's called wings from re and 10,000 days and it's about his mother dying, like it's a, it's a song to his mother's about when his mother was dying and he was at a, there was my buddy who actually passed from uh, you know, addiction like, and he, you know, he just Couldn't get it. Man, you know, and um, he was actually at the last concert, or Maynard and tool did Uh, wings from re and 10,000 days because it brought up the place he had to go to deliver that piece of art Was not something that he wanted to ever do again. Like he's like his worry had to go to get to that, to get to the voice, to get to the rhythm, to get to, to get to that magical, like work of art that we've listened to for so many years. He's just like I'm not willing to do that anymore.
Speaker 1:And so I give this example I said a map man. Imagine if that was like documented On history where anyone could go look that up. If that was the last time you were ever at your favorite artists or your favorite musicians concert and they played that song for the last time and it was provable, it was immutable, it was documented, you know, special of a collectible, that would be like because you know, right now we have to. Like I trusted him and I saw because I knew he was just as much a fanatic as I was, but someone else may not believe him. Imagine if you could prove that provenance on the internet, you know, and you could prove.
Speaker 1:Like if the band coded like this is the lack, like if you could literally see they never played another, another version of the song outside of that show. And so what I? What I tell people is a like, imagine if you're like I just say name your favorite artists and I say name, I like name your favorite song. And they're like what if you were at their last show that they played? And you could actually prove it? And I'm like well, how would I do that? And then it's like in the.
Speaker 2:So it's the ticket subs. Man, that was the old, the old way. Right approved NFT of the ticket stuff.
Speaker 1:It is, but but. But how would you just buy that ticket? So how would you really know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's true, right, so only only you said, only looking on the internet and finding that on this date these guys played this song for the last time. You know you're talking about, like you're yourself and you're right the art of that. It's fucking insane, because you're right, the last time they played it. It's like you know some of the stuff I tell kids when I would go to schools. I tell them that says listen, when you sit at your drawing table, your art pad or whatever fuck you're drawing in, when you start to create something, know that, think about how many people are on this planet, think about this gillie. At that moment you're the only person doing what you're doing and creating what you're creating and when you're done, the only one in existence sits before you. Now you have that. So think about that blow. And again, you can't now you can prove it, of course, but right that that moment it's like it's. It's there.
Speaker 2:Megan, as a photographer told her, you know she's caught some moment. I'm a dude. You've caught a moment in time that is never gonna occur ever again. That's what a photography is. It's a moment in time that you capture and it's never can ever happen again. She was out. We were somewhere driving on the 101. She posted her camera up and just took a picture of something out in the water and it was a picture of a dolphin jump, reaching the water, looking dead at camera One in a million shot of milk baby dolphin yeah, so both so far away in a perfect shot.
Speaker 2:She was up in Oregon visiting family. Uh, she sees a death throws up of salmon and it's dying and it's a miss death throws the water that flashes. She takes a picture, forms a heart, a perfect heart of water. I told her, dude, that they need the moment you captured. No one's gonna see that, no one would ever know it exists had you not captured that. Granted, she has a file, date on, stamped on or photography, yeah, but you know you're right, being like photography or picture or Probably a lot easier to, you know, have up here, I've drew it, but the date and stuff is the hard of truth unless you videotape. That's what they started doing when we were drawing a lot of these cats. He started to record because she said you know you did lose your sight. What, if it goes with, breves could be your last one, like, oh, we should write though you know you know.
Speaker 2:On that same note, like what, if you know, you know someone gets my concept and builds off it? I mean I would love for others to say, hey, you'd have a good idea here, but I think we do this. Oh, yeah, let's do that. You know, I would just love to see my creation come to life. You know, some of it I have, but it wasn't mine. You know to draw Uh on tv and you see something finally move, that you did and like, hey, I did that, that's cool. You know I'm going to the store and like I remember drawing the family got the chicken fight. I remember going to chicken. You fucking you did that chicken fire. Yeah, I did that. I remember going to chicken for the chicken time. And I remember going to the store and I look at the toys and I'm like, hey, I drew that fucking chicken. You know that that's my fucking chicken, but I drew it in family guy style. But in my mind there was no family guy chicken.
Speaker 2:You know, there was no. I drew Peter in a suit. I drew Peter the guy outside the thing. I do that whole my first show at the family guy. I'm Mexican. All the guys that were the writers were Jewish. The fucking show. I got there and they gave me the Jewish show. That's what they called the Jewish show. When I wish about a Weinstein? Oh, dude, I love this. This is gonna be so racist. I already know it. I'm gonna be in trouble round the box and sure enough, man, we were Obviously getting the trouble. But it wasn't. It wasn't my doing. I didn't write the script. I got one time this is your story. We were out, I had a crew jacket on and it's a family guy and I got up. I went to the restroom at a restaurant I was coming back. I maybe stood right in front. She told me I was a sinner. She'd go to hell. People like me deserve the worst and that or not that I kept that. I am responsible for the garbage on tv.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I looked at her and I said I'm already talking about she's all. Do you work for that show? And I said, yeah, I'm character designer there. She's all sitting there. She's all year, this and year that. I told her look, lady, I go. You're lucky that you're standing here before me this way. It's it's been any. If my life would have been any other way, I would have been standing behind you in the ATM with a gun in your back. Just know that. All right, so be fortunate that you're standing like this and telling you. You're talking this shit and I can take it Fit.
Speaker 2:But I want you to understand one thing I worked at this place but I didn't create it, I didn't write it. I. I go to work and it's like you know, it's like getting mad at the, at the guy at the slaughterhouse man, it's his job. He's got to kill the cattle, that's his job. Yeah, and that's what my job was. I had to draw characters. I got until a lot. One of the times I got in trouble with by celebrities was do you remember gary colman from different strokes? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, mind you, I told you, I was a big guy.
Speaker 2:I was like four bills I'm. At the time I was like 61. I lost a lot of wings. I lost a couple inches in height. I was like four bills Six one. I used to drive a 63 lowrider in paula and I was full on like like raider nation dump, all the time, sober and glad, and I had to go teach the bottom to middle of my chest. So I was, I was. I looked like I bugged up pretty hardcore.
Speaker 2:He got mad where I drew him so he kept complaining to the writers. You know who the fuck drew this? I want to see the guy who drew this. And they were telling him hey man, you really don't want to complain to this dude, he's a big guy, he's. I don't give a shit how big he is. He goes, get him down, get him up here. Right now I want to talk to the space. And they're all hey, you know, you were saying you were saying you were kind of impressed, it's kind of intimidated by that 63 lowrider down there. Well, that's his, and then he's all. I don't care, I want to talk to you, all right. So they call it gorilla, they need you in the writers. All right.
Speaker 2:So I go up there, I walk in and he's sure enough, little guys in there, because, hey, you're the one that drew me, yep, and he starts talking shit. I'm like, hey, bro, don't get mad at me, brother, this is your face. This is the picture they gave me. This is your face. You know I put them side by side. This is what they gave. He wanted me to draw him the way he was known like when he was a kid. You know he wanted a cute little picture of himself. They had a most recent drunk picture of him, so I use that. You know something that was from the news and it was relevant. So he got really pissed off and, uh, you know, that was one of those things where, like a lot of celebrities were, you find out vanity on some celebrities. Some people get really pissed. Like my nose isn't that big, or bro, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I'm not that bad and you know, try to try to be a dick, but you know we were, we had to be dead on or because it was our job. You know it was our job to do it, but some people just got mad at it. Some people didn't like I'm sorry that they need the restaurant. She called the cops. Yeah, she called the cops. She wanted, she made a big, she was what today I guess you can't call them that, but there was a Karen over her time. Yeah, she was, she was on it man, she was all over me man. Yeah, and she's telling me that. You know I was, I was a trouble with society. You're like, yeah, I work for flocks. I know, you know that's so. It was kind of a funny thing. But yeah it, our artwork is, is kind of it's been my life and still there and it's like the controversial and uh, and that's what's fun about it. But, like you said, um, um, when you have the ability now to to lock down like a history and the pronouns of something and say like, yeah, this, this happened at this time, um, we were aware of that when we started doing all the recordings and we started doing a lot of social media. We started instagram, the first thing we started doing is, like you know, we should do start recording every drawing that we do, so that way we have a time stamp. So if someone copies our shit we can say, hey, dude, we put that on the grand back on this date and we and I have the original paper.
Speaker 2:Back then I was drawing a lot on paper. Like I said, only recently do I go digital. So a lot of the artwork that I have I still have. When we got into NFTs, I thought, you know, if someone buys my artwork and I was just fine the drawing and send it to them. But then the logistical madness of that crossed my mind. I go man, that's a lot of paper, that's a lot of signals, a lot of mailing. You know when am I going to plan to draw, trying to build a metaverse here, bro? So I didn't want, I did. I thought now maybe there's another way.
Speaker 2:So then, and make say well, we need to find out more about NFTs and find out what is the, what are the downfalls, where are the where we're gonna go bad. And you know. So we, we start. We said our spend the last month now doing our homework. It's only been a month that it feels like we're doing it for like a year.
Speaker 2:Every day something new, like you think, those spaces yeah, this is like NFTs freaks We've been very helpful. That dude asked it on every. Well, we've gone that. Who is that other person we're listening to? Well, there's a bunch of, there's so many that we've been kind of like listening on and and they have, yes, sound advice and they, they've been doing it like they said you can't go to college for energy, you can't go, there's no class for you. You know, this is your kind of again, like the simpson on the job training. I gotta do it. I got, I got to learn as I go and I'm trying to find out every aspect.
Speaker 2:When we first came in, the metaverse hadn't even popped up. I mean, we were talking about selling some drawings and maybe meeting some artists, and then Leap didn't show it up and I was like what's this dude? And then everything just started to change. Yeah, it's like sandbox, almost sandbox. I've seen sandbox. You know, I follow this again, the twitch streams of some of these gamers.
Speaker 2:I was telling Meg, you know, how are they getting like some of these mods going? Yeah, how are they getting like hope to be insight back that thought. Or naked body or skeleton. How are they getting these mods? How do you know? How are they jumping the map? You know what are they doing here? How are they getting all these like modifications? Who's altering the code? And so I'm still kind of trying to figure that out. So I'm talking to, like everyone says oh, it's easy, you gotta go, bro. If it's that easy, then I guess I can put my own stuff in and I, yeah, is it isn't easy, because everyone keeps saying it's so, so easy.
Speaker 2:I keep seeing so many people like I'm altering their Grand Theft Auto, like I've seen the characters, all the characters from like sing or do some pretty awesome shit. I don't pretty pornographic stuff going. Yeah, the Grand Theft Auto is like dang, this guy who had his pants down Like running around punching people, but he had his pants like halfway down to see his ass and taking balls. And then there was a chick who was masturbating and blowing somebody on Grand Theft Auto. I was like holy shit, this is popping up for real. And it's like on these Twitch streams and like, dude, how are you guys doing this stuff? Man, it's yeah, you know, hey, man, I'm impressed. Who knows, I mean, I'm able to do this. This is insane.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to figure out more and more on how people are starting to, I guess, incorporate artwork into the NFT realm without getting into the game. I don't want my stuff, I don't want my characters to be put into some nardy shit either. You know, some of them are kind of like cute and cuddly, and now if you want to go and mess around with some of my gangster stuff, then, yeah, I got some dirty stuff too, but for the most part, you know, because I came from television and I did with stangers. In practice, I've kind of kept myself pretty censored and pretty much tongue-in-cheek parodies, to the point where you get close enough and not Cross that line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now I know that you know decentralized and you know, at three there's gonna be like really no, no rules and regulations. So, exactly, I'm kind of excited about that because I thought they were necessary and I guess they kind of are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's the tough conversation right now, that's the tough conversation yeah and I again, I'm kind of listening to the conversations about it Because I get what people are saying, that there's some kids in here and stuff like that, but I mean doomed. I've talked to kids that were so like more that I draw on paper Because since they were kids and entered school they've known nothing but tab. They don't even know how to walk. Wow, how do you draw on paper? It was this girl. I thought it was the cutest thing ever. She's all fuck paper. I hate it. It's so unforgiving, she's all so forgiving she's. I can't work with this bullshit Like well, yeah, because you have to race, there's no any done, do, and if you fucking use of use and mark your ink, it's dude. You fuck up and never know how to fix it. So I watch these kids that are like still on of a digital age. I come from an analog and I've evolved into digital, so I'm trying to grab the analog knowledge and try to incorporate it somehow.
Speaker 2:So I can at least make it more comfortable understanding for people that are a little afraid of it. You know, like right now our metaverse immediately, I want to integrate controls. I want to. I want to use a PlayStation control. I want to use something like the will we switch? Something that we could. You know, I don't want to use keyboard, I want to be able to wear Oculus and do that kind of shit. So I you know the idea of making a cartoon for Fox or food Disney sounds so Archaic to me. Now it sounds like it sounds like old school shit, you know you know what's wild man is?
Speaker 1:that, like 99% of the world would not think that's archaic, that's still a lot. That's still like a good percentage of the world's dream. Who hasn't discovered this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a stat, and that's what I'm saying. There's so many artists that do not know that the future is like right here and they're still like you know, oh man, if I get a chance, I'm gonna sell my shit to Disney or Nickelodeon or, oh, if I get a chance, sony, paramount, somebody's gonna buy my shit. And if I do, you don't know what you're getting into. I know they might be a dream of yours and go for it. I'm not trying to shit on nobody shit. I'm not the opinion that you dream. Go for broke bro.
Speaker 2:But what I'm saying is is in that industry and in the entertainment industry that I took part of and it still exists, it's a cutthroat. There's sharks and and and there's, it's very cutthroat and people want what you have. I've heard suits say this if it wasn't for the artist, this be a great industry About animation. It wasn't for the artist, well shit, if it wasn't for our son, you wouldn't have an industry. And I've actually gotten into arguments with some of these guys talking that kind of trash, saying that you know what you guys get in the way because you guys think you know best said, we know what we'd like to see with our artwork and we know we'd like Be the purpose of what we have caught, what we created, what we'd like to accomplish or what the goal of it was. You like the other things pretty big. You get this with it, not knowing that's not what we wanted to do right now. We got into the MFT world.
Speaker 2:Everyone saw the cats and they think that my metaverse is gonna be nothing. But the meow, meow, meow game is only a section, I'd say again, referring to that movie I do, where you go to earn money and Face danger, but for the most part I want it to be a vacation spot, a place where people can come be artistic graffiti walls, place where art can be displayed and sold for other artists. I don't need a piece of other people. That's the one thing I'm not cool with when someone says I'll give you a piece of it. I know that it's a necessary thing because of loyalty, like royalties and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But, um, when I've worked with other artists and I've had them do stuff for me, I Just let them have the money. They wouldn't be doing it, they didn't need it. I, like I said, I've been fortunate and blessed with some cash. You know, my wife is a CPA. She's very successful at what she does. Me and Meg may has made my business. You know, she's kept it alive to the last, for sure, 16 years for sure. She's keeping her a few of the lives because if it wasn't for her, there'd be no social media. They wouldn't be a catalog of myself, they would be no archiving of everything that I've done, it wouldn't be the networking, we wouldn't have investors in Saudi Arabia and princes of stuff trying to talk to us. You know, if it hadn't been for her making the right connection, now, as an artist, I'm very skeptical about anyone trying to invest in me. I don't like the idea of someone saying I'm gonna put money in you and you're gonna do what I say and it's like whoa, what do you mean? They have you either like my shit and buy it and I move on with my life, or, you know, we just don't do business at all. But some of these guys, the way they see it is like they want to buy into my life and they want to buy my, my properties and my and own a little piece of me to, yeah, like chair. Well, this guy's I, this that created this and he comes from here Because of my prom nots and where I come from. They think they can capitalize off that and I'm not cool with it. I want to work with other artists. I don't any cool. I've talked to some collectors and I like, I like their ideas, I like how they say hey man, I like what you're doing, in a sense of collecting.
Speaker 2:The first NFT we sold was to Well, you do my best friend because she, she's a collector and she's jumping the NFT. She wanted to be the first to get my first NFT, you know. And and I told her I go, all right, great, let's do this. And she jumped on board and got our first one and I thought this is awesome, you know, now she's involved, I'm involved, mm-hmm, but it's it's again a moving train that is constantly changing. I don't know what we're gonna do or where we're gonna go, I don't know who we're gonna meet, but I'm excited. It's like being somewhere for the first time with a bunch of cool fucking people they know, or into the same shit. Like you go into tool concert, you know, everywhere in the same fucking shirt. It's in the same fucking van.
Speaker 1:So that's what I'm talking about, man, yeah exactly like I stopped going to festivals after ACL. I think it was in 2018 when I went to go see Pearl Jam with my buddies. I was seeing both weekends. I love it like Pearl Jam. Yeah, yeah, dude, yeah man. But what I, what I realized was that you know, at ACL, like it's, it's, it's, you know it's. I live in Austin, right, it's like you know. You got to do it. At least once you know it's one of the things you like. If you're local, you got to do it. Go to South by good ACL. Go to like yeah.
Speaker 2:I. I brush my stuff here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, even though they're big fucking deals, I brush them off as like, yeah, yeah, whatever, but like I that it was that show that I realized that I will never go to a festival again, because it's not because, you know, like it's just a cool place to be, but it's the fact that when I tried to like I'm a mover, I'm a shaker, like when I, when I go see a band, like I want to move, I yell, I sing, I dance Like, I vibe, you know like, yeah, yeah, why the fuck are we like, are we there anyway? You know, like, what's the point of paying all this money if you can't vibe but with you? But there was a sea of like Bros and Barbies that would just like Stand there and they wouldn't move and they wouldn't let you through. And I'm like this is not the experience I will never like I want to go see a print and Pearl Jam kill it, like Eddie always kills it, like you know, just, they just they just do magic.
Speaker 1:But I want to go see a Pearl Jam show like with it. Just Pearl Jam fans like, as I've Heard some of their live recordings, man, like there's not. You know, I'm not gonna go see a Pearl Jam show, not, you know, like when you listen to a song and you hear the live recording and you can kind of like barely hear the crowd, like that Pearl Jam shows you can hear it syllable for syllable there is not one word in that audience that does not know every single word to every single song that they're playing like it Is it anything with tool, like it's?
Speaker 1:it's the same vibe like I want to go to a place when it's nothing but just Ridiculously fanatic, like fanatic tool. People like I that's only people I want to be around like cuz, like we're paying for an experience Like I don't know if you know this, your mother will probably tell you this, but at tool, they're one of the few bands where you cannot like. They'll warn you probably about 50 times before this the show starts. No cell phones yeah, recording good pictures.
Speaker 2:No, nothing, because we have no footage of her at all in these places. I was we don't know exactly recording that shit.
Speaker 1:It's an experience and like they want you to be there with them in this moment and celebrate this time, like. And then at the end, like, they always play the song called stink fist at the very end, and that is the only recording of a show. You really I mean you'll people bootleg it, people get away with recording, but the most recorded song is stink fist because they literally allow you to do that. But during the show, if you have your phone out, like your, your warnings before the show are your warnings. You don't get a warning once the show starts. If they see you with your phone, you're out like and I've seen it happen like they are really, really serious about that and it's like it forces us to stay in this room In the moment with them and have this ridiculously strong connection that no one else gets to have, because this is what we paid for and there's something really special about that.
Speaker 2:We went, we, we stood there's festivals out here, coachella.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, see, yeah, yeah, oh yeah like this beautiful and all these other ones we went to. The last couple went to Coachella. Last time we went to Coachella was the same thing. Everybody was standing around with phone, everyone's like no one was listening to the music and it was kind of like dude with the fuck, and there was a lot and he said a lot of bros that were there. Obviously the fight. You know there's like dude, what do you guys hear for you? You paid all this money to get kicked out crazy.
Speaker 2:So the last festival we start. We started kind of pulling back. I'm trying to go like Coachella. We pulled back, I'm not going to that. And then we ended up going to New Orleans for their bootleg fest and that was. It was in the rain, it was fucking, it was like no record because you know it was rain, so I was like it was pouring down and lightning was gonna strike you, you know, right everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, pull out of phone. You're, like me, wrong on the fabric. So that people on stage it was, it was great told that Phil got too ready in the stage, just started to sink, but it was, it was, it was viving. Oh my god, people were, and I was so pundly people I don't know where they got these a big old you know, those rastad look like a pizza car was running and sliding in mud puddles and she was watching it live. She, you see, like on video. You're like, oh my god, it's festival is crazy. You know this. We were there firsthand. We got see peaches on stage. She was dancing with vaginas and penises, you know, in the rain and she was. It was crazy. Yeah, it was something that you know we're jumping up and down. There was no one videotaping this shit. It was just happening, it was, it was, it was bomb, so it was, it was something like that.
Speaker 2:And I Mean I'd never been to Mississippi at all. Yeah, and really the other than also, I was kind of crazy. So we went to Mississippi, louisiana, I Didn't know you could eat gator. Like you know, I'm from California, like there's no alligators out here in Coyote and bears and shit. But you know I went there another for a week. I eat alligator and it was because I get to tell you the experience being on bourbon street, being out the week, I think we recorded maybe one experience on bourbon street, but it was so much going on it was like there's just gonna get a phone dropped in this. Let's just live the moment.
Speaker 1:And it was like after that you can't capture that there's no possible way to do that, because even if you do it, people don't have the context, they don't have the emotions and that same thing at a tools and especially at at concerts, you're gonna get the worst quality and you're never gonna watch that over again, like you know, you know, I mean like it's like, especially as a tool fan, like they like really fit my demographic.
Speaker 1:Because, like I'm a snob when it comes to like audio quality, like when I, when I hear some like really good, like they're just acoustics are beautiful. Like they, there's just it, just the audio engineering, if they're when, if they're like with their music, is a working artist of itself and so it. But it's just like I'm not gonna go listen to a tool song on my phone that was recorded like give me a break, man. Like I'm not, I'm just not gonna do that man.
Speaker 2:You know I drew my, my, uh, my, we part of his buddy and one of the first stages he comes across is opophis. Opophis is a band that I made up. Opophis is actual media, supposed to strike years and 30 years. Thought it was funny. So I thought you know what Fuck it? They were doing the planet. So I just fucking I'll make a band out of it. So pop is in that first scene I drew a bunch of animals and every single one was holding a phone up the holy, you know it's. So we're throwing up horns like devil horns, but they're rocking out. But I put up a lot of phones and I did that because I thought you know every concert, no matter where I go. Now Me and Meg went to go see a band. She, like a guy, ride, and dude was trying to record and talk in the same place. Even if you're gonna fucking watch the show and record it, why the fucking gonna talk if you wouldn't?
Speaker 2:shut up because all my god, I mean it was very show. Like dude, are you part? What are you recording for later? How are you gonna listen to this? So you know you're right. In a concert, you immerse yourself. That's why we like in this NFT realm, if we make the metaverse, I would love to have venues where you could, like you imagine that we had the bowl and said, hey, tool, we'd like you to come play tomorrow. Boy over here, and he liked me, you play. And I'm sure we'd like to buy all the tool fans. And why now? Wouldn't it be cool to have a place where they all just go and have been play and just like in the VR realm? I think that'd be cool where everyone's like oh shit, I can see, I can see you, I can see you and we're in real culture. But you know, you know you don't have to worry about get stand out Going to some of these concerts. The last time we went to I think it was uh, system of the down.
Speaker 1:The master got out of control. What? Oh yeah, what a while. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That master got a little out of hand, so we got a little too close to that and I'm rolling with two girls all the time, yeah so my wife and her and so big and he had to put a step back. So, uh, you know we, you know it was a pretty dangerous little thing, but you know, when you think about in br, at least when we do a match, that no one's gonna get her, yeah, yeah, well, you know, on a side, you know, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know, this is a side note for like offline, but surge uh the the lead singer system of down you got to check some of his artwork. He's like. He's like a. He does his own art on the side, like I know.
Speaker 2:I know all about because we have a friend named hard. He's Armenian, his father is a very pronounced. He paints up for the for the Vatican. Very, oh yeah, he's very famous painter. Uh, his last name of Geer, I can't pronounce it, it starts with a G. But hi, his son is a great musician, plays guitar like a motherfucker, he's great. Well, he's a big system in the down fan. Because they're all Armenian, they're you know, they all kind of like you know, look out for one another. Yeah and uh, I guess I I don't know if he met, but his dad ended up talking to them and they found out surge was the painter and they started showing some of the work. I'm a holy shit. This guy gets down.
Speaker 1:No sir, just sir, just a man yeah um.
Speaker 2:Chris Brown. I mean Chris Brown, the fucking singer. If you see his artwork it's crazy. He's a great dupini artists. He can draw, he can paint. It's like a lot of great Artists out there, a lot of rappers that could really bust and stuff it's. It's crazy that there's a lot of musician that Took the hard the musician route but could have easily stayed in the art realm easy, you know Bart, since, yeah, the way we see him today.
Speaker 2:You know who evolved them from that ugly ugly Tracy Almond, look. Remember that Tracy Almond show had the Bart Simpson look right, and then it evolved to what he looks like now. You know who did that? Eric Stefani, no doubt. Oh shit, eric Stefani. He worked in Los Angeles, he was there. He was there as an artist in the chimpsons and he's the one that evolved. And, look, he's the one that mapped out and wiped out. Everyone knows that. I'd no one's ever given him credit for it. I'll give, I'll give kudos to that. Now, I'm never thinking like he showed from the studio once. I'm not that dude from no doubt that. Oh yeah, he's the work here. I'm a what? Oh yeah, that's Eric Stefani. I'm a. But Mr Farni, the guy you guys keep talking about. He's the doc Daniel. Yeah, it's Gwen's brother. Oh no, shit.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, he worked with a lot of people there, but he's a great artist. Again, he's the one that actually um Rendered.
Speaker 2:I could say a regular, because he's skate March structure, given that 3d, like that, made the tubes connect and the. You know, homer's a thumb, thimble and a ball. If you ever want to draw Homer, that's a. She's headed a thumb in a thimble on a ball and there's time spikes the bar, if I remember correctly, and then I think they changed Peter. But the live is stuff that we did back then. There was rules and stuff.
Speaker 1:Back there the chimpsons.
Speaker 2:You could never put Homer. You couldn't draw him with his hands on his waist like a bug's bunny it was. That would. Oh yeah, there was a big no, no, you couldn't do that. You couldn't have him do that. Put two, one, it was something. There was a rule that they did with that, but I was there, I don't know they dropped, because I seen them do it after that.
Speaker 2:A lot of things, that Good things change, as you, you know, when you're somewhere and then you look at it, you know I'm looking at McDonald's when they actually had fire. You know, I remember that, but there was no firing in place. It was crazy. Yeah, you can actually start to fire in McDonald's and Carl's drew your hand and accidentally did what you got, pissed me off. It was a thing. It was a thing serious. But hey, man, I'm glad we got to talk because you know I was.
Speaker 2:I was very nervous about doing this for one, because I have. I've spoke to a lot of Talk about miss, the emotion because he passed away and on his death, that. But haven't called me, um, michelle, his daughter we're still friends, you know for her to say hey, my dad, you know he wanted just to say goodbye and I'm like, holy shit, you know, are you serious? And you know, this is the guy who taught a mentor. You got you, push me.
Speaker 2:There's this guy who really said, hey, this is this is you. This is what you're gonna do. You're gonna be an artist. Come hell or I wanted. This is what you are. It's not what you're gonna become, it's what you are. I've told my niece, when she was like one years old, she grabbed a pencil like the normal person, like the normal pencil grab, and I was like I told my sister go, dude, she's gonna be an artist lying must, because I used to do that. I used to just grab a pencil and draw like nothing, and she would do you know, you know yeah and yeah, even kind of.
Speaker 2:You know she's gotten into those things and soccer and so I got. But I'm sure she picked up a pencil. It would probably just come so natural to her. It would just would. My brothers and sisters all could do it, which was kind of a trip. All of us were artists but I was the one that pursued it. My brother campaign, my sister campaign, stole. Uh, my brother Martin was a great cartooner. He would build, would be. His woodworking skills were crazy. So all in my brother, my brother hobby he was the mathematical one. He used to tutor teachers in quantum physics. But uh, all that smart didn't didn't prevent him from going nine years of jail for not telling. You know, I would tell the crazy shit ever I don't want to know. It's called the promise on dateline. If you ever want to know that whole story, it's the craziest thing ever I'm. It's. It was embarrassing at one time, but now it's something that you know. You have to embrace what it is. You know you. You learn from the past, man, I'm pretty sure my brother learns.
Speaker 1:Always a lot yeah yeah, you missed.
Speaker 2:He missed a lot in that. But, and in the tragedy of my life and in that, because he was part of it, um, great art was created. You know, me and meg were able to create so many cool little things because the escape from what was going on was like me and meg would be. You know, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we this happened. Or hey, you know, I thought of this character and we just start making up a story. When we were on a walk, she took a picture of a I think it was a leaf, and she said it looked like a bat. And then we started talking about it'd be cool. But a little bat, the baddie, our buckle, and he had, you know, a little glow room friend. You know, he was a friend of dark you know and we just see always little thing.
Speaker 2:We just came up with a story.
Speaker 2:Next to you know, we have a whole little drawn out story for this guy. Have pictures and images of this little character we just made up on a walk and you know it's. I would love for other people to see it. I would love other people to say you know, I? I think I could add to that. Okay, I would love to share what I've created thus far, because I can't do it all by myself.
Speaker 2:You know, we're looking at over 20 years of IPs that have cross pollinated one another, all spread, all stemming from sport. Me. Sporty was the original like hub where it was going to be a platform where I can introduce all my friends that do comic book, you know, graffini art, just t-shirts and people that do sculptors. There was a guy who made a cool wire, a gorilla from you. He was called the wire guy. I don't know what happened to him, but he was doing Just out of wire, making just movable characters, you know, like transformers in the sand at the beach, and he would just find pieces in the trash wires and bolts and stuff and build these things and it was amazing.
Speaker 2:And you know, just art, art, like everywhere, everywhere I look. Mr Leavitt told me You'll look at everything. You buy a shirt, anything. It's gonna say Levi's. It's gonna say something, nike, they'll say adidas, something. You go to the store. It's not just a box, it's just, you know, cereal. It's gonna have a little cute character on it. You know, look at, look at charms. Let's look at this, look at that and then look at the back, look at the back of the box. You think that just was made. They, they just decided I'll do that.
Speaker 2:Someone drew that and I'd like. He made me look at packaging and that, you know, at t-shirts and that things that were like fashion. I had a draw. He made me draw of fashion. He said you see that model. He showed me a pack to your magazine.
Speaker 2:You know he goes, draw a girl, any girl you want to draw, and put those, put that clothing on her. And I was like, oh shit, you know, make, you know, try to grab that design, put it on. So I did that and he's also that fashion. You just put clothing on a different person. I said, well, I didn't make it up, he goes. Well, he goes. Now can you draw clothing on another person? I'm sure, but now that I know what you want. Tell me what you want to dress at the top. He would tell me and I would do it, and then he goes, that's fashion. So he introduced me to all aspects. Uh, the only thing that he didn't introduce me to was computers, and that's that was on my own, through gaming and, and you know, just by the time that I got a computer in college that do, and all those were really big. Yeah, man, I just jumped in way, dude, and I went for bro.
Speaker 1:But again, but again, he showed you the door. He didn't teach you how, like you know it's like. He like that was the computer stuff, all the good, that's that's all you you know. Like that, that's that's it like it's like. Like I said, he showed you the door. He didn't do it for you, but he showed you the door, he showed you the applications, he showed you different ways and then you found a way to apply your own thing to it.
Speaker 1:And I think that, like that's the beauty of like having having this man, and like I just I think I've said it probably three or four times but like like you have so much to contribute to the scene by sharing stories like that, to like show people the door and then they can come up with other ideas to bring through the door. Like but once you like part of that Challenge with anyone learning something new, is that like, once you see the door, it's good. But like getting to that point where you can like see it, it, it hinders creativity, it creates a lot of stuff, doubt, a lot of imposter syndrome, all all, all the things. You know what I mean. And so, like dude, I would, I would love to like see some of that shit like as I feel like you would be like such a huge personality on spaces, like like bringing up other artists, like getting, like finding ways to collaborate with other artists, or Twitter spaces is and I don't like using this word in a negative term, I'll find a better word for it but it's like. It's like a cesspool of like creativity, man, like it's. It's, there's just there, is just like like I know that it has a negative connotation to it there's just like. So much talent like permeating through Twitter and like you just randomly come into these like Twitter spaces Like I want to start wrapping it up here, man, but like I found this. Like there was like a. There was a. There was a website that I go to or that I like, where I can own some fractions of blue chip NFT projects. It's wild, dude.
Speaker 1:I actually had the community manager on a couple weeks ago and they were talking about some new shit that went way over my head. I was just there vibing you know what I mean and, um, they're like yeah, but you couldn't do this and like wait a second, couldn't you do this by doing like this, this and that and doing that as an overlay, and changing this code and Technically couldn't that be done? And there was some, some the silence. He was like, yeah, it actually could be, like who wants a weekend project? And, if you like, if you can do this, like you're hired and I'm like this is the type of shit that's happening in these spaces. You're just like Now. I understood none of what was happening, but what I did understand was this was really big and like the fact that we're able to like Someone could that could literally change someone's life. Yeah, you know, just from hanging out in an audio chat room like, well, you know, it's fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I, I've recently just told the story. This am I okay? I told you about DJ, my brother, when, yeah, yeah, now, when we ended up, he ended up a king of the hill and, uh, future rama and what he was at future rama. Now DJ, he's 5, 8 and he was about three, 20, 25 at the time. Little guy and he, he said I'm tired of drawing heroes. He was really in the comic book, superman's, a little spatman stuff. He was I want to be a hero in real life. I'm what do you mean? He was I want to be a fireman. I go okay, let's go. And with me it was never he.
Speaker 2:I never told DJ no, if he said I want to do this, we're gonna do it. So everyone says I'm too short and too fat. And I said, well, then we're going to the gym. And I got him into the gym and we started working out and I got him. I got him down to 190 of solid muscles. He became a fireman. He's still fireman at 63 in venice, a fireman paramedic.
Speaker 2:And I, you know I was on a journey with him then. You know I was there, like you said, to open doors and and watch people as you open the door and watch and go. And I and I did. I watched that. I watched DJ from going into animation To saying I don't want to do this anymore. I want to. I want to draw, I want to, I want to be a real hero. Yeah, dj is a great example of me saying no, I'll open the door.
Speaker 2:And cousin Muncie, roy, cousin Roy, doesn't want to. He's cousin, uh he, when he was a little kid he would constantly ask me to come watch and play football and I told him, sure, I'll come watch your games. And he said, um, I, I watched him play and I told him, like, well, you know, you're really good, I can't wait for you to play in the NFL. And he goes, you think I can, I go, I guarantee you will play in the NFL. I'm, I'm assuring you that you will and I have the king. So all through high school and college and stuff, I kept telling you you're gonna be in the fell. You know me.
Speaker 2:And when he got to college he got to scholarship to the San Jose state and he didn't have a corn and I had an El Camino I tool, silver and black when I would die hard raiders fan and had a gold and black one. And I gave him the golden black and I said I hope this doesn't come back to bite me. He was what do you mean? I said well, I should give you the silver and black so that way you play for the Raiders. And he goes uh, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2:So he went off play centers a little bit. They transferred over to the hustles. He graduated hustles First year out. He became a pit spritz steward, all right, and he wanted a Super Bowl ring. When he was a little kid I told him when you're an adult and you're on Super Bowl field, I want you to call me and tell me hey, I'm on the field. Guess what he did on the day of the Super Bowl when he played. He played with Paul and bottle and want to see that NFL. I don't picture me with the ring, but he called me from the field. He goes hey, grill against where I'm at. I go. I know where you're at, baby, because I knew for when he was a kid. You know when you see talent.
Speaker 1:I know, you just know it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it, yeah, and I whether it's football, whether it's a talent with them a guitar or a bass, or a drawing, a pencil, it doesn't matter. When you see talent, it's not. I have no credit in that kid's accomplishment. Djs or or muncie, I don't have any accomplishment. They say oh, thank you, drill, it's all because of you. I did nothing other than witness and encourage them to do what they've set out to do, that all they wanted to do. Yeah, they wanted to. They wanted to be firemen, they wanted about. Both of them were firemen. Um uh, muncie's apartment in Arizona and dj is like what? Going 18, 20, 16 years, 17 years, for sure. The has a paramedic. So he's like going 18 years as a firefighter now and he said venus 63's.
Speaker 2:I'm very proud of my boys, you know. I'm very proud of their accomplishment and I felt a sense of pride and a sense of like. I did it too, even though I I did nothing to deal with it, yeah, but I didn't. But sitting on the sidelines like watching, like a parent watching their kid, you know, and I, that's what I felt like. I felt like watching. I watched someone Blossom into what they said they were gonna do and it felt as if I was now wearing mr Leavrette's shoe and watching me Does that make?
Speaker 1:sense Like I was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was able to see and walk the shoes of someone that I admired and it did what. What someone did for me, I was doing for someone else. Dj and them were living in south central, off big row in 66. Now, you know, south central Los Angeles, that's a pretty rough area. Okay, watch boys in the hood, it's not far from there, it's. It's. It's south central, near it's near the coliseum. It's pretty raw. It was a rough area. It's been Pretty cleaned up now it's. It's pretty good, gentrified, pretty good in that area. You know it's it's. It's not what it once was, but when dj was there, um, it was very wrong.
Speaker 2:I had him living with me for a while when I first met him because he was, you know, his. You know, as an artist, every artist carries a little caboodle. You know it's a little archery little you know, because little full of archery, he would get robbed of that. He would get robbed of that on a date just taking the bus and he was like having a rough time just getting back and forth to school. Now, mind you, my boys, you know, definitely black though he can handle himself, he can defend himself, but you know guns and stuff that would be whipped down and we can't do much against. So he had pretty much give up what he had in the times and show up to school. We're at the time we were doing that school with nothing, so I didn't abide them new materials constantly and, having stayed with me, I gave him a van because that way he wouldn't have to ride the bus anymore. So, yeah, yeah, and giving him my old company van from the teacher company. He was a busted up band, it was getting on him a to b. Amen, I was in all the nice, yeah, but that little bit helped him and his family and I was always there for them and they're they just to me to see their families, my family, that's my fam. I'm very proud of them. I'm very, very I was very glad to see that they turned their lives into what they set out to do.
Speaker 2:From the area they technically were what have been a statistic, from where they live, yeah, none of them, none of them. No, you know. But dad went around, you know, nobody was around. Uncles were shot, they're dead and stuff like that. They were living at granny's house. Um, freddie may Said with you know, god bless, god bless you and rough your soul. She entrusted me with her family. She pretty much she's trusted me with them because she got me.
Speaker 2:You know DJ wasn't child and 17 years old and I was like 20 something, hanging out with this kid. You know I'm like eight, like nine years older than or whatever, and I'm hanging out with him. You know he didn't have a brother or a dad that he could look on and I took him under my wing and I I watched him turn into what he is today. He drew for the king of the hill and for future Rama and now as a firefighter, I had nothing to do with that but the watch yeah, you know it's excessive journeys Like you were talking about, to open the door and let someone try something. That's what I'd like to do now here in this NFT world. I'm gonna try make so me about maybe starting a space and trying something. I was gonna start tweeting. I've never done any of this stuff before, so I'm I'm very new to it. I'm just with my first podcast, so I don't know if I'm done. This is any good. I don't know if I've done right.
Speaker 1:Oh Well, here's the thing, man. There's no right or wrong way. Like there, it just is what it is. Like we're, we're we're two dudes recording an almost three hour podcast like vibing about your story and art and like all this shit. Like there's no rules. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like this is just a creation. This is like because, like my like when it comes to my abilities, like I, I've always been really good at relationship building, listening, talking to people like I can find common ground with a pedal. You know what I mean. And and and, and. This is like my creative expression, you know. So it's just like when, when Meg was like you know, he, he can go, man, and we got to have some guardrails, and I mean I fuck the guardrails. Like like, um, we go, like we go where the conversation takes us and that's the coolest part, because we've gone from your childhood, we've gone to your studio experience, we've gone to NFTs, we've gone to like all over the place, all all fucking over the place, man, and like that's.
Speaker 1:I, I, I, I, I'd I'd have it no other way. I mean to be honest, like that's, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You know something as as and yeah for yeah, leaving my life the way I've lived it, it's kind of you start to think like it's kind of yeah, you feel like it could be embarrassing, or maybe even like you're just gonna be Uh, a bad influence. A lot of people, actually. I was told one time, so you should permit or tell anybody around with homeboys or that you know I, that you were involved in this, involved in that, but that's what made me what I am today. You know I can't. You know I still have homie. I still. I still talk to my now they're older, they still do, they're still, you know, still do not go anything. I'm not talking to any things which, at 50, I find incredibly stupid. But whatever you know, do your thing they're like yeah, yeah, some of us.
Speaker 2:Some of us took a path of following Dreams and careers and trying to be decent members of society. All these stayed on the course where they'll never see a tree, a bird or the sun again. So it's kind of it's kind of you know it's, it's hardcore, you know, when you look at where we're at you know. So for me to be here and kind of talk about it's kind of it could be Arctic, but also a little it's kind of stressful and freaky because you start thinking people are gonna hate me now because they're gonna know like no, it's fucking god. He didn't even go to school because I give you good art school and people thought like I was, I was, I was shit upon in the industry.
Speaker 2:For that People are saying you didn't even go to school. You don't know these references that we're talking about, us You're talking about, like you know. Oh, you're talking about freaks, that that movie freaked. There was a movie called freaks that everyone was like at one time there were. All of everyone was talking about freaks and was because, oh, it was something that they showed over at Cal arts and I was like I didn't go to Cal arts, so what's good Did you go to? That's like they showed at every art school and they didn't go to our school and some people thought I was, I didn't deserve to be there. They, I was told you, you don't belong here, bro, you don't belong here. And I said, fuck you, I earned my spin this year and ain't nobody firing me. I've been here a year and I'm Obviously you did because you're there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel myself. I made it. Just because I came in a different way, doesn't, you know, deserve to be here? And as a business owner, ice, this was my motto, you know, as if I hired anyone. I don't care if you had a degree, if you can do the job, the proof is in the pudding. I don't give a shit what the paper says, it's the action. If you can draw, you can print, if you can do whatever Fuck I need you to do, I don't care if you went to school for it, but if you have the abilities, man, you could do it and you're on, man, I'm down for that.
Speaker 2:So I'm not really for for pedigree. You know, because I've worked with a lot of people, that I went to this. I'm made to come body. I did that and just that to give. But your art and shit, you know I and I'm hearing your shit, dude because all you talking about is where you went to school and all the people that you know. But you know I don't sound like a dick or nothing, but you didn't drop with this. In the sense you didn't drop. I'm the guy. So you can suck it. Don't tell me about. You know things like that.
Speaker 2:So I've gotten into a piece of that. Tell me that. You know I shouldn't tell my story. They were I should. I should really glorify more and tell people, like pretty aside to how it was, and I said, well, that that's not me, homie, I'm not gonna tell people A bullshit story that you know. Someone can call me on later say, hey, that's not true. Everything I told you is true. Some white friends that are dead and gone can't back it up. The ones that are jail aren't gonna talk to you probably would. They'd love to hear from anybody.
Speaker 1:You're right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't. I have a rule of mind. You know, there's some things that I just kind of live by. If you go away, do this your choice, man. Good luck, I'll see you when you get out. You know I'm not, I'm not gonna chase that. That's your choice, bro.
Speaker 2:I have too many friends in there, have I had to say, to write a letter to all my friends that have decided to take that route? I, I'd eat up a lot of time and I wouldn't be there when we're doing it. And so you know, a lot of them didn't believe in my model, and my model was simple and it still sticks to this day. And I told me, we're gonna enter the nft world with the same model I've always had. You could run with me, you can run behind, you run next to me or don't run at all, but get the fuck out of the way because the gorilla's come. You know I'm full steam and I'm coming full steam. There's nothing gonna stop me, there's nothing gonna hinder what I intend to do here.
Speaker 2:I, I want to create a world. I want to create a world with other artists. I want a bunch of us to work together in unison to say look there, look what we did. We did this shit. All right, we can't be the one guy that could say I did this on myself, great, someone can. It could have been better if you had more people. Possibly, you don't know and I I believe that shit.
Speaker 2:There's so much talent out there that's not seen that I. This is what I want to do now. I want to hook up with everyone that thinks they're good. I didn't give a shit if they're not. I want to see how good they are and if they can use them improvement or if they could take some honest criticism, I'll tell them. Hey, bro, if I will, you, I probably do this.
Speaker 2:I never telling one what they should do. I was, hey, they were me. This is what I do. That's usually my way of telling people, like I'd probably wonky this a little. You might be little, you know. Hey, you're off set. I don't want to tell anyone what to do, because sometimes I, in high school, I'm really telling this girl, denise, I dated her for a while too. I told her you know, you know he looks a little off, but we're supposed to look at it in perspective, in fact. Oh, you know, she drew it that way on purpose, so you look at it at a certain angle, but when you look at it did on the horse looked like it had a really word face and she it was.
Speaker 2:She was working on perspective. Even though she knows that technically I was right, she got a little pissed off. But then I also understood that she was saying like I did this on purpose, fuck you for bringing the belt. And I thought ever since then I I really stopped critiquing people's artwork. I look at people's artwork and say, wow, I understand what it is.
Speaker 2:You created something out of your mind or whether even big fan art and replicated something. You took the time to take a pencil, a pen or something and do it and and and the fact that you did it. I respect that as an artist and as a person, that you took the time to do it. When someone says, hey, girlage, can you draw this for me? I'm always flattered. I was like, well, okay, yeah, sure, as as a business owner, I I know I should be like well with your budget, what are you looking at? What are you looking to spend? You know, but as an artist, I never think that's why I got made, because I, everything I've ever had, pretty much have given over. I can. I can never think of really selling any of my NFTs, probably at first thing I've really actually sold. I mean, we've done so much artwork for people that never pay us. We've done like skateboards, t-shirt. We've come up with ideas for people's like storybooks, uh, coloring books, kids books, all these different things, and they never pay us. Because they have an idea. It's like oh, I have a great idea, all right, cool, I start working with them, thinking that we are understanding that my time and my drawings are this is opportunity costs. Every time I sit here drawing something for or sitting here talking to you, I could be making money somewhere else, but didn't understand that. But they thought, well, we'll get all your stuff and then I'll see what I can do. It's like, no, bro, this is my time costing to cost money. And if you look at scale of what I've worked for, think about how much it cost an hour. So you know, if I work eight hours on something, that's how much I put into it. No, I need you to match that money-wise so we can make this you happen.
Speaker 2:So we had a lot of people that didn't understand the concept of value of art and time. So it was. It was really. It's been that way still, even now. Even some of the investors don't understand. Well, we tell them we recently worked on buddy the scunk thing. I made a trailer for three minutes, three-minute trailer. We got quoted a quarter of a million dollars for a three-minute trailer. It's fixed second for animation right now.
Speaker 2:But I thought you know there's so many other animators that don't have work and I'll never work through this fucking studio. They have the same ability. But I will give them I am the credit. If they decide. If this thing turns into something, they have a job. You know, I was always trying to think something. We were working with schools, trying to get um them to say hey, listen, if I give you a project for the school, it's my property, we'll have the students, I'll work with them, we can make boards, you can do this. And if it turns into something, we take it to a studio. They have jobs now. All right, they'll have jobs there. Now they're grandfather there, I'm gonna make sure they're grandfathered in.
Speaker 2:And some of the schools were like well, what do we get out of this? I said, dude, it's about the students. I thought you guys were about the students. We'll fuck you guys, man. Yeah, I'll be. Well, we want a piece of the world. He's like bro, I go, it's. You're not doing anything to work. All you're doing is providing me with the students. I want to work with the artists, not with you. I go, I don't need you. I don't need you. I don't need your paperwork, I don't need you're telling me anything.
Speaker 1:I just need your students.
Speaker 2:So it was kind of those things where we're trying our best to kind of like, really expand our operations back then. And now here we are with the nfp world and again I've been rambling. We were calling three hours, my iPad's about to die. Yeah, what time it is in Texas, what time is it over there?
Speaker 1:At six o'clock six o'clock.
Speaker 2:My god, it's probably getter time for you, bro.
Speaker 1:It's, it's, it's, it's getting there, it's getting there. Yeah, you know, hey, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't. It is a thing like I didn't either. Meg knows that I ramble. I have a lot of stories and you know what I haven't. You know this is just Quick ramblings. I mean, if you sit, if I sat in a room with you and we're smoking weed or drinking a beer and you said, just tell me a story, I can tell you about one of one of the things I told you about in more detail oh yeah, eat up an hour or two and just in pure detail.
Speaker 2:It events that occur while I was at the simpson good and bad things, a family guy and people that I met, the artist, the Eclectic nature of some of these artists, some of the things that I became witness to when I was invited to Burning man and to Like all these different events as an MPART. He's that these guys are into you, but An art exhibit at the same time. It was crazy, very Kubrick shit. We just watch squirreling at the end, like right now at the very end with the VIP show up. You know, it's all.
Speaker 2:I've been shit like that. I've been one mansion. I've been to places that a lot of people have never been and I wasn't there for a party, I was there doing a drawing Can a box the Cooper. I did show up one time for an event and I had to get out of it. You know, you, going from a party world, you know when you yeah, yeah, I was a coke with my thing and Paranoia, too many people around you got too wild and and when everyone it seemed like they knew, everyone knew, like, oh, that's the guy that has it, everyone's watching, like I shake. You know, I didn't want to be around it, so I would always try to break out of any of these parties. So, again, I have stories that go on and on and I've been rambling all Shit and I don't even know what I missed or talked about at this point. I just never. Hey, it's been great talking to you, I'll tell you that, and it's like it's been a vibe, it's been really cool and, yeah, again, it's a great way to kind of like also clear a lot of stuff out that you know I haven't talked about in a long time.
Speaker 2:You know, things that I've kind of like single like you're, mr LaRae makes me emotional, it's still. It makes me sad because, even though it's been several years now, I think he's been gone. You know I still friends with his kids. I'm still friends, you know, with them. And Dennis Grandchild, you know it's kind of a trip that we're, so I'm still in contact with them, my friends that were encouraging Sherry Ferrari in college, when I would sit there once a princess, with her in her house and she would tell me how you know, I know this is for you, this is you're gonna do this how encouraging she was and you know I'll forget that. You know, it's kind of like I wish that's what I'm looking to do now.
Speaker 2:I'd like to be that Jimmy cricket on the next artist generation. You know, like hey, man, you can do this broke, and maybe they don't have that. That they had like somebody salty like me, someone that's been in the industry, to say, hey, pat him on the back and say, bro, this is good, keep going. Maybe that'll push him to keep going, cuz I I was well like everyone was telling me good job, I go, all right, cool, I'm just gonna keep going. But yeah, but I did hear a lot of negative shit too and but those guys, the haters that I had back then, I just didn't give a shit about it.
Speaker 2:Anyways, you know, yeah, yeah, when I was a kid I fought a lot because I was a fat kid and I, I just I just had a knuckle up a lot. I didn't want to, I was just not really good at it. Because you know, when you're a chubby kid and everyone called you fatty, fat, so we're near that stuff, you know you immediately want to put a stop to it, and I was one of those kids that, because I was picked on by older cousins, I, I, I defended myself with a very, a, very Tumacious and very, very vicious yeah, yeah attacks. When I was a kid I would, I wanted it to stop. So I made sure, like you hurt my feelings, I'm gonna hurt you so bad that you were gonna never want to hurt my feelings again. So that's what.
Speaker 2:That's how I was a child so that Anger and all that stuff was always expressed through art. So my artwork as a child was a lot of skulls, a lot of Hatred and anger, that I had a lot of gang stuff, a lot of gang violence. You know was pushing, and I drew a lot of weapons. For some crazy reason, yeah, now that I draw them for fun as cartoons, I find myself drawing them, yeah, ease and making them up that they don't exist, because they're cartoonish big guns. But the fact that I can draw weapons with such ease, it's because I'm doing so much as a child, you know, I was. I won't say I was evil or got he, but I I think that I can see, I could, I could Empathize and empathize with all the gods and I can see how those guys are. You know, I Remember sitting there listening to some of their poetry.
Speaker 2:You know, as I said that, the warm bath by Boban blood. I pondered and said, oh shit, you know I listen to words like that. He's like man. You know, this is big shit. This guy's really thinking. But it made me think even some of the lyrics that some of my friends would write on their songs. They never did anything with their bands, but someone more powerful. And then I, when Nirvana came into the scene, I was like dude, you guys are just as good at these motherfuckers. I remember going yeah, man, I went on a run with my cousin and we met up with some friends and pop us a beer down to fill her in Mexico. I was completely trashed, ended up and we ended up seeing the red hot shade peppers live on stage and I didn't even know who they were.
Speaker 1:These guys are blocking man.
Speaker 2:These guys are badass, they're all dude. They're from Cali, bro. Well, no shit, I'm a, don't a, we're in Mexico. And I remember hearing them like yeah, fuck, yeah. And we heard them the real hot chili peppers locked with. I had never heard them for they were just playing this some pop of the beer and it was free man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was a wild thing ever and it was like one of those things where, like man, experiences like that, I remember thinking like when I got back, I remember drawing a lot of stuff from that experience. No, I mean, I might have been a great pale, you trip that to here or acid, but it was still like the art where you came out was so bitch yeah.
Speaker 2:I was telling Meg about one time in an art class I know that I'm taking a little bit, this was a great story one time we all decided this is the guy thought of the NFT world would probably work. One time Mr Leverett told us all hey, there's a big sheet of paper on the wall. You know, he put this long ass thing of paper and he goes just, I want you guys to make one gigantic art piece between you all, just any left to read Like black, alright. And then we're all. We should be drawn. No, it's me. What we're gonna do, I don't know to do. So I thought well, you know what it was. Jimmy Hendricks is birthday or something like that time. Some of what do Jim and Hendricks. So I said we should do a lot of psychedelics 60 shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we should get in the mood first.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we would found mushrooms and we all started taking little pieces of mushroom micro dose in the sense and we started like we're like anyone bill anything and I'll. And there's, we get it with chunkers. This guy chunkers, he starts touching the fucking end of the paper. You know, this is my section, bro. We're all yeah, so we start.
Speaker 2:We start the one to town, all of us to start drawing. I, this guy, to Charles Manson. We had Jerry Garcia. I started drawing like the yellow submarine shit, you know, because I was like he did the whole. Yeah, there was all cartooning stuff. So I did the sergeant pepper. I was doing all this, creating like beetle stuff, and it was kind of like none of us were using reference material, which was crazy. We're all going based on memory and we are like the Charles Manson Was so fucking good. I can't even remember who did it. I think he was this Kid we called gizmo, but anyways, he ended up doing this crazy Charles Manson, eric. So we did this gigantic mural and at the end we were so proud all of us were just like dude, we're all.
Speaker 2:By the time the class is over, you know, we were all still tripping, but man, we just stated admired our work. We did it in a whole. We did was like second. Third, we had like advanced art was like two classes mixed together. So it was like two classes mixed together. It's like two classes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah so it was a long class. So we just the whole time we were busting, mr Levorette was doing some clay shit in the next room. He's left us alone and Because we were advanced art and and he let us go to town on it and I thought that that experience of how fun it was that we just all collabed, we all do, you take a space and then at the end it just looked like one gigantic art piece. That's what I kind of hope and see that would start happening in this NFT realm where I meet up other artists and I'll give a shit how good they are. We can get like, oh, he's a beginner, well, what would you put in a second? He'll, maybe he'll advance and you know, as we start to know his wall get better, bigger and more advanced.
Speaker 2:I got I believe I got better by watching cartoons, by playing video games, by looking at Serial boxes and and looking at the characters and saying, hey, I think I can do that, and by by witnessing other art. I think that helped me create my own. So I figured if I put my shit out there, made someone can see it and be like, hey, I can do that, or hey, I can draw like that and maybe to inspire, push or even help someone cuz I, in the stuff she records me doing, you actually see me doing structure, how I start my drawings, like I when I went blind. Even now I won't mind you when I do a stick, sometimes I'll walk away and come back and Really look at it and trip up that.
Speaker 2:I did it when I Was excited about starting the Meowthia video game. I was so excited one night I was telling Meg, we're gonna this, we're gonna do that. I have this leader will do this and do that. I went to bed. I got up the following morning and on my art table Was a cat. I got up in my sleep and walked over and drew a cat in my sleep and it was there in the morning. It was the craziest thing ever and she took a picture of it was mr Cho Chow, the leader of the Chinese own mafia, the yakuza.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, that was a mr Chow and I remember drawing him. I thought I dreamt it. I told the growth I hadn't seen I have to draw mr Chow. So I went to the table and I staring at this drawing and I was looking at it and I was like what the fuck, where did you come from? And I'm really a trip myself. I didn't know where the fuck it come from. I was like, dude, there's a drawing on my table. That's exactly what I dreamt that. And and now I told you, I was really heavy one time. So this happened to me before, where I'd get up in my sleep and do something, but it wasn't drawing, I was eating. I had eaten like a dozen donuts one time and I blame the girls. I fucking my daughter's in every I had I got up and ate my life. I dreamt of, yeah, donuts, and I actually did it.
Speaker 1:So I should think yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I did that with an artwork and our piece. I actually dreamt that I drew something and I apparently I got up in the middle of the night and drew it and I didn't have Vision at that time. I was, I was. I'm still kind of half blind at that point and I just can't believe that I did it. So even now Telling you that story, I'm like I believe it.
Speaker 2:You know, it still trips me out. Yeah, I do that, I do it on it. It's still. It's still kind of a weird thing and I don't know if it's because of the those little mushroom trips that we did back in the art and back in the day or the stuff that from a Simpsons in both party days.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but to this day I still kind of trip out on my art pieces and I still don't see myself as a professional or a celebrity artist. I still I just see myself as an artist and I'd like to meet up other artists to. You know, fucking man, just fucking do something with me, you know, just to make something fucking cool and say, look at, we did that shit. You know, I and I know I have so many ideas and they're just sitting here, you know, and I know now, with the metaverse and NFTs do the, it's a game changer for me. It's gonna change. And now you're right, I think that's bait making a space.
Speaker 2:And you know, it's encouraging to hear someone say that these stories can help, because I Was always told they were gonna be just that you should keep quiet about this shit. You shouldn't tell I was. I literally was told by somebody in ministry. You know you shouldn't tell anybody your past, bro, but why not throw? Because it's so obscure? You're gonna be such an odd ball that you know no one's gonna want to work with you. And I said really, people pay to see odd balls Like I know.
Speaker 1:I know that, now that you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get into an industry You're not too certain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like shit, dude, is this gonna really hinder me? And then I started getting treated different when people did hear my story, like you didn't go to school and you just walked here and you did what, and. And then At the Simpsons, when they told I said I want to be a character design, and they said no, dude, you start off with cleanup, you start off here. You didn't want, I didn't start with clean, I got ready to, yeah, layout though, well, you should know, you should have started here. I, I don't know the rules, I didn't. I didn't test for cleanup, I tested for layout and I was able to do it. So then I said I want to be a character design. I'm a dude, it takes years to get an office. You can't do it. You can't.
Speaker 2:I'm all we talking about yeah as a business owner never, never seen, ever to me when you say that shit, like what do you mean? I can't, I can't do it, I'm gonna show you I can't. So when I got on the family guy, I ended up in an office from cuba, go to office in a year and Everybody that was talking shit was like yeah, yeah, you're not supposed to be doing this and I'm not, but I'm doing. And you know it's like no one can stop you when you start like I told you you could run behind me, run next to me, don't run at all. But you know gorilla's coming to get the fuck up the way. And I did that then and I still mean it now. And that's where I'm headed in a jet of you realm. This is where we're headed and that's where I'm going and that's the model I take.
Speaker 1:Man fucking hell, man. Well, dude, this has been an absolute treat. I mean like that, we like as a.
Speaker 2:We unpacked everything like we have like yeah yeah, yeah, dude, I like you're my therapist for today, right Wait I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it. Man, like I'm still debating, like what do I release this in one episode? Do I do it? Do I break it into chunks, like cuz? Like that's gonna be my like cuz. This is the first time this has happened, where it's been this long of a podcast. I'm like man's.
Speaker 2:First time I read this like we're land is long and she's like keep it brief, and that this to me is brief.
Speaker 2:Conversations with somebody this is true story. One time I was sitting this, I was in jury duty, right yeah, this was before the pandemic the last year do they went to. I sat next to this guy and, oh fucking day and I don't remember, shoot about the guy, but that's everything about me. And I told I talked him for hours and that the edge is all bro, he goes. I wouldn't have got to this hadn't been for you know my way talking about us, let's do. You told me everything about yourself because now I know that I'm gonna follow you on the social media. You're cool dude, and he goes and fuck dude, because I would have never even believed some of these places existed had it not been for your people are like that.
Speaker 1:Well, really yeah.
Speaker 2:well, that's crazy yeah so I'm glad that you let me open up and I'm glad that you know again, it's feels good to know that I could talk about this kind of shit and not be always and you know, hey, man. Yeah, your dilemma is now having to break this up into like sections. Cool, bro, it's a good problem to have that, it's a good problem. I've always told me it's better to have too much than too little.
Speaker 2:You know, and yeah you, better to have something you don't need, then the need something you don't have so so, exactly, so I get, and on my little isms that I'm throwing out the part that I have with this whole thing about sharing my IPs in this energy realm is this bro, it's better to have a little bit of something than a whole lot of nothing. And right now I got a whole lot of nothing because no one knows what I've got. You know the shit ton of IPs and they're just sitting here with no one knows about. But if I can't share them with someone and say, hey, man, you got them, parties one and you want to help, it's kind of pointless. So it's it's better to have a little piece of something that a whole lot of nothing. So that's another thing, bro, that I've kind of taken in this energy world. So I'm glad that this helped out and I'm glad it's helped me out and I think, great you know I can help me pretty.
Speaker 2:I feel good. You know that I can. You made me think about your things. You know for sure I never really thought about a space beam as a helpful tool for another artist. I thought it was going to be just for me to meet them. Um, not necessarily as a place for someone to kind of like give them a platform and say, bro, let's see what you got. Um, I look the guy um Asked if he actually pinned some of my artwork up as we were talking during these spaces, which I want to learn how to do. Is I that'd be cool to say, hey, this guy's cool, you guys should follow him. I want to do that kind of stuff, because I was doing that on my space and on instagram for a while. Say, hey, you guys got to see this artist and stuff. But then instagram, facebook got really weird with ads.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, the algorithm got really wonky where it was like huge enough, no one's seeing, my friends are artists, or are you just getting ads and they think that I'm spamming them because I'm trying to show them artists. So it just got kind of weird and wonky. So I'm thinking that this is our place and you know, I really do appreciate it 100 percent.
Speaker 2:You that you did get, you know that you invited us on here and that I didn't bore you and that Fuck, anyone can be bored after talking to you man, yeah right, and I hope that I didn't ramble too much and I know that now let's see that kind of just spew a bunch of shit, like you know. But you know I've seen a lot in 50 something years. You know 51, and then I'm not gonna lie to you, in the 51 years of my life I've seen about a hundred years of worth of shit. You know, I know because running with homies and, yeah, growing up and doing the things that I've done, although they may not been pretty stings at times, um, they have molded me into what ends today. Like I tell Meg, no, you can't have light without dark may it can't have without drag.
Speaker 2:Amen. We need to have all these experiences for us to meet. Well, I was, you know, and now, with this role, I think that you kind of encouraged me to move, uh, you know, into it, into a more positive space. So, thanks, but I appreciate this. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. I know that you're getting late and we're at this life, so, yeah, I can tell it's getting dark behind you, so we'll let you go, brother.
Speaker 2:And yeah, you ever need to chat, man. Give me a holler and you know, yeah, talk again. This is really cool, man.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Schiller vaulted podcast. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. As we close out today's episode, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite audio platform and leave a five star review to ensure you never miss an episode and to help others discover the vaulted podcast as well. To stay updated on upcoming episodes, as well as our weekly twitter space schedule, be sure to follow us on x, formerly known as twitter, at schiller xyz. Once again, thank you for tuning in and remember if you're looking for it. Art is everywhere and it's up to us to appreciate and explore the emotions it brings to our lives. Until next time, this is Boone signing off.