Who are you?
I’m Sutu.
When did you start making art?
I sold my first comic ‘Revenge of the Ninja babies’ in grade 5 to a kid in grade 4 for $5.
What is Eyejack?
EyeJack is an Art and Technology company, that began as an Augmented Reality app, but now makes all kinds of art focused interactive tech experiences.
What do you love most about VR & AR?
I like VR for its total immersion and ability to create art spatially using my whole body. I like AR because I can place my art IRL and that looks magical.
Where did the idea for Neonz come from?
I’ve been drawing and minting HandDrawnNeonz for the last 5 months on HeN and after I saw Tezzardz I felt like I was in the perfect position to have a crack at a PFP – because I love character design and have actually had a desire to do a generative project since seeing No Man’s Sky (even tho my generative project is a tiny scale in comparison, it’s a start!)
Why did you choose Tezos?
I chose Tezos cos it’s a CleanNFT platform built on a sustainable Proof of Stake algorithm and also because the gas fees are like 30 cents. The gas fees are crazy on eth. Eth is for the rich, whereas Tezos is for everyone.
What sort of VR/AR content do you have planned for the Neonz/Sutuverse project?
Well I’ve started building a Sutuverse VR experience – this is a city with over 1000 frames of animated neonz playing through out it. The plan is to release it inside The Museum of Other Realities – which is my favourite multiplayer social VR platform. For AR I’m planning a Neonz AR activation to happen on the back cover of my new Prosthetic Reality AR NFT Art book – which is launching in November at Designer Con.
The book will allow users to hover their phones over the back cover and see a scrolling gallery of neonz come to life. Then after that, I’m planning to allow Neonz holders to sync their wallets with our EyeJack app and drop their Neonz into AR. I want people to place their neonz spatially throughout their home towns, cities or favourite physical places and then capture videos of their neonz floating there and share those with us all
Explain the process for creating a Neonz
The generative side of Neonz is coded by my biz partner, Lukasz Karluk using in pixijs, its a javascript webgl graphics library. I had to illustrate over 120 static traits and 30 animated traits which were then compiled together in a specific stacking order ie. face on the bottom layer and then other traits stacked on top like face tattoo then clothing then glasses etc. We also created masked areas within traits and these masked areas contain animations. I also created bespoke animations for specific traits which increased the rarity of a Neonz considerably. Every trait begins as white and then gets tinted during the generative process. I chose my colour palette based on my previous HandDrawnNeons work that I had been minting on HeN over the last 5 months.
What random items/rarities are your personal favorite?
I’ve become quite fond of my ‘well behaved’ bondage gear. Looks nice with a little shoulderz showing. Here’s my bondage fam including my twins Pepper and Spray. (Pepper and Spray shown below)
What else do you have planned for the Neonz project?
So if you visit our Discord you will find in our #announcementz channel a few Roadmap items. The first thing on the agenda is to bring neonz into AR as I explained earlier. In the meantime we’ve also been doing some impromptu giveaways, surprise Sutu drops for neonz holders only and we did a collab with Here and Now gallery by beets, where Neonz prizes were hidden in the escape room! (I’m guessing this interview will come out after Halloween so consider this answer a hot tip).
Anybody you want to shoutout?
I already shouted out Lukasz my collaborator. I wanna also shout out to @chandrewbie who manages Neonz community. He runs a tight ship doing an incredible job keeping it spicy up in the discord. And also my two sisters, Ali who is running the biz side of my company now, and Amanda who is head of marketing and client relations. The Sutuverse has become a family affair!
Anything else?
I think that’s it for now. Thanks!