PFPdate.ape
How does a project begin?
Sometimes with a team.
Sometimes with a business plan,
Sometimes with a brilliant idea…
💡
PFPdate.ape began with none of these.
It began with an Ape.
The BAYC had just dropped.
I had missed it, too lazy to get out of bed at midnight
to mint a cartoon monkey.
Then suddenly they were gone!
SOLD OUT! 😲
Then they doubled in price.
Then tripled!
FOMO prevailed. 😱
I aped in 3 weeks later on secondary,
hoping to get one I could still afford,
with pink fur on an aqua background.
But just like that, there he was:
BAYC #5679
A gray ape on an orange background, wearing a
playboy’s chianti colored smoking jacket.
The moment I saw him, I knew he was
The One
But Wait!
The One for what?
I had no idea.
Yet.
Flash Forward: A Few Months Later...
Projects were minting out every day,
every hour, every minute.
Collector frenzy prevailed.
This was the NFT-scape of the era,
which, seen in retrospect, clearly was:
🏆 THE GOLDEN AGE OF PFPS 🏆
No one quite realized at the time that
Digital Artists
had been creating the next chapter in
The Canon of Art History
By their very existence in that moment of time,
their projects had become legends,
authenticated on the blockchain.
By January 2022,
a new phenomenon had emerged:
A global online community
of like souls,
bonded through their PFPs,
was beginning to
cross-pollinate via collaborations.
Just for fun, I doodled ✏️ my Ape
wearing a pair of sneakers
from a recent drop I’d collected.
It was cute as pie and I 😍 loved it.
My Ape had come to life!
But... 🤔 it needed something...
So I added a cigarette holder.
It still needed something...
So I added a talk bubble.
It still needed something...
So I added a title.
Suddenly, it was Pop Art!
A Comic Book!
I was enchanted.
This was that genesis drawing:
And just like that, a character was born!
But who was this fellow?
I stared at him, and as I stared,
the answers emerged…
He was:
Dapper, Dashing, Debonair
He was a billionaire, and he was Bored
He was an elegant, refined ape-about-town
A suave playboy with a roaming eye for beauty
He was an Admiral,
An Ape of high rank in the Navy.
and he was arrogant.
His hauteur, however, belied a heart of gold
- hidden even from himself -
behind his love of a fine Bordeaux.
He was an enigma.
He was…
The Most Eligible Ape in the World
And his name was:
Sir Admiral Winston Apely
Thus, a very Bored Ape,
looking for some action to spice up his life,
became the genesis for…
PFPdate.ape
Much like Michelangelo,
who proclaimed that the sculpture was
already in the stone until he freed it,
I found that the story was
right there within the character.
My job was to explore and develop it,
with all the empathy, vulnerability,
and acquired wisdom I could muster to tell it.
It took two years and thousands of layers
to write, draw and hand-animate
layer by layer.
Staying true to PFPs as flat, 2D cartoons,
the characters move jerkily across the screen,
recalling the magical flip books
I’d loved to draw as a child.
I thought of it as an animated comic book
inspired by Roy Lichtenstein until...
Enter an Advisor:
@StudioPaiman
Paiman, a well-known and highly regarded icon
in the digital art community,
as well as a superb artist himself,
suggested that I switch gears and mint it as a
mock TV Pilot with seasons and episodes,
rather than an animated comic book.
BINGO !
He was right.
Connecting the first 8 videos as a film would create...
Season 1!
This conceptual change
completely transformed the project.
I wanted a retro riverboat jazz audio track
with cartoon sound effects,
but couldn’t find enough of the music
I needed for each episode.
Enter a Musician:
@QUAZRmusic
A brilliant musician, DJ, and himself
a spectacular digital artist,
QUAZR jumped in to collaborate.
He scored it to stream as a cohesive film,
with character motifs and hilarious sound effects,
and layered each track with ambient elements
that added levels of psychological depth
and meaning, enriching the whole.
A witty cartoon or a mirror?
PFPdate.ape is a tragicomedy
that aims for the emotional jugular;
for the “Aha!” moment of recognition
when one sees one’s own experiences
in those of the characters.
Underlying the story’s zany antics
and corny jokes,
is some damn serious content about
who we are
and how we relate to each other
when unexplored emotions
motivate our behavior.
It’s about you.
It’s about me.
It’s about everyone who has ever
• Loved and lost
• Did things they regretted and couldn’t walk back,
• and found a way to go on.
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