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1/ Someone recently asked me if I had advice for artists just starting to mint work. To be honest I'm not sure if my advice is helpful there as things were quite different when I started, but I think I do have some helpful advice for folks whose art career is starting to pick up.
2/ You will start to get a lot of proposals if one of your projects starts getting attention. They will seem enticing, perhaps significant financially, cool, or self-assuring, and often the people who are proposing them are nice and interesting.
3/ But a lot of them are short sighted. If you think what is going on is a short term thing and you don't believe in it, then by all means, get yours, won't judge. But if you think crypto art and digital art is going to stick around for many years, you need to think longer term.
4/ If you have just had some financial success, you're more fortunate than 99% of living artists ever, you've essentially pre-funded 6 months to up to a decade of studio practice. It means you can focus on making art, not selling it in the short term.
5/ After the success of my first on-chain project , I felt overwhelmed, seriously 90 ETH was life changing, but was fortunate enough to have a friend who helped me put things into perspective. I could have licensed it, or worked with brands, but instead focused on a few things.
6/ One was establishing my artistic intentions, and sharing them with a wider audience - who? what? why? kind of questions. The other, working on legit collaborations or projects that I know will be beneficial for "the art", the space and understanding and appreciation.
7/ Finally, working very hard on doing things that align with your artistic vision, even if it means waiting for the right moment, being patient, and leaving (a lot of) money on the table.
8/ The Wrapture is a good example of this, I could have launched at peak FOMO in the summer, but instead I forced myself to come up with something different and served as meta-commentary to everything going on.
9/ The reality is there is an opportunity for artists to have more control, creatively and economically, in this system. It's far from perfect, but I think if you've been fortunate enough to be "chosen by fate" you might as well do things your own way if you want to.
10/ At this point, the platforms and services need you more than you need them - besides OpenSea - so it's worth standing up for yourself, pushing back, and thinking longer term.
11/ If you are an artist who I follow, and you feel like you are in a situation and want to chat with me about something, I'm always around to help strategize. Was lucky enough to have someone lay all this out for me early, and I think it was the right choice for me.
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6529 @punk6529 ยท May 20, 2022
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nice thread