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Andre Oshea, 3D Animator On Expanding Dimensions For Creators, Plus: Squiddy, From Champions Ascension & Jam City, And More…
This crypto winter just got a lot warmer as 3D animator Andre Oshea gives us all a virtual hug. Aside from being a genuinely nice person, Andre is a superstar digital creator known for 3D-modeled animations exploring futuristic notions of spirituality and transcendence. In this session with the hosts at Edge of NFT, Andre shares how being a good person and literally giving out great hugs helps him in his mission of expanding dimensions for creators through the power of community. He also talks about the place of AI in art and other hot topics. Plus, see what Jam City is up to these days with Champions Ascension, a dope new interactive free-to-own game. Tune in for more!
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Andre Oshea, 3D Animator On Expanding Dimensions For Creators, Plus: Squiddy, From Champions Ascension & Jam City, And More…
My name is Andre Oshea. I’m a 3D animator building the future for the creator economy and more. I’m on Edge of NFT. This is a show where creators are honored and featured. Head to Apple Music, leave us a review, and give us five stars because that helps us get on more people’s radars. Here’s a shout-out to you all.
NFT-curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how our guest has made crypto winter warmer by giving out great hugs, why we’re asking AI to create a new word that combines curiosity, accountability, and determination, and what Jam City is up to with a dope new interactive free-to-own game. Don’t forget that we put together a gathering called NFT LA that brought out thousands of the world’s most innovative doers in the NFT space. Head to NFTLA.live to get tickets to our bigger, bolder, and better but also as intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles from March 20th through the 23rd, 2023. We will see you there.
This episode features Andre Oshea, a superstar digital creator known for 3D-modeled animations exploring futuristic notions of spirituality and transcendence. He has worked with Vogue, Netflix, Snapchat, Adult Swim, the Grammys, and OneOf among others, and was included in NFT Now’s inaugural NFT 100. Some of his recent projects include Christie’s** Art + Tech Summit**, Meta’s new digital collectibles, and TIMEPieces. Andre, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here.
Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. I’m glad to have a moment to chat it up with a few friends and catch everybody up on my world.
For those of you that are reading, Andre gives the best hugs. We were in Miami at Trippy’s event. I saw Andre. We caught up. That was a great hug.
Thank you. I take pride in my hug-giving ability. It’s important to embrace people and make them feel warm when they’re with you.
I have to work on my hugs. I never got a comment about them from Josh.
During crypto winter, everyone needs a good hug. It’s great to have you here. Your work is so awesome. I would love to learn more about your latest project with Instagram and what inspired you to create it.
Starting with Instagram, I’ve been pretty lucky to work with them on a few things in the past. We did an installation piece in May 2021 for Instagram’s Black Creator Day. They reached out to me with the opportunity to be one of the artists who helped launch their NFT platform. I wanted to embrace that opportunity. I worked alongside one of my friends. Her name is Latashá. She is also a megastar in the NFT world, specifically music NFTs. She is Queen Zora. We worked together on a collab. It’s foreshadowing some of the other work that we have done together. This is coming out in 2023. It’s a teaser for that. The reception was mind-blowing to me and positive.
When you’re working on that type of collaboration, what are the goals that you had top-of-mind? How are you hoping to impact the creator economy in 2023?
The goals I have in mind when it comes to collaborations are different per collaboration but for this one, in particular, I’m working with somebody who is a close friend of mine. This isn’t a commission piece or something like that. For me, the goal first and foremost is to have fun, enjoy the time with my friend, and collaborate on something that can allow both of us to leave with some pretty good feelings about it.
The second layer of what I wanted to do with this opportunity and the goal I had in mind when it came to collaborating was trying to work with a couple of other people that I haven’t worked with before, at least not publicly. There are a couple of other collaborators on the piece as well. Jahmel Reynolds is a creative director because the shot that this piece is from a series of photo shoots. The photographer on those photo shoots was Angel Darmella.
That was my other goal. Those are close friends of mine as well. It was important for me to continue that spirit of collaboration, work with some more friends, and bring this opportunity with Instagram and Meta to more people, not just hold it selfishly for myself. With that in mind, that’s where I’m trying to shift, adjust, and cater to the creator economy in 2023.
This may be an unpopular opinion but I for one think that the NFT community needs Instagram. I don’t think we need it because we need Instagram itself but there is a platform that is known for images or videos. That’s what they’re predominantly known for. Their install base is unfathomable. How many people have Instagram on their phones? I feel like it’s so important for widespread adoption.
The process of buying a piece on Instagram is relatively simple in comparison to some other NFT projects that may have been popular in 2021 or 2022 because it’s supposed to be for the mainstream user and somebody’s mom who isn’t Web3 native. It’s important to partner up with them. It’s cool to set the standard and break new ground on this platform that is inevitably going to be huge.
I don’t know why you said it might be unpopular but I cringe when I think about Meta and Instagram from living the life of the generation that I have and seeing the power structure grow up around those systems.
For some reason, Instagram from a sentiment analysis perspective makes me feel differently than Meta.
That’s what Meta wants out of you, Josh. I’m kidding. We’re very open-minded here. We love collaborating. We’ve got our Instagram account and all. We learned on Twitter that Elon is not allowing us to share links to other platforms. I don’t know if you heard about this.
I did hear about this. I was telling some of my friends, “That’s because we dropped the NFT on Instagram. He was mad it was not on Twitter.”
I don’t know how extreme he’s going to be about it but it’s a pretty provocative policy change.
They should rename Twitter Draconian. It will be a good name. Andre, it is a privilege to have you here with such impactful work in the past. I’m curious. How did your experiences and learnings from the previous projects influence your creation of TIMEPieces? What was the process there?
The TIMEPieces project is cool because it’s re-imagining Deepak Chopra’s first book cover. I remember my mom quoting Deepak growing up. For that reason, I wanted to accept the project and thought it was significant and cool. Every new project is an amalgamation of your former projects. You’re always taking a bit of experience or influence with you but for my piece, in particular, I was focused on landscape work, which a lot of people appreciate in my work the world-building that a lot of my pieces have. I wanted to embrace what I knew people appreciated about my work because I felt like it lent well to the subject matter.
The other thing I was focused on, and it is particular, strange, and weird, is fabric animation. I do this twice a year when I make a collection of fabric animations. They typically never come out for whatever reason. I did launch one with a group called Flowcarbon. Fabric animations are beautiful. If you’ve ever seen American Beauty where the kid is recording the shopping bag in the alley and he’s like, “It’s so beautiful,” I have that vibe with fabric animation.
3D Animator: Fabric animations are beautiful. If you’ve ever seen American Beauty where the kid is recording the shopping bag in the alley and he’s like, “It’s so beautiful,” I have that vibe with fabric animation.
What’s the process for fabric animation? The first thing that comes to mind is stop animation but is it more about recording a fabric? Can you explain the process?
I do it all digitally. It’s all on a computer. I’ll create something. It could be any shape but we will say it’s any sheet. It could be a square. You break the square down into vertices. You tell it how many grids it should have. You turn to a grid system. If we can imagine a T at each point, it puts a particle there. There are different simulations like plugins and stuff like that for water or smoke because most of those things are not hand-animated. They’re run by simulations.
If you can imagine a simulation of erosion or something like that, it works the same way where you put in different parameters and get different results. Cloth is another simulation that I can do. It gives physical properties to each one of those little particles on each little vertices. That’s how it tells it how to move and how to sway. One influences the other and pulls and pushes on other particles and so forth. That’s the long complicated way of how to get fabric animation.
That helps. When we talk about creators, the word creator evokes the creator. It is fun in some sense to be working in these mediums where you can almost feel like you’re creating the type of reality that you experienced. As you experience the world, you’re creating the cloth and the way that it’s going to interact with its environment and things like that. I can imagine that could be a fun place to be in. You might not think of it from that meta-perspective to talk about something you mentioned earlier but that’s pretty cool that we can do that nowadays and have that creator feeling in digital animation. We appreciate that.
That’s a real plus and perk of 3D animation in particular too. 2D art is cool. I was originally a 2D artist myself. This is not to say that I still don’t do stuff in 2D sometimes but when I found 3D art, it made me feel so limitless in what I could create because I could recreate things that I experienced in real life in real fathomable ways.
When you make things in 3D, they have to adhere to certain laws that 2D art doesn’t have to abide by but the cool thing about it too is it allows you to recreate places and situations in completely unique ways that you can break. You can take it and do something crazy with it. That’s why I appreciate 3D artwork. That’s why this is my medium of choice due to being able to input my life experiences directly into the artwork.
3D Animator: When you make things in 3D, they have to adhere to certain laws that 2D art doesn’t have to abide by but the cool thing about it too is it allows you to recreate places and situations in completely unique ways.
That’s cool. You mentioned earlier that you like to flow like gravity or water. At the same time, I’m sure 2022 was bumpy. It was full of adventure. I’m curious. What were some of the challenges that popped up for you throughout the year? How did that shape you as an artist?
The number one challenge that comes to mind, and it could be because I’m dealing with a little bit of this in my business is in 2021, I was heavily focused on the NFT space and releasing and minting NFTs on my own. In 2022, I shifted into doing a lot of partnered brand work. The money is a lot slower. Doing the partnered brand work, you have to deal with net 30s, net 60s, and all of this type of stuff. In the traditional NFT world, your money is a little bit more instantaneous.
Granted I’m earning the money but learning how to adjust to that budget was a difference for me, for one. Two, the challenge is also maintaining those relationships. That’s a job in and of itself. That’s difficult but I loved it. I love working with visible brands because it allows me the greatest opportunity to help others. That was one challenge I had. The second challenge was I traveled in 2022 far more than I ever traveled in my life, especially for work.
There were times when it would probably be a six-month period and I would be home for maybe fourteen days total because I’m traveling nonstop. Go, go, go. The important thing to know about that type of lifestyle or to wrap your head around when going through something like this is the emotional whiplash that you get when you go home because you’re so used to living fast, living hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and flight-to-flight.
When you get home, things slow down so much for you and you don’t know how to respond or react mentally and emotionally because you’re so used to, “I have to go do this. I may not eat until 10:00 but that’s fine.” You’re bouncing around and living this chaotic life. When you get home, you’re having to realize, “I need to be a little bit more accountable about regulating my day here. I’m used to being able to eat when I can eat. Now, I have to tell myself, ‘If I don’t eat by noon, this is not trending in the right direction for my day.’” That was the other big adjustment for me.
I can relate. There’s a lot of travel that happened in our industry. Everyone was excited to meet each other in real life and find ways to explore but I can also imagine an artist getting into a flow state. When you get to Japan, there are some good ramen shops next door but you have to knock out some art. Do you do it in your room? Do you go to the pool? It’s hard to get into a flow state when you’re on the move.
That’s true. When you brought up being in Japan and you have a go-to ramen spot, this is a challenge 2.5. You start to imagine yourself living in those places and build this fantasy in your head about what it would be like if you were there all the time but that’s neither here nor there.
I wanted to pull in the collaboration thread a little and relate from the perspective of the show and NFT LA because we have hundreds of collaborators. We want to have deep relationships with all of them but how do we do that? In a way, you as an artist have a little bit of an upper hand because there are only so many collaborations you can work with at one time on one project. You can only do so many projects. You’re constrained. In a media role or this ecosystem, it’s an unconstrained kid-in-a-sandbox potential.
With the media, in particular, people probably have this idea that you can do it whenever it’s best for them, “Why can’t you post this tomorrow? This would be great.” You’re like, “I have to be a good collaborator to these six other people that you don’t know that I’m collaborating with. That doesn’t work for them either.” I’m sending you a little bit of love and empathy.
That’s the most empathy we have ever gotten on that particular topic. I appreciate that.
It’s not something that gets discussed but it’s a real challenge. We came back from Asia with 30 or 40 incredible pieces of content. Everyone wanted their piece of content out first. It was like, “There’s this thing we have to do. It’s called editing.”
It’s fun. It also costs to produce a podcast, which people don’t always understand.
I imagine people think once you get a mic and some headphones, you’re good. Seeing your checklist, for one, I’ve always thought about starting a podcast. I know myself well enough to know that I couldn’t do it alone. I would need to partner up with somebody who has a mind to put together the types of documents that you put together for me. There’s a lot of love and respect on my end for what you’re doing because I know I couldn’t do it. It’s very challenging. I’m not sure where I’m going next.
Keep going there. That feels good. I want to bring a quote here that I just happened to remember and come across to help bring us back to the topic of 3D animation. It’s a fun little anecdote. Somebody was saying to Picasso that he ought to make pictures of things the way they are or objective pictures. He mumbled he wasn’t quite sure what that would be. That’s what Picasso said. He wasn’t quite sure, “I don’t see what that would be.” The person who was bullying him produced a photograph of his wife from his wallet and said, “That is a picture of how she is.” Picasso looked at it and said, “She is rather small and flat.”
That’s pretty good. That’s not where I thought that was going. That’s a good response from him.
It’s a great point when anybody has these criticisms of any form of art or representation. We’re all making the best representation or a specific representation of something but you do have at least three dimensions. It’s constantly evolving. It’s always interesting to see how different artists approach their work. I could see somebody saying, “Your wife always lives in these 3D goggles.” It’s fun. What do you think about the field as it changes and how it has been since you started working in it trends you’ve seen and things like this?
Strangely enough, I don’t feel like a lot of trends have changed since I got into 3D. I’ve been a 3D artist for years. The popular style back then is very much still the popular style now if it has not evolved a little bit futuristic, humanoid, space vibes, and otherworldly planet things. I don’t think that should necessarily change. It’s a real plus for what 3D art can produce. It’s a little bit easier to make those scenes than a lot of other art, and that’s okay. That’s part of its identity as part of the identity of paintings are Renaissance paintings. It’s not the end-all and be-all of it but it is what a lot of people recognize as 3D art.
It is good to introduce a lot of people to 3D art and break the glass ceiling but there’s also a lot going on in 3D art. The thing that is changing the most is the accessibility of high-end software. The tools have evolved incredibly. Lowering the learning curve has been a big thing as well in 3D art in particular. You brought up art that a lot of people criticize. In our artistic industry, we’re dealing with a highly criticized art form. I wanted to float it to see what each of you thought about it. Where are you on the topic of AI art? Are you for it or against it?
I’m always down to talk about AI art.
What I was going to bring up is I moderated a panel at Art Basel with a company in the Sandbox Accelerator. They have created AI for 3D animation where in about five minutes or less, you can have a full AI version of 3D architecture based on existing 2D or 3D information. That’s innovative. I’m happy to give you the information if you want to see more about what they’re doing. This is part of the Sandbox program to accelerate world development. To me, that makes sense because your craft is very time-consuming.
To answer your question and not to bias your feedback on this because I was going to ask you the question, and you’re flipping the script on this over here, if artists can use it to enhance and amplify their work and it allows more creation in the metaverse, which is a daunting task for a lot of people, it sounds great to create a metaverse world but then there’s a lot of work in there. That’s a good use of AI. Similar to any tool that exists, it can be used for good or evil. It’s a fascinating topic. It’s here. We have to embrace it like one of your hugs and figure out what to do with it. What are your thoughts?
What a collab right there.
You tune pianos.
That’s not my opinion.
I hear that a lot.
I’m ready.
Let’s give a shout-out to your school.
What is your most prized possession?
The question is, “Can AI figure it out?”
You have to get that cat fed.
We finally did it. It’s good to see you.
Likewise. We bailed on LA on Miami living here.
That’s one of my favorites.
Thank you so much for having me.
It’s great to meet you.
You heard it here first.
The best place to learn about me and find out what I’m doing is to follow me on Twitter @AndreOshea or Instagram @AndreOshea_. This one has an underscore because somebody doesn’t want to let me get my name. They haven’t even used the page in two years.
“That sucks. You should give it to me.”
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