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JN Silva Of Animus - The Platform That Is Bringing The Artists To Center Stage, Plus: William Shatner’s NFT Release
NFT art is a growing piece of the Web3 universe, but a lot still needs to be done to increase artist participation in the space. One of the barriers to entry is the lack of opportunity for creatives to partner with developers in creating new, groundbreaking ideas. Animus enables this collaboration process at scale by creating a platform where hundreds of artists get onboarded in the world of blockchain and NFTs. Animus is a collective of artists dedicated to bridging the divide between the traditional and digital art worlds by harnessing the benefits of Web2 and Web3 tech. They are fostering meaningful connections within our community and encouraging exploration and experimentation. Animus co-founder JN Silva talks about this and a lot more right here on the Edge of NFT.
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JN Silva Of Animus - The Platform That Is Bringing The Artists To Center Stage, Plus: William Shatner’s NFT Release
This is JN Silva, artist and founder of Animus, the platform bringing the artist to the center stage of Web3. I’m here on the Edge of NFT, the show where the art of Web3 can always shine bright.
Stay tuned for this episode to learn how the Web3 artist JN Silva is taking Animus users on a philosophically rich journey of utility and art on the blockchain.
Plus, the incredible story of how our guest’s first purchase resulted in a robbery at knifepoint.
Finally, read the details behind Infinite Connections, the recent drop from the legendary Web3 voyager, none other than William Shatner.
Before we go, don’t forget that our Outer Edge LA event returned to LA from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023. You can now catch up on all the discussions, presentations, and more. Head over to Watch.OuterEdge.live and register with only your email address. You will have access to over 60 captivating conversations and performances. Binge watchers are welcome. See you inside.
This episode features JN Silva of Animus, the artist collective dedicated to advancing the future of the NFT crypto space. He is a Venezuelan-born photographer with a keen eye for the decisive moment. His eclectic photographic style has allowed him to pursue different avenues in photography, ranging from street and portraiture to live music and aerial photography.
His artwork has been displayed and sold at the prestigious Sotheby’s Auction House alongside the all-time greats. With a career that spans over a decade, he has showcased his work all around the world. He has a long history of building and fostering community across mediums. A former educator, JN has taught photography workshops and led photo walks all over the world while working with major brands and photographing iconic images of the world’s leading artists.
His entry into the NFT world marked a clear shift for the photography community. He has onboarded hundreds if not thousands of artists in the world of NFTs via his artists collective Animus. Animus is a collective of artists dedicated to bridging the divide between the traditional and digital art worlds by harnessing the benefits of Web2 and Web3 tech. They are fostering meaningful connections within our community and encouraging exploration and experimentation. JN, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here. This is going to be fun.
It was great to have you at Outer Edge in 2023 and start to get to know each other. This is event season. We also had a chance to catch up in Austin. I was like we go to have you on the show. We have to unpack your story and what you are up to a little bit more.
I appreciate it. Thank you for coming to our event in Austin. It was a good time. It was great seeing you. I had a blast at Outer Edge as well. My panel was on community building, which I feel is my specialty. I’m grateful for the invitation.
Let’s start at the beginning of Animus. How did this platform come into being? What is it all about?
I will start a little bit earlier. I got into crypto in 2017. I’m Venezuelan. Hyperinflation is what destroyed our economy. When someone sat down and explained Bitcoin to me, I was like, “This makes perfect sense. Hedge against hyperinflation.” I’m one of those people who when I get into something, I become mega-focused on learning as much as I can. I spent all of 2017, 2018, and 2019 learning as much as I could about blockchain in general, and even through the bear market of 2018 and 2019.
In 2020, I’m still doing a ton of photography work. It was supposed to be the busiest year of my life with regular client work. In March 2020, I lost all my work and all my creative friends lost all their work because of the pandemic. There was this moment where I was like, “What the hell can I do now?” I figured I could day trade and do crypto. I started paying attention again to what was going on in blockchain. As soon as the government turned the printer back on, I was like, “This is what we have been waiting for. This is the value proposition of blockchain.” I saw this opportunity emerging for creatives. At the time, there were a lot of genius developers and people in the space, but their creative and marketing side of things were lacking.
I found myself having all of these friends who were super creative and amazing artists all over the world that were out of work, and all of these people in blockchain that were seriously needing creative advice. That is when I started to create Animus. At first, we were advising and helping a lot of the projects that were launching in 2020 during DeFi Summer. We were helping them with marketing and making decks. Eventually, a few of those artists were like, “Can you make NFTs for us?” I was like, “We can make NFTs. You have to make the art, and you guys can mint it.”
It started like that. I’m connecting amazing artists with amazing developers. Eventually, as more demand came in, I was like, “Let me start Animus to have an organized umbrella where we can do all these things.” As we grew, I realized we didn’t want to have this agency model, which is how we started. I wanted it to be more about empowering the artists because this was a new paradigm. It wasn’t like Web2 where I was hiring these artists for hire. I wanted them to be a part of it all.
We shifted to becoming an artist collective. At the same time, I was very vocal on all my social media platforms about Web3 and NFTs. Everyone thought I was going crazy because it was in the middle of the pandemic. They were like, “What the hell are you talking about?” I figured, “Maybe we can use Animus to onboard artists.” I made a lot of presentations and decks. I curated a ton of articles and links. We put it all under this huge Padlet link. I was calling friends every day and being like, “You need to come onto Web3. You need to learn about NFTs.” All of my second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021 were spent getting on calls and onboarding artists.
From there, Animus grew to hundreds of artists that entered the space through us. We did a lot of advising for a lot of marketplaces early on. We then started hosting events starting with PTC Miami in 2021. Since then, we have hosted in-person events at a lot of the major conferences. Our whole thing is empowering artists, helping artists grow, and helping them navigate this ecosystem, whether that is through advising, helping with moral support, and mental health things. It has been an awesome and fulfilling experience so far.
As you are talking about the need for creativity in this space, I’m reflecting on my early days in crypto in 2017 and 2018. I’m sure, Eathan and Richard, you can relate. There were some bad cut-and-paste websites out there. Every single project was following the same WordPress templates. I don’t even think Wix was around then. There was no culture in this space.
It is all about basic language, basic marketing jargon, and technical teams. What got us excited to start the show about the same time you were getting fired up in March of 2021 is we saw a cultural revolution here where some of the traditional principles of crypto were intersecting with the opportunities that that digital collections had with the intersection of pure culture. It is something we all needed and were looking for in a relatively desperate time in our society.
I commend anyone who saw that opportunity early on. In March 2021, I was a guest on The Joe Budden Podcast. I don’t know if you guys know Joe Budden. He is a rapper turned podcaster. He runs a huge podcast. I have been friends with him for over a decade. I have never asked him for a favor before. I was like, “Let me go on your podcast and talk to people about NFTs.” He let me on. It was late February 2021. I went on the podcast, and that clip ended up getting millions of views.
Still to this day, whenever any platform asks, “How did you learn about NFTs?” A lot of people tagged me and they were like, “Through Silva on the Joe Budden Podcast.” I can’t even measure how many people got that first hint of curiosity from that. I’m still an advocate for this space. There are still people who don’t quite see it yet. We went through this crazy hype cycle. A lot of people are like, “I told you. It was all a fad.” People still have trouble seeing the long-term vision of it all, but we got to keep showing up every day.
At the moment, you are minting your Animus Key Card. That is the NFT entry into that ecosystem. Tell us a little bit about that and how it plays into the collective.
The Animus Key Card is something we have been working on for over a year. We wanted to tokenize entry into our ecosystem. We have an active Telegram chat. We chose not to do Discord because I have seen many people get scammed on Discord. I would be heartbroken if one of our Animus community members got scammed by our Discord. We chose to keep our community on Telegram.
We have been growing. We wanted to tokenize entry into our ecosystem. What that means is becoming the VIP of the Animus community. It is also a way for us to get art into the hands of the holders, the core Animus team like myself, and four of my best friends in the world. We make a lot of stuff and a ton of art. Up until now, we have done it either by collaborations or different personal projects where we release it, but we wanted to have something under the Animus lore.
If you go on our website, you will see that we have this deep and philosophical lore. I studied Philosophy in college. Philosophy changed my life. Everything that I do is in view of philosophy. We created this story behind Animus, which is deeply rooted in a lot of different philosophical concepts. We wanted to get that out. It is almost like a story that we are telling through blockchain. We held on for different reasons. We strategized on how to do this properly.
For me, one major thing that’s halting the release was the gas fees. In 2021, gas fees were astronomical. It didn’t sit right with me to release this because I’m Venezuelan. I onboarded a ton of artists from South America and all different underrepresented communities and nations. For us, we might pay $30 or $50 in a gas transaction here and there. For someone in South America, that is food for almost a week. You don’t have the privilege to be minting stuff for $50 as you go.
I wanted to find a solution to bring the fees down. That is why after doing a ton of research and talking to a lot of different teams, we entered a partnership with the Arbitrum team. As an aside, I’m a huge gamer. I have been a gamer my whole life. I entered the Arbitrum ecosystem via Treasure DAO MAGIC. I was doing a ton of gaming on there in 2022. I enjoyed what they stand for and what they have been building on Arbitrum.
I’m good friends with a few people on the team. Unbeknownst to me, a lot of them were in the Animus Telegram. They reached out. They were like, “We like what you are doing. This seems like a very organic artist community. How can we help you empower more artists in the space?” I was like, “What do you mean?” He was like, “We want to help artists. We love to have more on Arbitrum because there are a lot of PFPs and gaming projects. There is not a lot of art on there.”
We saw that as a perfect opportunity to enter this partnership and release Animus Key Card via Arbitrum. We started minting a few weeks ago. It is a fairly limited supply of a little bit over 1,000. What the Animus Key Card is going to get you is a lot of art. We are working on a lot of projects. I’m doing some personal projects there. We are going to start airdropping, releasing, and doing claims for artwork. If you have the Key Card, you will be the VIP at our in-person events.
Animus: What the Animus Key Card is going to get you is a lot of art. We started minting a few weeks ago. It is a fairly limited supply of a little bit over 1,000.
For this event in Austin, the first wave of signups to come were all Animus Key Card holders. We reserved the free merch that we made for the event for the Key Card holders. Once every Key Card holder was satisfied, we then opened it up to the public. We are going to start doing more things like that. Holding a Key Card will have you be the VIP of our ecosystem.
Josh, have you been to one of these events? Did I miss it?
I don’t know if that qualified as one of these official events, but there was a said event on Friday before the thunderstorms where it was pretty chill. It is a bunch of artists hanging out, some good tacos, arts, and good music. Am I leaving anything out?
Did you guys check out the laser installation in there?
No, I missed the laser installation.
That covers it. A lot of people in this space always think they have to throw this grand deals mega jam. Everyone is going crazy with the loud pumping music. The artists do not like that. I want to be somewhere where I can’t hear people speak. I want to be in places where I can talk to people, connect, have fun, and have a more chill vibe. Our Animus Telegram is called the Animus Lounge. For all our events, we try to harness that feeling of being somewhere with friends and creatives, and embracing the connection there. That is what our event in Austin was all about.
There were good tacos. We had a lot of art. We had these incredible artists. Laser Lou came. He was this in-person laser crystal installation. You don’t get to check it out, but they are unbelievable. We partner with this incredible Ally A.L. Grime. She did a whole mural outside of the venue. That same design is what we put on the merchandise for the event.
It is all about getting artists to get together and connect. It is always about the quality of the people at our events and not the quantity of the people. We specifically curate our lists very tight. Our event is never too packed, which for me is incredible. It is a relaxing and recharging environment. I want people to leave the Animus events recharged, and they are not like, “I’m so drained.”
I hate it when I’m at an event where there are lots of cool people but I can’t hear anything of what any of them is saying. The only critique I have for you is I wasn’t there. In Venezuela, I thought you should have some Arepas in addition to those tacos.
Arepas and Tequeños are a must for any of that. I didn’t trust that. I don’t want to get someone in Austin and get some Arepas on board. In Miami, we always have that.
There are a couple of things you brought up that I want to go back and touch briefly on. The first is the ability to access. With ETH, someone has to pay $35-plus. During bullish times, you are paying $100 up to $1,000 in peak times. That is a barrier to entry. Being able to go with Arbitrum and having a way to have more access for people is setting up the future for getting more people involved, meeting artists where they are, and finding a way to get them onboarded.
In that same regard, you are working as an executive producer of the Buscando América Project. For anyone who has tried to make a featured film, you know how hard and challenging it is to do that. Access to be able to become a part of that is difficult. Can you tell us a little bit about that project and how you are able to get some of those NFTs featured on OpenSea?
My two biggest projects were Animus Collective and Buscando América. They overlap. We are both families. Animus Studios is under the Animus umbrella. Me and my cofounder Phil Yoon who is one of my best friends. We went to college together. We have been doing short and long-form content for over ten years. That is our Web2 careers. We are doing photography and videography for festivals, artists, events, and music videos. It is storytelling through photos and videos.
We feel that this is still severely lacking in Web3. That is why we have Animus Studios. Under that umbrella, we have made and produced a few short-form storytelling projects. We did this piece with Cory Van Lew and Farokh for Rug Radio for the faces of Web3 mint. We did a five-minute short documentary on Cory Van Lew and his process.
That is the whole purpose of Animus Studio. Animus Studio produced this first short documentary that we are doing with Buscando América. It is a passion project. That was introduced to one of the directors, Nelo. He is a brilliant Venezuelan filmmaker and Emmy nominated. He made a documentary about the Venezuelan protest of 2017 and beyond. He was nominated for an Emmy in 2022. Someone said, “You two should know each other because you are both into the Venezuelan culture and wrapping the flag.
We met and chatted. He was about to enter Web3, and he wanted some advice. He was like, “I and my best friends living in Medellín wrote a script together over the pandemic. We shot a little teaser for what we wanted this film to look like. I want to get your opinion on how I can go about these things and if there is a future for it.” He wanted like my thoughts.
I checked out the script, looked at this teaser, and saw the deck. Immediately, I was blown away. I was like, “How can I be a part of this? Please let me in. I want to help you bring this thing to life.” I came out as the executive producer and Web3 strategist. I don’t think there is a big Film3 community, and there are different projects at different stages of production.
To this day, there is not one completed full film that is out that can say, “We fundraised the whole thing. We went from zero to this via NFTs.” I respect a lot of the projects. We have some amazing friends in the Film3 community. We are all figuring it out as we go. What we are doing is we broke the stages of making a film into different parts. For every part, we are going to be dropping an NFT project to fund that stage and get us to the next one.
I’m a Sony ambassador. I have been working with Sony on their camera side for over ten years. Sony lent us all this gear to go to Medellín, and we went to Medellín for twelve days in 2022. We did a whole canvas of the whole city, doing location scouting, character scouting, and getting into some places that no one is allowed to go into. I have been interviewing some very interesting people all over Medellín.
We put together a short documentary. It is a twenty-minute documentary. You can watch it on YouTube. It is called IDIOSINCRASIA. We turned all of our scouting and the documentary photography we did into this first collection, also called IDIOSINCRASIA. We turned that into a whole collection. It is 2,500 one-of-one photos from outside of Medellín. The photos are from myself and the two directors of the film, Nelson Nelo and Alex. Alex is also a brilliant filmmaker and music video director. He was born and raised in Medellín.
We have had David Bianchi on the show.
I went for it. It is just money.
No, that sounds familiar.
Yes, let’s do it.
The umbrella salesman in the rainstorm.
What is the most recent thing you sold?
What is your most prized possession?
It is like meme coins are back.
What are you going to do next after the show?
That thing made a 10,000 extra turn.
Don’t sleep on us yet.
Yes, let’s do one.
Important Links
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IDIOSINCRASIA – YouTube
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David Bianchi – Past Episode – Apple Podcast
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Maya Draisin – Past Episode – Apple Podcast
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Jeremy Cowart– Past Episode – YouTube
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@PhilYoon_ – Twitter
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@NeloGGN – Twitter
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@JNSilva_ – Twitter
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@MadeByAnimus – Twitter
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@BuscandoAm3rica – Twitter
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Spotify – Edge Of NFT Podcast
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iTunes – Edge Of NFT Podcast