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Gremlin’s Grotto

Gremlin interviews artists in the nft space. They talk about artistic process, background, and the art market.

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Gremlin’s Grotto: Poppel

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A few artists on Tezos are immediately recognizable. For the 1 bit genre, there are a few that stand above the rest. One is Poppel, who creates 1 bit animated works of fantasy and sci-fi scenes nostalgic of 80’s and 90’s personal gaming.

The gremlin is a big fan of Poppel, and was lucky enough to chat about his work.

So who are you?

I’m Poppel. Studied and worked as a biologist and GIS technician. Have also been freelancing as a writer/journalist for pop culture magazines.

I haven’t been trained as an artist even though I had to learn some art in schools as it’s part of the obligatory education system I grew up under. I started doodling dungeons and monsters in my pre-teen days, influenced by my cousin who was a big fan of Castlevania games. Not sure if you can call them art but it was indeed very fun to make them.

I think “artist” is a very ambiguous and debatable title, I’m pretty sure many people wouldn’t call what I make “art”. I tend to call myself a “content creator”, not because I care about what people think, just because it’s a title much more inclusive and neutral.

What’s the story behind your handle?

The name Poppel is a pseudonym. It’s based on my real name though.

Why do you make art?

Good question. I had been writing quite some either for the media or for myself before I started to make the artworks in the forms you see today. For me, making art is just like writing, you express yourself and/ or you connect readers with ideas you appreciate or you agree on. That’s also why I’d like to have storytellings in the non-abstract works I make.

And now with NFT, creators who make stuff that have thousands or millions of fans but no galleries would show can really gain extra income with their works, and I’m happy that I could be one of them.

Can you tell me a little about your process?

In short: Come up with an idea, get the idea interpreted by hand (computer) work, output the result. The hardest part is forming an idea for a piece. Metaphorically saying I’m not afraid to walk long straight roads but twisted and winding alleys. Not having an idea is like being trapped and lost in those alleys, it grinds down my soul and makes me groan in pain.

Besides thinking hard, to come up with an idea, I usually doodle a bit on paper, and then draw some simple lines in drawing softwares, or modify some code written before to create some “anomalies”. And gradually the visual cues would merge with thoughts in my head, and then a clear imagery would start to form up. After that it’s just walking the long and straight road to the end of it, happily with a bit of hard work.

Coding is fun, but there are often these Deus Ex Machina moments in coding where things just suddenly come to you (after struggling, of course) and look too good to be true. And after the initial excitement it feels a bit empty. In comparison, drawing feels much more healing to me.

Drawing is like hard-coding but in a good way, you have to be there and do every bit by hand, just like painting a house, when you see paints cover every inch of the wooden panel, it’s quite satisfying and de-stressing.

Fly Away on Tezos

Maybe you could give specific instances of inspiration for a work or two. “Fly Away” I think would be great to hear about, and a recent one “Now Playing” is incredible.

This is the photo used in Fly Away. I took it in 2017. Before combining pixel art with generative art, I was experimenting with combining photography with gen art. The lone tree photo was something I tried to use in such a piece, but it didn’t happen.

And then this March, I was playing Elden Ring a lot. There were lots of suffering from different kinds of creatures in the game, like clusters of half-dead humans groaning in pain at night, such unsettling scenes. So I was inspired to do something with death, suffering, soul, etc.

And I found the lone tree photo, which has a doomer vibe in it already. After pixelation and combining with drawings and gen art snippets, we got Fly Away.

Now Playing on Tezos

Now Playing started with that TV bleeding. The TV was of course hand drawn pixel art and the bleeding part was a generated snippet. It didn’t have a storyline in the beginning, just a bleeding TV, and some random horror images showing on it. You can say maybe it’s inspired by Videodrome.

Then I thought I want to have a fuller story. I need something nice and relaxing before the TV starts to bleed. Then came the girl, the cocktail, and plants.

And then somehow I think, all these good things are not real, only the horror from the TV should be real. So I made them into AR.

Not sure what inspired this. Maybe from countless sci-fi films and games I’ve watched and played.

You mentioned something which I always talk about with people who don’t get NFTs, which is that they explicitly allow digital work to have value assigned. Because of this we have seen an explosion of work that technically has been possible, but creators have not been incentivized to create before. Your work is a perfect example of this phenomenon.

The only time anything like this was produced was early games in personal computing in the 80s and 90s. So when I see your or @1bitnecro’s work, I feel like you are going back and properly exploring an entire genre that came and went super quickly.

Oh yes you just reminded me.

The Now Playing would have been inspired by the intro of Command and Conquer. Westwood presents a late capitalistic world on the brink of a global crisis, merely via browsing through TV channels. Which was very inspiring.

Command and Conquer Gold: Intro Movie

I put those goofy TV programmes on the TV screen in Now Playing just to show they were living in a flamboyant world. Westwood games have very cool and inspiring visuals which impacted me a lot as a kid.

I think you capture a feel from those sorts of games eerily well. Had to be there sorta of stuff. I know I played games a million times back then, so I’d sit through the same intros and loading screens, or die on the same levels over and over again. Your work reminds me of that familiar feeling.

Very glad to know!

I’m also a big fan of the original Fallout games. I’d say they have shaped part of me. Humour. I usually want to show a vibe of “Wonderfully Desolated” in my non-abstract works.

I’d say I could attribute that adjective to them all.

Many of my works are about failure and things going wrong, as my gf pointed out, which I didn’t notice.

Subliminal? or just life?

Maybe both haha.

After-party on Tezos

Alien the film inspires me a lot.

Yeah, one work reminded me of it a lot. “After-party”.

Dirty spacecraft hanger with clunky big computers with rust stains and a hard ass chick, yeah!

How long from idea to mint does a work usually take you?

Oh it really depends. I’d say the quickest would be within a week. I write initial ideas down and sometimes it would take like a month to see any fruition, or even longer.

The Visitation on Tezos

Had the idea for The Visitation for a long time before anything was done. It was inspired by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. And hence Roadside Picnic, the novel behind the game. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games have many elements and themes that are relatable to me.

I draw rather slowly. I draw only with a mouse. Was trying to get used to drawing tablet but it’s just not for me.

Now Playing seemed pretty involved.

It took a week, of course not full time. And yes it had many layers like 30 so yes the workload was big, but it’s not the work that took the most brain cells.

Really? Ha wow. Which was that if you know off the top of your head? or perhaps tweaking a generative for fxhash.

Yes, tweaking generative parts takes time.

Bad Move on Tezos

I’d say this piece consumed more brainpower than others. Also this was before I started to use Aseprite to draw.

I love “Bad Move” haha.

It was done in Piskel, which is a nice free tool but not as powerful for multilayer animation.

Who / what are your artistic inspirations? Alive / Dead?

In general, fiction, films, video games, and internet art inspired me a lot.

My mother used to buy those artbooks of “World Famous Paintings” for me, just to broaden my interest when she thought I was too much into dinosaurs, spaceships and sci-fi stuff. The “world-famous”s were fun to watch either in books or in galleries but those works often feel so distant and un-relatable to me.

I’d say my taste in art and preferred aesthetics started to form and establish after broadband Internet became a thing just after 2000 — when you could really start to see countless, different artworks on that boxy monitor. Later Tumblr became a very prominent influence on me. Things posted by artists such as @FornaxVoid and @annaxmalina, are just so beautiful and cool.

There are just so many beautiful works on Tumblr, with different vibes, in different formats. Some are like a warm, mysterious digital ocean waving on a CRT monitor, some are like forgotten dreams and moments you feel nostalgic to but have never lived.

These artworks are not short of appreciators, but many of them would never be displayed in some glorious and glossy galleries. They are things a Goth and/or a Cyberpunk would love to see, non-mainstream stuff which do not abide the spiritual core of neoliberal economy. They are the images you would swap by on screen when you are retreating onto your bed in the middle of the night when everybody else is partying upstairs.

Your parents do not understand these artworks at all, but they make you smile like the happiest idiot. Without any doubt, these artworks have cultivated the taste in art and aesthetic standard of a whole generation. I’m inspired by them and I want to make things like these.

How about contemporary artists?

I have been in love with @FornaxVoid and @annaxmalina ‘s work long before NFT. They are both on HEN, with the former on a break for now.

Both Fornax and I are inspired by a game called DreamWeb a lot. His audiovisual works are excellent.

Anna’s works are like a dream you´ve never dreamed, has a strange nostalgic feeling.

I love @computerevryday ‘s generative microbes a lot. They are fun to watch and remind me of my biologist days.

There are many artists I like. I would need a list for all of them lol.

What draws you to fxhash?

It was fun to try something like that, on-the-go gen art with the blindbox-ish sale mechanism.

I have only two rather simple works on fx though, and don’t consider it my main playground, but will create new works for it in the future.

I love @mandybrigwell ‘s newest fx work “The Last Days of Fire and Steel” a lot.

Do your family / friends / pets know you are into NFTs?

My parents know. Having been dealing with one of the most fraudulent stock markets in the world for decades, my mother is very open-minded on crypto and NFT. On the contrary some of my younger friends don’t get it at all. Well I tried to explain but oh never mind.

What are your current plans in the space?

Create more pieces in the #genxel series. Expand, revisit or remix older series (like The Future Reruns. Learn more drawing and coding tricks, try more ways of storytelling, etc. Might also start something totally new and different, who knows. Stay alive, hang around and have fun, I guess.

Is there anything else you’d like to convey to someone who likes your work?

As I answered in a previous interview: I want my works to trigger something, a smile, a frown, a gush of excitement in the arteries, a wave of nostalgia in the veins, etc. As long as they trigger something in the viewers, then I think it’s good. Everyone is free to perceive my works however they like.

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Gremlin’s Grotto
Gremlin’s Grotto

Published in Gremlin’s Grotto

Gremlin interviews artists in the nft space. They talk about artistic process, background, and the art market.

Gremlin
Gremlin

Written by Gremlin

artist and collector of nfts. shadow imp.

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