Building Web3, Art and Animation with Robbie Shilstone

Transcript

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Welcome to the Index Podcast hosted by Alex Kahaya.

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Plug in as we explore new frontiers with Web 3 and the decentralized future.

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Hey everyone, and welcome to the Index brought to you by the Graph, where we engage in conversations with visionary entrepreneurs building the next wave of the Internet.

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Our mission is driven by the belief that people and their stories are worth knowing.

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We aim to share these stories so that you can understand why they are here, pushing for a better future.

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Today, I'm excited to welcome artist Robbie Shilstone, a Los Angeles-based animator, director and filmmaker.

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His work showcases a variety of styles, themes and techniques that align with each of his projects, and he pulls from abstraction, minimalism, music and philosophy to create worlds for his characters to inhabit.

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He's about to launch his new project, public, which we'll cover on the show, and I'm just super excited to have him here, because your work is amazing and I think what you're building is really, really cool.

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So thanks for coming on the show, yeah thanks for having me.

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I really appreciate it.

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I told you this when we met last week that I have this bucket list thing where I want to be a voice actor, just like an extra or a cameo on an animated film and I was kind of like nerding out about the work that you do.

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But can you just share with everybody kind of your background, who you've worked for in the past, what your style is like?

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Just give people an idea of who you are.

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Yeah, I mean forever and always.

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The best way to really explain something is just to show people, but in this case my work tends to lean in the more minimal and modernist angle.

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I'm an animator and filmmaker, like you said.

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It's kind of like to think that that's the closest, that what my imagination looks like is animated, it's alive.

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So to give a sense of my background, I come from a traditional illustration background, you know, went to art school to learn illustration design.

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You know anatomy drawing classes, all of the above.

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I knew pretty much from the beginning that I wanted to get into animation, but the tools are not easily accessible to someone who's maybe an amateur just starting out.

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So as time went on, I kind of taught myself, gathered kind of the resources and tools and yet, just like I figured there's no better way than just diving in and kind of really throwing yourself at the practice.

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So yeah, I totally hear you on like needing to be able to see the work, and we'll have this in the show notes too.

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But maybe can you give people your Instagram handle, like, if you're listening to this, go to Instagram.

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And here's your handle so they can go check it out.

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It's my last name, shillstone underscore arts.

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That's kind of the primary portfolio, if you want to call it that.

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So shillste underscore arts on Instagram.

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I loved your work.

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I think it's really cool, and you have these like these, like paintings that have this AR, or the drawings that have this AR component, to where you can like take the iPhone out about and hold it in front of the painting, and these are for sale on your website.

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But it's like a picture of a jazz musician playing various instruments, right, and there's three of them.

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When you overlay the VR app, it like plays the music, which I thought was super cool.

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I consider web three actually like crypto, blockchain, stuff, ar, vr and AI.

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It's like all, all of those things yeah, all of the umbrella.

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You kind of are dabbling in everything there with your art.

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How did you get into web three?

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Like?

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You're an artist, an animator, you've worked for some pretty big name brands like Disney, and how did you go from that to web three stuff?

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Yeah, and so I had been working freelance for the past it's like five, maybe six years now.

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I haven't had a full-time job for quite a bit, which is ideal, and I had this really great chance to kind of work with some of the larger institutions, including MoMA and Apple, and I think I always knew that my primary goal was filmmaking and storytelling.

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I think it's just what I naturally gravitate towards, and so, you know, I have been constantly looking for different ways and means of pursuing that.

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I'm not one for really waiting for permission for people to tell me I can start doing something, particularly like an idea that I need to see fleshed out, and so crowdsourcing had always been this really interesting idea to me, but it never really felt serious enough to make a career on.

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It always felt very, I don't know, pieced together.

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I didn't feel like a serious investment in a project, and so I naturally kind of heard about the people drop back in 2021 and his landmark sale that kind of like took over the public news cycle for a while, and my manager at the time was like hey, I think you're the ideal candidate for this space.

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Like it's a place where creatives can kind of like use their you know, fandom as well as also be paid for their work which at that time in a digital landscape, had never been even on the table.

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You're talking about people just putting up things for, hopefully, social engagement, which then might lead to a financial opportunity.

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But that is like was an unprecedented moment for the digital art world.

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So I heard about that and we kind of made a wallet together.

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We were making an Ethereum wallet.

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We're kind of fast-tracked on the Super Rare.

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Our very first piece was a one-of-one collab with Method man from Wu-Tang, so it was kind of a sweet way to just jump into the space.

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They contacted us, saw our work and really liked it.

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So, yeah, it was kind of a haphazard way of getting into the space.

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I think most people can attest to being like your first steps into Web 3 might be a little chaotic a little.

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You know you have to kind of fish through all the scams and the people that are just like DMing you or tagging you and you're like what the hell is this place?

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But slowly but surely built this really great community here.

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That has been particularly on Solana.

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That has been such a great way for us to just kind of grow together in this kind of bizarre ecosystem.

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Amazing.

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And so Method man, just like DMed you Like.

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How did that happen?

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How did it reach out to you?

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Yeah, it was actually like pieced together through a handful of other people.

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So people had the rights to a song that was unreleased, that was made during like a, the story goes, a producer by the name of J Ralph.

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He had met Method man in Brooklyn back in like early 90s at a music production studio, and in a hallway he whipped out a boombox and cassette tapes and he essentially played him a track and there's a video of Method man freestyling on top of the boombox cassette tapes.

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So they were like wanted to recreate that in a fine art sense 25 years later, and that's the name of the piece.

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So it's kind of like this abstracted hip hop version of that moment.

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And so, yeah, they just reached out and kind of like coordinated the whole thing.

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It took a little bit to get it over the finish line because none of us knew pretty much anything about Web 3 at the time other than, hey, let's put something up and see what happens.

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And so it's sold for a pretty substantial amount.

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At that point I was like, okay, I think we're here to like hang out and see what's going on.

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I can do this, yeah, exactly.

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If you're okay with it, I'd like to read through slide to your thesis on this new project that you've got going on.

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I think the writing is really compelling.

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So public is a character led animated universe set in a bustling mid century metropolis.

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It is public's belief that everyone is unique with a story worth telling.

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While more modern characters exist in this world, it is fondness of the past that will breathe throughout everything related to public.

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Through short films and animated vignettes, we glimpse into the everyday lives of every citizen.

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Each hand drawn character will be a collectable cast member of this living, breathing world.

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Collectors will gain access to the animation production process, contribute to story ideas and develop these characters alongside the creator.

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The gradual release of characters will support film development with the ultimate goal of screening at film festivals, pitching to streaming networks, securing a show deal and growing the IP.

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Number one.

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That's a great thesis.

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You heard the beginning of the show.

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My whole tagline for the index is we believe people are worth knowing.

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It really resonates for me what you're trying to do and it's just so thoughtful.

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I just wonder like where did the inspiration for this come from?

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Where's the inspiration drawn from?

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Yeah, when I saw that in your description of the podcast I was like, okay, like we're aligned on the kind of thesis there.

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The idea again came from storytelling and film making and fundraising.

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I guess I should touch on Offleash a little bit, because that it was kind of our proof of concept a little bit, and then I can delve into you know, where this concept really came from.

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Offleash was a film that I fundraised on Solana just over a year ago.

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We put all the characters in the film up for sale.

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It's a film about dogs, so nine dogs went up for sale and it was over a three week period and we said whichever one of these characters sells for the most and is auctioned off for the most will become the protagonist of the film.

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And that kind of kept me as a storyteller on my toes and kind of needing to be improvisational and willing to practice that philosophy of saying I could put the spotlight on any of these characters and I have something to say about each of them.

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And now when you see the final result, which the poodle ended up being the protagonist, her name's Isabella.

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The collector got to name them.

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They got a little tag with their name on it as an airdrop was fun.

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If you were to look at the full cast there's a wide variety of different characters.

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Like there's a pug who is like super derpy and like really like you would never think to be a protagonist in a film.

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They were always the comic relief, and so I found that exercising that and being open enough for that was something that stimulated me, just got me excited to think oh, what would the film actually be like with any of these guys?

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So that was the initial idea and now off leash was actually our plan B of all things.

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So we had an entire separate film and all the artwork and the actual like pieces to auction off were ready to go.

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And I'm not gonna divulge what that film necessarily about, but we were planning on selling essentially vignettes that were like little animated scenes that would be kind of referencing what the film's about as well as kind of a seasonal interpretation of the city itself and then background characters.

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And then as time went on, we were like man, these background characters, that is the whole thing.

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Everyone is a background character and someone else's story and that's kind of how we like drifted over from being like no, we're gonna do one film at a time and really focus in on that, to then saying, no, it's crap, that the films shouldn't necessarily be the first thing that we're leading with.

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We should lead with the characters, because that's what people care about.

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And then through that process we really like it's been, you know, now coming on two years of really fleshing this idea out and really like just honing it, creating all of the characters.

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Now we're pretty deep into it.

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I'm excited to really practice what we preach and put something out there.

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I know that, like the industry is paying attention your industry is paying attention to this now, but I still feel like it's so early.

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But if you look at what you're doing and what, like Claynassource has done, it's really turned the whole model of creation of these kinds of animated films and games and products on its head.

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The normal way to do business is like pitch a production company, get a bunch of money, then like make the film right and this is like we're gonna develop the characters with the fans and like let the market kind of help tell us what thing is gonna resonate the most.

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Like I'm really interested to see where this lands in a couple of years, where, like these characters that you're developing initially through like the sales, the auctions, and then through the vignette development and like this like iterative process, where is it gonna go?

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You know, like what thing is gonna be the most popular and will that have a meaningful impact on the longevity of the brand you're building around it Right?

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Like I mean, look in startups, is customer discovery right?

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Like you do you go out and you like have an idea for a startup and so you talk to your customers and this is literally the best kind of customer discovery.

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You're literally selling them the content before you've actually made the film or the game or whatever it is.

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I mean it's really cool to watch.

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But the difference here is that, you know, compared to a lot of projects in web three which, granted, there are a lot of really great ones, particularly Love Clayno stores there are some good friends of mine on that team what was really important for us is to provide a proof of concept prior to launching a big project like this, which is why we really wanted to do the off leash film, what's to say, we can deliver the goods.

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We have delivered the goods.

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We've already done this on a smaller scale.

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Now let's like take it more seriously, and I feel like there's a lot of projects currently that don't really like they launch just a generative collection or whatever it might be, and it becomes a huge success, and then they are like trying to figure out what to do with all these funds.

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And for me, I really wanted to make sure that the goal was always super clear and, with the path of exactly what it is, we were trying to do.

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And so people can go watch this movie like the first film is out there.

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Yep, it's on YouTube.

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It's just on YouTube search off-leash short film and, yeah, you'll recognize the art style.

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It's already in a film festival in Istanbul and it's making the rounds.

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Some more we're waiting to hear back from a few dozen more, so we have a lot of submissions out there.

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Stuff always takes a long time to to get over the finish line, though.

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That's very cool, continuing to pull on that thread.

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You're not doing a generative drop with this project, you're gonna do one of ones.

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Can you talk about that, like the character development, and I mean I was reading through the deck I was like, dude, this is a lot of work.

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He's just are you the only animator or you have other people helping you, or is it just you?

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So far, this entire thing is just me.

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That is insane amount of work so people understand.

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Tell them more about that and then like what actually goes into the process of each animation.

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Yeah, so hand-drawn animation is exactly what it sounds like.

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It's sitting still and drawing frame by frame In order to, you know, create the illusion of life.

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Generally speaking, when we watch any video, it's shot at between 24 to 30 frames per second and for me that's obviously a Tremendous amount of effort to animate and draw that may frames per second.

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So I animate on twos, which means 12 frames per second.

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Essentially, every time you look at a, you know, a frame of my animation is still frame.

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That's one of 12 that would, you know, have to be made of per frame.

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So it's quite a laborious process and you know I've been able to Streamline my process quite a bit over the years and really, you know hone in on how to produce it in a way that's a little More favorable to my time and schedule.

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But you're still in the weeds, you know, scrolling through frames.

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So it's quite a laborious process and you know, as far as the full production, it's like you design the characters, you storyboard, you know the actual like, beat by beat, how you time that out to music and in the off-leashers case, we, you know, commissioned a composer and you know performers to produce the score of the film, which is you can listen to on Spotify.

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Now it's a full production process Animations a little different than, say, video, in the sense that you shoot Footage and then you edit it down.

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When it comes to live action, but an animation, you pretty much edit the entire film before you even start animating itself.

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Just because there's no extra footage you don't like, you have to make every single bit of it.

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So it's a labor of love at the end of the day and you know, that's kind of the philosophy of wanting to do one-of-ones as opposed to, say, generative collections.

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You're making a thousand characters like I mean one by one at least a thousand, yeah and then you're auctioning them off.

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Are you doing 12 frames Per thousand characters?

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Are they each character gonna be animated?

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Oh yeah, they're all gonna be animated.

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Yes, it's 12,000, really 12,000 drawings, 12,000 yeah, at least I.

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A thousand is kind of a rough point in the on the horizon, but I don't know.

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I don't see any reason why this should stop.

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If you think about a thousand people, like you know it, over a thousand people, guaranteed right, it's like and, and they're all individuals, like a thousand kind of feels small to me, frankly, as far as like the variety of people in this world and different stories that you could tell.

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So you know that that is a benchmark that I'm wanting to like hit as at least when we're, you know, trying to communicate about it.

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But it's definitely an ambitious scale, but we're planning on rolling it out slowly over a really long period of time.

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It's not something where it's like we're dropping a thousand at once.

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Yeah, what's that gonna look like?

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Like what's really long, and how's the how's it gonna get rolled out?

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How are people gonna get them?

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so we're really like with the character collection in particular where we want to make sure that there is a moment to highlight each character and so currently our Plan right now is to release one a week indefinitely until you know the collections complete.

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Now I think there will be opportunities to do batch drops or theme drops.

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So, for instance, if all the fine dining cooks were to drop at once and that kind of fleshes out like that little pocket of storytelling and location-based character collection, that within it, so you can kind of do like Different versions of it.

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So it's not only one a week, but we want to like provide that cadence so that people know and can expect every single week when you return at this time you will see a new character that's in the collection and that's like a moment of entertainment that kind of takes your eye off of the floor price of a collection and just makes it about the fun, the storytelling.

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You know, and there is an entry point you know every week it's not just like you can get in if the market's at a low point or if it's at a high point.

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You know that, there's just like it's more sustainable in a long term and you know I've been able to grow my Instagram account over quite a long period of time without any gimmicks or tricks, like it's always it's been organic and it because of that it has, you know, flourished into like one of the most you know Fascinating communities on Instagram.

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I think, as far as just the type of people that, a gravitate sword.

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You have like 400,000 followers on Instagram who already this is another like you've got great market validation.

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Like you've got this big community, people who love your work already and this is like the next level in the funnel right where they can like really engage and really like get ownership and some of the content that you're creating.

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I have not seen an experiment quite like this yet.

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You know the slow drip, the actual creation process.

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It's very cool and they're all storytellers.

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If you go through the comment section of Instagram, you'll see paragraphs of people going into detail about some of these characters, which are, you know, 12-second animations of characters doing a number of different things.

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But just spontaneously, just doing that on their own every single post, pretty much I prompt saying what's their name and or if it's a building or a restaurant.

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Or this week I posted a sailboat and I said what's the sailboat's name?

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And people write these crazy backstories for it.

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I love it because it's like for me, art is a reflection of each of us, like it's that's where you find real values.

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You see yourself in it and are able to pull something from it that no one else would, and so whenever you get that chance to, you know see people's interpretations of this.

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It's a reflection of themselves.

00:20:08.049 --> 00:20:18.950
You know some people be like that's my dad and he just passed away three years ago, and like I miss him every day and I'm like holy shit, this is awesome, it's just because it's beautiful.

00:20:19.913 --> 00:20:25.048
Yeah, you impacted that person, you, you inspired them in some way and and had an impact on them, and that was cathartic.

00:20:25.048 --> 00:20:28.317
In that case, I mean, that's meaningful and that's emotional yeah, and.

00:20:28.337 --> 00:20:29.060
I mean, this is another.

00:20:29.060 --> 00:20:35.003
Another thing that I want to read actually from your deck, if you don't mind, is just at the last slide.

00:20:35.003 --> 00:20:36.410
It's a word from shillstone.

00:20:36.410 --> 00:20:42.695
I believe public can be a force for good in the world Outside of just being entertainment.

00:20:42.695 --> 00:20:50.230
Public can provide intellectual, emotional and financial value to its fans by making the brand and body growth, human connection and simplicity.

00:20:50.230 --> 00:20:52.760
I know public can stand the test of time.

00:20:52.760 --> 00:20:54.910
It's really powerful, what you're doing.

00:20:55.872 --> 00:21:03.792
It goes back to the why, like you believe these stories are important in the people that are telling them are actually the fans.

00:21:03.792 --> 00:21:08.349
They're the ones, like, helping create and tell the story and there's just something really meaningful there.

00:21:08.349 --> 00:21:17.549
And I'm like I'm thinking about you mentioned Like you're gonna roll out these thousand ish initial ones like once a week, with like potentially some bulk drops.

00:21:17.549 --> 00:21:21.161
It sounds like a handful as bulk, like five, ten maybe at a once.

00:21:21.161 --> 00:21:34.263
It just strikes me that there's just like it's gonna be basically forever and it could be, and you've seen like some timeless classics out there that have like 15 seasons, you know, and this is like the beginning of one of those things.

00:21:34.263 --> 00:21:37.954
But it's a totally different Medium, isn't the right word?

00:21:37.954 --> 00:21:40.019
It's it's, but it is a different delivery right.

00:21:40.019 --> 00:21:43.513
It's a very different delivery of Something like this.

00:21:43.513 --> 00:21:45.180
It's really intriguing.

00:21:45.951 --> 00:21:48.237
At the end of the day, the why is really important?

00:21:48.237 --> 00:21:50.883
Because that's gonna keep you invested in it for the long haul.

00:21:50.883 --> 00:21:58.584
Money's not really all that important to me outside of making ends meet and being able to pursue the things that I want.

00:21:58.584 --> 00:22:15.328
Obviously, more is better and in certain instances but like I didn't get into animation to make money, let's put it like that so I'm, you know, keen on making sure that this has like real Sticking value for people and becomes part of their lives in a way.

00:22:15.328 --> 00:22:23.740
You know it's not just something that distract you from, you know, your, your everyday life, but it's something that hopefully helps you cope with life in a way.

00:22:23.740 --> 00:22:46.173
There's just a lot of noise in the world right now and I think people, particularly on the internet, are really starved of soulful things that are like a piece of calm and Really like that slow them down for a moment, when I feel like that's something that the internet Certainly doesn't incentivize, but clearly there's a demand for it to some degree.

00:22:47.397 --> 00:22:48.382
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

00:22:48.382 --> 00:22:55.163
Yeah, you keep talking about like standing this day of time right, Like in lasting forever, and having this like long-term meaningful impact.

00:22:55.163 --> 00:23:00.625
That resonates with me throughout the entire presentation that you have about this project.

00:23:00.625 --> 00:23:02.367
It's just inspiring.

00:23:02.367 --> 00:23:03.819
It'll be really cool to see it happen.

00:23:03.819 --> 00:23:11.463
We're getting towards the top of the show here and I always ask kind of the same question of people but what have I not asked you that I should have asked?

00:23:12.575 --> 00:23:14.541
Why Web 3, maybe yeah.

00:23:14.541 --> 00:23:18.683
Why not pursue like a Disney deal or whomever?

00:23:19.494 --> 00:23:19.997
Great question.

00:23:20.615 --> 00:23:24.705
The reason why I do it to begin with is to connect as closely with the fans as possible.

00:23:24.705 --> 00:23:30.126
I believe that content is king like, and people will follow it wherever like.

00:23:30.126 --> 00:23:34.003
If they find content that they are particularly fond of, they will follow it wherever it goes.

00:23:34.775 --> 00:23:37.883
We're in the middle of a writer strike, an actor strike.

00:23:37.883 --> 00:23:45.287
There's like a clear lack of value that's being associated with creators.

00:23:45.287 --> 00:23:49.724
Like I said previously, I don't want to wait for permission from someone else.

00:23:49.724 --> 00:23:53.825
I know there are people out there that want to see what I want to produce.

00:23:53.825 --> 00:24:01.299
I'm going to try and get to that as quickly as possible, because the idea is here and now and it needs to be made now.

00:24:01.299 --> 00:24:08.228
The bureaucratic hurdles of traditional media to me is just too slow in today's world.

00:24:08.228 --> 00:24:28.644
I think that having a fan base that can really support and hopefully gain something from it as well Not just the entertainment or like a Kickstarter, but hopefully can be rewarded for being early to culture I think that to me is like a really interesting and unprecedented opportunity.

00:24:29.365 --> 00:24:30.166
Wonderfully said.

00:24:30.166 --> 00:24:38.724
Yeah, I think that that's like the why Web 3 question is so important for people to hear and it's one of the big reasons why I have this show is to help folks understand that.

00:24:38.724 --> 00:24:56.105
But that direct connection between creator and the consumer, the audience, is really important and I think more and more creators are becoming aware of the fact that their core channel, their core ways, where they reach that audience, is not theirs.

00:24:56.105 --> 00:24:57.599
They don't own that audience.

00:24:57.599 --> 00:25:07.442
And the nature of having your fan have a wallet that's composable across an open, permissionless blockchain that allows you to all of a sudden have that direct relationship.

00:25:07.442 --> 00:25:14.605
Technologies may change, providers of interfaces to access, the fans may change, but it's always there.

00:25:14.605 --> 00:25:16.028
The connection is always there.

00:25:16.028 --> 00:25:17.058
You can always find a way.

00:25:17.058 --> 00:25:22.205
That's the future of the internet is that you have this connection across platforms and they don't own it.

00:25:22.205 --> 00:25:22.626
You own it.

00:25:23.474 --> 00:25:27.566
The amount of power that these platforms have right now is just over society as it is.

00:25:27.566 --> 00:25:30.343
It's just hard to really wrap our heads around.

00:25:30.343 --> 00:25:32.741
So, yeah, I couldn't agree more of that sentiment.

00:25:33.435 --> 00:25:34.862
Robbie, thanks so much for being on the show.

00:25:34.862 --> 00:25:45.008
I wish you the best of luck with public and if you're listening to this, please go check out his Instagram shillstone underscore arts.

00:25:45.008 --> 00:25:47.221
Yeah, just follow along on the journey.

00:25:47.221 --> 00:25:52.598
This is a really really interesting experiment happening kind of in real time over the next six months or so.

00:25:52.598 --> 00:25:54.759
Really look forward to seeing how you end up.

00:25:55.320 --> 00:25:59.285
Yeah, appreciate it, alex, and look forward to sharing everything with everyone along the way.

00:25:59.948 --> 00:26:00.229
All right.

00:26:02.287 --> 00:26:03.334
Thanks for tuning in.

00:26:03.334 --> 00:26:06.324
Thanks for watching.

00:26:06.324 --> 00:26:08.654
You just heard the index podcast with your host, alex Kahaya.

00:26:08.654 --> 00:26:16.343
If you enjoyed this episode, please give the show a five star rating and subscribe on Apple, spotify, google or your favorite streaming platform.

00:26:16.343 --> 00:26:19.182
New episodes available every other Wednesday.

00:26:19.182 --> 00:26:20.696
Thanks for tuning in.

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