Hello! I'd like introduce myself, let loose with the word vomit and give you my untold autobiography ... the rise of a zombie artist ... it's a working title and told the best I can remember. It's going to be a bit concise and lengthy. I apologize in advance.
tl:dr - i am a self starter that stays the course and I'm looking for help building the Horde. Or barring that - idea developer and graphic creator for hire
best gallery www.artistbyron.ca more listed throughout the novel I just typed.
another easy source of my art is
https://opensea.io/ArtistByron .
on with the show
I'm Byron from Canada and I draw zombies. I'ts been the thing I do for the better part of 2 decades now and I don't think it's something I will ever stop doing. My wife and children have come to accept it.
This addiction to drawing the undead started off way back in 2009 as a blog
The blog is still live and I pull some inspiration from it from time to time. It's not very good, but I was young and bitter. It was something to do. Anyways. I kept at it and eventually googlePlus came around and I took a chance on it. My zombie portraits at the time were very amateur but it was my shtick so I laid it on thick with googleplus. I started photobombing the accounts with biggish engagement. Follower count wasn't as important as ego was to me. So I would post photos like this 
I admit it wasn't super great art, but it was fun and random. I would try to make it a game where people would start wondering who would Byron zombify next. I wasn't selling anything, it was just giggles and it got me noticed and eventually led to commissions ... and then googlePLUS started to see that artists were making waves so they invested in bringing media to those artists.
I was interviewed on as well as a local station. They put it together pretty well https://vimeo.com/50542192
I started a 1000 zombies art project (it has since stalled in the 400s) as a way to build some community and it would have been the bomb if NFTs were around then. The idea was that for just ten bucks I paint you as a zombie and you get the high res I keep original for eventual art installation. Pipe dreams but why dream small.
Only problem is that I was small time all by myself and no way to know what the heck to do. Also a full time father, all my other depression building life story that everyone has to deal with. It was too much, I put family first and the whole thing kinda petered out . . . and then totally gone when googlePLUS died. . Whatever. Move on - still blogging a bit, still selling art here and there, still doing the grind. Facebook started to be neat again and I was making some youtube videos and starting to get a bit of traction there. Nothing that was even making a dent in my financials but it was keeping me alive ... so to speak.
I got some art sales and donations through my ko-fi work , which is like patreon but different. I'm starting to resell on there again. Free stuff including another little life story as a comic Free to read, donations welcome ... buy me a coffee?
The grind .. always the grind.
But that's been a slow slow grind to figure out how to get traction. Traction and keep it. I have people that have subscribed for over a year just because they like me. I got by with a lot of zombie pet portraits and zombie cat paintings.
Anyways - that was years prior and some of covid. In 2021 my half bro introduced me to NFTs and I had no clue what the heck I was doing, but people were buying.
So I minted the hell out of my art and trying all sorts of different things. I didn't know what a bull run was but people were buying.
We were supposed to make a game, we never did. In the mean time I have built a few art collecting games and even a whole community sprung up organically around the idea of Zombie Pickles
What began as a joke in the Horde's telegram community quickly became a whole project and NFT Art collection. Me and some of the community began to come up with art collecting games that could be played by anyone. Free to start, pay to start better options with the end result just being that you managed to get an NFT. But it built community.
More and more people joined my journey and followed on twitter and discord. We now have over 1000 members in the Horde and a solid team of people that know how to run a discord better than me.
Crypto was a real trip - so much fun to connect to people that actually liked my art and were ready to spend money on it. Sure it was 'play money' of a sort but I knew some people were really investing in me. What a head trip. Some were buying and selling my NFTs for hundreds of real dollars. It is also fun because the developers are pretty chill and make fun tools. So staying on good terms with them is key, but that's easy as long as you don't be a dick. There was no end to people telling me how to do things the right way, their way, the make them more money way. Sure ... but what about the other person that wants me to do it their way. I had to learn to tune them out and keep playing. Don't chase the money ... entertain the people.
And it was fun for a long time.
Then it shifted and got to be a lot of work again but I managed to build a really solid community and they've kept me going. They buy and sell a lot of collections of NFTs to turn profits, but with my collections, they're collecting to own and keep. I need to really think about what I've accomplished with NFTs and my artwork and my ideas. It's a lot, more than I can remember sometimes.
I taught my eldest son how to mint his artwork on the WAX Blockchain too. He is on his way to being an amazing self taught tattoo artist. I also taught my youngest sonsecond born how to do it. They were hesitant but the community made them feel like they were worth something. Plus it kept them busy during covid and earned them money.
I've also minted my wifes artwork on the blockchain.
In fact, it's because of the blockchain success that she started to get into art again. Other people have reached out, and continue to reach out, telling me how they are picking up the pen again because of my art. I have developed relationships with tech developers all over the wax blockchain and people seem to know me, or of me. Some don't like my art, others love it.I have people willing to be my merch distributors - but I need to figure out how to market it and push it a bit more. I have people willing to develop my blockchain ideas if I could hire them or solidify the plans.
I have people willing to help, and that's cool.
With the Horde's help I also developed the (shitcoin) token $DHC on the WAXP blockchain that is now tradable for WAX on alcor and people get to earn it for free just by working in the Horde's discord. A free thing they can do just by showing up and clicking. Then they can use the $DHC (daHordesCoin) to buy some exclusive NFTs and participate in NFT Art games of mine. They can sell the NFTs as well for WAX which earns them money and me too. It's doing pretty well, but I need to bring more attention to it and that coin could moon.
I have solid core group on the Horde's Discord that we call the Founders. They have the Founders Coin
and they can stake that coin to earn DHC passively. They also get a year long subscription pass to my WAX art airdrops. I've been offering subscription art service for over a year and have regular subscribers. It could be bigger but . . .
I have people sharing my work all the time and trying to come up with ideas to bring more attention to the Horde.
I have people helping run the Horde's discord and developing bots, holding rumble games and generally just trying to help. Speaking of the Horde - it's a community that built up around the zombie art and they're kind of proud of how weird we can get sometimes. Check out the A.S.S. Packs for example. They encourage me ...though it's not like I really need the encouragement.
At this point the WAX PFP machine came out on NFT hive and I started to have a lot more fun building again. I could take all sorts of my artwork and mash them together to build really fun generative art projects. I used to have a strong dislike for those PFP projects like BAYC because it was much to copycat cheap and lazy feeling to me. I was probably also bitter still :P But if you make it more for being ART then it was a hell of a lot of fun.
? Big ideas, huge ambition, but no real solid plan or ability to quite pull it off.
Now I'm starting to live stream and Ive got ideas on how to incorporate all three things into one project. Live streaming zombie portraits that will be used for an apocalyptically different NFT project. At least that's the plan ... as well as develop the myzicklearmy game, the zombiecats game, the undead baseball game, and so many more. Plus the live action or animated movie ideas that I need to create as well as the 2 even more important projects . . . 1. Help teach my wife how to become the artist she is and get the attention she deserves so she can tell her story. While doing so start documenting it and share it with others so they can replicate it, if it works. If it fails, well then we tell them what not to do :) 2. Leave a legacy for my family.
See, I don't do what most people do. I draw and paint with real materials and I actually hoard it all.
I'm starting to sell my work on the Ko-fi page and I'm willing to take commissions. But the main point is that with this collection my kids could retain all sorts of rights and be set for life. So my job is to make my art worth having by being a really good person to want to own a piece of. How to do that, tell my story. What have I been doing all my life since 2009? Telling my story. What will I do tomorrow? Tell my story.
I'll have more time now that my kids are much older and self sufficient.
I drone on. It's what I do.
So now things have come to a point where for me it is now sink or swim. If I don't find something to make me some money fast, I will be, quite simply, fucked.
I don't want to put any burden on you at all so don't think of this like that. Just a fact, everyone knows it because I've shared it. One old googleplus friend reached out and gave a huge chunk of financial help. Crazy, but I guess people like me. Not all people, I have some that don't like me and some that even hate me and there are a few people out there that I owe artwork to but have lost contact with. Either forgotten from old age or drowned in the amber liquid that once sloshed through my brain.
I have more ideas than time, I don't know enough to properly pull them all off by myself. Anyways ... I'm sure I've taken up enough of your time. That's my life, mostly.
I work hard, can't stop, got ideas and I bring a lot of them to life.
If you can help, awesome. I don't like going slow though and I'm not really able to travel. Other than that, I'm all in to do most things or collaborate with someone to bring some of my ideas to life. Thanks for reading, hope to hear from you soon.
www.artistbyron.ca https://opensea.io/ArtistByron
