It’s the second week of the Designer Weekly Spotlight and for this edition we are featuring Stan Mclygin!
Stan has been part of the DIGITALAX core team since the very beginning, he was the first full time team member and leads as the core 3D pipeline manager and creative mind behind so much of our in-house fashion production. He’s the one that coordinated the scene creation, animation and rendering across all of the DIGITALAX OG auctions and also runs the digital fashion and 3D content produced and released by the protocol. In short, he’s pretty much a 3D wizard— works almost 24/7 and is on the same determined mission to revolutionise the entire fashion industry!
Treasury Web3 Fashion Vault Purchases
Under the designer spotlight, both the DIGITALAX + GDN Treasuries have purchased one each of Stan’s live pieces from the DIGITALAX web3 fashion marketplace which will be held in the treasury vaults.
DIGITALAX Vault Purchase
Item: Tantalum Mesh Bikini Top
GDN Vault Purchase
Item: Digi x Vibe Boots Ultra Violet
Autobiographical Entry from Stan
My journey into digital fashion wasn’t so straight forward. But it starts in an a now no longer existent country (USSR), in the early 90s, during my time at art school. I was a good student and really enjoyed painting vases and flowers, studying colors, shapes, proportion, perspective etc. A neighbour from a nearby block had a PC (very rare at the time and in my area)… I still don't know where or how he got it. It was pretty impossible to get it in the USSR in the 90s and his family was very closed from society so we could only imagine.
One day he showed me his drawings. It was a short story reflecting a popular game called Quake, it was made in a comical style with a simple pen, but it blew my mind!
Could myself, a boy who drew vases and flowers, also draw begin to draw stuff like this?
Later he gave me a book on how to draw comics that multiplied on my art school knowledge and gave me an immersive push into the arts. I never went back to art school again.
As I was moving into my young adulthood, I focused heavily on my studies, and while all of my friends were having fun at parties, I studied Russian literature and English. The faculty of Romance-Germanic philology was awaiting for me with open arms— I even thought whether or not I should be an English language teacher in a Russian school or perhaps an interpreter. But, I didn't see all the depth of this direction, and honestly, the thought of living out my days as a teacher really just drove me crazy.
So, just one month before the entrance examination I quit it all and instead moved into studying economics. Just not to lose a year, I said "ok, LFG!"
During this time, I met very important people that would be part of my journey, including my best friend. But it was also a period when I was far far away from any art, English literature and all the areas that I had previously put so much effort into learning. It was only economical stuff, and really most of the time quite boring. Oh, sometimes I would draw female portraits— but I guess it was just hormones. 😂 😂
After so many unsatisfying jobs that were purely focused on money alone, I almost completely lost myself as an artist.
Then I met my wife, we got married and moved to Italy. We lived in Italy for a month and it was a life changing experience. Not just a journey but the turning point for probably my entire life. I don't know what it was exactly- Florence or the Vatican with its ancient art, my favorite food and wine, Rome or Venice, beautiful Lagos, Alps and seas galore…. It was like taking off such dirty glasses, cleaning them and putting them back… so much clarity. "Oh, the sky is blue! I see!"
After we got back I quit my job immediately. My wife quit hers also. And we began our journey. The leap of faith.
The first year was very hard for us and for our lazy bronze brains, but it helped us to move away and leave behind all the emptiness and trash around us. So we decided to run our own business, and we started brainstorming ideas. Whilst we were doing this I found myself immersed in my art again— I was enjoying doing sketches, doodles, different designs that were just appearing in my mind and I was like, "Omg I’m an artist, I just forgot it!"
With that, I started my solo designer career as a freelancer. I'm a completely self-taught artist, from the technical tooling to all of the 3D softwares.
After about 5-6 years I established for myself a pretty good portfolio that got me a number of client opportunities and allowed me to make enough money to not have to look for a regular job.
And then I met Emma-Jane, she showed me the crypto world and digital fashion. It was a huge revelation for me. My crazy brain started to draw pictures of the future I was realising and dreaming up. The energy of this young girl was so powerful that I stood by her side from the first days and we started to build the entire future together through DIGITALAX.
Web3 Renaissance Patronage
Any patronage of the Weekly Designer Spotlight goes directly to the Global Designer Network Treasury, Spotlighted Designer and Core Writer (50/35/15), for further growing out the infrastructure, community and market of web3 fashion, the open metaverse and more. For this week, the core writer was GDN member Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee.