The Story

With each piece in ART PONZI, I tried to tell a story about the entire collection. This is important for this 1st series. So far, the pieces in the collection referred to the collection’s genesis, its drop mechanics, the time of the drops (close to the merge), the glitch art style, on-chain immutability, and never-ending artistic tweaks.

There are a couple of ways to interpret this piece, but the one I like is the story of artists and builders in web3, who are pushing the space forward, pushing the boundaries, and in the end cracking through, becoming damaged themselves but hopefully making a change and leaving their mark.

So Pushersleft wants to honor the boundary-pushers in web3, but also represents my hope for ART PONZI to be a part of these legendary collections. This is why I tried to do “firsts” throughout each drop, even if they’re niche (first on-chain glitch art, first on-chain editions, first on-chain visual story with scenes, first on-chain puzzle, etc).

The Concept

The first time I told an on-chain visual story was through Mergeleft. Mergeleft depicted the story of proof of work switching to an environmentally friendly proof of stake.

What was unique about Mergeleft?

Mergeleft included three scenes. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the ending didn’t stop like in a video file. The ending was on a loop.

With Pushersleft, I’m taking a similar approach to Mergeleft. So technically it’s not a first. But hopefully, it’s a more complete story this time.

Pushersleft has four scenes: Pushing, cracking, distorting, and birth. The code was even written based on the separation of scenes.

Technicals

In my view, the most artistic part of this work is not the aesthetic (although I find it beautiful), not the concept (although I think non-looping scenes of visual events is a pretty unique concept), but the optimizations to ensure the work can be immutably stored on-chain.

Here I’ll explain some of the strategies I use to deploy my works on-chain.

I first draw different scenes by hand. Already at this stage, I have to consider the number of nodes I’m using. I reduce the number of nodes used to reduce the length of the pathways. There’s already a trade-off here; optimize for the shortest path while maintaining an aesthetic image that conveys the emotion you want to express with the artwork. Much like pixel art, simplicity is key in SVG art. One of the tricks is drawing the pathways that may go outside the viewbox to reduce the number of nodes.

The next step is removing decimals where not needed. Why would you need coordinate 71.89 when you can have coordinate 72? Barely anything changes in the final artwork after making such a change.

I also sectionize parts of the SVG code. For example, if there are elements in the piece with the same color, they can go under the same layer, even if they are in irrelevant parts of the piece. This applies to animations too, similar animations can be grouped.

Choosing the right command is also key. You can save about 5% if you use ‘path’ command instead of ‘rect’ command to reach the same shape.

Then there’s the ‘use’ command. You can assign identities to sections of the code to reuse them later. You can even move them slightly to repeat the same section in a different coordinate. You have to be careful though; everything, including the animation, gets copied with this command.

There are several minor tricks also specific to the use case; like how you animate (draw a new pathway, or simply use command) or how much glow you add.

This is how I can build these animated mini-movies on-chain with the files sized 99% smaller than a fiverr cartoon pfp.

Final Thoughts

I hope everyone likes Pushersleft as much as I enjoyed making it. It took about a week to complete, but due to the volatility in crypto, gas cost was high and the transaction to put the file on-chain got stuck more than a week.

This was ART PONZI’s 7th drop. I want to keep marking other niche “firsts” in NFT space with the next drops, explore new frontiers and hopefully push the boundaries of what can be done on-chain a little further.

Don’t forget; every piece you own in ART PONZI qualify you an airdrop of the next piece. The 10th piece in the collection will qualify its holders for a piece from a secret collection. This means; if you keep holding all drops, the next ART PONZI piece (piece #8) will qualify you for 3 additional airdrops of unique artworks.