Creative minds are finding themselves enamoured by NFTs, and so CoinBurp will be getting to know members of this diverse community to see what makes artists and other NFT creators tick.
The first artist is called Max Hay, an 18-year-old 3D digital artist with an impressive 422 picture catalogue on his Instagram account, boasting over 28,000 followers.
Max, thank you for taking the time to do this interview with us. We have been following your first NFT sale and we’d like to say congratulations! 🥳
The link to the auction is below for our readers to view: (Now closed)
You have a huge plethora of art on your Instagram page. Being only 18, it is incredibly impressive to have produced such high-quality work at a young age. How did you first get into creating digital art?
My first time creating digital art was with an app on my phone (that unfortunately no longer exists) called Photoshop Touch. At the time I was probably 11 or 12 years old, and super excited to be able to make these weird, abstract photo manipulations. Eventually I got a camera and started learning photography, as well as the real version of Photoshop. By the time I got into 3D art, these camera & editing skills really came in handy.
Your work primarily consists of 3D digital landscapes that allow the viewer to immerse themselves into another dimension.
What are your inspirations? This could be artists (NFT or non-NFTs), TV shows, music or any random thing on the internet!
I think one of the main things that inspires me is just following a bunch of amazing artists on social media, since there’s crazy new stuff popping up all the time. I also used to play a lot of video games, which I think can be a great way to get ideas that can be directly applied to 3D artwork. Some of those include games like Destiny, The Division, and Dark Souls, all of which have some stunning environments that you get to explore.
What is your work process from idea to finish?
It’s great if I have a clear idea of something I want to do, but a lot of the time I just start messing around in Blender (the 3D software I use for all of my art) and then go with whatever idea naturally starts to form. I’ll get it to look as good as I can before rendering the image, and once it’s rendered I’ll run it through Photoshop where I’ll add additional effects, sharpening, brightness/contrast adjustments, etc. In my experience, it looks better with post-processing 100% of the time if done right.
Cryptocurrencies and NFT have been dominating the world news for the past year thanks to the meteoric rise of Bitcoin, Cryptopunks, and of course, the famous Beeple $69M NFT purchase. What are your honest thoughts on the cryptocurrency and NFT space right now?
I’m so excited to just be diving right into the cryptocurrency and NFT space right now. A couple of months ago I barely knew what these things were, and the idea of using Ethereum scared me far away from NFTs. After realizing that these are things that I should research and take seriously, I’m honestly ashamed of myself for dismissing them for as long as I did just because I was too lazy to try to figure it out. With that being said, I’m so glad I decided to make time to research it and get in when I did. Everyone in the crypto art community in particular has been extremely supportive and welcoming, and I’m very excited for the future of NFTs and cryptocurrency.
What are your other passions besides creating art?
That’s a great question… right now, not much. I’ve been creating electronic music for over 5 years, and at first, I wanted to try to make a career out of that, but after this art stuff started doing so well that’s all I’ve been focusing on.
This is something CoinBurp asks new starters in the company as part of their Q&A interviews that get posted on the blog, but the answers are always great! What TV show or movie are you ashamed to admit you love?
Honestly, I don’t watch TV shows, and I don’t really have any movies that I’ve liked that aren’t just some cool sci-fi thing. I do watch way too much of the Joe Rogan Experience though…
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions Max. The CoinBurp team can’t wait to see you grow as an artist!
Post some links to where people can find your artwork and social media accounts. Also, feel free to shout out anything else you wish.
Thanks so much for the interview! I post all my artwork on Instagram, Twitter, and Artstation:
I also mentioned my music, if anyone is curious about that I post all that stuff here:
Important Information
Cryptocurrencies are generally not regulated and investors do not have access to recourse or compensation schemes such as, for example, in the UK, the Financial Ombudsman Service or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Investing in cryptocurrencies can be high risk and investors should carefully evaluate their appetite for risk and their understanding of trading cryptocurrencies prior to entering into a transaction.
