With some crazy cool pieces, Tonakai joined us today in an incredible interview. Based in Rio de Janeiro, he’s creating some massively unique work that’s caught the attention of NFT lovers across the globe.
Tonakai, thank you for taking the time to do this interview with us.
I loved your surprise drop “B L U E”, it looks incredible. How did you first get into creating digital art?
My first contact with digital art was in 2013 and I didn’t take it any further. But exactly on the first day of 2016 I decided that I would practice more seriously and improve to try to create my own comic book. Over time I found that I was more suited to the
illustration itself than making comics. I still have plans to write stories but this is something in the future, now I’m focused on my NFT collections.
What are your inspirations? This could be artists (NFT or non-NFTs), TV shows, music, or any random thing on the internet!
I’m purely inspired by the harajuku style, the artist Akiakane also several other Japanese artists I see on Twitter and anime in general! For the details of my drawings, I like to look for inspiration in japanese patterns and bones. I really like all
the aesthetics of both elements and I always try to show that in my art!
How would you explain your art to someone who is just discovering it now?
COLORS! That’s the first impression I want to give to everybody. I’ve always liked colorful drawings but at my beginning I didn’t make it that good and tried a lot of different styles. In the past two years I’ve tried again the colorful style and kept trying until now. Today I can say that I’m progressing and not that far of the point I want to get!
What is your work process from idea to finish?
First of all I make a lot of little sketches to try differents compositions. After getting the best sketch I just start making a second sketch and then the lineart. Now is the best part for me that is coloring! When I get there I just try a lot of color combinations until I get in the right one for the composition. I can’t give any specifics details on how is the process because it’s basically me trying differents colors and other compositions on the drawing.
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?
For now I can’t give a good opinion about because I’m new on cryptocurrency and NFT but I noticed that this is really a promising space and all I can think about is “This is the future!”. Artists trying they best to make NFT art and collectors supporting them. I feel that this community is so supportive and constructive to all artists and I love it.
What are your other passions besides creating art?
I love listening to music! Recently that genre I’m always listening is pagode, a brazilian music genre. I’d love to learn make music one day but I’m not that good on it. Also I do love watching animes on my free time.
This is something we ask new starters in CoinBurp as part of their Q&A interviews that we post on our blog, but the answers are always great so we’ll ask you too; What TV show or movie are you ashamed to admit you love?
Probably the anime Mirai Nikki! I’m not ashamed of but a lot of people don’t like that show and really don’t know why. It’s an anime that have a girl with a psychopathic love with a boy… Oh, okay now I can see why they dislike it.
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions for us. 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.
https://twitter.com/tonakai_art
https://www.instagram.com/tonakai.art/
https://foundation.app/@Tonakai
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