Raoul Pal & Fvckrender: A Leading Digital Artist's Journey Into NFTs

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1:24And now to the top analysis of today's markets. I'm really excited to speak to Fakarenda. Great name, one of the greatest digital artists in the NFT world, and somebody who's a friend of mine as well. He's got an incredible story. He's an amazing talent. And I want to find out what the hell he's up to. He's been a pioneer. So listening to things that he's doing will give us an idea where the space is going to go. And I think it's just going to be really interesting to see how he sees everything evolving. The world of crypto is an incredibly exciting journey that we're all going on together. We don't know where it's leading to, but we know it's going to be absolutely massive.

2:11Join me, Raoul Pal, as I guide you on our adventure to discover just what this new world will look like.

2:20Fred, fantastic to see you on Real Vision Yeah, thank you so much for having me I've been waiting for this for ages since we met in Paris It's such a good time, I thought I'd definitely have to get you on Yeah, thank you so much So before we start, why the name Fuckrenda? It's a brilliant name, but where did it come from? It's actually a funny story When I started doing art and 3D about, let's say, 8, 9 years ago I'm not quite sure. I'm not very good with dates. But I was working on a very old MacBook Pro, probably like a 2008, 2010 MacBook. And it was so long to see the art. Because when you do 3D rendering, you have the viewport, which is what I see.

3:07And you have the rendering. The rendering is always super long. and just to see like my art would it would take like eight hours just to see what it looks like to realize it would look like garbage you know uh so I would have to do redo everything from from start to finish and everything um so yeah and when I started this like I just started to learn like like 3d just for fun and just like basically to like learn something new and everything and yeah, I started this Instagram to have like a place where I could share my progress and store my progress and I needed to find a name. So I called it Fuck Render, never expecting it to be something, you know, like that was just a way for me to like learn art and just like, yeah, for fun.

3:59Let's go back in time and give me a story. How the hell did you get into digital art? What were you doing? What was your journey? And then we'll talk about your journey into NFTs and everything else, because it's fascinating. Yeah, I think it all started at 17 years old. I'm from a small town called Magog. It's in the eastern township of Quebec, which is why I have this thick French accent. And yeah, I knew this guy, Dan, who was working on films and doing 3D art and stuff like this. And I was like, oh, that's so crazy. like I didn't know that that was a job and I was very bad at school I got I got placed in like difficulty classes since high school since my first year of high school and I I quit high school at 15 or 16 years old don't fully remember but I don't have like I don't have a degree or anything and I like far to have a degree I don't even have like my in French is secondaire 3 I don't have which is like you're you're not allowed in society when you don't have these you know it's like like basically you cannot read I'm joking but yeah that was how people would see me when I when I quit school but um so yeah so I started to learn uh 3d that way I do I did it for a month and I hated it I was like okay this is too complicated for me I'm not smart enough for this So I quit a few years after I met my fiance, that I'm still with her, Joe, that you actually met.

5:36We moved to Montreal, started to work in a restaurant. And many years later, I was doing a lot of cycling and I had this bike accident, which left my left side completely numb for years. And still to this day, I still have some numbness in my arm. But it was interesting because when that happened, And I'm the type of person that needs to do something constantly. Like every waking hours, I need to do something. Like I cannot just sit still. I have difficulty watching TV, just to put you in perspective. So not being able to do bicycle anymore, I was like, oh, I need to do something. So I need to do something that uses my brain and just my head.

6:18And I remembered when I was 17, I was doing 3D art and stuff like this. I was interested. So I picked it up and I was a little bit more mature and I started to really like it and really like deep dive into this new universe for me, which is art by itself. So did you know you were creative at this point or was this suddenly the realization that your creative brain was better than your academic brain and it was your gift, in fact? I always knew I wanted to do something creative. I never knew what it was. like when I was 16 years old, I would just like, like make cardigan out of a sewing machine and like do tie dyes and stuff like this and sell it at my school.

7:01Like I always wanted to do something creative and stuff like this, but I never exactly knew what. But yeah, I just like I spend too much time learning this thing now and now it's my life. And so when you started producing kind of, because you've got a very particular style with this highly rendered, incredible digital imagery. What did you do with it first? Because that was before NFTs, before you had a way of monetizing it. So you're probably thinking, how the hell am I going to make any money? Yeah. I mean, when I started, to me, it was just to learn. And after a moment, I was like, oh, this action of me learning and doing art makes me feel good.

7:44And I was a very anxious person at that time. I lost my mom when I was 10 years old. um I I lost my dad a few years ago and everything but uh when I lost my mom I started to have like these panic attacks a few years later and and uh and yeah like the the childhood trauma I had a bunch of other stuff when I was young with my dad and stuff but no no need to go in details um but yeah so I I pretty much used art to like feel better and it was really working um so to me like i never really wanted to make money with this i just wanted to like feel better and just like occupy my brain and do something you know uh but it's funny because after maybe four months i started to have client work which was crazy and i had my first meeting and i was like people want to hire me for this like this is so crazy and like i remember i went to a meeting uh in the agency in montreal they were like oh we want this for a music video can you do this and i had no idea how to do it i was like oh yeah it's very easy actually like i lied so much on this on this moment and it but i knew that like if i didn't take that opportunity like i would lose it you know uh and i i didn't know how to do it i did it i learned how to do it and i started to have more job more job more international job i think my second gig was like toki monster she wanted like a music video and now i've been working a lot with her and she's a amazing and everything um and yeah just like got client work basically out of this from instagram and so how did nfts come into the equation when did you learn about this and and sort of thinking this might be a medium for you to express yourself then yeah i think it was probably like early 2020 if I'm not wrong um and I was like I was looking for something like this because for the longest time like for five six years I did commercial work like client work studio work and stuff like this but the reality is I'm very bad at commercial work or client work uh I consider myself more an artist.

10:00I was not very good at doing commercial work. I was actually very bad at doing commercial work. And when I started to see NFTs and all that stuff, it was like, oh, that's an opportunity for me to do art and not have to care about what a client says or whatever thing they need me to do or execute for them or anything. So it was like a, I don't know how to say that in English, but it was like a bright moment when I saw my friends selling their art. I was like, oh, this is insane. I always considered myself as an artist, but no one ever considered me as an artist. But now we have something to consider digital art, art which was completely crazy to me like it was like mind-blowing so what was your first step so you see nfts you kind of get it and you think okay this is an avenue for me to explore what then how the hell did you learn what you had to do to get your digital art on the blockchain and then to think about how does anybody know about it how did that whole process go because i'm always fascinated because you're an early pioneer in the big movement of kind of fine art NFTs, digital art NFTs.

11:26So you're one of the people at the front who had to learn all this stuff. The rest of us can copy people like you. It's easier. I mean, it was funny because I was seeing some of my friends, like Jason Abayer was the first one that I saw minting NFTs, amazing artists. And I was like, how do you do this? And I remember I went on Twitter and I was like, oh this sucks so much I think I missed the the super rare train can you imagine how crazy it is that in 2020 I thought I missed the NFT train like how crazy is this I was like oh this is over for me like everyone's already like on it and and I won't be on it so I tweeted that out and and super got me and I I sent my video application which was very awkward because they they wanted you to do like this introductionary video of you speaking and everything which was I always thought was weird still to this day but so I did it I went on super I minted my first piece which was Rejuvenate which was a very important piece for me because in my like client career I did like couple burnout and they really left a big mark on me we can talk about this later but but they they were very important for me.

12:45And, and one of the few pieces that I created during the, this, this burnout was rejuvenated self-help and many others. But so I wanted to mint this first piece. I put it for sale. No one bids on it. And I was like, okay, that's fine. Like I, I, at least I tried. I went to bed and there was a bid war between Goltra and Yanis. And I was like, what the fuck is happening like it was so crazy i wake up with and and the the auction stop i think it was 12 each 12 my first ever pieces no way and knowing who you were really i mean they knew i already had like a big audience on on instagram to be fair but they didn't really know who i was and i had like a bit a big like client list as well like i worked with dior like swarovski supreme all these big brands i worked with them before nfts you know so that that that probably and clearly helped me for sure uh to get a good head start but in the nft space no one knew who i was which was very interesting and so i was super excited right away i minted another piece i was like this is too crazy and that piece sold i remember there was a bit of like six eight or something and uh bitcoin profit uh now a close friend of mine he put i think he put like 28 it was like and he sent me a d i was like i'm cutting all this this bullshit i win this piece and it was just so crazy i think i sold it for 25 feet uh the second piece i was like i was losing my my mind i was like this is so crazy like i can't believe this is actually real i made more in like two days that I made in like a year.

14:35Like literally, I was like shaking. I was shaking and super anxious because like it didn't make any sense for me, no? We're going to take a quick break and be right back with more of the day's top analysis on the Real Vision daily briefing. Have you ever wanted to trade Bitcoin but haven't dared try? With Plus500 Futures, you can trade crypto without the hassle of opening a wallet. With just a few clicks, you can register and start practicing with their free and unlimited demo. See a trading opportunity? You'll be able to trade it in just two clicks. Feel ready? You can move to real money with as little as$100 once your account is approved.

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15:53So, okay, well, that's quite a good validation that maybe you're a good artist and people like the work that you do. So then what you start thinking, you're going to go full time into this and you're going to start creating art. Because again, people got to realize this is pretty early on. So there's not that many people thinking in the same way. You know, I don't think even people have gone to auction at that stage. So that was pretty people. That's right. So, OK, so you make the decision, you see what's going on. What do you do next? I went full on. I stopped taking client work and I was like, this is what I'm doing now.

16:34And your work has become incredibly successful and extremely collectible as well, which is, I mean, it must be amazing to you to see this suddenly. The kid who couldn't get through school has now become one of the leading lights of the entire digital art space. It's just incredible. thank you that's that's really nice I mean for me like it's it's crazy because I think like like most people we always focus on like not the negative stuff or anything but like it's hard to like like the journey is never done you know so to me I'm like oh this is like just the beginning but I don't know if that makes sense but yeah I'm extremely grateful like it's it's just yeah it's just so crazy so then you started iterating you you built a separate business or a studio that's attached and and also things like kind of pfp projects and to expand the footprint of the people because your work's actually quite inaccessible because it's expensive yeah so you started creating other things for other people was that journey different did you find you had different collectors and it was harder to deal with yeah these people how was that Yeah, and it's crazy because I have three projects right now.

17:54I have Fuckrendu, which is my art career, which is obviously something that I've been building for many, many years. I have Lucidia, which is this immersive marketplace for artists. So what we do there is we create immersive environments for amazing artists to tell their stories in a more digital way. This is the focus of Lucidio. And we have many things that we're doing there, but this is the main focus. And we have 90 Skids, which is a skate project where I started skating at 10 years old to help with my trauma when I lost my mom and everything. And I always, me and Gabe, my best friend since that day, we always wanted to have our own skate brand.

18:41And it was the perfect opportunity to start it there. So that's what we're doing there. But the reality is like with NFT project is like the attention span is so short and people have high expectation because they see BoredApe and they expect you to be BoredApe, you know. And it really like it really affected me personally when I launched Lucidia because Lucidia is not something that can be built in one month or even one year. It's something that takes a lot of time. And we have about 40, 50 people that have been working on Lucidia for a year and a half now. Wow. And we're not near where I want it to be, you know.

19:21What's your vision? What's your vision with Lucidia? Yeah, so basically right now what we're doing, we're currently building the marketplace. We just shut down the immersive experience because we are remodeling everything. where we have a bunch of we just got a new unreal engine senior devs to join the team which is amazing but we we're building this immersive marketplace because as digital artists i don't think it makes sense to view digital art on a thumbnail you know on a web page for us i want to create like this immersive experience and tell the story of the artist because when you go on super or anything, you see the art and that's it.

20:01We want to create an old story for the artists and by the artists in the most immersive way and the best way to see digital art. That's really where we're focusing and creating this marketplace is just an add-on to this whole experience. And we're currently getting a space in Vancouver that is about 4 ,000 square feet. We're going to turn this into a small cafe with the art gallery with a 360 Lucidia immersive experience where people will be able to see what's happening virtually but physically as well um so that's pretty much what we're we're doing at the moment uh it's it's it's a lot of work we're working with you can manifold and amazing partners to make this a reality uh but the reality is like it takes time and everything started by myself um as me alone and now we have an amazing team of amazing people which is insane.

20:56So where does that go? So once you've created these kind of immersive storytelling experiences around art, how do I get involved in that without going to Vancouver? Yeah. You know, how does that work? What's your vision there? So, okay, just to give like a little story of how it started, in the nifty gateway days, I started this project for Prendiverse, which was an immersive way for people to see my art. That's it. And I picked up Unreal Engine, which is a game engine. I learned it about like one or three months and I created this immersive experience. And it was actually pretty innovative because it was the first like Web 3 type of immersive experience.

21:43So started there, had a lot of success. We started with the crystals. Fuck crystals were an amazing success. We released the fuck avatars right before the crash, unfortunately. So everything went a little bit down and we had a lot of haters because when every crash, it brings a negative, you know. But I think it's amazing because we were able to keep building it. But it's all started there. And now what we're building is a pixel streaming services where people will just be able to go on the web page and immerse themselves on screen into this virtual world created by us for artists. Example, like Victor Maschera will have like his own virtual space there telling his story because his story is amazing.

22:37a close friend of mine. But our goal is really to shine lights on amazing artists, not necessarily the most famous artists, but also artists that we think have an amazing story, basically. And so it really is sort of part of your imagination of what the metaverse is going to be. It's a fully immersive experience to get away from this 2D display that we talked about, or the thumbnail, into something that is deeper storytelling, I guess. Yeah, I think storytelling is important because I think I have my own story, but imagine these millions of artists, their own story. And how can we facilitate collectors to understand the story of an artist?

23:25With our Real Vision Collective project, we've been working with an artist called Yinkore based out of Nigeria. and her stories are unique because it's Nigeria and suddenly she starts selling art at two ETH or whatever and she's like I've just earned two months worth of wages and she's a lawyer in Nigeria. I know and she's like I'm now selling art on a global playing field and before I'd have to sell it in an art shop in or a gallery in Nigeria and they'd never take me seriously and now suddenly the world's opened up. The stories that are going to come from this space as is your story they're amazing because it's enabled people which is why we all love web 3 because it's kind of leveled the playing field yeah yeah no i agree and like it it personally changed my life and like i really oh if i can change one person's life in in this mission like i i won that's literally i feel about all that yeah so talk about 90s kids because you just launched that just after i saw in Paris.

24:28I know you and Ian Rogers are both skaters. And I can see the branding and it's kind of, it's really unique and very cool. What are you doing with that? Because I'm sure you've got a few plans there as well. This project is so exciting to me because I've been skateboarding my whole life. I cannot skate as much as I wish I could because I'm busy working and I'm getting older. So every time I fall, it's like hurting more. But skateboarding has always been like in my rules and my partner Gabe's route. And we want to create like this Web3 media entertainment business, basically. So what we're doing right now is like we're hosting like online contests.

25:08And these contests is, we want to redistribute some money to like skaters because for a skater to make money is barely impossible. Like you need to win contests and everything. And it's a very challenging, it's a very challenging career, to be honest. And we want to help good skaters to be able to travel or go to Barcelona and have some footage. So we're hosting these contests every month with cash price and NFT price as well. So this is one part of the whole thing. We're launching the 90s magazine, which is going to be very interesting, featuring amazing skateboard photographers. And a lot of skateboarders are artists.

25:51So how can we work with these amazing artists that share the same passion as us into this sick Web3 magazine of skateboarding? It's like the Web3 trasher, basically. So we're doing this. Every month we have a burn mechanic. Almost every month we have a burn mechanic introducing new characters. just to use blockchain, like smart contract in different ways and give different roles and not priorities. Priority is not the right word, but options for collectors. So yeah, we have this. We're launching the clothing company, which is 90s as well. And we already have, I mean, this is kind of secret yet, but we might have one of the biggest stores in Quebec and pretty much Canada as well to sell our brand, which is amazing.

26:56So yeah, that's pretty much it. It's a very simple project, but it's something that we really take seriously and it's something that we really want to build to be something that will help skaters and artists that are skaters as well. Well, because it's kind of the, I think of it as the tokenization of the culture of skating. So it's for the skaters, by the skaters around their culture. So it's not about collecting NFTs per se as being part of this. Because as you said, skaters, it's a hard thing if you want to try and compete. You don't have any money to do all of this stuff. And there's only a few of you at the skate park or on the streets.

27:35And you want to meet other people. it's a way of connecting them and then giving them a focal point and i think the idea of the fashion brand is genius because skatewear for a long time as has been at the forefront of fashion yeah and even the 90s idea relates to people who grew up it's like a very specific thing it's very clever yeah well thank you i appreciate it and it's it's something that we like we like building and it's it's been so fun like just seeing like on discord like seeing like kids being able to talk to like actually good skaters we have so many like good skateboarders on our discord like just sharing clips and just like hanging out and talking with other people and having like even like there's so many people that like don't skate but everyone picked up a skateboard when they were kids everyone watched skate videos when they were kids almost everyone so it's so especially in the 90s culture, it's so part of everyone.

28:37So that's why we were like... It's also, what I love about skating, skateboarding, it's egalitarian. It's for everybody. You just need four wheels and a piece of wood, essentially. It's the same as football. English football, soccer. Anybody, anywhere can do it. And the barrier to entry is low, so it gives kids something to do yeah and really gives kids who live in inner cities something to do that's not involved in crime or other stuff it's it gives them a sense of purpose oh yeah no that that's for sure like honestly skateboarding got me out of trouble my in my during my childhood like that's for sure like i yeah i was literally spending eight ten hours at the skate park like every every day of the summer like literally if if not more look it's amazing what you're doing what's the next steps for you you still continuing to produce art under fuck render yeah and then building out lucidia yeah building out 90s kids if that's not enough i mean i'm doing about three or four businesses it's exhausting but it's been pretty challenging and honestly like i think the most challenging part was like the whole market crash and like a lot of pressure not pressure on me to like deliver even more even more even more and like it was like it was really burning um i think like a lot of people like i think as a when you start a project and everything you have a lot of like pressure of like you need to succeed like yuga lab did or stuff like this where it's not sustainable to think that every project can have this this level of uh success i'm sorry Sorry, but people don't have the rights to demand that you manage the price.

30:28Yeah, exactly. It's not your job. Your job is to create great art, projects that people want to be part of, and the price goes up or down. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I was speaking to, I'm sure you know Sergio Silva as well. I mean, he's launched his project Seize the Meebs, and he suddenly realized how hard it is because there's a lot of people who just care about price. It's crazy. It can't be about price. I think that's the main thing is like, there's so much I can do. And like the reality is like, there's a project that has no vision or anything that will pump even harder than my own project.

31:10But I don't think it's fair for, I think like platform like OpenSeas and everything, it's fine but I don't think like like you won't buy butter at the garage you know like it doesn't make sense for like I don't like to see my art on OpenSea per se I think I prefer to see it on a marketplace that is dedicated for artists I think the OpenSea interface is more like it looks like an eBay or like a Kijiji or something like this it's more like you buy and sell when it's art it's more like you buy and you appreciate it and you sell it if you want, but you should always buy art because you like the art.

31:54And so many times I was like, oh, I bought this and price went down. I was like, why did you buy it if you didn't like the art at first? Like, but yeah. But yeah, to come back to your question, I think Lucidia and 90s Kids is doing pretty well. We're having an amazing team on both sides and we're keeping building this whole ecosystem, which is amazing. Not stressed for this. And as for FuckRender, which is my art carrier, I'm releasing something called a FuckToken, which is ERC721. So it's not really a token. But it's only going to be available by burning, which is interesting. And it's going to help me because in the last few years, I experimented a lot.

32:47So I released a bunch of collections and I had a hard time saying no to collaborations as well, which I should have said no many times, but it's very hard when you have all these amazing friends that want you to participate in their project and everything. So what I'm doing is my goal is to tone down the overall supply of every collection I've ever touched, pretty much, and bring back the focus to a core group of collectors, people that actually love my art and people that actually love what I'm doing as an artist. So this F.O.K.T.O.K.E.N. is going to be an amazing artwork cap to X amount of supply, probably going to be quite low, only available by burning, which is interesting.

33:31And everything that I'm going to do in the future, you'll need this token to participate. So it's more like a participation token for everything I'll do in the future. And I've been doing more and more physical jewelries and physical art pieces. And all of these will be available by owning that token. We're going to take another quick break and be right back with more of the day's top analysis on the Real Vision daily briefing.

34:05I think the stuff you're doing in the physical world is really interesting because a lot of people start with the physical world and then try and go into this highly rendered, beautiful 3D world. You started the other way around. It's like, no, I started digital and then I can produce it into physical. I just love that fluidity between two different worlds as if they're the same thing i love doing physical art it's it's a new medium and honestly like i feel like um like a lot of like pressure for from like floor prices and stuff like this really killed my creativity and over the last two years uh even though like i i talk about that on twitter but even though if i had like the most success in the last two years i probably felt the most depressed like literally um of course and but it doesn't mean i wasn't grateful for everything that happened I just felt some pressure and stuff like this.

35:01You need control back. Even if you just said, I will produce one piece every three months, fuck you, that's all I'm doing. You then own it again. Because I think what you've done is you sold yourself a little too much and then you got caught away in it. Fine. That's okay. We all make mistakes. But coming back I love this idea of this burning. So basically, it's a membership of collectors. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's the main goal in life is like, you learn as you go. I'm far from being perfect. And I've learned so much in the last two years. And even though if I was depressed, these were the most amazing years of my life, literally.

35:45I grew so much out of this. And it's amazing because now I have full control of what I'm doing. And I think this token will be amazing because it brings back the attention of what I'm actually doing. And I'll be able to focus on more limited work, less frequent, and more passion again, if that makes sense. Yeah, and you might even be able to occasionally do commission work for one of your good collectors where you do something interesting, you explore new avenues. I think you will love doing it. The question I wanted to ask you, because it was a conversation that was going on about a month ago, is what do you think of the blur situation?