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Hangry Barboons Rapid Fire Interview in The LightHouse

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HANGRY BARBOONS

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

King Solomon interviews NFT project Hangry Barboons with rapid fire questions as part of the Hedera Corner in the Lighthouse by Genfinity! Brought to you by The LightHouse Report sponsor Hedera Hashgraph.  

Transcription

King Solomon:
What is up everybody, King Solomon here within the Lighthouse report. As some of you may know we are sponsored by Hedera Hashgraph so I am trying to nail out as many interviews as I possibly can with as many Hedera projects. This is 10 questions, 10 answers in hopefully under 10 minutes. Super excited to have the artist and Creator behind Hangry Barboons we will just say his name's Hangry for the sake of the interview. How's it going man, how are you doing?

Hangry:
Doing great thanks for having me.

King Solomon:
No problem dude.

Hangry:
Long time listener. Happy to be here.

King Solomon:
Oh thank you very much.  Yeah, I appreciate it so I'm just going to start right now so the first question we have here is: How would you describe your crypto project?

Hangry:
My crypto NFT project is like you said Hangry Barboons. It's a collection of 4444 Boons that I've Illustrated taking advantage of my skill set. I'm an artist with over 10 years of digital art experience, and I've published several books in real life related to Medical artwork because I'm a healthcare provider in real life.

The point of the project is to create a great brand that can make Hedera proud. Something where we can continue building in the future but really my focus is on creating cool digital Collectibles around very interesting art that's unique and inspired by cartoons I watched growing up like Ren and Stimpy. I was a big fan of webcomics growing up.

King Solomon:
Awesome! I was definitely watching Ren and Stimpy back in the day as well um second question is: Why are you building in web3?

Hangry:
Personally, the way I got into web3 was just because cryptos sparked my interest about a year ago when I heard Facebook was changing their name to Meta. Then I looked into it more and I realized that there was a movement in art towards authenticity.

Like I mentioned I was an artist in web 2 and the main place to post your artwork there was on Instagram. I noticed that I would post my artwork and people would just copy and paste it onto other accounts and grow their accounts really fast. It was always a little heartbreaking because they didn't give you credit or anything and they were like selling other things.

So one of the main things that attracted me to web3 was seeing people seeming to appreciate that a piece of art actually came from the Creator themselves and that it's not a fake or if someone's trying to sell a fake it's condemned within the community because there's a token ID behind this piece of art. So I thought wow, there's like this revolution in artwork, I'm a real artist, and it's something I care passionately about. So I thought I want to join in on this. I want to take part in this kind of art Revolution that's taking place. I really do think there is a movement in the art world and a lot of the world hasn't seen it yet. Even though people are profiting a lot from it already, I think a lot of people don't realize that there is a real art movement here. People really do care about art in general as it relates to web3 in the future.

King Solomon:
Thank you man, I appreciate it. Question number three is: Who is your target audience and Community?

Hangry:
My target audience initially was art enthusiasts that would be interested in this brand of artwork that I'm bringing. I'm trying to make it like this mainstream sort of art for the crypto community and I looked at different networks before coming to Hedera like Ethereum, Solana and Cardano, but as an artist I wanted the best place that would be the best shot to take off and maybe give me an opportunity to shine. Essentially I saw so much saturation in other networks and projects that didn't mint anything.

I simply was a collector learning about crypto, and Hedera. When I got here I started collecting, looking at projects, getting to know people, and I loved the community so much that I was like “this is where I want to be”. Even though back in December or January there was a wallet that just failed, there was no marketplace, I saw a lot of potential here and I was like this is where I want to be and my target audience is basically my friends here and everyone else that wants to join.

King Solomon:
Yeah 100% I mean that old school Hedera community especially from back then is pretty much still around which is just fantastic to deal with and it's great to see it expanding. Next question is: What differentiates your project from other web3 projects?

Hangry:
I think there's nothing wrong with one approach versus the other but my project is different in that I think I'm carrying a lot of the load being the artist, the creator, the community manager. I'm wearing a lot of hats and so that being said, also I think the experience I bring to the table because I started my other company around 2015 which is called Medcomic which it's a series of medical illustrations to teach medicine and I've written like any EKG book on EKG interpretation and illustrated every page with a huge textbook that's used in schools I think I have a unique skill set and I'm trying to apply all the things I've learned over the years to this project. I think there's something almost hard to put your finger on that makes the whole project feel unique. I think I'm not saying it's like the most unique thing in the world because it's inspired by every crypto project that came before me, it's a generative art project where I'm drawing the layers and then using HashLips to combine them, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that it's almost like there's a genre and there's artists taking part in this genre. Like there's hip-hop and there's rock music, I feel like the generative part when you get a good artist in it, it's really cool to see what they can come up with because it's a new way of creating art.

King Solomon:
What partnerships or collaborations have you made in the space so far? I know that you're a little bit of a renaissance guy in the sense that you're everywhere so if you could touch base about that a little bit that would be great.

Hangry:
I somehow managed to connect with a ton of people in Hedera over the last few months so the most obvious one is Turtle Moon, because that's the launchpad I'm using so Patches has been great giving me the opportunity to put my project on their launchpad  there's a lot of great projects on there and I respect what they're doing a lot. They're going to continue creating tools for Hedera, and as they release it to creators and artists, I want to leverage those tools. Another collaboration I'm involved with is Hbar space. They have a team that's creating some great tools so right now I'm leveraging their platform to have token gates, and I hope to use some other tools later on which could be even gamification or AirDrops. There’s a lot of potential for creativity, that being said I don't want to just use tools for tool sake, I want to have a good reason to do it so but I think that's part of the exciting thing, there's a lot of room for creativity here as you have these talented people that you're collaborating with creating and doing and things like that. Aside from those two tech collaborations there's some other things down the line that are just forming from friendships within creator communities that I'll unveil in the future. The Hbar space, as the fugitives guys, is an old project that's making a comeback.

King Solomon:
What are some of the pros and cons that you have right now? Being that end all be all and everything that's going on and do you imagine that at some point in time you might expand out with some trusted people that can help you build out the brand bit more

Hangry:
I can't say it's easy to say I'm the only person but honestly, I'm on Discord all the time and the people in Discord really helped out a lot so they are almost like part of the team. Answering questions and keeping people engaged so those Mods are a big help. The team itself to me, I think that as the project grows, the team will grow depending on the enthusiasm from the community and I hope it continues to grow and spread and people join in. I'm very optimistic and obviously I'm giving it all I can but if it gets to the point where this becomes unreasonable for me to manage myself I'd love to grow the team and obviously expand so we'll have to wait for another interview in the future and see where we're at.

King Solomon:
I think that makes a lot of sense. I've been in that discord by the way and it's wild. Vote Hangry 444 politicians are temporary hangry forever, which I'll take credit for.

Hangry:
Yeah! We are going to say that you did a tweet where like Hangry is forever and I made that into this sport sticker and it became a slogan so I appreciate that.

King Solomon:
Yeah no problem! Alright, so this is really kind of the big one here, describe any milestones and achievements that you've accomplished thus far or any big announcements you want to talk about coming up in the next couple of weeks.

Hangry:
Well, my first big milestone was my first artwork and that happened earlier in the year. I created 14 NFTS that are called Hangry heads and I just distributed them for free to the first 14 people that joined my Discord. I did it for fun and they have become one of the high tier Hangry art now and very exclusive. There's a token gated channel for holders, and I'm thinking of creative ways to reward those early adopters so to speak. A couple of the NFTs have already sold on the secondary market which is really impressive for me to see sales on a secondary market already, and that's before the main characters I was working on so I thought that was a special milestone for me to see NFTs actually traded hands. Recently I released the golden banana coins which are a whitelist token that also function as a VIP pass in the sense that I hope to incorporate into the future of the project so those NFTs have done really well. They surpassed over 1.5 million in volume on Zuse Marketplace that's the secondary market for NFTs and the main one that's being used, there's others but that was a huge milestone to see the excitement around the project prior to the main event. I'm super hyped and excited to drop the Hangry Barboons in October.

King Solomon:
Could you give a date on the mint of the whole collection?

Hangry:
The whitelist pass is October 15th and I'm not saying the public date yet. Keeping that a little bit of a mystery but if you want security in grabbing a Hangry Barboon get out and get those golden banana coins.

King Solomon:
Where do you see your project in three to five years?

Hangry:
Well, I see Henry Barboons the collection as this classic art project early on in the Hedera and the Hangry brand itself expanding. I see hangry as like the universe of my heart and leveraging the Hangry Barboons as like a character set within this world that I'm creating. So definitely building a brand in three to five years, I mean the crypto space moves so fast and in just a few months in Hedera we've gone from no marketplace to marketplace to all these creators joining in so it's hard to predict where we're going to be but my goal is to be here.

King Solomon:
For anyone interested in learning more, what channels do you recommend for people to join the community?

Hangry:
My discord is discord.GG/Hangry, the website is hangrybarboons.com and on Twitter I'm Hangry Barboons. Those are some great places to connect with me. I'm fairly easy to reach so I'm always online interacting with people so definitely be good to meet everyone.

King Solomon:
Last question is probably the most ridiculous out of all the questions, which is; when moon?

Hangry:
Well, I said I want to be a little modest but I hope “when moon” will be this October when the project is released but no financial advice or anything. I’m excited and confident in the artwork I've created, I think it's top quality and we have a lot of enthusiasm around it and good branding so it should be fun.

King Solomon:
It's interesting right now to watch even just yesterday there was that announcement about clout.art moving from Polygon to Hedera and we're kind of seeing that shift on projects or Polygon projects at least helping out and exploring the tool sets in Hedera.

As far as the questions are concerned, these are the 10 questions, but I do like leaving these where with a touch of the heart type comment from you or whatever you want to say to the community or just kind of leave us out with some closing thoughts.

King Solomon:
I'd like to let the community know that I'm here to help so if you want any advice or anything I'm here as a resource. Also I want these to empower the community so when these entities are released I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with them too. I think web3 it's moving towards a sense of ownership of the artwork that they purchased on marketplaces. I'm totally for that, I used to be a little more protective of my art like back in my medical illustration days where I would get mad if people copied it or modified it but I'm letting go of that with this. I'm looking forward to seeing derivative art and all that type of stuff. I'm not against it anymore. As far as people getting into art, I love talking about art so if you need tips on resources, what hardware or software I use, I love talking about that too. I just want to empower the community and look forward to connecting with everyone in the future.

King Solomon:
Thank you very much, Hangry. Well there we have it 10 question,s 10 answers and definitely not less than 10 minutes as usual but that's fine it's great seeing an artist and creator really trying to delve out into this space and do great things for the community as a whole and to build out a great brand so I want to say thank you for taking the time out of your extremely busy morning to have this interview and I'm sure this won't be the last time that we're talking Hangry so thank you so much.

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