Sitdown with Co-Creator of Azuki - Full 'Steam' Ahead
Anime in Web3 with Arnold Tsang
This one hit home and as someone who has seen the unity of this project,
Couldn’t be happier to have gotten this interview going!
In this Segment, We get a hold of the Lead Designer for Azuki (Steamboy) and everything that withholds its’ standards and the elevation of Creativity.
Beyond grateful for the opportunity and always a pleasure to highlight and go into more depth with the contributions to the Azuki Ecosystem.
With this, I had to compile questions that would bring excitement to those in and just coming into the community.
Those heartfelt, great moments but also including those points that could teach and pick each other up.
Here’s how it went.
Let’s get to know you a bit more.
My name is Arnold Tsang, also known as "steamboy". I'm the main artist for Azuki. Previously I was in the games industry where I spent 12 years at Blizzard Entertainment, mostly working as Character Concept Lead and Art Director for "Overwatch".
I never really got into crypto before NFTs, so my story really starts where most artists heard of NFTs for the first time - from Beeple's groundbreaking sale in early 2021. After that, I found my way onto foundation.app and started minting my own 1:1's. Since I love doing pixel art on the side, they were mostly short animation loops that I did in pixel style.
From there, I started to pay attention to the rapidly booming NFT market. I started seeing PFP projects like BAYC on the rise. As a character designer, the idea of a generative PFP collection was something that piqued my interest, but felt a little too technically prohibitive for me to do myself. Coincidentally, that's around the time that Z reached out to me! Did a bit of research and saw your former role in Overwatch.
How did you get a hold of a position like that?
I started out at Blizzard as a character concept artist on Team 4. The team was making an MMO called project Titan that eventually got cancelled and became Overwatch. I was lead character concept when we started, but eventually became character art director.
How did you get into animation?
I always loved animation as a kid. I first fell in love with anime when I watched Dragon Ball, Nausicaa, and other Ghibli movies from the 80's and 90's. Eventually I decided to go to Sheridan college to study Classical (2D) animation.
What’s your background in character design?
Hmm.. it's kinda hard to say what my "background" is here, but I guess I spent around 16 years in the game industry as a character designer.
What did you take from there to help you design the art for Azuki?
As a character designer, the concept of a PFP collection was fascinating. Generating hundred of traits and then randomizing them programmatically was something that felt very familiar to what we did in games with character customization and skins.
Was anime always the concept behind the project?
The anime aesthetic was always part of the DNA of Azuki. It's part of my own personal artistic DNA, so it's kinda inseparable!
Why the alias ‘Steamboy’?
It's a boring story but since you asked:
One day I was trying to install Steam to play TF2, while watching the anime Steamboy in the background. I needed a gamer tag, so I just used steamboy since I was watching it, and installing steam and I thought that was funny.
Turns out though that steam has some rules against using "steam" in your username, probably to prevent people from pretending to be valve staff or doing vulgar things with the steam brand. So then I decided that I had to use it at that point and just used some random Cyrillic letters to bypass the filter. I ended up using the name steamboy for gaming ever since then.
I’m familiar with your position at Azuki, as Co-Founder.
How did you and Zagabond come to meet?
I'd rather refer to myself as a Co-Creator of Azuki. When we say co-founder, we usually mean the 4 founders of Chiru Labs (Z, tba, 2pm, hoshi).
One day Z just emailed me randomly and asked if I wanted to work on something. I was curious, so I met him over zoom. I met the 4 founders shortly after and talked Web3 and NFTs over dinner. I felt there was a spark of something there, and chased after it!
How did the utilities come to be a part of the project?
Already envisioned or ongoing ideas?
We're trying to unlock the world's creativity by building an anime brand. The art, lore, and products we put out to the world can hopefully inspire other creators out there, and through our tech and community, we want to facilitate that inspiration and those creators and together. Which in return will grow into something truly amazing.
In regards to the art style,
Was there inspiration?
Samurai Champloo was a big inspiration, especially the intro art style by Takeshi Koike.
Big ups on the recent ‘Austin Mahomes’ collaboration.
Loved the design for the virtual card, Gave me nostalgic Dragon Ball Z vibes.
How did this collaboration come to life?
Came into fruition with our Head of Growth, Liz. I had a lot of fun with that collab! We did multiple versions of the poses and the ones that are being printed are actually approved by Mahomes himself!
One of the biggest setbacks projects have are collaborations as you may be well aware of. How important was this one and did it align with Azuki as the team had intended it to?
Azuki chooses it's collaborators very carefully. With the Oracle/Red Bull Racing collab, we established an identity of working with best-in-class athletes who exemplify the spirit of winning, hard work, and dedication. We feel like Patrick Mahomes definitely embodies that and very much aligns with what we intended.
What do you think of those who say that Azuki should only stick to Anime purely based on aesthetics and the design?
I think what makes Azuki interesting, and what makes collaboration interesting is when brands who collaborate are aligned on values and vision, rather than aesthetics alone. While there is a place for aesthetics-based anime collabs, I think it makes for a deeper connection if the two sides of the collab have a synergy that subverts expectations and goes beyond just looks.
Absolutely enjoying the sketches you have shared on X, brings great anticipation for what’s to come. How important is that hype factor?
Hype is a double edged sword. It's a fine balance to make people excited, while tempering expectations.
The Elementals design, Were you the illustrator for these?
and it reminds me of the anime series ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’.
How do these 4 domains characterize in the sense of a story?
Elementals is the product of the entire Azuki art team. I was the art director and one of the illustrators, as well as Njoo, Tenn, Tomugi and Crow.
Avatar was definitely an inspiration, as well as Naruto. It's hard to do elemental powers without thinking about those two awesome IPs.
Following the last question,
In regards to heroes and villains, How did you differentiate these labels for the elements?
I don't think any element is "good" or "bad". Heroes and villains can come from any of the domains and wield any of the elements. I think the fun thing about the domains is all the diversity you can get within one domain, just thinking of their good/evil alignment, whether they are a human or an animal type, adult or kid, etc. There are so many character ideas and so much potential with Elementals!
What has been the most difficult design within the project to complete?
That could be time or even just on technicality.
Time is always a factor. With elementals we were racing against the clock so we could get everything ready for the Follow the Rabbit event in Las Vegas. That was tough!
Technically though, I think finding all the interesting trait interactions for all the domains and identifying which ones were working and which were not was very hard. I think this is a problem that all generative PFP collections go though, but for us we had to do it with 4 domains x male and female x kids x animals. Shoutout to the Azuki art team, Jojo, and everyone at Chiru who pitched in to help. It was really a team effort.
If I had to pick one design though... I'd say the Earth Zanbato was pretty difficult. We went through many designs and iterations until we got the the final one. Did you ever notice that the engraving on the Earth Zanbato looks familiar?
Who comes up with the finalization of a design?
"Coming up with" and "finalization" are basically two completely different ends of the design process. In terms of coming up with the ideas, a lot of it comes from the art team, some of it comes from other team members at chiru who have awesome ideas. From there, we go through iterations to try to make it better. Feedback from myself as art director, and from the rest of the team is taken and implemented until I make the call and say something is "final".
Any advice you would give an aspiring Illustrator/Artist in the space and where would you have wanted to make it easier for yourself?
I'm going to assume that as an aspiring illustrator or artist that you're already doing everything you can to hone your craft and that you're living and breathing the art. If you're not, then you're NGMI...
That said, a piece of non-art advice is to always be aware of how you talk to and treat the people you work with. It's easy as an aspiring artist to just focus on the art itself, but after doing this for a long time, at the end of the day it's really hard to be successful by yourself. You need to surround yourself with people who are more talented, smarter, and more experienced than you. Don't be an asshole. Build up your relationships and learn from those around you, and then pass on what you learn to the next artist!
Why is Azuki going to make it?
Because beans grow together
Maru’s Quirky Questions:
Favorite pixelated game?
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
Strongest elemental domain?
It's like rock paper scissors, there is no strongest!
Change your name to anything else. What would it be?
I'd take the "old" out of my name so I can be young forever.
Are you the hero or villain?
Hero
Which Main Character of any anime are you?
Kogure from Slam Dunk
Artist you look up to?
Kinu Nishimura
Honorable mention with this week’s Highlight and an immense amount of respect on everything that the team over at Azuki have done so far.
With this, we conclude this segment but stay tuned for more in the near future!
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