MINDDS Eternals

MINDDS: Dario De Siena has his roots in graffiti and is one of the internationally celebrated artists of the NFT scene. With MINDDS 2.0 The Eternals his figures leave the frame, 333 characters…

• Client: desiena GmbH
• Built by: Geyst AG (Jan Stalder)
• Period: 2021–2022

MINDDS: Dario De Siena has his roots in graffiti and is one of the internationally celebrated artists of the NFT scene. With MINDDS 2.0 The Eternals his figures leave the frame, 333 characters brought into the third dimension by hand.

All 333 Eternals, each a frame from its own loop.

Within a few years the NFT market has grown into an industry of its own, and with it the flood of collections whose figures a random generator assembles from parts. Anyone who wants to hold their own here needs a strong product, a story of their own and a recognisable signature style. Dario De Siena has all three: he has been painting portraits in acrylic, spray, pastel and collage for more than ten years, makes his name with MINDDS, wins an award at NFT NYC 2021, and Geyst AG accompanies him on the way from artist to brand. For the second generation the figures are to become three-dimensional, lit and in motion, and yet be recognisably his at first glance. In September 2021 the commission goes to Geyst, with Jan Stalder in the lead: 333 unique pieces by the mint in May 2022, each a ten-second loop at 2500 by 2500 pixels.

• 333 handmade unique pieces • Six shapes, four crowns • Custom editor in Unreal Engine 5 • MetaHuman, Maya, Substance Painter • Light motion capture • 26 flythroughs, 27 clips • Light room at NFT NYC • Mint on 10 May 2022

By hand, not by chance

The originals are all about line, colour and flat surface. In three dimensions, every trait needs a shape, a material and lighting, and this is exactly where the collection sets itself apart from the competition: instead of a random generator, a custom editor is built in Unreal Engine 5, in which textures, light, hairstyles, horns and eyes are mixed and every figure is curated one by one. The first experiments in summer 2021 lead to four prototypes that set the language of the collection, from the greyscale head with coins for glasses to the neon figure with glowing horns. Crowns, rings of light and masks, ice, lava, wood and stone, fire and heat are added as building blocks of their own, and light motion capture gives every head a small movement so the loop comes alive.

Rarity as a promise

Collectors buy not just a picture but its place in the collection. Every figure has one of six base shapes, Horn (111), Cap (77), Mouse (55), Fox (44), Mohawk (33) and Icarus (13), and one of four crown tiers, no crown (127), Basic (100), Advanced (73) and Heavy (33). Each of the 24 combinations is assigned by hand, not left to the dice.

One figure per cell: base shape in the columns, crown tier in the rows.

There is also a colour class: 267 figures are multicoloured, 33 monochrome, 11 black and white and 3 entirely black. The rarest are placed, not drawn: the nine gold ones sit at numbers 37, 74, 111 and so on at intervals of 37, and the ten special editions are spread out up to the last number, 333. Here, rarity is a promise, not chance.

Gold, special edition and black and white, nine figures from each class.

Feeding the community

A community wants to see something new every day. For the website and 27 clips for social media the camera moves in close to the figures, revealing what disappears in the thumbnail: wood grain on the skin, scales as a mask, gilded lips, a phoenix as a pattern on the neck. 26 flythroughs at 7490 by 1200 pixels lead from a distance right into a figure's mouth, each ten seconds long, each ending in the same place, each mouth in its figure's material.

A room of light in New York

The biggest appearance does not take place online. For NFT NYC 2022 a whole light room is created: four projection surfaces, the long walls 3650 pixels wide each, filled with a three-minute choreography of single figures, close-ups, groups and a full wall of figures. The collection's hero panoramas are the long walls of this room, and a room like it is mapped for the first MINDDS collection as well.

Both long walls at the same moment, 75 seconds into the choreography.

Even the reveal gets its own idea: each figure is given an egg in its material and with its base shape, horns, ears or cap included, 335 eggs and a short video with the MINDDS 2.0 emblem. In the end the collection is released without the eggs, which remain a study.

The market turns, the work remains

The mint opens on 10 May 2022 at 18:09 UTC, in the middle of a market that is turning after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. The collection no longer sells out, the project has been on hold ever since, and the figures can be found on OpenSea. For Jan Stalder, MINDDS Eternals remains the largest creative production before Orbit: a team led, a pipeline built, 333 figures completed. What was learned along the way about 3D, real time and production systems is in every Orbit scene today.