31 Aug 2023/2 min/Adamtastic
MLow X Adamtastic
Adamtastic on spreading positivity through art, the name he invented at his lowest point, and why talking to your collectors is web3's real innovation.
Adamtastic frames his whole practice as a mission: spread positivity, put smiles on faces, and reduce emotions to their simplest forms so people can see themselves in the characters and tell their own stories. He has run Fluffy Goodness, his creature project, for over fifteen years, selling physicals at craft fairs long before minting them as digital collectibles in 2021 and 2022, and he tells MLow about a recent email from a fifteen year old who got one of the creatures at age three, whose mother commissioned a giant custom version, writing years later just to say thank you for the memories. Web3 also became his most effective charity fundraising channel, with less friction and more liquidity even in a bear market.
The episode's centerpiece is the name. After grad school for animation, jobless and depressed, Adam ended up working at a chain restaurant, doodling on shifts. One day he refused to be just Adam on his name tag, printed Adamtastic on the label gun, and wore it as a daily self affirmation through his darkest stretch. Nobody had ever asked him about it in an interview before MLow did. From there the conversation moves to his core belief about the space: web3 opened a dialogue between artists and collectors that never existed in galleries or craft fairs, where you rarely learn who bought your work. He thanks collectors personally, urges every artist to find or start a peer group chat, and names the advisors he talks to daily, from Bryan Brinkman and ThankYouX to Dave Krugman, Coldie and Cory Van Lew.
He also previews his drop the next day on Dewdrops, the text to collect platform where buyers need no crypto: a limited edition of 25, randomized among opt ins, for a piece called Flow, an ocean as origin of life image filtered through a childhood misreading of a Matisse blue nude print in his parents' bedroom. The AI discussion is one of the most worked out in the series: a Midjourney beta member for over a year, he uses AI as reference and for backgrounds (as in the seven month Truth Labs project where he hand painted the character elements), draws a hard line between AI as part of a whole and AI alone, defends prompt artists like his friend Nuclear Samurai on the strength of curation and intention, and compares the whole practice to collage. His ten year holds: The Worm, a Joshua Davis Universe Machine, and Tiffatron's Dopamine.
What this episode teaches
- Thank your collectors personally
Adamtastic messages a thank you for primary and secondary sales alike, and collectors are routinely stunned because almost nobody does it. The point is not retention, it is connection, but the goodwill compounds anyway.
- Get in a group chat or start one
His strongest advice for artists: if you are not in a peer chat of any kind, find one or create one. His own chats have not missed a day in two and a half years and double as advice network, classroom and pressure valve.
- Helping others costs you nothing
Nine times out of ten the gig or sale you pass to another artist was never going to be yours. He treats generosity as structurally free, a norm he learned from earlier artists like Coldie and Bryan Brinkman and tries to pass on.
- Cute on the surface, weight underneath
His characters look fun and approachable, but he makes art with intention and something going on below the surface, and deliberately does not explain everything. Ambiguity stays in the work; generosity stays in the conversation.
- Turn the low point into the identity
The name Adamtastic began as a self affirmation printed on a restaurant name tag during his most depressed stretch. He kept the pin as a reminder that the darkest period produced the identity his whole career now runs under.
- Use AI as reference, not replacement
He replaces Google image scraping with AI generated reference and still paints the piece himself, and in team projects uses AI where it is honest, backgrounds in a whole, while hand painting the characters. The line he draws is AI as part of a whole versus AI alone.
- Judge AI art by curation and intention
People discount prompt work because they never see the curation: creative directing the language, generating a hundred outputs, weeding down to the story. He credits his fifteen years of experience for knowing what to ask for, and cites collage as the precedent for recontextualizing material you did not make.
- Try new rails during the bear
He joined Dewdrops early because a bear market is the time to mess around with new mechanics like text to collect, credit card checkout and custodial wallets, which also solves his personal rule of never doing crypto on his phone.
The conversation, topic by topic
Mission and Fluffy Goodness
Adamtastic wants his art to affect change positively, reducing characters and scenes to simple universal emotions. Fluffy Goodness, his fifteen plus year creature project, sold physicals at craft fairs and mom and pop shops before becoming digital collectibles in 2021 and 2022. A teenager recently emailed a photo of the worn, loved custom creature his mother commissioned when he was three, thanking him for the memories.
Charity in web3
He raises funds for charity through his art and says web3 has less friction and generally more liquidity than anywhere else he has fundraised, even in a bear market.
The name tag story
After grad school for animation he could not find work and took a chain restaurant job, feeling he had failed. Frustrated, he printed Adamtastic on his name tag as a daily self affirmation, I am more than just Adam, and kept the pin ever since. MLow is the first interviewer to ask about it in almost twenty years.
What collectors should know
MLow's signature opener. Adamtastic pours everything in, makes art with intention and hidden depth, does not always explain it, but is always happy to talk. He clarifies mid answer, with MLow's help, that the new dialogue is between artists and collectors, something gallery and print sales never allowed.
The Lindsey Byrnes exchange
MLow tells his own story: buying a secondary piece from photographer Lindsey Byrnes led to a thank you DM, a relationship and eventually a project together, something a traditional gallery purchase never triggers. Adamtastic says every artist he knows watches primary and secondary moves and should reach out, because even a simple thanks goes a long way.
Shapeshifters
His most recent self minted piece came from Shapeshifters, which he calls his first generative series, built without code as a randomization project he figured out by hand.
Dewdrops and text to collect
His drop the next day ran on Dewdrops, a platform launched that summer: text alerts announce drops, collectors get nine hours to opt in with a credit card, no crypto required, and a limited edition of 25 is randomized among entrants into custodial wallets that can be transferred out later. Bryan Brinkman was the inaugural artist; Amber Vittoria and Jonathan Wolfe had just dropped there too. He likes it for onboarding and artist discovery.
Flow and the Matisse memory
The Dewdrops piece, Flow, reflects on the oceans giving birth to all life, abstract but character centric. It filters a childhood memory: a Matisse blue nude print in his parents' bedroom whose upraised arm he always misread as a giant head, an image he finally painted his own version of.
Favorite artists and the advice network
He credits Bryan Brinkman for onboarding him and championing artists, admires Sam Spratt (whose Luci and its game moment were peaking), and a black and white storytelling artist whose name the transcript garbles. Daily advice comes from group chats with ThankYouX, Dave Krugman, Jen Stein, Roger Dickerman, Jesse Wilson, Ed Balloon, Cory Van Lew and others, plus early clubhouse circles like Ryan Hawthorne's NFT and Chill. The founding sentiment: we are all figuring it out together.
AI, Pandora's box
In the Midjourney beta for over a year, he says the technology is not going away, so understand what it can and cannot do. He uses it for reference instead of scraping the web, riffs on outputs in his own style, and on the Truth Labs project used an AI test that looked like fake stock imagery as the seed for quickly produced backgrounds while he hand painted the character elements over seven months of storytelling work.
Collage as precedent
After MLow's laptop dies and revives, Adamtastic finishes the thought: collage artists recontextualize photos and paintings they did not make, and AI does something similar at unprecedented scale. His conclusion is to embrace AI as a tool, while respecting intentional prompt artists like Nuclear Samurai.
Three NFTs for ten years
Digging through his wallet on the spot, he lands on his copy of The Worm, a Joshua Davis Universe Machine piece he calls underrated and beautiful, and Dopamine by Tiffatron.
In their words
“It was sort of like a self affirmation. I'm Adamtastic, I'm awesome. A reminder in my darkest time.”
Adamtastic“I pour everything into it. It's a genuine expression of who I am. I make art with intention.”
Adamtastic“I have this ability to say thank you personally to somebody. I don't care if you ever buy anything of mine ever again.”
Adamtastic“Helping other people out doesn't take anything away from you and your success.”
Adamtastic“There's a very distinct difference between using AI as a part of a whole versus using AI alone.”
AdamtasticCite this conversation
Adamtastic in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Adamtastic," The MLow Show, 31 Aug 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-08-31-mlow-x-adamtastic.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.