2 Sep 2023/79 min/Michael Kutsche
MLow X Michael Kutsche
Disney character designer Michael Kutsche on escaping the studio greenlight bottleneck, painting mortality onto a mountain, and pacing an art practice against the crypto rat race.
The full Google Meet recording runs about 79 minutes, far beyond the clip that was published, and it opens with the two Michaels comparing entry points: MLow in crypto since 2017 but late to the right art, Kutsche recalling the 2021 gold rush, the Clubhouse rooms where careers were made during COVID, and artists from outside the fine art world getting pulled on stage with Snoop Dogg. MLow lays out his own arc, art as therapy since childhood, a turn toward curation, and the Flowcarbon collection he curated for the a16z backed carbon company, with pieces tied to carbon credits that let him offset his whole life's emissions. Kutsche then traces his path: drawing since childhood, a taste shaped equally by comics, Star Wars and painters like Neo Rauch, no art school, a Pixar short that hooked him on 3D before Toy Story existed, and a career as a film character designer on Disney features including Alice in Wonderland and The Lion King, with another Disney film underway as they speak. His mid 90s stint in a music group now returns as the sound design on his own pieces.
The middle of the conversation is the heart of it. Kutsche explains how his two lifelong side projects, exhibiting oil paintings and pitching an original animated series (Star Wars cantina characters crossed with sketch comedy, pitched to Netflix at the wrong moment), taught him the studio math: everything hangs on one executive saying yes. Web3 flips that, letting a niche community fund and co own work that never needs mass appeal, the route taken by Ben Mauro's Huxley and by Maciej Kuciara and pplpleasr's Shibuya, and partially by his own Phantom Zero, produced with French backers and a team of 3D artists. He walks through the piece he minted that morning for Rug Radio's curated drop: a figure climbing a mountain while piggybacking a skeleton, inspired by an episode of an 80s Sinbad anime in which a demon, once lifted, can never be put down. The painting carries his core theme, that a limited lifespan is the weight we carry and the reason our choices matter.
From there the talk ranges across his symbol kit (Matrix pills, squiggles, geese, XCOPY references, loaded icons he calls very powerful, though ideas that fail as design get cut), the pressure question (collectors have never pressured him; the artist is his own harshest critic, and open editions attract traders shouting for the pump), and pacing: he refuses the crypto rat race of constant work in progress signaling, which he likens to a painter installing a studio webcam, and points to Sam Spratt's year long Monument Game, Joe Pease and Jake Fried as proof that taking your time blows minds. On AI he uses generation only for ideation, insisting on the brain to hand connection, with a chess computer analogy for why humans will keep painting. The final stretch covers the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, Yuval Noah Harari's warning that AI has hacked language, the operating system of society, and Kutsche's suggestion that blockchain could serve as the failsafe proving a human made a thing. He closes planning elaborate motion capture animation pieces and hoping to collaborate with a generative artist, possibly through Transient Labs, where MLow curates.
What this episode teaches
- The studio greenlight bottleneck
Kutsche learned from pitching his animated series to Netflix that traditional entertainment hangs on the stars aligning with one executive who says yes or no. Web3 lets a niche community of shareholder like supporters fund a property instead, and smaller scale is a feature: the work no longer needs to please every age group, which is exactly what makes original content original.
- Art is the purest form because the boat is small
After decades inside film productions that need large teams and heavy management, Kutsche values 1/1 art as a nutshell boat: you set your sail alone with your skill set and your connection to collectors. Less machinery, more spontaneity, and a personal form of expression that was never meant to sell movie tickets or plush toys.
- Mortality is the engine, not the subject
His piggybacking Death painting argues that because our lifespan is limited, our choices are scarce and therefore special; an immortal could have endless careers and nothing would mean anything. The weight we cannot put down is also the driver that makes an artist want to leave a mark.
- Use loaded symbols, but let bad ones go
Pills, squiggles, geese and XCOPY nods work because they arrive pre charged with meaning from crypto culture and endless referencing. Kutsche iterates through many candidate elements per piece, and when a brilliant idea fails as an image or a design, he cuts it: the picture outranks the cleverness.
- Curate your collectors
With 1/1s there is usually a conversation before a sale, so the artist effectively chooses holders with real conviction, which protects the work from being dumped under the floor in a bear market. Open editions, by contrast, fill a collector base with traders who pressure artists in the replies, waiting for the pump.
- Set your own pacing; sketches count as the work
Crypto pressures artists to constantly signal activity, as if a painter had to install a webcam in the studio. Kutsche aligns instead with Sam Spratt, Joe Pease and Jake Fried, who share nothing until the work lands; the research, writing and sketches behind one elaborate piece are part of the body of work, even if statistics favor a piece a day.
- Keep the brain to hand connection with AI
Kutsche uses AI for ideation, shapes and color trials, but chiseling prompts leaves him not fully in control, and a finished piece without his own mark feels like no accomplishment. His chess computer analogy: machines beat humans long ago, yet people still play, because the process is the point, and artists should be careful how much they let AI control their practice.
- Old skills compound into new mediums
The 3D pipeline he learned on Silicon Graphics workstations in the late 90s and his mid 90s music group both resurfaced in his NFT practice, where he models, animates and scores his own pieces. He sees the space breeding renaissance artists like Reuben Wu whose work spans photography, film, animation and music.
The conversation, topic by topic
Gold rush, Clubhouse and COVID
They open on the 2021 land grab: opportunism, the jungle of knowing which Telegram or Discord to be in, and careers launched on Clubhouse, where lockdown put Grammy winning producers, film people and artists in the same rooms. Kutsche recalls hearing of Black artists from Chicago, shut out of the fine art world, brought on stage with Snoop Dogg. MLow admits he was in crypto since 2017 but trading rather than collecting, and minted SuperRare artists in 2021 who later left the space.
MLow's path and the Flowcarbon collection
MLow describes art as lifelong therapy, his own practice in photography, digital art and AI tools like Stable Diffusion and Runway ML, and his choice of the curation path. He curated a nature themed collection for Flowcarbon, the a16z backed carbon company, released the previous December with artists from Andre O'Shea to Olive and photographer Lindsay Burns; every piece was tied to carbon credits, and he offset his calculated lifetime emissions through it. Both note SuperRare volume had collapsed to under an ETH traded on some days.
From comics to Disney character design
Kutsche traces a childhood of drawing plus comics, Star Wars and entertainment, refusing snobbery about sources; he cites East German painter Neo Rauch, whose intricate worlds draw more on comics than on fine art. He never studied art: early Pixar shorts, seen before Toy Story, hooked him on 3D, and a job at a 3D company with Silicon Graphics workstations taught him storyboarding, modeling and animation on the way to becoming a film character designer on Disney features including Alice in Wonderland and The Lion King, with another Disney film in progress as they speak.
The Netflix pitch that missed its window
His two lifelong side threads were exhibiting oil paintings and developing his own animated series: Star Wars cantina style creatures in Saturday Night Live style sketch vignettes, with Monty Python and Rick and Morty energy, imagined in high fidelity 3D. Netflix was initially very interested, but the pitch landed as they wound projects down; two years earlier, he thinks it had a real chance alongside Love, Death and Robots.
Phantom Zero, Huxley and Shibuya
Asked whether he would fund a film through web3 instead, Kutsche says yes: his friend Ben Mauro turned Huxley into NFT graphic novels after studios passed, and Maciej Kuciara, working with pplpleasr on Shibuya, shows community involved storytelling working. His own Phantom Zero, Chewbacca like characters in varied masks and outfits drawn from his unmade show, was produced with a group of French entrepreneur backers and a hired team of 3D artists once one man could no longer build every trait.
Why art over entertainment for now
Kutsche contrasts the machinery of film, marketing, merchandise, large teams and dry management, with the purity of making a single artwork: a small boat, your sail set, the waves menacing, just you, your skill set and your collectors. Crypto comes in cycles, and for this one his focus is art.
The morning's Rug Radio piece, painting with pixels
That morning he minted a painting for Rug Radio's curated drops, in the vein of The Connoisseur. He describes emulating oil paint with pixels while deliberately breaking areas to look digital, so the two flavors fight and create a collage feel. Ideas arrive as hazy emotional glimpses on walks or in the shower, then he interrogates them in a dialogue of sketching, coloring and scrapping until he understands why the idea came.
The Sinbad demon and the weight we carry
The piece shows a figure climbing a mountain piggybacking a skeleton. The seed is an episode of an 80s Sinbad anime, a Japanese German co production he loved as a kid, where a demon disguised as an old man begs to be carried and then can never be put down. For Kutsche the rider is our limited lifespan: because choices are scarce they are special, the awareness drives artists to leave a mark, and the mountain is ambition, even the web3 spirit of leaving the valley for the summit, to the moon.
Chance, reference folders and Star Wars side characters
His recurring themes: art as a game of chance and betting, like the artist in one of his books who composes abstractions from randomly falling wooden sticks, which he links to why poker players flooded crypto. He keeps growing folders of references, unusual animals, medieval painting, random patterns in nature, and his character obsession goes back to preferring Jabba's quirky bounty hunters and cantina insect faces over Star Wars heroes.
Pills, geese, squiggles and XCOPY
MLow asks about the Easter eggs: the goose in his Sotheby's piece, squiggles, Alice in Wonderland nods, XCOPY elements. Kutsche explains the pills as multi layered symbols, drugs, the Matrix red and blue pill, and crypto's decentralization creed that shared belief constructs reality the way money and morals do. XCOPY spoke to him before the prices went through the roof, and such loaded, endlessly referenced elements are very powerful, though many candidates, including a goose tried as a chocolate bar, get cut when they fail as design.
Pressure, collector curation and the next level
On expectations, Kutsche says collectors have never pressured him; artists with open editions attract trader collectors posting about waiting for the pump. His few editions and mostly 1/1 practice let him effectively curate collectors through pre sale conversations, protecting the work in the bear. The real stress is internal: he feels he has not come close to his best work, and his planned series returns heavily to animation with motion capture, harder and slower but emotionally richer than stills.
Pacing against the rat race: Sam Spratt's campfire
Crypto's transparency makes artists feel they must show progress constantly, the studio webcam problem. He admires Sam Spratt (whose Rug Radio episode aired the same day), Joe Pease and Jake Fried for taking their time; Spratt worked a year on The Monument Game without spoiling it. Kutsche reads Spratt's whole system, the observations, the ritual circle of collectors, as one masterpiece: a primal campfire where people blend out their lives and think about one thing together, marketing mechanics genuinely embedded in the art rather than bolted on for fomo.
AI in the practice, and AI as societal risk
Kutsche has tried purely prompted work but now uses AI mainly to find shapes and test combinations, alongside pencil sketches and Photoshop painting; without the brain to hand mark the result feels hollow, and chess proves process outlives machine superiority. Turning to the writers and actors strikes hitting his LA film work, he calls the technology a Pandora's box and endorses Yuval Noah Harari's warning: ChatGPT mastered language, the operating system of society, and hacked it, so releases should be treated like biological agents kept in labs, with regulation marking what is AI made. He suggests blockchain could be the failsafe verifying a human behind news or art. MLow adds NYU's new anti AI plagiarism rules and artists' anger at models trained on their portfolios.
Collaborations and what is next
Everything he has released as NFTs he made alone, music included, except Phantom Zero's team of 3D artists and a Paris digital fashion designer working in Marvelous Designer. The collaboration he wants is with a generative artist, something neither could make alone, and he has been in touch with Transient Labs; MLow, who curates for Transient Labs, offers to build a project together. Ahead: unannounced curated releases and the long, elaborate animation pieces, with Kutsche closing that he is happy to join the lineage of artists on the series.
In their words
“The stars have to align... and it requires this one person to say yes or no.”
Michael Kutsche“You have this little nutshell of a boat and you set your sail... it's just you and your skill set and the connection you have with your collectors.”
Michael Kutsche“Because our choices are limited, it makes them very special.”
Michael Kutsche“It's almost like the traditional artist would have to put a webcam in his studio, so that collectors can watch him paint.”
Michael Kutsche“If I haven't left my own mark, with my brain to hand connection, I feel something is missing.”
Michael Kutsche“People still play chess. They just enjoy the process of it... and I think there's an argument for that in art too.”
Michael KutscheCite this conversation
Michael Kutsche in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Michael Kutsche," The MLow Show, 2 Sep 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-09-02-mlow-x-michael-kutsche.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.