A ₿etter Future (Satoshi´s Citadel v2)

Satoshi´s Citadel (v1) inspiration

The inspiration for this artwork, originally titled ´Satoshi´s Citadel´ comes from the original bitcoin time traveler reddit post. Although the infamous reddit post paints a bleak picture of the future post ´hyperbitcoinization´, I set out to paint a picture of a better future thanks to better money. The idea to take this subject on in an art piece came from a discussion I had with my friend and fellow bitcoin-focused artist Brekkie, a.k.a. @BVBTC

Satoshi´s Citadel v1 by Lucho Poletti

The original post, perhaps a prank or harmless piece of ´fan fiction´, posits that bitcoin brings a future upon us where governments no longer exist and the "Bitcoin rich" live in Citadels to protect themselves and their wealth. This situation comes with its own set of problems - i.e. what about all the non-bitcoiners? For more info here, see the original post.

The original Satoshi´s Citadel piece was one of my first ever ´digital paintings´, completed in July 2019.

Satoshi´s Citadel has been sold in Limited Edition prints to multiple bitcoin art collectors, exhibited a few times between Miami & Los Angeles, and a large format 3-piece set is on display (on-going) in Bitcoin Center Miami.

In total, a piece like this takes me a good couple weeks of focused work, depending on how much experimentation and level of detail is in the artwork. In this case, there are hundreds of layers resulting in a vector design file of about 500MB & difficult to manage on a low-end graphics card.

A ₿etter Future (v2)

As I have expanded my digital art formats to include a bit of animation, I decided to re-do the image, transforming it into something new and creating a fully animated version.

Note: the full, finished version will be tokenized March 27th 2020 at 11:30AM Pacific Time via superrare.co as a single-edition nft.

The artwork is composed of 88 still-frame vector art images, compiled first in APNG format and then converted into GIF due to size constraints with NFT platforms. The process of creation of this artwork uses only the Adobe Illustrator program, adjusting each image element and exporting each still-frame individually. It is a cumbersome, labor intensive process and does lead often to minor glitches as it is 100% a manual process.

The timing of this release coincides with prominent crypto artist Coldie´s 6.15 art experience taking place tomorrow in the cryptovoxels virtual gallery. This piece was created in commemoration of this digital art event.

The new character was created using an augmented reality mask, fitting the satoshi mask to a certain "anonymous leader". This is only done to capture the facial expression, from there I took a text box full of bitcoin´s genesis block code, and began to layer it and give it colors, to shade the Satoshi face.

A similar process was used for the collar texture, which uses molecular structure textures (blockchain visualization).

In addition to this, all colors were changed as well as the entire landscape, background, fully animated ships & drones/helicopters. The ships were all given afterburners for the animation, including the satoshi starship (final 15 frames, not in preciew clip).

The rising sun effect is the result of many hours of experimentation with the radial design and overlaying many layers. The background elements represent areas where bitcoin mining has occured, delivering a visual sense of prosperity and riches.

Some of my 'signature touches' on this special art piece:

Satoshi´s wink is a touch I like to use as a sort of 'hat tip' to bitcoiners who share my vision for a bright future with Bitcoin as a prominent global standard for currency. The wink is featured in a few previous animated works, such as Nakamoto´s Invasion and also in the cryptopolis poster print.

Satoshi´s Wink from A Better Future by Lucho Poletti