The Bootyshaker Collection was a series of 25 individually made 3D animated looping gifs that the Super Dope team and I created between March-December of 2022. The goal was to find, highlight and commemorate artists in the web3 space that we believe were not only creating dope work but were also positively impacting the entire community.
In each instance, we faced the interesting design challenge of how to represent the artist or their work, and how we’d navigate that combination. We also made 5 colorways: Cool Cheeks, Warm Butts, Pastel Poopers, Gray Glutes, and Radiant Rumps, to break up the collection. As a Woman of Color myself, we understood that there could be mixed feelings in regards to the project- How would you feel if someone wanted to make an animated version of you shaking your butt? An extremely important part of this then became getting the individual artists’ consent.
I was responsible for researching and finding a majority of the artists, gaining their consent, and in some cases even interviewing the artists in Twitter Spaces. I’ve always loved sitting down with artists over lunch and learning about their story, so this was our way of doing that within this new remote world. What has been the coolest part of this process was making friends along the way and truly being blown away by so many of the artists we highlighted and interviewed. These people are really incredible and I’m so honored I got to be part of this. Excuse me- YumYum London and Mike Shinoda?! How COOL!
Sometimes, the process included completely rethinking a Bootyshaker after completion or just ruthlessly ripping them apart mid-production. We wanted to respect the artist we were highlighting by creating something we were proud of. This involved a lot of back and forth and draw overs with the team. Each animated loop was then put out into the world with their own personal love letter. In two instances, we were able to donate profits to organizations: Jump Start Designers created by Emonee LaRussa, who is dedicated to providing computers & digital art programs to kids in underserved communities, and Mec Doa by Mec Zilla, focused on educating and onboarding POC to the web3 space! <3
Throughout the process, I helped model the characters and create sneak peaks as well. This was a pretty challenging project because of the sheer amount of work and time it took to make these. So many little shoes, so many different specificities. To the right is a behind the scenes glimpse of what it took just to make this DeeKay bootyshaker.
Hope you’ll enjoy!
