The freelance artist behind a million-dollar NFT collection

If you were going through Art Basel Miami in December, you might have heard of a Pudgy Penguins club night. Founder Cole Thereum was there, surrounded by penguin art on the wall and even etched into ice. The artist behind it all, Antoine Mingo, was also there and sipped a gin and tonic at the back of the room, but he kept a lower profile. He drew the faces and bodies that made up the penguins, but his connection to the project has remained under the radar. Unlike Cole, no one at the party recognized him.

The Miami event was a highlight of Mingo’s unusual career as an NFT artist. Tokens built by his art have sold for over $ 400,000, even though he is mostly on the sidelines. When it comes to the NFT world, the real leaders of Pudgy Penguin are the founders, who coded the variants and marketed the project to potential buyers. The artists who create the visuals are treated as hired weapons – and in Mingo’s case, they benefit most from the boom because of their reputation.

Mingo first became serious about art while attending school in Woodbridge, Virginia, drawing portraits of his favorite basketball players and trying to capture small details from the game. As he got older, he began to take on small assignments – first making album art for local Woodbridge rappers, then making logos for local businesses. Each concert led to another.

“I was trying to figure out what my niche was. I wasn’t even sure who I was selling to,” he says. “The work simply fell into my hands.”

After graduating, he started community college, and learned the rules of graphic design and typography. They were crucial skills, but he was frustrated at how slowly his freelance career was growing. Looking back now, he remembers that period as a low point in his life as an artist. “Honestly, I did not even know about [clients] was so fond of art, he says.

In search of new challenges, Mingo found its way to Upwork, a gig-work platform for graphic designers. Upwork is controversial with some artists – especially its 20 percent cut and sometimes abrupt work policy – but for Mingo it was perfect. He was able to find gigs from all over the world, and often paid much more than his local customers. It also gave him a chance to check out his competitors, by getting guidance from other artists’ portfolios. His first job was to design rugby jerseys for someone in Australia. He began to drive into logo design, and learned the tricks that succeed on the platform. He still had to get part-time jobs to make ends meet, but he began to learn the game.

Then he was offered a gig for an NFT project that sounded interesting. He did not know much about NFTs at the time, only that cryptocurrency was volatile and that one of his friends had lost a lot of money in timing the market wrong. The salary was only $ 150 to begin with, more to consult and turn around ideas than to produce a finished product. He was not used to the comic book style, and the feature system that most NFT collections run on was completely new to him.

“I’m usually a realism artist, though [the founder] really wanted me to draw these simple penguins, ”he recalls. “When I drew them, the penguins from Mario 64 were in the back of my mind.”

The founder of The Pudgy Penguins, Cole Thereum, showed him how to build separate properties over the same base penguin form, so that the property can be swapped in and out to create new tokens. Antoine created a series of hats, clothes, glasses and color choices – more than 100 unique features in total. There were also some penguins with unique backgrounds and themes that were thrown into the mix as an extra rare find. When Mingo handed over the features, developers combined them into 8,888 images, the first batch of Pudgy Penguin NFTs. The finished product came with a huge salary: $ 23,000 in dollars and $ 37,000 in Ethereum.

Cole Thereum reached out two weeks later, and was shocked by the project’s success. Without affiliation with NFT Twitter, Mingo had no idea that Pudgy Penguins had been so successful. Soon the founders appeared on CNN and Bloomberg TV – with the community as compared to the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Without knowing it, Mingo had become the artist for one of the largest NFT collections ever made.

“Everything changed,” he says. ‘I had an insane view of it all. I was just the artist who saw it all explode. “

He no longer had to search for commissions on Upwork. Instead, people approached him to create NFT collections for them – for example with the Unbanked NFT project. He remained involved with Pudgy Penguins as well, creating a second collection for the group and other content for the site and social media channels. It was good enough to get him invited to the party in Miami – but not enough to make him the center of the action. Pudgy Penguins was his most successful client, but still only one client among many.

When the scandal hit, he was as shocked as anyone else. Twitter user @ 9x9x9eth put out a thread explained that Cole Thereum, the founder of Pudgy Penguins, had emptied the project’s treasury before he wanted to sell the company for 888 ETH (over $ 2 million). Cole was soon thrown out of his own company – and Mingo’s work was linked to one of the NFT scene’s biggest betrayals.

“I felt a little betrayed,” says Mingo, “but not to the point where I wanted to say something crazy online.” A few months later, LA-based entrepreneur Luca Netz bought Pudgy Penguins from Cole and started the project again, launched a new headquarters in Miami and set plans for a book.

Mingo is planning a move to Miami soon as well, after Pudgy Penguins and the wider boom around crypto art. But until then, he is still sitting in the same room he did a year ago, at the same desk where the artwork Pudgy Penguin was made.

This is not the usual reward for an artist whose work is sold for six figures – but there are other types of satisfaction. Mingo still remembers the moment he saw it Steph Curry had bought a Pudgy Penguin. He had to take a step back from the computer and return to the feeling that had made him start drawing.

– It was a confirmation that I was good enough. I needed it to keep going, “Mingo said.” If I continued the way I went, I’m not sure I would still draw the way I am now. “