The Protagonist - Part I History Ediz Onay, or as you will get to know him @perpetual_cgi, born in 1991, initially pursued a career in civil engineering, graduating in 2015 and working in the field until 2017. Dissatisfied and bored with engineering he started pursuing 3D modeling. “I’ve been 3D modeling since I could use a computer basically but never professionally and here I was thinking: I’m gonna focus and sharpen my skills and work in design.” His exploration of design software and subsequent role at a garage startup in Austin, Texas, marked his transition into the creative world, culminating in three of his sculptures being featured in museums. Exhibit in the George Washington Carver Museum From Physical to Digital After working together with numerous museums and high profile companies from various fields Ediz decided to take another leap of faith. Yet again because of the natural boundaries of the medium he chose himself. “The problem with designing sculptures is that you are limited by the boundaries of manufacturing. Whatever you design, it has to be manufacturable. You can't just go YOLO. You can just design whatever you want.” In late 2020 an opportunity came up as NFTs started to gain traction in the public sphere and Digital Art finally found its medium. Ediz then left the Austin company, which has since become a household name with 20 employees, and created Perpetual_CGI where he designed nothing but motion graphic animations. Perpetual_CGI minted his first work on April 9th, 2021 (click the link for the video animation Seeing success with his drops he continued creating more. Unfortunately, looking at a screen with looping animations with no end in sight had to take its toll - a burnout paired with motion sickness started to kick in and as soon as Perpetual_CGI sat in front of a computer sickness overcame him and he had to throw up. A break was needed. But the urge to design was still there. “I tried finding something that I could do without getting sick, something that didn’t require me to sit in front of a computer - suddenly AI was everywhere.” This time a rather involuntary leap of faith, Perpetual_CGI began experimenting with AI Image Creation. It took 10 days of prompting, curating, and starting from scratch to find to find his recognizable style in Midjourney but after that he got obsessed with it: “I was always on my phone. and was easily spending 5-6 hours every single day just generating new images. Of course, it was not just generating, but the curation process was something that pulled me in even more.” The collection that will be dropped under the umbrella name “Continuum” is pulled from a collection of 500 curated and retouched images by Perpetual_CGI. “It took me 7,000 images to get to the 500 you will be able to mint, and you have to keep in mind that MidJourney provides you four images per prompt leading to an astonishing 28,000 images that I went through during curation.” The collection was solely created to satiate the creative hunger Perpetual_CGI felt and since it was just sitting there waiting to be revealed it started to become a part of who he was and is now. Soon it is time to reveal it. Soon it is time for you to enter the Ballroom. Get ready for tomorrow as we will dive deeper into Perpetual_CGI’s creative process and uncover why he would never call himself an artist. (If you want to read up on Ediz Onay / @perpetual_cgi please refer to his X Account and the Linktree. If you would like to schedule a call with either the artist or the team please reach out to @heyPalmes)