Xazil The Appraiser -- SuperRare tokenized artwork

Bow before Xazil, The Appraiser.

Lord of knowledge and appraiser of the new gems and crystals extracted from Askian mines, they represent the calm and calculated risks taken by true HODLers, and they are the Supreme HODLer responsible for fighting the panic- and terror-induced feelings so often promoted by the dark powers of FUD and FOMO...

A new entry into my "Supreme HODLers" series, this tokenized artwork is now available on the Eth-based SuperRare cryptoart platform !

This is the fifth entry into the series, joining two works on the BTC Counterparty protocol Crystalcraft collection and 2 others on the SuperRare platform.

Raw Materials

The raw materials for this creation were taken from several sources, some added later on in the process.

The initial source was actually an Artbreeder image

I immediately attacked it with my usual kaleidoscopic strategy, to see if I could extract a more abstract pattern from it:

I could immediately see something of interest in that inner pattern. kinda similar to a devil's head with horns, but made out of the combined eye shapes.

I went ahead and studied the different results various filters gave with this image, to determine which one to pursue

This one caught my interest... there was an even more devilish air to it than the original kaleidoscope pattern !

Some cutting to give it an actual white background (the 'gray' color in the previous picture is actually just thinly spaced black and white lines)

Then I erased some of the edges, to extract the part I was interested in.

Also, a sneak peek at the kinds of songs I end up with when I let Youtube choose the next one ;)

I then superposed that with the output of another filter, to see what I could do to make it better.

I then duplicated and downscaled a copy of the background piece, scaling it into the transparent eye sockets so it looked like proper eyes.

I then began another Kaleidoscope run of the background to determine the best overall appearance, when associated with the "eyed mask" I'd just created.

I initially wasn't sure if there wasn't more to do with the background, hence the 'background ?' name for one of the layers.

I added in some crypto symbols to represent the new gems/crystals/jewels mined from the Askian moutains, and applied the Engrave filter on them.

And then I went in search of an "eye" like shape for the image:

I ended up with this public domain image:

I then extracted it's iris for the artwork

and, after adjusting for some parameters, went ahead with the artwork:

Then, it was just about setting up a copy with a different color for the 'iris' and create a gif:

And voila:

Xazil The Appraiser -- SuperRare tokenized artwork

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I hope you liked this presentation of my creative process.

Have a good day,

Peter.