Today I'm fortunate enough to present an extremely in depth conversation, bursting with ideas and insights from artist Ben Mauro. We went deep into his craft, the industry of AAA gaming, movies, and NFT collectable projects. Towards the end of our conversation we discuss our thoughts on the vast potential of this space and the possibilities that may unfold with mass adoption of blockchain technology.

Can you begin by introducing yourself to our readers? Your name, where you are based and the mediums you work in?

Hi my name is Ben Mauro, I am an artist living in Seattle WA, USA and I work digitally in 2D and 3D to create my art.

If you trace back your journey, to your earliest creative impulses, is there a specific moment or a time where you knew you wanted to pursue a creative path?

Good question! I always sort of did drawings when I was little like most kids do, but it probably wasn't until high school when I was maybe 17-18 that I started to take it seriously as a possible career path. I was obsessed with videogames at the time, specifically the original Halo really hooked me. I thought it would be cool to design levels and architecture for a game like that.

It got the gears turning in my head and led me down a rabbit hole of researching things more and figuring out how that whole industry works; what sort of skills and training I would need to do that for a living and I just went from there.

Ben Mauro / Art Director Sparth

Were the people guiding you along your path encouraging of a creative career or did you have to push against resistance to follow these dreams?

Probably a bit of both, early on the biggest hurdle was convincing my parents to let me do this is in the first place. My dad was very traditional, and like most people at the time he wanted me to be a doctor/lawyer/businessman or something safe and practical like that. For most of my life, he viewed videogames as a distraction from 'real work,' so it definitely took some convincing that it was a viable career path.

In order to do that, I had to pitch to him like he was an investor, so I did all the research, made a presentation like I was pitching to a VC or something ha! Luckily he was convinced and on board after that and has been fully behind this since then.

Once I was on the path there were many amazing friends and mentors along the way that helped and encouraged me but also a lot of obstacles early on. Most of my career has been people telling me I can't do something and I find a way to do it to prove that I can, I always prefer to just keep my head down and let the work do the talking.

It’s so cool to hear that you trace your journey back to the original halo, and currently you are working on the very IP that original inspired you. What a story.

What was that experience like for you emotionally, and how does it feel to now be designing the worlds that inspire countless others to make the same leap? And what advice would you have for those young creative minds?

That has been a crazy full circle for sure! My original goal in high school was to go work for Bungie on Halo, but once I started college in a 3D animation school I saw what a big range of skills there were to learn, and I found that I was most interested in being a designer which required a lot more work and training than I originally anticipated.

This led me down to study in California at Art Center College of Design to learn from the top artists at the time who were only teaching there. After school I sort of got swept away in the film industry working on The Hobbit Trilogy, ELYSIUM, Amazing Spiderman 2 and a bunch of other big films down in New Zealand at Weta Workshop. After that I sold all my belongings and traveled the world for around 3 years living out of a suitcase while freelancing on Call of Duty and other films.

Once I finally felt like it was time to settle down, the opportunity to work on Halo was finally there, all those years later, and I just went for it. It's kind of a trip, because I am literally doing the exact thing my 17 year old self wanted to do. It just took a lot longer to get there than I originally thought.

I think any advice I might give is to not to try to control your journey too much. Try to always make decisions that are right for you, wherever you are in your artistic development. So many of the things that happened over my career were me chasing knowledge and going wherever that took me even if it seemed like an odd choice to many of my peers.

So if moving to another country to work with artists on a project that I felt would help me grow in the ways I needed or would never get if I stayed in LA, then I felt that was the right decision to make.

In school they sort of pushed us to try to specialize in 1-2 skills so we could get a job faster, but I really wanted to get good at everything so that I could build my own universes eventually.....this obviously takes a lot longer to achieve but it's what I wanted to do.

Most of my career has been making decisions and choosing projects that helped me become a much more well-rounded artist, so that long term I could accomplish this bigger artistic goal. Another thing was coming to the realization that nothing is wasted, so many movies or projects I worked on I thought would be the 'next big thing' but ended up not connecting with their audiences. That can hit hard sometimes.

In the short term I would sometimes feel like I made a mistake working on it, but long term I have always found that they have lead to new unexpected opportunities I could have never planned for. The hard work doesn't go unnoticed in the grand scheme of things.

All that resonates so much with me, especially the part about following your own threads, and putting in the groundwork before expecting the world.

That was always the hardest part.

And yes, sharpen your sword on the stones you stumble on :)

That's what that inner voice kept telling me to do, so I just listened to it. I could have played it safe and stayed in LA, made good money working on all the sequels and reboots.....or move to New Zealand, take a big pay cut, start over not knowing anyone... but work on very original projects with artists I felt were doing some of the most original and innovative work that I would never be able to learn anywhere else.

Most of my friends thought I was crazy to do this but long term this was definitely the right decision for me and what I needed in my artistic development.

You’ve had an incredible career already- I’d love to move into the present for a moment because you’ve been doing some incredible things with NFTs. How did this technology first come across your radar? How did you begin to ideate this concept of EVOLUTION and work with FLOW to bring the project into reality?

I have been into crypto since probably around 2016, I remember seeing when CryptoKitties launched but I wasn't aware of NFT's or what they were at the time.

It got on my radar in a more serious way late last year when Beeple started talking about it and I saw a few other friends like Victor Mosquera getting into it also. Once I researched more into it and saw exactly what it was, there was an immediate 'eureka' moment for me.

It solved a problem all digital artists have had our entire careers, allowing us to have a unique version of a digital creation that can be bought/sold/traded on the blockchain. There are moments in life where you look back and realize something was huge and you missed the boat, to me this is one of those moments so I dove in and went for it immediately to give it my best shot.

Around the time NFT's got on my radar late 2020 and I was accepted into SuperRare I was contacted by the team at Viv3 and they wanted to know if I would be interested in launching a project on FLOW. I hadn't heard of either of these at the time, but after researching FLOW and seeing that it was a POS network made by the creators of the hugely successful CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shots to be able to handle high volume transactions/trading efficiently for collectible projects, I felt if I was going to create something like this then that would be the network to do it on.

Once the content was done I worked with the Viv3 and FLOW teams to help promote it for launch. I wasn't sure what to expect to be honest, I was super nervous the night before but it sold out in 7mins with over 2m in sales! I'm still a bit shocked and in disbelief a month or so later, it really was a sudden life-changing moment.

Currently I am working on rewards for the EVOLUTION collectors (first one arriving April 30th) and planning other content to keep the project alive and thriving long term along with starting to think about what might make an exciting Series 2. :)

Wow man. Such an incredible project, the art is so beautiful but so is the concept and gamification. It’s cool that you were so early to building on FLOW has such an incredible success, because now you’re more than the just the artist, you are a trailblazer with new tech, opening up worlds of potential for those who will come after.

This space is moving so fast it’s like watching a time-lapse of a new industry being born. What are your hopes for the evolution of this space and what are your plans personally to continue to push the envelope with your own projects?

It really does move so fast, each week feels like 10 years of progress which definitely makes things exciting and keeps everyone on their toes innovating, which I think is a good thing.

Long term I hope there is more focus and solidification on projects that are supported more heavily that have strong/innovative utility. Right now there seems to be a lot of short term thinking of dropping something, bailing and moving onto the next thing, which to me just means collectors will get burned along with your name brand in the NFT space.

My hope is to have a small amount of bigger projects that I create, love, grow and support with a strong community over a long period of time, in-between a few collabs and 1/1's here and there. After spending so many years building AAA films and games from start to finish, I just see this as the way to create big things that have value that people love for many years.

It doesn't happen overnight, but then nothing great does, you just have to keep putting in the effort one day at a time and eventually that seed will grow into a tree.

You said one very key word there- utility. Can you speak to some examples of good utility in this space? Either examples you see from others, ways you think about it for your own projects, or ideas you have that are hypothetical? I love to think of NFTs as keys...

When I say utility I mean its more than just getting some art and that's it. There is either some gamified aspect to the collection (or it is literally a game you play) to keep users excited and having fun, or level up systems (this has to be done perfectly though so you don't break your project) or people getting perks for holding cards, unlockable content, social token integration etc.

Some teams I'm seeing that are doing this well would be RTFKT studios, where if you bought the first drop of a collection, they offer exclusive content ONLY for those first collectors. For example, if you bought that virtual shoe from them you can wear it in Decentraland, Sandbox or any of the other metaverse spaces. Things like this really keep collectors around and invested for a longer period of time and make people want to come back for future things they create, because you are providing so much value for their investment.

I'm always keeping my ear to the ground and studying what all the successful projects are doing. NBA TopShots for example does a lot of amazing things and is great to learn from as well- their ability to keep such a massive user base happy and engaged is no easy task!

These are just a few successful mechanics happening now but obviously I am trying to look ahead into what could be the next big/cool/innovative thing in this space. This is what keeps me up at night in the coming weeks/months/years, when I figure it out I'll be happy to talk more about it. :)

I could do this infinitely but let’s wrap it up with one more question for now in this same vein... as someone who has worked with so many top gaming companies, when do you see adoption for AAA game marketplaces happening with NFTs, and what are some ideas or thoughts around how this will change gaming?

Will we see blockchain based arms markets in COD? NFT Travel passes to different worlds in Halo? Play to earn mechanics in Fortnite and other IPs? It seems like NFTs are such a natural fit for this world- is there anything you can speak to about the potential here?

I definitely see this happening when and not if. Epic Games has been super vocal about the metaverse and I think they will most likely be one of the first big companies to crack the code and then everyone else will quickly follow.

Just the idea that all the things we have bought in our favorite games over the years automatically become NFT items that we own and can buy/sell/trade worldwide will be a huge moment for all of this. I think some of the biggest early hurdles will be on a legal side because basically every IP in the world would all be interacting outside of their main game/platform/IP.

So if we get to some sort of open Ready Player One metaverse space, can we take our stylized Fortnite marvel skin and go play Call of Duty with our friends in that game, even though its a completely different universe and art direction? Can I take my photoreal COD character into Minecraft? What will most likely happen is those things will remain intact as contained experiences, but they will all be connected to that central metaverse space.

In this scenario there will be new gaming experiences specifically made that allow for this to happen, so you could go play some games as your photorealistic COD soldier with your friend wearing a blocky Minecraft pixel skin for example in a special made social gaming experience that allows any content from any game to all interact in the same space.

But like Ready Player One I imagine every franchise will make their own experiences in the metaverse almost like going to a theme-park virtually. All your friends meetup and go hang out or do adventures in the StarWars world, hop out and go do adventures in 8-bit Mario world etc, the possibilities are endless and I'm incredibly excited to see how all this plays out in the coming years.

What an incredibly exciting time, bursting with potential. I can’t wait to see it unfold, and I’m eager to participate in these new economies.

Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me today- this was such a valuable conversation and I know our readers will feel the same way. What are the best ways for people to connect with you online?

It was my pleasure! Thank you so much for inviting me. Best way to keep in touch is probably Twitter/Instagram/Discord currently as they are my main social platforms I'm most active on.