I've been working on this drop now for 15 months lol. Spent mostly evenings and weekends chipping away on it...everything has been done by myself. There are over 4,000 traits which are all hand-drawn...actually maybe the real number is like 1,000-2,000 coz lots of them are duplicated lol for the screens etc. I conceptualised the output logic myself and with the help of ChatGPT wrote a Python script to render the final animated images. "Professional Degen" was the first piece I drew that I felt got me on the map a bit as an artist.
I spent a decade as a trader at Barclays Investment Bank and have always been fascinated by the similarities of that job vs sitting at home degenning crypto & NFTs. The two are actually more similar than you'd think; just in one you have to be more professional and can play with the bank's capital, the other you can do whatever the fuck you like but it's your own capital at risk. The aim of Professional Degen was to depict the collision of these two worlds. I went on to make a few versions of this.
I've always had the idea to transform Professional Degen into a generative project; just seemed so obvious to have all the screens as different traits etc. It just felt like a mammoth project and hence why it took so long to complete. I haven't released much art recently as I've really been focused on this. I want to make it a free mint, like I did with Rektguy, just coz it feels more pure. I hope that the way that I have constructed the allowlists will mean that our community is rewarded at the same time as bringing new entrants.
This is simply just an art project, so please don't expect any future utility/benefits. It's something I worked hard on so it feels good to get it out there and hope you like it.
