The Swallja Story
I had the opportunity to interview the artist known as Swallja recently to learn about his history in digital art and where his love of bricks comes from.
I first met Swallja in April 2024 at Frogs Over Fiat — a popup gallery hosted by Superchief during NFT.NYC. He was busy distributing free art and was kind enough to personalize one for me. Knowing now when and why these images were made makes it even more meaningful. In his words, “making these got me through the winter.” They were made in front of his fireplace “almost as a compulsion.” The fire was the only heat source in his house and he somehow kept it going for three months. While he was sat in a chair tending to the fire his love for painting reignited (pun intended) while at the same time helped relieve the stress of life. Then in April he gave every one of the paintings away for free.
Swallja began making digital art 10 to 12 years both at home and on the go using his phone. As he puts it, “the iPhone allowed me to create.” Over the years he became so familiar with the applications and filters offered that he could recognize them in other peoples work. But with the exception of a handful of album covers and videos he did for bands that he produced, his art was not for other people to see. That was until he visited his first gallery of Pepe-themed art in 2021. It was there that he met so many good people and was reassured that he could do this too. He learned that anyone could just “do” art. You didn’t have to wait for someone to ask you to make something. These artists were just making things they liked and thought were funny and really didn’t expect anything in return for them except maybe a laugh from the viewer and the admiration of other artists. It was here that Swallja knew he wanted to be part of this community and part of this conversation.
Along with art, Swallja also makes and produces music. Much like art, he had stepped away from this part of his life. But when he discovered “crypto Twitter” (a small sub-genre of people who post about crypto currency and crypto art on the social platform) he fell in love with the memes people were posting on a daily basis.
In 2022 developer and lover of all things Counterparty, Robot Love Coffee posted a link to a Counterparty dispenser for the Darkfarms art “SMOOLDOGG”. This drove Swallja down the Counterparty/Pepe rabbit hole and prompted him to perform his first-ever Bitcoin spend. He had to have one of these for himself. Like many of us in this space, he couldn’t figure out how to get one. He bought from a wallet that he controlled, but wasn’t Counterparty aware. He was saddened by the thought that his Bitcoin was gone and he had nothing to show for it. Luckily, the pepe community is extremely helpful and Swallja was able to retrieve his token and move it to the proper wallet.
All of that aside, it was the RLC post and the discussion of it afterwards that inspired Swallja to stay up all night to write an original song to accompany the image just for laughs. This is how memes work — they spark creativity and engagement. Darkfarms is the master of creating topical and hilarious memes. The song got a lot of love on Twitter and Swallja has been meeming ever since.
Back to the bricks
Swallja is about making referential artwork. When he was introduced to yungwknd — an artist and smart contract connoisseur from Seattle, WA by Robot Love Coffee, he did a deep dive on yungwknd’s art. This is where he first encountered the City Parks project and it spoke to him deeply. It was the simplicity of it. All the images were made from just 5 vector files — a brick, a fence, the sun, a tree, and a UFO. He thought to himself, “I bet I could meme within these boundaries. I want to show people what can be done with just these limited shapes. But — it has to be good, and funny.”
He began to paint and draw them and assigned meaning to the shapes. The bricks represent resources. Fences are required boundaries. Trees are natural order. The sun brings energy. UFO’s are the unknown. He says, “live your life like you’re planning a city that you’re not going to live in forever. Admit that there is an issue with the status quo.”
His first attempt at using the City Planner images was in September 2022 when he created an animated video entitled city planner (ver. pale blue death) which featured a drum solo by “homie, bandmate & collaborator” Mark Guiliana. The announcement of the drop was made on X and received praise from both Yungwknd and AlphaCentauriKid (creator of pale blue death + The Great Color Study). On the mint page, Swallja mentions that proceeds from sales of this piece will be dedicated to minting out original “City Parks” by yungwknd.
Blessings and Good Tidings
It was early 2023 when Swallja reached out to yungwknd to ask if he could use the City Parks images on a grander scale. His response was, “you own this now.” Meaning that Swallja had yungwknd’s blessing to take the images and run with them.
On to Counterparty
On March 23, 2023 Swallja minted a piece titled SWALLJA.LETSGETSMOL. With this piece, Swallja wanted to prove something to himself and to others. He wanted it to be something that people would find interesting, and to do something with it that could only be done on the blockchain. So he set about animating the piece, and to further challenge himself, wrote some original music for it, added in some samples of old and new songs, sprinkled in some voice messages from friends, and (for the first time in his life) rapped.
The song by itself is quite catchy and the rap is funny, topical, and flows nicely. BUT because Swallja is the way he is — it doesn’t end there. He also included a very cleaver puzzle in his piece. The only clue given was in the token’s description, “0ne s1mple key h1dden w1th1n,f0r clever 0nes, n0 sp01lers. An amus1ng test 0f trust & gener0s1ty,f0r sm0wls and cur10us enjoy00rs.” The prize for solving the puzzle was the entire supply of 69 LETSGETSMOL tokens and enough bitcoin to move the prize to your own wallet.
It took 6 months, but someone eventually did solve it. And the coolest part about the solve is that it was done by someone that was not involved in crypto at all. She goes by the name Jo!ly Rabbit on Twitter. And in a spaces hosted by Swallja, Jo!ly revealed that her boyfriend is an avid spaces listener and happened to hear one where Swallja was discussing the unsolved puzzle. He took this information back to Jo!ly who he knew loved a good puzzle and she was instantly hooked.
The prize wallet is still active and anyone can attempt to solve it themselves. There are still tokens available to be had there and more are being added all the time. Jo!ly has even gone so far as to write a bot script that will send a text message to her phone if someone else solves it.
Further Usage of City Planner Images
In 2024 his tribute to X Copy’s Max Pain entitled City Planner, Draft B was selected to be part of the BOUNDLESS at NFT.NYC 2024 event where it was auctioned for 0.11 ETH.
Also in 2024, just before the Rare Coco Project was closed, Swallja minted a trio of images on Counterparty — COCOPLANNER, COCOPITFALL, and COCOCOW. Only COCOPLANNER utilized the City Planner images, but the other two include Swallja’s signature lines font. COCOCOW is an obvious tribute to artist Grant Riven Yun’s “Cow.” If you are unfamiliar with who or what a Coco is, he is a snappy little crocodile, and friend of Pepe the Frog that was brought to the memesphere by artist Kero in July of 2023 via the X Platform. Swallja also minted an animated version of COCOPLANNER on the Ethereum blockchain that includes an original rap song.
SWORDS OF STATUS QUO
The culmination of the City Planner project was even bigger and bolder than the crypto puzzle. It was an art piece designed as a website and a role playing game. To build the website, Swallja had to teach himself to code. Then he had to learn how to create what he considers the most important aspect of the site and game — the leaderboard.
Swallja created and scrapped two complete games before arriving on the third and final game that is up and running now. The game uses city planner that Swallja arranged in such a way that they are no longer shapes, but enemies to be defeated.
This is a nod to the original RPG — Dungeons and Dragons. Along with the leaderboard, the art, and the gameplay — Swallja also wrote and produced over 1 hour of original music and sound effects. This is the definition of high concept.
With the leaderboard, he can track every element of the game and uses that data to learn what players are doing with it, how they are doing it, and why. To date over 50 people have tried the game and more than 100 hours of total gameplay has been logged. There are prizes in the form of NFT’s on the Ethereum blockchain that can be minted by players — one just for participating and another if the player reaches the top 5 on the leaderboard. The latter is only mintable with a password provided to the player after reaching the top 5.
Additionally, all 33 game sprites in the game can be minted as NFT’s on the Ethereum blockchain. A wallet can claim 1 of each for free (plus platform fee and gas). There is a tip option which goes to Swallja and users have generously left him 0.02549 ETH to date. A total of 22 pieces have been minted and there are currently 28 days left to mint them as of this writing. The mints are scheduled to close on Sunday November 17th.
And as is his way — there is a puzzle in the game with a 1 of 1 NFT mint for the solver too. Swallja described this puzzle as a “Sword in the Stone” situation. It is in the public square for everyone to see, lay their hands on, and give it a tug. But ultimately only one may raise it from it’s stone sheath and claim it for their own.
Note: After many days of playing, pondering, studying, and obsessing I solved this little puzzle and claimed the 1 of 1 NFT. Sorry, not sorry. I’ll probably put up an explainer article at some point about how I did it.
What’s next
Swallja is keeping his future projects close to the vest for now, he did let me know that one of them will be called Outlaw Ocean. I for one, can not wait to see whatever the next thing is. I’ve become a huge fan since talking to, reading about, and interacting with the art of the man known only as Swallja.
