Welcome to the latest Artist Q&A on CNFT World.
Today we bring you an interview with Dillon Burks, otherwise known as Dilliat. Similarly to our interview with Charles Gitnick, Dillon has graciously recorded his interview response (watch the embedded video).
If you’d prefer to read the interview, we have transcribed it below.
If you missed our previews Meet The Artist posts, you can find them all here.
Why don’t you introduce yourself? What is your art background? What got you started?
What is going on CNFT world? My name is Dilliat and I started in the Cardano space around seven months ago, started around September. And how I basically got started was basically just, pure inspiration and, you know, just looking around Opensea and just really seeing what NFTs were and what the whole, you know, hype was about.
And, you know, I quickly just got started. You know, what really brought me over to Cardano was my father, Anthony Burks, BurksCardano. He basically recruited me in a sense to come over to the Cardano, to, you know, to post my art for a better mint price, because I started over there on Opensea.
So I decided to listen and give it a try. And, I started out with Artano, shout out to Artano. And then, you know, moved over to utilizing Tokhun, but really utilizing Tokhun to mint and, you know, kind of using my website Dilliat.com as a display.
My art background really comes from, I think just giving art, literally a try. You know, a lot of us artists look up to John Michel Basquiat. I would say John Michel Basquiat and Rothko are kind of like my two inspirations, you know, I guess they kind of always been, you know in my subconscious and a little bit in a sense, even before I started to doing it NFTs. I always remembered a Rothko painting, how simple and effective it was.
And then I kind of knew like Basquiat as more of a person instead of his art. I kind of learned about Basquiat once I just researched him a little bit more and, yeah, basically I used to read a lot of like childhood, kid books back in the day and you know, I guess I have a lot of memories of how the art used to look, very sharp, but childish, or youthful, I should say.
What attracted me to the blockchain and NFTs was, well, what attracted me to Cardano was just listening to my Dad, and, you know, I started off on Opensea for like two weeks, and literally man, I was paying like a hundred dollars worth of ETH just to post an NFT and it just wasn’t really working out, you know, but as soon as two weeks were up I went straight to Cardano and, it was like a domino effect.
The people, who really got Dilliats going in this space was Tyler With Spaces, Fettuccine, the Nixon, then people just kept on, kept on going, you know, so that’s really cool.
Tell us about your project and artwork. What is available?
So my project is, each piece that I create is called a Dilliat. Basically what a Dilliat is, is it’s a spinoff of my first name which is Dillon and then Basquiat. Dill and then uiat, so it’s like Dilliat. I just felt like it was a great combination of names to use.
Really, how it got started was, you know, I was driving around, just driving around, listening to music and, I was thinking about what could be a new thing that I could do, what could be my new sport?
What could be my new basketball? Because basketball was my first love and I knew I wasn’t going to go to the NBA so I was kind of searching for these two years of like, what can I do? What can be my hobby? You know, what can be my escape, and then I remember seeing this picture of Basquiat and he was in a suit and he was in some cool sunglasses and that was the picture that really created Dilliat and this new zone and this new world that I’m in.
So my project is, each piece that I create is called a Dilliat. Basically what a Dilliat is, is it’s a spinoff of my first name which is Dillon and then Basquiat. Dill and then uiat, so it’s like Dilliat. I just felt like it was a great combination of names to use.
Really, how it got started was, you know, I was driving around, just driving around, listening to music and, I was thinking about what could be a new thing that I could do, what could be my new sport? What could be my new basketball? Because basketball was my first love and I knew I wasn’t going to go to the NBA so I was kind of searching for these two years of like, what can I do? What can be my hobby? You know, what can be my escape, and then I remember seeing this picture of Basquiat and he was in a suit and he was in some cool sunglasses and that was the picture that really created Dilliat and this new zone and this new world that I’m in.
And I got to really think thinking to that picture, and so Basquiat’s really set in the foundation, to see somebody like me making it to the art world that really inspired me. And I’m so, you know, heavily inspired by Basquiat.
So I was like, Dilliat, that sounds very official. And basically what my artwork is, I describe it as it kind of started out as me wanting to do music, but just music is different man, that’s a different beast right there. You know, I don’t think i’m made out to do music, but I can channel it through drawing on the canvas, whether it’s digital or physical, and you know, really kind of expressing my inner Jay Z of how he just could talk on the song or how most music artists can talk on their song, and I kind of wanted to have this outlet of what I was feeling and to kind of, you know, fill in this, this hole of, damn, I really want to be a music artist, but that’s not gonna work, but I’m gonna just do it this this way. And that’s how I kind of felt like Basquiat was like if Basquiat was a hip-hop artists and like each piece was just a song and this my perspective on Dilliats.
If I’m going through a bad day, I can write about it, I can draw about it. If I just got a good business deal, I can draw about it, I can paint about it. If I just got some inspiration I can draw about, I can paint about it. So it’s just a great outlet for all this creativity that I’ve absorbed through, whatever I look at, whatever I hear, whatever I see and I put it in a Dilliat and I release it on dilliat.com and if there’s somebody that wants to own my work, boom.
What is available? I actually, transitioned from just selling my entities through Twitter, if that makes sense. So instead of using a marketplace, I used to just sell on Twitter, but you know, my community voted that I should transition to more of a buy now type of system.
And so what I did before I merged JPG was, to save my ADA and to save Dilliats that people wanted I would just release some on my website and if somebody saw the Dilliat that they liked, then I minted it. So I basically used to mint on demand. But you know, my community started to say to me like, let’s put these on a marketplace. So basically I put them up on JPGstore now and so you can buy them there.
So I make sure to release it on JPGStore and it’s been great ever since I started to do that.
The prices are around 200ADA to 300ADA. You know, I like to sell my pieces for a good amount of money, like $200, $250, $300, so I make sure to establish the price on my NFTs.
There are still a lot of artists that are hesitant to get involved with NFTs. There is a lot of fud around, calling NFTs scams etc. What would you say to an artist who was perhaps on the fence about getting involved with NFTs?
What would I say to an artist that’s on the fence? About getting into NFTs, I would say just go in, just start with one. I feel like if you’re wanting to start out with an NFT project, then you have to get a team, you have to get this and that, but if you want to go more of a, like, not an easier route, but more of a, um, more of a route where it’s more room for you to breathe individually, I would say go solo.
And then, you know sell art as if you’re in the physical world. All you’re doing with NFTs is going into the digital world and, you know, make dope art and most importantly, make sure your marketing is pretty fresh. Make sure you market the image that you want. Make sure to really go deep and really think about “okay what is it that I want people to think about my art and think about me?” you know, so I would say if you’re on the fence about getting into NFTs, then climb over the fence, it’s nothing bad to, to get over.
Now, that’s from the creative side. Now buying is a totally different thing. So when I first got into NFTs, I’m not going to lie to you. I made some bad choices in terms of some NFTs, and most of them were on the ETH side right, because I was a newbie and I was like, oh man, this is the next Bored Ape Yacht Club, right. No, it wasn’t the next Bored Ape Yacht Club!
And so I made sure not to get too mad at myself back then, because I didn’t know, you know what I mean? I didn’t know. At the time I thought I was making the best decisions, with this investment and this investment, but, you know, it’s all good. Make sure not to be too hard on myself, I was a kid that was trying to do the right thing with my money, but, you know, reality didn’t agree with me on that one. So I made sure not to get too mad at myself on that.
I mean, it is what it is, take the punch with it. It’s okay.
Why did you choose Cardano to launch your NFTs over other blockchains?
I chose Cardano because I felt like the community is very tight.
And I feel that the community feels like a neighbourhood, man. Doesn’t feel like too much of us to spread it out, you know, it’s like a digital neighbourhood. And I feel like, having a leader like Charles Hoskinson really helps out because he, you know, holding Spaces, every few weeks really helps the consumers and the people or the investors to really feel that we’re ok, and whatever bear market we’re in it’s okay.
I just really got to shout out the community, Charles, and that we have so much diversity in that the big names that are coming into Cardano, like Martin Lawrence and Snoop Dog. And there’s going to be way more so we’re so, so early, so very early.
So I feel like Cardano is here to stay forever.
I feel like, when it comes to a crypto to invest for the long-term Cardano is one of those safe picks, a top five, for sure. You know, we’re already number six in market cap.
If you could work on a collaboration with any other NFT artist, who would it be?
I’m actually working with my boy Zach Borden. He’s an upcoming NFT artist on the Cardano blockchain. So I’m gonna go ahead and say I’m working with him right now. We just set up a collab piece called optimist, that’s my boy. So we’re gonna make four pieces together, but we’re going to start off with selling jut one. So shout out to my boy Zach Borden.
Do you collect NFTs too? If so, what is your favourite?
I’m going to go ahead and say Chilled Kongs. I’m all in on Chilled Kongs, I have six.
Like my dad said, keep it plain vanilla when it comes to investing. So the only two investments that I have right now is ADA and Chilled Kongs and Chilled Kongs are here to stay. I’m probably going to, I want to pick up a Clay, just to pick up a Clay. No, I have six Chilled Kongs, man. I think, that’s my investment to make sure, just to make smart investments and to keep all of my investments into a, you know, just a straight line, man. It’s not too much, I don’t want too much diversity. I want to make sure that I have a good project that I’m invested in and that I make sure I put my money in a great spot.
So I feel like that’s Chilled Kongs and, yeah, with that being said, man, thank you CNFT World for allowing me to do this interview, check out Dilliat.com and follow me on Twitter.