My guest this week is one of the most talented artists I have had the privilege of meeting. Sebastian Pfeifer, AKA Everfresh is a motion designer, animator, beer lover, and well, it’s a long list, and labels don’t do folks justice generally. Listening to him speak, you will get a feel for the depth of experience, and intensely thoughtful approach that lives behind a very humble and calm exterior shell.
I really love to hear what artists used to do as kids, whether it was terrorizing their parents’ walls with crayons, or putting googly eyes on rocks and setting up dioramas with them. In Seb’s case, it turns out he had a hands on approach to everything, and loved creating things from the very beginning. From drawing to sewing things, he found his way to making music, before he decided on a life of making visual art.
When the time came to make some adult life decisions, he wanted to go into music, but went with visual arts instead. The reason for this is relatable on many levels; especially if you’re the kind of person that has some strict specificity when it comes to your interests. In Seb’s case, he was into very particular types of music, and found that he would prefer to work in a creative field where he didn’t have to create things that he wasn’t into. We talked a bit about the difficulties of being a musician, and now, after having listened to this discussion again, I am thinking about how much harder it is even to be a writer.
He states that he enjoys “nailing different styles.” This is extremely evident in his body of work; just checking out his Vimeo account gives us a glimpse of just how versatile he is across multiple aesthetics and technical approaches to motion design. It’s really impressive, and there’s a reason many animators call him sensei.
I find it pertinent, that he had an appreciate for software and interfaces early on, and that it began with synthesizers. Not the keys necessarily, but the combination of all the data being output on a tiny LCD screen! This was a physical space in which he discovered that he could start fucking around with devices and find ways to make them produce things they were not intended to!
And in the vein of doing things we maybe aren’t “supposed” to do, we bullshitted a bit about how we bullshit our ways into jobs at young ages. By the time Seb was 24, he was done with working for other agencies, and moved on with starting to work for himself. Sounds like he had enough of the bullshit! (badumtis)
Mostly I realized early on in our discussion that his story is about an artist that knew what he did and did not want to do, all along. From the hilarity of his first animations being created with the now defunct framework Flash, to how he organically transitioned into 3D work, the underlying love of creating worlds seems to have driven him through the decision making process. Also, it’s pretty crazy to think that so many of us in our generation (us 80s kids specifically) were so influenced by Flash. It makes me think back to one of my very first podcasts with Flashfox, where she points out that her online handle literally comes from being a Flash user!
Seb’s points about how software sucked so bad back then, and how there were no readily available tutorials online, brought back some pretty crazy memories, and made me thankful that I started suffering with Maya much later in life, when I could just google the crap out of tutorials on how to do things. Also, it’s it’s always fun to hear an actual professional echo the sentiment that Maya is freaking difficult to use; I’m not crazy after all. OK maybe I am, but at least we’re all crazy here together.
When it comes to his style that we all know him for, it appears it also was an organic process of discovery. While it was not an intentional discovery, he did know what he loved; color and flow specifically, and so he leaned into it. This naturally led me to inquire about his influences, and the point he made about it really resonates. Sometimes you have to reduce exposure to other things, so you can let your mind do what it needs to do. It’s a point about overexposure that I don’t think artists talk about enough.
And just like our influences and motivations, it’s so curious to me how our habits change over the years. Some folks are night owls that operate best late in the night. And some are very productive in the morning, like Seb. For me, it changes from year to year, and maybe has a lot to do with who and what is influencing my work at the time. Crowded thoughts with this one, but it’s an interesting thought that we can clear everything out and start fresh with nothing before us, to create our best work sometimes.
One of the things I enjoy the most about Seb’s process and approach, is how he finds creative ways to do things. Using the software in unintended ways is a great outcome of happy accidents. It’s a really good example of how somebody’s organic approach to exploration tends to manifest work that reflects this. “What else can I do with this tool?”
When I ask about the positive, approachable nature of his style, I find a truth that I always find about people behind good art. I find a person behind it that has a lot of depth and familiarity with depression, and personal struggles. Different folks have different difficulties, but mental health is an underlying topic in so much impactful art. He says a lot of his work revolves around “knowing your flaws,” and how you can’t always fix them.
This part of our discussion is some really honest talk about how difficult it can be dealing with some things, and how we can’t fully let go, but maybe we can give it a face. Maybe that’s a resolution of some sort, who knows. It feels really good to talk to, and hear from other creatives that validate the value in accepting the things we cannot change, and the importance of building better mechanisms to cope with our realities. Does art really fully resolve any of our problems? According to Seb, maybe a little bit, but not really. We are all just trying to be better versions of ourselves I think.
And on the topic of dark art, he is very clear that while he enjoys it, it is not his thing when it comes to his own work. He finds it relatable personally, and as we get deep into how personal experiences and pains influence our art, he brings up the piece, “Letting Go.” Talk about personal. Check it out on SuperRare here.
We switch to some lighter notes, where we joke about how we are in a support group for seamless loop lovers, how getting lost in the sauce of making art is so important, and how sometimes, the meaning behind art is not actually that deep. There’s no rule saying all good art has to be about our struggles as humans. His story about explaining that there is no prolific meaning behind one of his pieces to some gallery agents is entirely comedic to me, and I love these kinds of interactions. We’re humans, and sometimes we just do shit because we can. I love how Seb brings around a great truth: Art is about life. And life, well it’s not always so complicated is it?
Inevitably, we come around to how he got into NFTs. It’s quite similar to how he found himself in motion graphics to begin with; it was very organic. Just how early on an IT guy was using 3D software at an agency he worked for, he found NFTs through the community of animators he was linked in with through social media. We tangentially jump off with a brief visit to how we got started with it all, and touch on how curation didn’t really work out so well for NFT marketplaces. Or maybe it did monetarily, and not from a qualitative perspective.
More importantly, we wrap the whole thing up with taco and burrito talk. I couldn’t resist the pun, forgive me. Such is life. Sometimes things are just not that complicated.
Please be sure to follow Everfresh on Twitter, and check out his website for the latest and greatest. And be sure to fall down the rabbithole of his available works on the Blockchain!
My next podcast episode will be with yet another brilliant mind, Beka Rios. Incidentally, our conversation got so deep, we went well over 90 minutes, effectively making it the longest episode I’ve recorded yet. And as always, I felt like we’re just skimming the surface with things. Check him out on Twitter!
Transmission #20 - Everfresh