The Humans of The Open Web Sandbox is a new series that provides a small background behind the contributors engaging with the NEAR ecosystem through The Open Web Sandbox. This week’s character profile is Samtoshi_F_Baby; A new member of the moderating team for the Sandbox discord channel. So, who is Samtoshi and why does he see the Sandbox as a life-changing opportunity?
Samtoshi_F_Baby aka Sammy Flores is an independent comic book artist, and now Crypto/NFTArtist, from San Antonio Texas. He was trained by comic book & trading sketch card artist (Marvel comics, Dynamite Comics, Upper Deck) Gary ODD Edmund. Together they have worked on 5+ independent comic book series; most notably the “Freedom Filled Flavorful Faithfully Fierce Fantastic Fear Facing Food Fighters”.
After a few years of coloring for Gary ODD Edmund, Samtoshi_F_Baby decided to write his own comic book and created “Henry the Elf: Revenge of the Elf”; an adult only Christmas 6 issue comic book mini-series. It was planned to be released in October of 2020, however due to the pandemic it was pushed back to October 2021. Which was a good thing because that’s what led Samtoshi into the NFT space. When asked about what made the NFT space appealing for a comic book artist like him, he said:
Panel from Henry the Elf: Revenge of the Elf Issue #1
In addition to his comic books, Samtoshi has been creating other NFT collections across multiple blockchains and platforms; most notably on ParasHQ a curated platform on the NEAR blockchain where he has his “Man of Bitcoin’’ collection and his collaborative collection with Gary ODD Edmund named “Tales from the ODD” which are on sale now.
NEAR protocol was the first blockchain to give Samtoshi an opportunity to showcase his art. That’s when he began learning about NEAR and over time researching, he really liked what NEAR was trying to do with their blockchain by introducing interoperability and really planning on building towards having transactions run across multiple blockchains.
Sandbox was created March 24th, but now is celebrating an official launch and is now recognized as its own guild as of earlier this week. The purpose of the Sandbox is to encourage participation and collaboration across multiple activities in the NEAR ecosystem. There, contributors have the ability to participate in some cool monthly activities and find out more about different projects building on top of NEAR Protocol. In addition to those opportunities, contributors are also encouraged to submit proposals for projects with the possibilities of having some initial funding to jump start. If you have an idea but do not know how to bring it to life, Sandbox is the right place to be. If you do not have an idea, but you want to engage in some cool crypto-geeky stuff or more serious initiatives like reaching out to academia, the Sandbox is the right place to be. If you are none of this and just want to meet like-minded people passionate about crypto-space, the Sandbox is the right place to be. Whoever you are, the Sandbox welcomes everyone.
For more information about Samtoshi, his art, comic books, NFTs, and the NEAR open web sandbox follow @Samtoshi_F_Baby on Twitter, Instagram, Telegram, & Discord.
