Hollow’s Journal

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Journal Entry — Early Characters Lately I’ve been thinking about how some of the earliest versions of worlds don’t just appear as sketches or concept art, but as characters. Simple, expressive characters that people start using long before anyone thinks of them as “important.” Telegram stickers are an interesting example of this. They’re not just images — they become part of how people communicate. Over time, certain characters stop being just drawings and start becoming a kind of shared language. The more expressive they are, the more they get used. And the more they get used, the more they begin to feel like they belong to the culture itself. I’ve been paying attention to a few creators working in this space, especially those who clearly treat their work with a high level of care. One pattern I keep noticing is that the best sticker artists approach their work almost like animators or game designers. The characters feel alive, expressive, and consistent. You can tell when someone is a student of the craft. The Baby Yoda-inspired sticker set on TON (along with my other favorite, Cherry) has really stood out to me for that reason. It wasn’t just the character itself — which is already culturally recognizable — but the execution: • expressive animation • clean visual language • consistency across the set • and a clear understanding of how people actually use stickers in conversation That combination is rare. From a broader perspective, TON itself has been gaining traction, largely because of its deep integration with Telegram and the ease of building and distributing apps, tokens, and digital assets directly within a massive user base. That creates an interesting environment where: characters → become stickers stickers → become communication communication → becomes culture And occasionally, culture becomes value. I’m less interested in predicting which tokens “pump” and more interested in recognizing when something feels like it’s starting to embed itself into how people interact. When that happens, the character often matters more than the asset. And sometimes, the earliest artifacts tied to that character end up being the most interesting to own.

Journal Entry — Early Worlds One thing I’ve always loved is seeing the earliest versions of worlds before they fully exist. Concept art, sketches, early illustrations — the stage where imagination is still forming. Some of the most fascinating artifacts in culture come from this moment. Leonardo da Vinci filled notebooks with sketches of flying machines and strange mechanical devices centuries before the technology existed to build them. Jules Verne imagined submarines, deep sea exploration, and journeys to the moon long before engineers could actually create those machines. His stories helped readers visualize futures that hadn’t arrived yet. Later, artists like Ralph McQuarrie painted entire cinematic worlds before they existed. His concept art for Star Wars helped people see a universe that had only lived in imagination. What fascinates me about these early visions is that they contain entire worlds in seed form. They’re not polished yet. They’re exploratory. But you can feel the idea beginning to take shape. Sometimes those early sketches or illustrations eventually become films, technologies, or entire cultural universes. Other times they remain beautiful glimpses of possibilities that were never fully realized. Either way, there’s something special about encountering imagination at that early stage. It’s like seeing the first outline of a world before the rest of us know it exists. And occasionally, if you’re lucky, you get to watch that world grow.

Journal Entry — How I Decide Who to Back Early People sometimes ask how I decide which creators or projects to support early. The truth is, I’m not trying to predict markets. I’m looking for people who are clearly students of their craft. When someone truly cares about what they’re making, it shows. Animation feels alive. Details feel intentional. Each new piece feels slightly better than the last. You can tell they’ve studied what came before them and are trying to push things forward. Skill matters to me because it reflects time invested, mistakes learned from, and genuine respect for the work itself. There’s a Japanese idea — shokunin — describing artisans who dedicate their lives to mastering their craft, caring even about details most people will never consciously notice. Steve Jobs once said that even the parts of a computer nobody sees should be made well. The belief was simple: craftsmanship matters, even when invisible. I’m drawn to creators who think this way. People who would rather ship fewer things at higher quality than flood the world with mediocre output. People who focus on doing one thing well instead of chasing every opportunity. Originality and speed usually follow naturally when someone is deeply invested in becoming great at what they do. Over time, I’ve realized that supporting creators at this stage — before recognition arrives — means you sometimes get to watch something meaningful grow from the beginning. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get to help it along the way. More than anything, I enjoy meeting builders who are quietly working on things they believe in long before the crowd notices. Those are usually the people worth paying attention to.

All of these stories have in common: • People doing something before it was cool • People building from obsession, not consensus • People who gathered a few like-minded outcasts to build something memorable That’s the energy I’m trying to spot when I collect early. Collecting early isn’t about speculation. It’s about seeing the shape of something before it’s obvious, before others have put a narrative around it, and before it’s priced that way. This journal is a way for me to document those early convictions — to capture why certain creators and projects stand out to me while they’re still being built, before the rest of the world notices.

Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) were three musicians in Tokyo in the late 1970s — Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto — experimenting with synthesizers and computers before a clear mainstream path existed for that sound. They were pioneers of electronic and synth music, influencing everything from early video game soundtracks to techno and hip hop. Their use of electronic textures, even sampling sounds reminiscent of early arcade games, helped shape what game and electronic music would become. Their classic track Rydeen has always felt like one of those artifacts where you can hear a future emerging before people knew what to call it. 🔗 Yellow Magic Orchestra — Rydeen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxep-gS-Btg

Stories like that capture the energy I’m drawn to: people obsessively pushing boundaries because that’s what feels right to them — not because a crowd told them to. Same thing happened in music.

Take Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) — founded by George Lucas in 1975 to make the original Star Wars happen. Lucas couldn’t get the effects he imagined done with existing studios, so he literally pulled together a small team of artists, engineers, and thinkers into a warehouse to invent new ways of doing visuals for film. From those humble beginnings, ILM helped shape the language of modern visual effects, pushing creativity beyond what anyone had seen before. 🔗 ILM Origin Story (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Light_%26_Magic

Journal Entry — Why I Collect Early I’ve realized I’m less interested in buying things once everyone agrees they’re valuable, and more interested in discovering creators and projects while they’re still forming. The stories that keep pulling me in all share the same pattern: people building things before the world understood why they mattered — long before there was a job market or “permission” to do it.

Journal Entry — Why I Rejected a 500 TON Offer Today I received a 500 TON offer for one of my Telegram gifts — a Scared Cat (Cat Nukem) on Onyx Black background. And I declined. Not because of price, but because of conviction. I first became interested in Telegram character gifts after listening to an early @giooton stream where he interviewed @osiyux who covered how collectible characters like Utya, Cherry, Scared Cats and some others (like Kissed Frogs, Pet Snakes, Toy Bears, etc) inside digital ecosystems can evolve into cultural assets — similar to how Nintendo built lasting value through mascots people emotionally connect with. It made me think about how, in many online games and collectible ecosystems, certain visual styles become desirable regardless of rarity. Monochrome or palette-matched designs often feel cleaner, more recognizable, and tend to become status items over time. This particular piece stands out to me because: • the Cat Nukem model has one of the most distinctive animations in the collection • the explosion animation makes it instantly recognizable • the character’s palette matches the onyx black background cleanly • onyx black backgrounds are highly sought after across many Telegram gift collections Interestingly, even though the onyx black background is one of the most common backdrops within the Scared Cat collection, it still commands the second-highest floor price among all backgrounds. Demand seems to outweigh pure rarity here. More broadly, the Scared Cat collection itself has been steadily gaining attention over recent months. I’m less interested in short-term liquidity and more interested in holding pieces that feel culturally sticky if Telegram gifts continue evolving into identity items within the ecosystem. For me, this one feels like a keeper.