Episode 72:Twitter Fail Whale Artist Yiying Lu and her WhaleShark NFT Drop

MikoBits Blockchain NFT and DeFi show

This episode we interview brilliant digital artist and San Francisco Arts Commission, Yiying Lu, who created many emojis and also the famous Twitter "Fail Whale".

She is talking about herself, her art and her upcoming drop on Opensea for some exclusive WhaleShark NFTs.

Check out her art at: https://www.yiyinglu.com/

Yiying's new Whale NFT Drops on Opensea, celebrating $Whale Community's 1st Anniversary: https://yiyinglu.com/whale

Yiying Lu's NFT Journey

So this Whale NFT journey started back in 2009, when I first came to the San Francisco Bay Area. As I created the artwork of a white beluga whale lifted by 8 birds, which eventually became the Twitter "Fail Whale". It was used in the early days of Twitter during around 2008 to 2013. Every time Twitter went down, people will see it. When I initially created the artwork back in 2007, during the time I was living and studying in Sydney, Australia. The artwork was initially created as a personal work, and it was not commissioned by Twitter. As I was living in Sydney, New South "Whales" pun not intended, after my exchange study from London, UK in 2006. I was finishing my final year in college, and I miss my friends in UK, but also miss my friends in China, I was born and raised in Shanghai, China. So it was around the same time when Twitter, Facebook and other social media website became popular. So there is a lot of FOMO as overseas people sent birthday party invites and graduation ceremonies invites from social media, and I couldn't physically be there with them. So I thought, well, what I studied was visual communication, why don't I just communicate this huge wish to be physically there with my friends as a visual metaphor - the Whale. So I created the whale initially, and I caught it "Lifting a Dreamer", it's almost like an impossible dream come true - because in our physical reality, Whales don't fly, but with art, anything is possible. And by serendipity, the co-founder and creative director of Twitter, Biz Stone, found it online and licensed it and next thing, you know, it became Twitter's iconic service breakdown image.

Yiying's interview with Milton Glaser, the artist of the Iconic 'I ❤️ NY'.

https://youtu.be/hFlWVJ5pY5Q

Yiying's youtube channel: https://youtube.com/c/yiyinglu