Mao

I’ve spent a long time watching something I created grow far beyond anything I could have imagined. I was the artist and creator behind the Pudgy Penguins character, and seeing that character evolve from a piece of art into a worldwide cultural phenomenon has been surreal. Pudgy became bigger than just crypto. There are games, toys, plushies, endless memes, and people all over the world who recognize the character without even knowing where it originally came from. The community took the art and gave it a life of its own, and watching $PENGU grow into a multi-billion-dollar memecoin showed me firsthand just how powerful a simple character can become when millions of people connect with it. But eventually, Pudgy reached a point where it didn’t need me anymore. It became its own established brand, with a massive team, community, and ecosystem carrying it forward. I’m incredibly proud of what it became, but as an artist, I started realizing something was missing for me personally. Somewhere along the way, I lost that feeling of sitting down and creating something simply because I thought it was funny, cool, or worth bringing to life. I missed having a character that felt completely personal to me—something without expectations, without years of history behind it, and without needing to live up to anything that came before. So I started drawing for myself again. That’s how Mao came to life.