Gas

Artist: Perry Cooper

Above: a still image from Gas #6/48 by Perry Cooper. Click to view the full, hilarious animation.

Perry Cooper is a British 3D motion graphics designer who now lives in the USA. I found his work in 2020 on Maker’s Place, where he brought an amazing eye to commonplace items like milk cartons, juice containers and even game cartridges.

Above: a still from Condiment Collection / Cheese Sauce. Click image to view full 3D animation.

Milk Monitor Open Editions was a part of Perry’s second Nifty Gateway drop. There were three milk bottles in this time-limited drop: FOMO (Fear of Milk Outage), 24/7 and Gas, and Perry describes the collection brilliantly:

This collection is a time capsule for the joy, stresses, anxieties and fun we’ve had over the last few months. I liked the idea of turning a common baby bottle into something rare and valuable, like a Fabergé egg. I’ve also found great pleasure in finding the crossover terms for baby related things and crypto. I’m a dad now, so I can officially do dad jokes!

As a then-expecting father, these pieces spoke to me. What can I say? I had to own one, knowing that at a future date I’d be able to pass this one along to my own daughter (now at three months) and get a big laugh out of it. I finally settled on Gas, as I laughed when I read further. Perry’s description of this piece is amazing in itself, as it goes from the cost of crypto transactions, to farting, to embarrassing your offspring well into the future:

We pay the price for minting our NFTs in Gas, and all of that milk leads to an equal amount of Gas. My daughter used to sound like a trumpet, but that seems to have calmed down now. This is forever on the blockchain right? So I can embarrass my daughter 20 years from now? Hello! This is your dad from the past, you passed gas a lot! You’re welcome.

The piece is hysterical, enjoyable, playful and fun, and I can totally sympathize with the artist, now that I know just how much my own tiny tot can toot like a tugboat. The mildly explosive (and musical) sound design was done by Guilt Free in Soho, London. Perry has a very helpful YouTube channel here, and can be found on Twitter here.