Can I call myself that? I'm Kris. Neuroscientist and technical founder in the Boston area. I build brain-computer interfaces and onchain systems. Onion Man is neither of those things.
I made this character up in 5th grade with a friend. We had tiny pencils, even littler taste, and we thought a sentient onion fighting carrot ninjas was the pinnacle of... well, something. I'm bringing it back now because I still think so, and because not everything I build needs to produce stares of incomprehension from my family and friends.
The NFT format is inspired by projects I love: Turf Plots, Murakami Flowers, EightBit Me, Nyan Cat. Small, finite, joyful things that proved digital collectibles could have real personality.
Onion Man draws from the comics I grew up on. Bill Watterson and Gary Larson were the two that stuck with me most, along with the animes I was obsessed with as a kid: Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Duel Masters. I didn't discover Ghibli until high school, but it became one of those things that only gets better the older you get.
I think the best things adults make come from the same place as the best things kids make. Somewhere along the way most people stop drawing just because it's fun, stop building things that don't need a business case, stop treating their own imagination like it matters. I don't think that's growing up. I think that's giving up. Onion Man is one way of not doing that.