I've been thinking a lot to myself, how can I reach these users, especially after months of talks between artists, weebs, and more recently ATprotocol devs.

For those that don't know, I did a talk at the atprotonyc.bsky.social meetup recently about how to design for niche communities, using Hatsune Miku's success as a shining beacon example of decentralized culture building and about how artists and non-dev users don't hate technology, they need vision and sometimes that vision needs to be more fun and silly.

Why tho?

The point of ATprotocol, and the open social movement as a whole is decentralizing the vision of what the internet is going to be outside of a few stupid ketamine overdosing eugenicist billionaire ghouls - a lot of the problem however is that users feel overwhelmed by the thought of learning new platforms and technologies. Taking a page out of Ms Boba (rebuilding community era) 's series of projects around using yaoi and fandom to teach code and build an interest in technology - and drawing from older online art movements such as the OS-tan movement - which turned a joke about the constantly crashing Windows ME and created a whole anime opening out of it by turning different OSs into cute anime girls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-tan

Microsoft ended up even canonizing their own Browser-tan, magical girl explorer-tan, she even got a sick ass transformation.

Google didn't wanna be left behind either

you won't trick me you little ram stealing bitch, I won't go back. I assume chrome-tan is the kyubey of browsers.

The phenomenon isn't just limited to operating systems and browsers - there's a whole multi-media series called Hyperdimension Neptunia that plays with this concept turning the entire console war into a real battle between cute anime girls including the CPUs (The Console Patron Unit), representing the Sega Saturn, Wii, Xbox, and PS3 respectively.

The Sega Saturn ate that, tbh

At the end of the day though, there were many nerds made through this concept!

World and Character concepts - blogging

Currently I'm working with Chris Pardy to work on making sure I'm actually getting many of these concepts correct and legible to users, and maybe get some help from all over the protocol, the current idea I have is atprotocoland as an important alliance in a city of clouds. There's also the activity(re)public filled with the Mastodonians (who think themselves enemies to the protocolians). The idea of Atprotocol and data as force of power, similar to series like Magical Knight Rayearth, with the user being Isekai'd but like in a fun yuri 90s way not the annoying way modern Isekai do it lmao.

To start with the concept though I decided to start off personifying the blogging services on atprotocol as living in a place called the "digital gardens" harkening back to the concept of digital gardening writ large and long form content being something that takes time to grow and consume.

I wanted to make sure that I didn't paint them all as competitors explicitly but rather all of them having their jobs and places within the ecosystem, and tried to represent their services as best as I could, while giving them distinct personalities.

Full disclosure here: I drew these while on the plane from New York to San Francisco! So they're much more messy than usual, and they are early concepts - super subject to change.

If you have ideas, opinions, or wanna contribute your own design or help out, let me know!

So here's the big 3:

Pckt-tan: The overly caffinated digger who just wants to show you cool shiny things and talk your ear off!

The idea behind Ms. Pckt is that she would always be a little covered in dirt, always looking for something new, excavating around. I asked Brookie what she thought the personality of Pckt would be like and I she mentioned the coffee mascot and how she'd always be drinking something caffeinated which I thought fit the idea of a digger character. Cuz you'd need a lot of energy to be digging around, showing off things, lifting and sowing seeds. Overall while the bouncy, fun, and rounded nature of Pckt's UI made me want to round out the corners of the design and give an overall more bubble-like silhouette to match.

Offprint-tan: The strong silent reaper who chooses their words carefully.

The idea of this came from the idea of a garden needing a harvester, a reaper, and one who cuts. Looking at Offprint 's design being so super sleek, minimalist, and pulled back I could really imagine users like journalists and essayists who wanted to post mores serious hot takes really flocking to the platform with cutting words and criticism. Maybe not the most active users but those that when they drop, it's systemic and a bit cutting, hence someone who does the weeds. I had a blog over there I haven't written yet because I intended for it to be for marketing reviews of companies and how I would do it better lol! I also just like a character with a scythe.

Leaflet-tan: the chill gardener and collector

Leaflet is the thing that really got me super interested in ATprotocol writ large after my blog post about Deviantart went viral, not really even after joining Bluesky, so I think I have a special soft-spot for it. Much more chill than most other blogging platforms, I immediately picked up that it was likely supposed to be notion competitor from the backslash. Which is why I probably took to it so quickly, for those who don't know - I'm a total slut for Notion. But it really does allow you to incorporate so many types of media and do so many things, I can't help of thinking of Leaflette-tan of having a bunch of seeds everywhere since they whenever I'm on leaflet I just end up with hella tabs open from the cool things people post there from across the web, hence the idea of our leaflet mascot and her little leaflet helpers (the mascots designed by celine ) I liked the idea of them being able to fly hence their little wings.

How can I help?

I'm so glad you asked! share this around everywhere, if you're an atproto dev tell me if you want a mascot! (it's helpful if you tell me what you think the "personality" of your project is or if you have special branding or colors)

If you wanna contribute art, or have special comic powers (like inking or coloring). Tell me if you're down to help work on this project!

I'll post more soon :)