We were lucky to catch up with Christa LaNatra recently and have shared our conversation below.
Christa, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The Battle Bunnies NFT Project is what I’ve been working on nonstop for the last 9 months and it’s been incredible! I’ve been tattooing full-time since I graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale back in 2012 and my husband and I opened our own studio, Into the Woods Tattoo Gallery. Tattooing is amazing and I loved it with all my heart, but it got to a point where I felt restricted in what I could create and where I could go with it. I had grown my clientele to the hundreds, was still pushing each design, but the tattoos were still walking away at the end of the day. That’s when I got introduced to the NFT space. NFTs are so much more than digital tokens of art, we are creating a world that has no limits to what you can do and add and is growing more expansive every day with tons of amazing artists and creative minds entering the space. We are able to fully realize our dream and create our own universe to live in with an amazing & loving community to do it all with! The community, which we call a fluffle family (fluffle is a group of bunnies) has been so supportive and is able to create the world with us bringing in the connection I have with my tattoo clients to a much higher level and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’ve been an artist and obsessed with color since I can remember getting very excited when they released the big 64 color crayon box. I wanted every marker, pen and color and carried around a huge backpack of supplies from a very early age spending most of my time drawing. I was an only child, so I had a lot of time spent creating and was naturally drawn to realism and drawing what I saw around me.
I started getting serious about my art in high school taking advanced art classes and thinking about going to college for it, which I ended up doing in 2007. I studied animation for 2 years before switching to Illustration as I was introduced to the Tattoo industry by an amazingly talented guy I met on the first day in the first class & ended up marrying after we graduated, Frank LaNatra. Frank has been a huge influence on my art as we push each other to get better every day and he’s just as obsessed with color as I am while working in a completely different style.
Frank’s been tattooing for almost 25 years as I have been for over 10 years now and we have 2 Tattoo studios here in South Florida. I’ve served hundreds of clients over the years and created a custom design for each one of them which can vary from digital art to traditional to painting a full painting for a tattoo. I work in a few different styles from photo-realism to watercolor to Disney/Pixar characters and the common theme throughout my body of work is a painterly touch to everything I do. I started painting in high school and fell in love with the medium and have painted throughout my career and still do. I paint in acrylic, oil & watercolor and love the feel of paint and the freedom of letting it be what it wants to be.
The main problem I solve for clients is being consistent and delivering a quality experience for them. The tattoo world is unregulated, no one is coming into our shop to make sure we know what we’re doing, so a lot of people get burned in various ways. Being an established artist clients can count on has been essential and very rewarding for me personally. Now that we are venturing into the NFT space, we’ve taken those same values and transferred it over to our project as this space is in its infancy and a kin to the wild wild west with a lot of scams mixed in with amazing projects.
The most important thing for me is positivity and love, so I put that into each piece I make and hope that resonates with others. Life is too short to not be grateful for all of it and focus on the good parts. Connecting with so many people through art has been beautiful, I feel very blessed and happy to be here following my passion.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
I’m obsessed with them! Funny enough, I knew nothing about NFTs a year ago and if you asked me then if I would be a Founder & Artist of an NFT project then, I’d say you were crazy. I thought they were just digital tokens of art you could buy and have, I had no idea how vast this new creative space is and what all you could do with it.
NFTs can be just digital tokens of art that are minted or created onto a crypto blockchain (digital currency) and live there forever. However, they can be so much more than that and can serve as your entry ticket into a world full of imagination and endless possibilities.
Take our project for example: The Battle Bunnies. Hold one of our bunny NFTs and instantly become a character in our story of adventures which includes cute critters like bunnies, squirrels & otters as well as Dragons. Magical waters flow through the land and give you the power to speak and understand far more than an ordinary bunny. Becoming a character in our world brings you into the creation itself allowing you to name your character, write their backstory and help drive the future of the project we are all building and benefit from together. We have a custom game where you can hop down the rabbit hole of the different lands, fight foes & find friends along the way as you Win prizes & NFTs and a virtual reality world you can explore today!
We’ve partnered with an Emmy-award winning animation company, Food Fight Studios, to create real world IP for our Holders. We are about to publish the first NFT community-written Novel and are just getting started. We are also working on a card game which works like Pokemon or World of Warcraft and have tons of awesome merch as well. Like I said before, there’s no limits to what we can build and create together, it’s absolutely amazing and I believe NFTs are the future vehicle for creation on a larger scale.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I have tons of stories as I have personally struggled with mental health most of my life. Growing up in a very unstable environment taught me the world was hard and tough and I needed to be a certain way to survive, but the truth is the world is whatever you think of it. Perspective is everything and no matter what you’re going through, love abounds and if you look for a way out, you’ll find it.
I won’t go into details, but I’ve learned that focusing on negative aspects will only create more negativity, so I choose to focus on the light and love this world has to offer as it’s more vast and powerful than the bad. Stay strong and know you’re on the right path, follow your heart and passions as that’s what is calling you, leave the crap where it belongs, on the floor and keep on walkin with you head held high. You’re here for a reason!
Contact Info:
Website: https://intothewoodstattoo.com/artists/christa-z-lanatra/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/christamakesart
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChristaTBB
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PaintingsByChrista/
Other: Discord: https://discord.gg/thebattlebunnies Gitbook: https://grimoire.thebattlebunnies.io/