# NimBuds by Bryan Brinkman

*Art Blocks Curated, project 10 · 400 outputs · minted 16 January 2021 · NFT License*

![NimBuds #209: a white cloud with green eyes, angled brows and a straight mouth, hanging from a few coloured wires against a deep teal sky](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/10000209.png)
*NimBuds #209, held by AB5D. A blue-sky NimBud whose mouth is drawn straight although its label reads "Smile Amount -26". Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

## The work and its context

NimBuds is Art Blocks project 10 on the contract `0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270`. The index records 400 invocations against a maximum of 400, the runtime label `js@na`, a square aspect ratio, the curation status "curated" and the licence label "NFT License" with no link. It also records a price field of 0.2 ETH [^S01]. The project text describes "on-chain, generative cumulonimbus buddies" made with "vanilla javascript", each with "random wires, colors, eyes, mouths, cloud bodies, and more" [^S01].

Each output is a single white cloud with a cartoon face, hung from a tangle of coloured cables that rise out of the top of the frame. The face blinks at its own pace, and a click drops the cloud into a toy box [^S01]. Brinkman is a New York animator and digital artist, born in Omaha in 1985, with an MFA in animation from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia [^S02]. His television work includes *The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon* and *Saturday Night Live* [^S03].

NimBuds reached well beyond the early Art Blocks audience. Within three months it was on the ZKM Cube screen in Karlsruhe and in the background of an *SNL* sketch about NFTs. It has since been offered at Sotheby's and Christie's and, on the artist's account, acquired by OpenSea [^S04][^S05][^S06]. Brinkman returned to the characters with NimTeens, released on 13 January 2023 as "a fun follow-up to NimBuds (Art Blocks Project #10)" [^S07].

## Conception and development

The main primary source is Jeff Davis's Art Blocks interview, published two days before release. Brinkman traced his way into crypto art to the artist Killer Acid and to SuperRare. He called his October 2020 Nifty Gateway drop "a bit of a predecessor to the NimBuds project" [^S08]. His first collector, j1mmy.eth, had long argued for on-chain art [^S08]. He said he "had been talking with Manny Morales for months about the promise of generative technology". Seeing Josh Katzenmeyer (luxpris.eth) turn a personal style into something "entirely code based made me realize what was really possible" [^S08]. Once he and Morales "started doing some tests we couldn't stop". They drew on *Avastars*, *Chainfaces* and *CryptoKitties* [^S08].

Asked what collectors should look for, he said "the collectors can impart their own personalities into these characters", and added: "There are also a few small hidden features that I don't want to spoil" [^S08]. That promise is examined below.

Brinkman's project page credits the work to him "in collaboration with Manny (heyotetsuo)" and gives the imagery a meaning: "The clouds symbolize the clouds on which digital art is stored. The wires symbolize the connections between people" [^S05]. In a 2024 nft now profile he traced the motif to his earlier piece *Explode*: "the clouds from the explosion started to symbolize the clouds that we're storing all this art on" [^S09]. In 2023 he told Subject Matter that "NimBuds seem like simple clouds of faces, but they have a rich history in my older work" [^S10].

## How the work was constructed

The program is two script parts that concatenate to 12,839 bytes, SHA-256 `ccefb580602340e63376791ee7e31a5e8751a893f52026ebd344eeedf92b2ff9`. It was retrieved from the Art Blocks index on 20 September 2026 and read in full. No library is used; everything is drawn with the browser's 2D canvas [^S01]. No code is reproduced here.

The token hash is split into 32 bytes, and each byte has a job [^S01]:

- Byte 0 sets the background, the number of wires and the number of cloud blobs.
- Bytes 2, 12 and 15 switch the eyebrows, the moustache and the blush.
- Bytes 3 to 5 place the mouth and set its width and curve.
- Bytes 6 to 10 set the face colour, eye spacing, brow angle and pupil direction.
- Byte 18 sets the blink interval, from 5 to 15 seconds.
- The wires read overlapping runs of bytes from the start of the hash.

The drawing runs in layers. A radial gradient fills the ground. The wires are drawn once as shadows, the whole canvas is blurred, and the wires are drawn again as crisp black-edged cables in one of four colours. The cloud is a central disc ringed by 6 to 12 smaller circles. Its soft shadow is made by drawing each circle a full canvas-height off screen and letting only the shadow fall into view [^S01]. The face is drawn last, in the same four colours as the wires.

The published features follow the program's thresholds. Counts are from the index; the program shares are this essay's arithmetic from the code [^S01].

| Feature | Rule in the code | Count of 400 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Face Color: yellow, green, blue, red | byte 6 modulo 4 | 107, 101, 97, 95 |
| Cloud Blobs: 6 to 12 | byte 0 modulo 7, plus 6 | 48 to 70 each |
| Blink Rate: 5 to 15 seconds | byte 18 scaled to 5,000 to 15,000 ms | 18 at 5 s, 21 at 15 s, 30 to 50 otherwise |
| No eyebrows (unlabelled as such) | byte 2 above 128, about 50% | 203 |
| Moustache | byte 12 below 39, about 15% | 65 |
| Blush | byte 15 below 39, about 15% | 63 |
| Blue sky (not published) | byte 0 below 64, 25% | 103 |

The end values of Blink Rate are rarer because they catch only half a rounding band each (computation) [^S01]. Mouth Width, Smile Amount and Eyebrow Angle are published as raw numbers. They match the program's values on a 2,400-pixel canvas, the size of the Art Blocks renders: widths run from 1 to 358, smiles from -119 to 120, and brow angles within plus or minus 45 degrees (computation) [^S01].

## Quirks in the algorithm

A full read of the program, checked against all 400 token records, turned up the following. Points that rest on the code alone are marked as code readings.

1. **One label for four hidden features.** "Mystery Feature" holds a single value. Moustache takes precedence, then "No Eyebrows", then "Blush"; only when none applies does it show a wire tally [^S01]. So 203 NimBuds have no eyebrows but only 171 say so, 63 blush but only 26 say so, and the wire tally is published for just 138 of 400 [^S01].
2. **The blue sky is unlabelled.** A quarter of the byte range swaps the cream ground for a teal gradient and recolours the cloud's shadow to match. It applies to 103 NimBuds, #209 among them, and appears in no published feature [^S01].
3. **Wires and blobs are locked together.** Both counts come from byte 0, one modulo 28 and the other modulo 7. Because 28 is a multiple of 7, the blob count is fixed by the wire count: every 11-wire NimBud has 6 blobs. The rule holds for all 138 published tallies (computation) [^S01].
4. **Smiles that are drawn straight.** When the mouth's corners would tilt by less than 7 degrees, the program flattens it to a line. That happens on 70 NimBuds, yet 68 carry a non-zero Smile Amount, up to 38 on #324 [^S01].
5. **"Hidden" wires really are hidden.** A dangling wire whose control byte falls in the lower half bends upward and stays above the top edge. The published "Hidden" count matches that rule across all 138 tallies [^S01].
6. **An Easter egg that cannot hatch.** A flag named EASTER, hard-wired to false, would force the blue sky and the moustache on. Nothing sets it (code reading) [^S01].
7. **Pink called red.** The "red" face colour is the pink `#f2668b` [^S01].
8. **Small slips.** The blush gradient is painted with a rectangle sized by corner coordinates, so it is larger than intended, though its transparent fade hides this. The program also computes a seed it never uses and declares variables it never reads (code reading) [^S01].
9. **Eight labels round up.** Eight tokens whose blink delays end in .49 seconds are labelled one second higher, for example #21 at 10.49 s labelled "11 seconds" (computation) [^S01].
10. **Resolution and interaction.** The canvas is sized once to the shorter side of the window, with no allowance for high-density screens and no resize handling. Blinks last 200 ms. Clicking toggles the boxed view, with a "NimBuds" logo in the four colours (code reading) [^S01].

## The hidden features

Brinkman's "few small hidden features" can now be matched to the code [^S08]. Four conditional elements sit outside the ordinary face: the brown moustache, the pink blush, the missing eyebrows and the blue sky. Three surface in the Mystery Feature label; the sky surfaces nowhere [^S01].

The label's precedence hides combinations. Six NimBuds have both a moustache and blush: #97, #151, #162, #178, #212 and #365. Three of them, #151, #212 and #365, have all four features at once, yet each is labelled only "Mustache Variant" (computation) [^S01].

![NimBuds #151: a moustached, blushing, browless cloud on a teal sky under green and yellow wires](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/10000151.png)
*NimBuds #151, one of three with all four hidden features. Its label reads only "Mustache Variant". Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

## The most coveted variants

No source consulted ranks NimBuds variants, and the auction records found are for ordinary tokens. The families below are therefore ordered by rarity in the code and data, not by market evidence (computation) [^S01].

**All four hidden features (3 of 400).** #151, #212 and #365. Two of the three sit in the same wallet [^S01].

**Moustache (65 of 400).** The most visible hidden feature, and the one the label always reports. One wallet holds 11 NimBuds, 8 of them moustached, including four of the six moustache-and-blush tokens; no source inspected names its owner [^S01]. The Art Blocks founders' Sotheby's lot in 2021 included a moustached NimBud, #267 [^S11][^S01].

![NimBuds #267: a green-faced cloud with a brown moustache and a wide smile on a cream ground under coloured wires](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/10000267.png)
*NimBuds #267, the NimBud in Art Blocks' 19-work lot at Sotheby's, June 2021. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

**Extreme expressions.** Smiles of 120 (#78 and #142) and frowns of -119 (#128 and #229) are the ends of the range [^S01]. #78 also has a blue sky and 30 wires, near the maximum of 31 [^S01].

![NimBuds #78: a small smiling cloud with anxious brows beneath a dense web of pink, yellow and green wires on teal](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/10000078.png)
*NimBuds #78, Smile Amount 120, blue sky and 30 wires. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

**Flat mouths (70 of 400).** These deadpan faces are unlabelled, and the label usually claims a smile or frown. #324 carries the largest such value, 38 [^S01]. AB5D's #209 is another, with a blue sky, 7 wires and 9 blobs [^S01][^S12].

![NimBuds #324: a cream-ground cloud with worried brows and a perfectly straight mouth under many wires](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/10000324.png)
*NimBuds #324: labelled Smile Amount 38, drawn straight. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

**Invocation 0.** #0, a pink-faced frowner with 11 wires, was minted before the project was activated (see below) [^S01].

![NimBuds #0: a pink-faced cloud with raised brows and a small frown on a cream ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/10000000.png)
*NimBuds #0. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

## Exhibitions, auctions and screen

**ZKM, Karlsruhe (April to July 2021).** "CryptoArt: It's Not About Money", curated by Daniel Heiss and Margit Rosen, ran from 7 April to 18 July 2021. It showed Art Blocks projects on the ZKM Cube screen, NimBuds among them, with #289 and #372 credited in the museum's image captions [^S04]. Both now sit in one wallet that holds nine NimBuds; no source names it [^S01].

**Saturday Night Live (March 2021).** CoinDesk reported that NimBuds were "featured in a 'Saturday Night Live' skit parodying NFT projects" in March 2021 [^S06]. The sketch is on SNL's YouTube channel as "NFTs - SNL" [^S13]. Brinkman's project page lists it as a milestone [^S05]. Which tokens appear on screen, and whether Brinkman's own *SNL* job played a part, is not recorded in the sources read.

**Sotheby's, June 2021.** Lot 4 of "Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale" was 19 Art Blocks works owned by the founders Erick Calderon and Jeff Davis, one per early project, including NimBuds #267. Bidding closed on 10 June 2021 [^S11][^S14]. Texas Monthly reported that "the lot went for $81,900" [^S15]. Brinkman's CV and project page describe this as a Sotheby's London sale in September 2021, which does not match Sotheby's own page [^S16][^S05].

**Christie's, 2021.** Brinkman's CV lists NimBuds in Christie's New York "Post-War to Present: The NFTs" in September 2021, and CoinDesk says NimBuds have been sold by Christie's [^S16][^S06]. The Christie's lot record was not found.

**Sotheby's, 2024.** NimBuds #226 was lot 42 in "Grails: Property from an Iconic Digital Art Collection Part V" (New York, 18 to 25 June 2024), estimated at $700 to $900 [^S17]. MutualArt reports that it sold about 290 per cent above the mid-estimate [^S18]. NimBuds #8 was lot 52 in Sotheby's Digital Art Day Sale, closing on 22 August 2024 with an estimate of $1,000 to $2,000 [^S19]. MutualArt puts the result about 4 per cent below the mid-estimate [^S20]. Neither hammer price was visible without a login.

## Notable collectors

- **Erick Calderon and Jeff Davis**, the Art Blocks founders, owned #267 until the 2021 Sotheby's sale [^S11].
- **OpenSea.** Brinkman's project page records that NimBuds were "Acquired by OpenSea for their permanent vault collection (2025)" [^S05]. OpenSea describes its Flagship Collection as a "$1+ million commitment to acquiring, curating, and celebrating digital art and culture" [^S21]. The token and the holding wallet are not confirmed from a fetchable source.
- **Sotheby's provenance** names the 2024 consignors only by platform handle: "mikegee" for #226 and "y_kymin" for #8 [^S17][^S19].

## The mint

Invocation 0 was minted on 16 January 2021 at 14:10:14 UTC, before the index's activation time of 14:30:46 [^S01]. Invocation 1 followed at 15:59:38, the time the index gives as the project's start. The other 398 were minted between 18:00:34 and 18:04:56 UTC, a span of 4 minutes 22 seconds (computation) [^S01]. 18:00 UTC was 1 pm in New York. The index's price field reads 0.2 ETH; no fetched source confirms it as the launch price [^S01].

The secondary market is sketched only in passing. In June 2021 DappRadar gave the floor as 0.49 ETH [^S22]. A September 2021 overview said the most expensive NimBud had sold for 16 ETH, without naming it [^S23]. By January 2023 CoinDesk counted 1,155 ETH, "or about $1.8 million in secondary sales", and a floor of 3.2 ETH [^S06]. At retrieval the 400 tokens were held by 249 addresses, the largest holding was 14, the artist's address held none, and the lowest Art Blocks listing was 0.69 ETH [^S01][^S24]. The index's interview link points to a cent.co page titled "In Conversation with Bryan Brinkman" [^S01][^S25].

## Copyright and licensing

The index records "NFT License" without a link [^S01]. Brinkman's licence page says that most of his NFTs follow the NFT License, that he retains copyright, and that terms on an individual artwork page or in token metadata take precedence [^S26]. The NFT License 2.0 states that the creator "owns all legal right, title and interest in and to the Art" [^S27]. Owners may display their work and make limited commercial use, capped at "One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000) in gross revenue each year", but may not modify it [^S27]. The renders here are reproduced by reference through the Art Blocks media proxy.

## Significance and limitations

NimBuds showed early that Art Blocks could host characters with personality, not only abstract systems. It reached a museum screen, network television and the major auction houses within its first year [^S04][^S06][^S11]. Its hidden features are well hidden: the labels report at most one of four, and the blue sky not at all. The code, not the metadata, is the true record of each NimBud [^S01][^S08]. The market record remains thin: no named record sale, no hammer prices without a login, and no institutional holder confirmed on-chain.

Unresolved research questions:

1. Which NimBud did OpenSea acquire, and when? An OpenSea X post surfaced by search appears to name "NimBuds 57", dated 19 November 2025 by its post ID, but X could not be fetched. #57 sits in a Safe contract with no public label [^S01].
2. Brinkman's X post of 10 January 2021 (per its post ID), as surfaced by search, announces "Only 200" to mint from "1PM ET". Was the edition raised from 200 to 400, or were 200 reserved? It could not be fetched.
3. What were the hammer prices of #226 and #8 in 2024, which token sold for 16 ETH by September 2021, and does a Christie's NimBuds lot exist?
4. Was the June 2021 Sotheby's sale in New York or London, and why does Brinkman's page date it September 2021?
5. All quotations here came from automated WebFetch extraction. The interview, project page, nft now, Subject Matter, CoinDesk and Texas Monthly quotes should be checked against the pages.

## Bibliography

### Primary

[^S01]: Art Blocks public GraphQL index, `projects_metadata` for project 10 (including the full program) and `tokens_metadata` for all 400 tokens. Retrieved 2026-09-20 via https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql. Collection page: https://www.artblocks.io/collection/nimbuds-by-bryan-brinkman
[^S08]: Jeff Davis, "In Conversation with Bryan Brinkman on NimBuds", Art Blocks, 14 January 2021. https://www.artblocks.io/articles/in-conversation-with-bryan-brinkman-on-nimbuds
[^S05]: Bryan Brinkman, "NimBuds", project page. Read 21 September 2026. https://bryanbrinkman.com/works/nimbuds
[^S16]: Bryan Brinkman, Artist CV. https://www.bryanbrinkman.com/artist-cv
[^S26]: Bryan Brinkman, licence page. https://bryanbrinkman.com/license
[^S02]: Art Blocks, artist profile, "Bryan Brinkman". https://www.artblocks.io/artists/bryan-brinkman
[^S07]: Art Blocks, "NimTeens by Bryan Brinkman", collection page. https://www.artblocks.io/collection/nimteens-by-bryan-brinkman
[^S25]: "In Conversation with Bryan Brinkman", cent.co, the interview link in the project record. https://beta.cent.co/artblocks/+sutras
[^S27]: NFT License 2.0. https://www.nftlicense.org/
[^S12]: Art Blocks, "NimBuds #209", token page, owner AB5D. Read 20 September 2026. https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/10000209

### Exhibitions and auctions

[^S04]: ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, "CryptoArt: It's Not About Money", 7 April to 18 July 2021. https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2021/04/cryptoart
[^S11]: Sotheby's, "Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale", lot 4, Art Blocks (19 works), closed 10 June 2021. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/natively-digital-a-curated-nft-sale-2/19-works
[^S14]: Lot-Art, "19 works, Art Blocks", listing of the Sotheby's lot with token numbers. https://www.lot-art.com/auction-lots/19-works-Art-Blocks/4-19_work-10.6.21-sotheby
[^S17]: Sotheby's, "Grails: Property from an Iconic Digital Art Collection Part V", lot 42, NimBuds #226, June 2024. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/grails-property-from-an-iconic-digital-art-collection-part-v/nimbuds-226
[^S18]: MutualArt, "Bryan Brinkman, NimBuds #226 (2021)". https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/NimBuds--226/85F2AF184C49372449F16BD6B1916FB5
[^S19]: Sotheby's, "Digital Art Day Sale", lot 52, NimBuds #8, August 2024. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/digital-art-day-sale-2/nimbuds-8
[^S20]: MutualArt, "Bryan Brinkman, NimBuds #8 (2021)". https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/NimBuds--8/867B562E0A17E2ECE77959D194705C67
[^S21]: OpenSea, "The OpenSea Flagship Collection". https://opensea.io/learn/nft/the-opensea-flagship-collection

### Video and audio

[^S13]: "NFTs - SNL", Saturday Night Live, YouTube, March 2021 (title and channel confirmed via oEmbed). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrNOYudaMAc

- "Bryan Brinkman on Generative Art in the NFT Space (Node Mode #4)", The Daily Bone Podcast, YouTube (oEmbed confirmed; not watched). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2AwIrnt_7U
- *That's Nifty*, episode 68, "Bryan Brinkman", 11 April 2022. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bryan-brinkman/id1554794204?i=1000557087769
- *The Outer Realm NFT Podcast*, "Bryan Brinkman on Animation, NFT Market, and Importance of Being Mentally Balanced" (not accessed). https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/theouterrealm/episodes/Bryan-Brinkman-on-Animation--NFT-Market--and-Importance-of-Being-Mentally-Balanced-e15565m

### Criticism, collecting and market

[^S06]: Cam Thompson, "NFT Collection NimTeens Explores Just How Fast the NFT Space Moves", CoinDesk, 18 January 2023. https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/01/18/nft-collection-nimteens-explores-just-how-fast-the-nft-space-moves/
[^S09]: Matt Medved, "The Wry and Whimsical World of Bryan Brinkman", nft now, 13 February 2024. https://nftnow.com/features/the-wry-and-whimsical-world-of-bryan-brinkman/
[^S10]: Elle Bland, "The Balance Between Laughter and Looking Inward: A Conversation with Bryan Brinkman", Subject Matter, 2023. https://www.subjectmatter.art/brinkman
[^S15]: Omar L. Gallaga, "Art Blocks Brings Big Money to Artists Who Paint With Code", Texas Monthly, 14 July 2021. https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/art-blocks-generative-artists/
[^S22]: DappRadar, "Art Blocks Surges 500% as New NFT Collection Drops", 14 June 2021. https://dappradar.com/blog/art-blocks-surges-500-as-new-nft-collection-drops
[^S23]: Hardik Katariyaa, "Everything You Need To Know About The NFT Projects Of Art Blocks Curated", Medium, 24 September 2021. https://medium.com/@hardik-katariya/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nft-projects-of-art-blocks-curated-b603cc114a5f
[^S24]: Art Blocks marketplace, NimBuds listings, read 20 September 2026. https://www.artblocks.io/marketplace/collections/nimbuds-by-bryan-brinkman
[^S03]: Wikipedia, "Bryan Brinkman". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Brinkman

### Further reading

- Efrain Ortiz, "Bryan Brinkman: Uniqueness, Storytelling & Sharing your Work (Interview)", Dalosdov, illustrated with NimBuds #19. https://www.dalosdov.com/writing/bryan-brinkman-interview
- Greg Oakford, "From SNL and The Tonight Show to Sotheby's: NFT Creator Bryan Brinkman", Cointelegraph Magazine, 19 April 2023. https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/snl-the-tonight-show-christies-sothebys-nft-creator-bryan-brinkman/
- OpenSea, "Live From Marfa: In Conversation with Bryan Brinkman", 29 December 2025. https://opensea.io/blog/articles/live-from-marfa-in-conversation-with-bryan-brinkman
- Art Blocks Community Wiki, "NimBuds" (blocked to automated fetch). https://artblocks.wiki/Curated/NimBuds
- Leads on X, not fetchable: Brinkman's launch announcement (https://x.com/bryanbrinkman/status/1348368618954829833) and OpenSea's Flagship post (https://x.com/opensea/status/1991268309145182695).