Meet the Lotus Eaters Club

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lotus Eaters Club.

Lotus Eaters Club, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It’s kind of weird, but it all started with the name. I’ve always been really big on names, and the importance of having a name that fits its owner. I don’t know about you, but growing up, whoever my group of friends were at the time, we would always try to come up with a crew name. It was just what we did. It’s kind of like the last name of a family; that’s part of who you are, that’s your tribe.

One day, chatting with a buddy and fellow artist of mine, Mochi Baby; we were talking about sitting “Indian Style” cause I was doodling chibi versions of us sitting that way. I was digging the sketch and immediately started thinking of names for a yet to be determined project. I wanted something other than the potentially offensive “Indian Style”, and something that wasn’t Criss-cross applesauce, to represent the sitting characters. I found out that lotus position was another name for sitting that way, and I was feeling that one, I thought it sounded cool. Then it was just mashing words together with Lotus until I came across something dope. I was always a fan of the name Billionaire Boys Club from the clothing retailer and wanted to play with something with the word ‘club’ in it.

Eventually, I ended up with Lotus Eaters Club, and I was like yeah, this is the shit. I did some quick google searches to see if that name was in use, and came to learn that there were these people called the Lotus Eaters in Greek epic, The Odyssey. The short of it, or at least what I gathered from it, was that they were just a bunch of stoners on an island, and I thought that was hilarious. So yeah, that was the birth of the Lotus Eaters Club. It was October 23rd, 2014. Now I just needed a project and a club.

At the time, me and my buddies were participating in the FAFATL movement pretty heavily. We love making art, and we love to share. We were at it every weekend, and I knew I wanted to use that as a catalyst to experiment. I was hanging one day, just surfing vids online, and came across a gallery showcase that had an augmented reality aspect to their show. All the pieces on the walls came to life when viewed through a phone, and I was like man, I gotta do that shit. I wanted to drop art around town, that you could keep, that would animate, come to life on your phone, and then watch people freak out.

For the hell of it, I mean why not. I needed to round up a crew, with the skills to pull this off. I needed an illustrator; shout out to @courtney.e.hicks, an animator; @ctalvarez, and a developer; @cuibonobo. The crew quickly grew as we moved forward, but these were my OGz. We worked on this idea for a period of 2 years, taking on new members along the way, and we grew into a little family. During that time we developed our first app, simply called Lotus Eaters Club. It’s available on both android and ios platforms.

With our app, you can view some of our artwork and the characters will come to life. The app went live in September of 2016, and we began a city-wide art dump of AR-enabled artwork. It was a blast and we loved the positive feedback from anyone who would find one of our art drops. This lead to us experimenting with new projects like a coloring book with AR-enabled artwork, T-shirts that animate, wood cut-outs, prints, and even a mural on the Beltline that all comes to life when viewed through our app.

During all of this though, we never stopped creating art just for the sake of art, enjoying ourselves, and getting involved with the community. Aside from our app and the AR artwork we do; we also are very active in the Atlanta street art and mural scene, we volunteer to work with children, teach art workshops at universities, participate in gallery shows, and hunt down good eats in town. I think these are the things that played a bigger roll in where we are today; we love people and are always finding new ways to connect with them. LEC has much love for the Atlanta community, and we are happy to be here.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road for us was pretty smooth. There was never a set deadline to meet, or a client to cater to for us. It was always about her, here’s this thing we want to try, let’s see if we can do it. And sure there were hiccups along the way, as far as figuring out how to make the app, troubleshooting, and adjusting where necessary, but it never felt stressful. We just did what we had to do, and took our time with it.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Lotus Eaters Club – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
I guess the challenge has always been, who are we, and what do we do. We get asked that question a lot, and the answer is always changing because we’re always trying something new. We do AR, we do murals, we animate, we illustrate, we do a lot of things.

People look at us like we’re a company, but I look at us as a crew. I think at our core, that’s what we are, a crew of artists, and a family. Sometimes we do big projects together, and sometimes we’re just helping each other accomplish personal projects. Either way, we’re doing it as a crew, and I think that’s what sets us apart. We’re not a company, with a boss, and a bunch of employees. We operate more like a collective. Everyone has their own set of skills, and each of us compliments each other in different ways. Whenever we take on a gig, work is delegated based on the client’s needs.

The 2 things that we specialize in, and are best known for, are murals and AR. Our crew consists of illustrators, designers, animators, developers, musicians etc. But one thing we have in common is the desire to paint and to paint big. So we do a lot of street art and murals around town. We’ve had the opportunity to do a mural for the Vortex in little five points, walls at Dad’s Garage, 2 walls on the Beltline just past Ponce City Market, and even a wall at Floyd County Productions, the local animation studio that creates the show, Archer.

Last Christmas, we had the opportunity to create an augmented reality experience for the agency Moxie USA. For that project, we designed ‘wrapping paper’ that came to life when viewed on your phone, with T-Pain singing and dressed as Santa. You can experience it by downloading the app ‘Gift Rap’ on the app store. We were very proud of the project.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I think for our future, we will continue the path of experimenting and trying new things while continuing to do what we always do; paint and make things move. Future plans? One thing we’ve been talking about doing for a while is making a video game, and maybe a slumber party. Who knows.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lotuseaters.club
• Phone: 4044919276
• Email: info@lotuseaters.club
• Instagram: @lotuseatersclub
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LotusEatersClub/

Image Credit:
@tinydoorsatl

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