Sogand Nobahar

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Four 3D characters under an orange ribbon, animated film still from Octant Clarified, character design and animation by Sogand Nobahar

OCTANT CLARIFIED

Brand Storytelling · Creative Direction · Character Design · Jewelry and Accessory Design · 3D Modelling · 3D Animation

2024 → 2025 · Delivered through Orbyline

A public goods platform funded a jewelry designer to explain it.

The Challenge

Octant takes the yield from a hundred thousand staked Ethereum and gives it away, in ninety-day cycles, to open source projects chosen by the people who hold its token. The money is real and it comes back every quarter. Almost nobody in the creative industry knew it existed.

In late 2024 Octant opened its second Community Fund round to anyone who could reach an audience it was not reaching. I applied through The ALANA Project, proposing to explain the platform to creatives in their own visual language. A grants council reviewed the proposals. Ours was selected.

Then I had to find out whether the problem was the one I assumed it was.

Survey result showing most respondents had not heard of Octant, chart designed by Sogand Nobahar
I asked my own audience first.

So I ran a survey through my own community. Designers, makers, photographers. Two thirds had never heard of Octant, which I expected. The answer that changed the work came from the ones who had.

They did not say it was too complicated. They said it was not for them. They believed that participating required being technical, and that being a creative disqualified you from the room.

“They were not confused.
They were waiting to be invited.”

Chrome 3D character with a blue looped neckpiece on a white plinth, character design by Sogand
Chrome and transparent blue

First, the cast.

We did not design mascots. We designed objects and then made them walk.

Chrome, matte black, transparent blue. Each one standing on a white plinth under a single soft light against a neutral field. It is how I light a piece of jewelry, and it is the reason the films do not look like anything else in that space. Four characters, built to be looked at the way you look at an object in a vitrine.

3D character with copper spiral earrings and a striped garment on a white plinth, from Octant Clarified
Copper spiral, matte black stripe. Garment by Nastaran Hashemi.
Tall black figure in a sculptural garment by Nastaran Hashemi, 3D scene by Sogand Nobahar for Octant Clarified
Matte black and blu/silver. Garment by Nastaran Hashemi.
Matte black 3D character with a stacked disc headpiece and visor, character design by Sogand Nobahar
Orange & black stripe. Garment by Nastaran Hashemi.

The jewelry

Every piece on every character was modelled as a piece, not as decoration. Earrings with a copper and white spiral. A blue disc that pivots inside its own frame. A neckpiece of looped transparent tube. A silver cuff.

The same work I do when something is going to be printed and worn. The only difference is that here it never had to survive a machine.

Close-up of a chrome character head with a transparent blue looped neckpiece, 3D modelling by Sogand Nobahar
Modelled in Rhino. Never manufactured.
Silver cuff on a black glossy arm, accessory design by Sogand Nobahar for Octant Clarified
Copper and white spiral sphere earrings, isolated 3D render by Sogand Nobahar

The method

Everything abstract had to become something you could pick up.

Ethereum is an orange solid. Accumulated rewards fill a glass piggy bank on a shelf. Voting is four bodies standing in front of a screen, and the screen carries the real interface, with real projects and real numbers on it.

Nobody watching had to follow a mechanism. They had to watch someone take something and decide what to do with it.

Storyboard frame for the individual impact scene, Octant Clarified pre-production by Sogand Nobahar
Storyboard, then final. The diagram became a room.
Final individual impact scene with a character at a desk and a glass piggy bank filling with Ethereum, animation by Sogand Nobahar

The storyboard had a test tube with two labels on it, increase and keep. Correct, legible, and dead. The final scene is a desk, a chair, a screen that says creating, and a piggy bank slowly filling with orange. The information is identical. One of them you watch.

Character reaching toward floating Ethereum tokens under the word claim, animated film still by Sogand Nobahar
Rhino wireframe view of a character head and neckpiece, 3D modelling by Sogand Nobahar
The neckpiece before the rig.

The films

Three films, published as a series.

One. Earning. What the platform is and how a creative can take part.

Two. Rewards. Keep them or give them away, and what happens when you do.

Three. Voting. Where the money goes and who decides.

Modelled in Rhino. Rigged and animated in Blender. Specialist support on part of the rigging and part of the render load.

The writing around it

The films were the last part of a written argument, not a drop.

Two articles came first. One on what centralised creative industries cost the people inside them and what open source alternatives already exist. One on the survey, published with the findings intact, including the two thirds who had never heard of the platform. A third piece closed the series when the films went out.

Scene showing Octant's framework applied to other industries, animated film still from Octant Clarified
Written into the film itself, 2025.

WHAT IT COST

We priced it wrong.

The proposal treated animation production as a line item. What it turned out to be was a full production. Four characters, three garments, jewelry and accessories, environments, a rebuilt interface, rigging, animation, render, edit, across three films. We did not know where Blender would stop and where we would stop. We found out by hitting it. Parts of the storyboard changed because of limits we discovered while making them. We outsourced rigging and part of the rendering to finish on time. By the end, most of what came in had gone back out.

Storyboard frame for the voting scene showing rough character placement, Octant Clarified pre-production
Final voting scene with four characters facing a rebuilt Octant project interface, animation by Sogand Nobahar

On the left, four grey shapes and a blank white rectangle labelled Octant projects to vote to. On the right, four finished characters, a working interface carrying twelve funded projects with their ETH totals and donor counts, and voting spheres with type wrapped around their surfaces.

Everything between those two images is the part that was not in the estimate.

I do not guess about that distance anymore. When I quote a production now, the number comes from having paid the difference myself.

Orbyline and Octant end card with a white dragon, animation by Sogand Nobahar

Delivered through Orbyline 

The practice this method came from Nobahar Design 

I made this for people who thought it wasn’t for them.

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