Lifestyle

Meet the Three Artists Representing Canada at This Year’s First Ever NFT BAZL

Published

5 years ago

May 15, 2021

With the increase in the sudden growth of the NFT market, Estelle Ohayon of EO Art Concierge Inc., has decided to partner up with Elitium, a blockchain wealth management specialist and GDA Capital, a digital asset investment firm to host NFT BAZL. NFT BAZL will host the world’s first physical NFT gallery, showcasing both physical and digital art using the blockchain to bridge the gap between the physical and digital art worlds.

Breathing new life into an antiquated market, renown artists including names such as Daniel Mazzone, Diogo Snow, and Max Jamali will exhibit physical and digital masterpieces side-by-side, welcoming collectors to an exhibition where onlookers can view artworks across a variety of mediums and bid by scanning a QR code. Each of these acclaimed Canadian artists have their own distinctive style and are eager to showcase their artwork to this new generation of collectors.

“When I started selecting artists for this event, I focused on a few criteria such as originality, diversity, talent and career trajectory. I have worked with Daniel, Diogo, and Max in the past few years and knew that they would be a perfect fit to represent Canadian talent in an international exhibit such as NFT BAZL. Their art compliments one another’s and each one already has a successful and established career. I see great things for all of them in the future and I am thrilled to be part of their journey “. Says Estelle

Today we take a closer look at these three Canadian artists representing their country at this first-of-its-kind display.

Daniel Mazzone

Daniel Mazzone was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. As part of an artistic family, he was surrounded by a world of visual concepts and expression. His mother was an art instructor and during his school days, teachers and fellow students alike saw his inherent artistic ability and potential. The youthful exploration of his artistic talents were pushed aside when he became homeless at the age of 15. Once Mazzone got back on his feet a few years later, he pushed himself to explore his true passions again.

In 2013, Mazzone began exhibiting at both the Canadian Heritage Art Company and at Hazelton Fine Art Gallery for the next two years. It was not until the Toronto International Art Fair in late 2014 where his artwork really caught the attention of the renowned Tanenbaum family, who are part of the top 200 art collectors in the world. Since then, Mazzone has been making waves nonstop across North America. In May 2015, he did his first show, “Torn Apart”, in New York City at the Carriage House Arts Center and in December made his official Art Basel Miami debut at 1 Hotel South Beach, “A Walk Through Life”, selling out his entire collection of 25 pieces at the show.

Mazzone continues his journey of creative exploration and pushing the envelope with his unique style.

Diogo Snow

Diogo Neves also known by his artist name D-Snow, was born and raised in São Paulo Brazil and currently resides in Toronto, Canada. The artist started his career early as a teen in Brazil with graffiti street art that grew into a passion. His style of art is a mix of urban with a twist of modern. Using a variety of materials such as spray paints, acrylics, diamond dust, prints, and resin, make his paintings unique and impactful. He has further expanded his portfolio to now include sculptures, cars, murals, boats and so much more.

D-Snow has made many custom art pieces for celebrities such as Drake, Fetty Wap, Sean Paul, Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, and many more. Early 2020 D-Snow joined Bieber Industries, becoming the brand’s art creator and actively designing logos and graphic art for the company. Some highlights of this artist’s portfolio include being chosen by Universal Music to create a tribute mural for Juice WRLD, becoming the first artist to spray-paint a Ferrari in Canada, and more recently collaborating with the Canadian coat company Woodpecker; for which he created a custom line of 100 one-of-a-kind spray-painted parkas.

With a tenacious devotion to his passion, Diogo continues to solidify his reputation as a star-studded artist for celebrity collectors.

Max Jemali

Max Jamali is a Luxury Artist based in Toronto, with an award-winning background in fashion photography, with his work showcased in Toronto, Miami, L.A. and Dubai. He is a mixed-media Artist famous for the use of Luxurious materials to create his Art. In contrast with other artists, Max’s work focuses on Luxury itself as a medium. Diamond Dust, Exotic Leather, 24K Gold, Sterling Silver, Crystals; he uses them all to create pieces that scream opulence.

In 2017, Max started combining the two worlds of Photography and Art through photorealism techniques and created his first private show in collaboration with Bisha Hotels. He later expanded his art in collaboration with luxury brands such as Lamborghini, Jason of Beverley Hills, Modern Sense, Ernst Benz Swiss Watches and hosted two exclusive events at SLS South Beach and Prestige Imports during Art Basel 2019. Since then, his art has been showcased in New York, Beverly Hills, Miami and Dubai.

Every one of Max’s artworks is created with his “M” logo that symbolizes Luxury, handcrafted from Python Skin.

Estelle Ohayon

Estelle Ohayon is a secondary art market specialist and curator bringing together an electric group of renowned artists to take part in this revolutionary event in an ever-evolving art world. With a global art network, we are able to source off-market exclusive art pieces directly from collectors across a broad spectrum of artists spanning time and genre.

GDA CAPITAL X ELITIUM

JOIN US FOR THE FIRST-EVER

NFT ART EXHIBITION

THE TEMPLE HOUSE – MIAMI

JUNE 2ND, 2021

https://nftbazl.com/

Lifestyle

The Future of Youth Horror Gaming: Lonely Rabbit’s Midnight Strikes

Published

22 hours ago

April 1, 2026

Michelle Langton

Credit: Lonely Rabbit

Empty hallways echo with footsteps that aren’t yours. The carnival rides spin without passengers. Familiar spaces, the ones etched into childhood memory, twist into something menacing, something that watches. Lonely Rabbit’s Midnight Strikes arrives eight months before its completion, targeting a youth horror genre that is hungry for experiences that feel personal rather than purely fantastical. The indie studio searches for a publisher while building momentum for a game that weaponizes nostalgia, turning high schools and carnivals into theaters of psychological dread. As franchises age and audiences demand fresh scares, this PC title tests whether memory-based terror represents the next chapter in youth horror.

Maturing Past Jump Scares

Youth horror gaming shed its training wheels. Little Nightmares and Bendy and the Ink Machine proved that younger players crave atmospheric storytelling over cheap shocks, puzzle-solving over gore, and visual distinctiveness over recycled formulas. Bendy’s ink-soaked corridors attracted a massive audience, including children drawn to the characters despite the T-rating, because the experience felt emotionally authentic rather than condescending. Players now expect psychological tension woven through environmental details, stories told through decaying spaces, and cryptic objects scattered across levels.

The genre’s maturation reflects audiences who grew up solving Portal’s test chambers and exploring Limbo’s monochrome nightmares. Among the Sleep demonstrated the potency of perspective: experiencing horror through a toddler’s eyes made familiar domestic spaces feel uncanny and threatening. Fran Bow plunged players into hand-drawn asylum corridors where perception itself became unreliable, where puzzles demanded engagement with trauma and grief rather than simple pattern recognition. Modern youth horror respects its audience enough to disturb them thoughtfully, creating experiences that linger days after the screen goes dark.

Corrupted Childhood as New Territory

Midnight Strikes drags players through levels “reminiscent of their childhood memories”: the high school, the carnival, spaces universal enough to feel personal. Lonely Rabbit constructs what they describe as a “menacingly beautiful atmosphere filled with bizarre and terrifying creatures,” pairing monster survival with puzzle challenges that prioritize mood over mechanics. The game adopts a “cinematic and otherworldly feel” while grounding its terror in locations players actually inhabited, making fear feel intimate rather than abstract.

This memory-based direction distinguishes Midnight Strikes from fantasy settings that dominate youth horror. Deserted carnival rides and empty school corridors carry weight because players recognize them as such. Maybe the locker rows feel too narrow, maybe the Ferris wheel groans with a voice that shouldn’t exist, maybe the cafeteria smells wrong. The game challenges players to “survive their fear of the unknown” while navigating spaces that should feel known, creating cognitive dissonance that amplifies dread. Other developers exploring similar territory, such as Subliminal, which utilizes “nostalgic spaces” and “a rotting feeling that something is not quite right,” suggest that childhood corruption represents an emerging subgenre.

Lonely Rabbit’s approach weaponizes personal history. Every player attended school, visited carnivals, and formed memories in spaces designed for safety and joy. Corrupting those spaces turns nostalgia into a threat, asking audiences to confront distorted versions of their own experiences. The monsters inhabiting these environments become more than obstacles; they represent the fear that familiar places might betray us, that memory itself becomes unreliable when shadows move in the wrong direction.

Smaller Teams, Bigger Risks

Indie studios like Lonely Rabbit maneuver where larger publishers hesitate. Their two-month publisher search and pre-launch community building reflect changing pathways for games that defy established franchise formulas. Building a follower base before release creates market validation, proving that audiences want what you’re making before significant capital is committed. Transparency about development timelines and production milestones generates audience investment, turning potential players into advocates during the publisher search.

Midnight Strikes represents creative gambles major studios avoid when quarterly earnings loom. Smaller teams experiment with concepts, corrupted childhood spaces, memory-based horror, pand sychological tension prioritized over action mechanics, that might fracture focus groups but resonate with underserved audiences. Lonely Rabbit’s global distribution ambitions demonstrate indie confidence: build something distinctive enough, and geography becomes irrelevant when digital storefronts erase borders.

The next eight months determine whether Midnight Strikes defines a subgenre or remains an interesting experiment. If players respond to horror that mines personal history, if corrupted nostalgia proves more terrifying than fantasy monsters, other developers will follow this path. Lonely Rabbit’s gamble, that childhood spaces make better horror stages than alien planets or demon dimensions, could redefine what scares young players next. The studio’s publisher search tests whether the industry views memory-based terror as the future of youth horror or a niche curiosity. Either outcome writes the next page in a genre still learning what it can become.