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So I made a collection of NFT’s - now what? And what does that mean?
The answer? I have no idea.
It’s still such a wild concept, even after completion - after all, I learned about it a full 3-4 weeks ago. I’ve listened, watched, studied, understood, brainstormed and then… I did.
Thats the biggest piece of advice I can give anyone, listen and learn first. I consumed about 40-50 hours of content first, which sounds like a lot, because it is a lot.
I just shared on IG & twitter earlier today the first 4 piece collection of NFT’s (link below) titled GLOBAL PATHFINDERS. I dont even recall how I stumbled on the name but it’s absolutely perfect. The series is built around astronauts and how they’re this majestic job we all want to do when we were kids - and that we don’t know whose behind the helmet and it doesnt matter. No race, religion, color, creed, sexual orientation is associated - just this beautiful and badass person in space.
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This was an incredibly challenging process - not necessarily on the physical end, but more on the mental. The first stage was anxiety. Hearing about it on Clubhouse, listening to all these people talk about selling on different platforms with very little consistency was super difficult to digest. Then you dive a little deeper and people talk about Metamasks, coinbases, etherium, and nifty gateways and its just a different fucking language. All of that combined caused me to shut down for like 3-4 days… it was too much. Too much information, too much power, too much newness - - the fact that there were no rules or regulations, there was no beginners guide, there were only opinions on the internet.
And then…. I listened to a clubhouse with GaryVee through the CultureClub and he said one thing ill remember forever - to focus on the excitement of it all, and how rare moments like this happen. That moment resonated with me and showcased I was looking at it all wrong. I was picturing all the fake walls that were put up in front of me, instead of being excited about learning something new.
There were no rules two weeks ago when I heard that, and there are no rules today. I tried to listen to other physical artists talk about them translating their work to NFT’s and none were clicking with me. So I thought about doing my own thing and formulating a creative approach to it.
That approach? Learning a new software program. I’ve never used Adobe After Effects before. And it wasn’t easy - I had to study and watch about 10-15 hours of youtube to learn what the hell I was doing. Well, err… even before that even I tried to half ass it through photoshop, because I have a basic skillset there, but it looked half assed. And I’m a full ass kind of guy. But once I fully committed to After Effects, as it was part of my creative cloud license anyway, I loved the process. The process of adapting a physical 2D image and making it move, was and is such an amazing feeling. Learning how to do that was super cool and im forever thankful for it - regardless if the NFT’s dont sell.
Once I had them in 3 second shifts/movements, I had to export them into GIFS… and learning how to turn them into GIF’s even was something new. It’s like every page I turned, it was a new learning process. Every page I turned, it was another hurdle. - - even uploading them to Opensea and not having enough etherium money in my wallet to pay for the gas through me for a loop. For fucks sake, etherium isnt even a word yet… it keeps coming up with a red underline as a type this.
But I did it. I created my first collection. If anyone buys one piece, they’ll receive a full set of physical prints of each of the 4. If anyone bought 2 of them, theyll get an actual painting. I hope they sell. I honestly plan on buying someone elses art with it. I’m still amazed that this started with me finger painting some astronauts and now they move on a platform thats worth a cryptocurrency. It’s crazy. I’m in love with them, I’m super proud, and I hope you enjoy them too.
NFT community - lets ride.
Cheers.
