Meet one of the team behind NFTNT
I have been sitting on this interview for a while this is quite an interesting project as its not just one project but multiply projects that they bringing to WAX as I am now seeing there promotion for two of there projects I thought it was now time to let people read up about what they are doing .
Hey bro how's things?
Doing good.
How you cope in this blood bath?
Sheewwwwwww rough, but I'm staying positive lol
Aren't we all lol .
I wish, ahah. So many people on wax just hopping off the ship, really disappointing tbh.
Why who is jumping?
Mainly non-creators, but idk anyone specifically lol, just seems like its a ghost town the last few day . But I'm stoked I get to stock back up on wax once I've bought it, WAX is WAX. If it's $0.10 or $1 doesn't really matter to me.
How did you start in NFTs?
For Collecting or creating? Collecting, I started in like March of last year I think it was? I've been big into crypto since using Silk Road way back when I was still young, and had toyed around with NFTs a little bit beforehand but I didn't really get super into it till GPK first came onto wax. I've always collected garbage pail kids, so I was immediately into it. Funny enough though, never really collected a lot of them, I ended up finding so many collections that I loved that they quickly were replaced. For creating, that's a much more complicated story haha.
Have to ask what did get you into creating?
Well, I've been programming since I was a kid, and had tried before to do it for a full time career, but, life happens, and its hard to feed kids and pay bills without a steady job. So, I kept it as a hobby, and instead I was lucky enough to find something I still enjoyed, and was able to work in the trading card industry for essentially my entire adult life, and kept coding as a hobby. So when Topps announced that they'd be making NFTs, and on WAX nonetheless, I had to immediately tell every one I knew about it. Just so happens, Mike had also fell in love with NFTs and WAX. We'd met and spoke a few times prior to this, but never really in depth. I was a lower level floor worker, and he's the VP so we never really had any reason to talk, but once Topps was out, it became our routine, and how I spent my breaks over the next while was just standing outside talking about NFTs, glued to our phones and just thinking of the possibilities.
When did you decide that you should be creating on?
We always knew we wanted to be on WAX, since we started here. But once we got in the community, we decided that we wouldn't leave. This has become our home, and we couldn't imagine being anywhere else. I look at other chains from time to time, and it just makes me want to come back to wax even more. So whether they want us here or not, we'll be a permanent fixture on the WAX blockchain
Every now and then we get upset about something or have a crappy release and get mad and say to each other that we're just gonna leave and go to another chain, but still to this day, we've never gotten as far as "well this one doesn't suck that bad so maybe here?" For creators and for collectors, just no where out there competes.
How many releases have you had so for ?
Oh man, I'll have to make sure its right just because of some small one off promos or things like that, but I'll try lol. For our collection promos.nftnt we have our Alpha and Beta promo, two "First Appearance" releases, a bunch of one offs, and actually just started my own side project in that collection called Fjords Forge. With Beth Alice, we had 7 + a promo release With The Lore Icons, we had one promo release, and one (very very heartbreaking) release, but we may be bringing this one back in a big way in the future With King Kong, we technically had 20, but it was a daily release called Road to Skull Island. As well as 3 promo event releases. For Alchemy England we have 4 full releases with new pack drops every 2 weeks. For TatealiaSaga we are on our 7th drop, and it gets a new pack drop every week. And also, we have had one tiny unofficial for our Ultraman collection. Sooooo, however many that adds up to lol.
We focus primarily on licensing deals with brands and IPs we enjoy, but as we finish up all our existing commitments with them, we're exploring more of our own creations and creating new tools, games, and other things for the community, and helping connect other creators with licenses, so that we can bring even more big names to the chain.
Can you say how many branding licenses you guys hold?
For sure! There's one I cant tell you about since we've not finalized the contract. We have 7 in total right now that we're actively producing for. BethAliceArt King Kong of Skull Island Alchemy England Tate Licensing Group (actually is 10 artists licenses) Tsuburaya Productions (Ultraman!!) and our biggest project Trailer Park Boys. Plus the 7th secret that I hope we can get finalized and announced because its super exciting!
Off the blockchain we also have a deal to produce physical trading cards for different youtubers, the biggest of which is FGTeeV, who is also getting a non-blockchain based digital collection!
How many is in your team?
We were a really big team with all kinds of outside people, but just in the past month or so, we decided it was best to cut down to Me, Mike, and a third person. We just filled that role actually with someone who's actually from the Wax Community Dylan Ironside, also known as Professor Wax is already an incredible contribution to the team.
Are you all U.S based?
Yep! Me and Mike both live in Kentucky, and our Offices/Warehouse/HQ are here as well. Our new team member is actually our first fully remote employee, but is, just by coincidence, also US based.
When did you launch your first NFT What was the first NFT you launched? How did the community react?
Our first actual release was our Alpha Promo pack, which was exactly that, an Alpha test. It has all kinds of things from various projects, and to be honest it's really neat to look and see how much we've grown since its launch, and how different things are vs how we expected them to be. It was released in October or November I think? And we initially thought it was a massive success, we blew up on discord, and it had over 1000 people in just a few hours. It had completely sold out in a few hours, and to this day it is the only drop to do that. Would be fantastic...if it was really that successful, but in actuality, what we thought were eager and excited fans, actually didn't care about our projects at all, and we had somehow ended up on the radar of a small group of bots from Russia. It seemed great, but the whole purpose of the release was to build a following, so we sold them for less than it costs to actually make them just to reach more people. Our fastest selling release ever was our biggest failure, and I personally think it's still affecting us to this day and makes us look very shady. But slowly we're cleaning up, and have got a decent little following now. It's not anywhere near the thousands of people we thought we were getting, but they're actually interested in what we're doing and care about the projects, so I'd trade a million fake followers for just one of our real fans
So how NFTs have you guys created so far ? When is the next one to drop?
Well, across all collections we have over 650 different templates. There are a few that don’t have any actual assets. I honestly couldn’t say for sure the exact number, we definitely have over 600 different NFTs that are floating around out there. We’re actually just now hitting our stride so by the end of next month I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually have over 1000. Our main focus right now is Trailer Park Boys, it’s first release is on July 2nd, and is going to have regular drops with tons of different styles and releases. We’ve actually partnered with MassCult to use their Waxify platform, which will provide a Shopify store front for the collection, complete with FIAT payments, subscription services, gated content, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. The next new collection to drop is Ultraman, we just got back the final approved assets and are just cleaning up to get ready for launch!
What is the process of creating?
Every collection and license comes with its own needs and with that we have to take different processes for each one, depending on what the licensor is looking for, how involved they are, and how big they want to go. But generally we try and follow a standard process. It all starts with concept and ideas, this is where we really just come up with answers to “who should come to WAX next?” Or in some cases we have had a license we like approach us and we decide if they’re a good fit or not. When we go to pitch to a license holder, We try and make sure that we put a personal touch on their concept, but also not to overwhelm with what all is actually possible on WAX or with NFTs in general. If all goes well, and they say yes, we get to work immediately on fine tuning those concepts, and really diving into the options with them. This can either simplify the collection or in most cases we really flesh it out and make it unique. Some licenses like to be more involved, like Joe DeVito for Kong, who has really been a big part of the process, and let us truly embrace the entire Skull Island universe, all the way down to the fine details, and has even created a new canonical addition to the beasts that inhabit skull island, that’s exclusive to his collection. In a lot of cases we’re provided a massive stockpile of art to pick through and create our own variants to fit in the concept ideas, some are less involved and it’s completely on us to create, and some are even more involved and will actually fully create each asset to use and we’re tasked with just gameifing the collection and releasing. Creating is usually where most of our time is spent, for every asset released, we probably have 10 that were thrown out because in our mind it looked great, but once made it wasn’t up to par, or maybe it worked with one but not another, or we just come up with something better. This can even end up having us completely remake the entire concept of the collection.
What programs are used in making them?
I’m not too sure exactly what all programs gets used by everyone else involved, but I personally use GIMP as my go to editor for the majority. But, I love 3D Animation, however, I have only been doing it for going on 2 years now, so at the start I still wasn’t very good. I’ve definitely gotten better the last year, and only recently did I hit the point to be comfortable with actually animating assets to be released, so when we’re able to fit them in we have been. For those I use different combinations Blender, After Effects, Davinci Resolve, and most recently I started experimenting with ZBrush. Usually it’s the packs that I get to do this way, with the occasional one off asset here and there. But I actually just started a super cool subproject on promos.nftnt called Fjords Forge. The plan here is to actually use NFTs to share access to Project files and Tutorials to make the animation that’s shown on the NFTs, and help other creators on wax also learn to create their own. I’d love it to take off and help as many people as I can, But, I don’t want to take away from anything else we’re focused on for it, so it’s only worked on when I have down time, so at the moment it’s super casual and has no set timeline or schedule. It does have my Betsy submission for the Nefty Art Contest and a free preview promo though!
Have you done all collabs yet?
We did a collab with Broken Dollz for our Alchemy England, he was a great dude to work with, I hope we can do another in the future. # Dream collab has been Taco since day one. I've been a fan on their stuff since the beta version of the app came out like a year ago if I remember right. They did one with Cat Fresh really early on and it's always been something I've wanted to do, but never felt an idea I had was good enough for it tbh, and it seems that everyday they get a little further away from us and it becomes more and more far-fetched. One day though, it'll happen.
Who is your favorite artist in NFT?
My favorite artist probably changes every week lol. But right now its a tie between Bret Blackberg and Lewd Momoko. Which I think just kind of shows how varied my tastes can be lol.
What has been your favorite to create?
My favorite NFT to create so far is actually going to be released as one of the premier cards in the first Trailer Park Boys release. When you see it, you'll know which one it is, I like to stay humble but honestly I can say it's probably the most badass thing we've put out yet. There is something that not an NFT itself that'll be coming out soon too from a partner we're helping enter the WAX world that I've been working on with them, and it's been the most fun to create though. But of things that are released, my favorite is the pack assets itself for TatealiaSaga, just because there is sort of a story being told very subtly when you start to look at them all. (#3 is the coolest)
What has been the hardest part of the project?
The hardest part of it all has been just staying positive enough to keep doing it all, and not letting anything put us down. When we first started the world outside viewed NFTs way differently, if they even knew what they were. Now, I'm sure everyone knows just how volatile a topic it can be. The same people who thought we were about to take the world by storm, now are saying that we're destroying the planet and ruining the world. It gets disheartening at times. And even inside wax, it gets so frustrating and can even feel like its never going to take off no matter how hard you work on it. I know most creators have had the frustration of spending weeks, even months, making every detail perfect, only to finally release it, and not even sell enough to cover the cost of resources, meanwhile you see another game that's more than likely never going to go any further than a vague roadmap, getting promoted all over the blockchain by people you can only dream of even retweeting one of your posts. We've had a lot more misses than hits, and the support we get both online and in the real world can be disheartening, but I don't let it get me down. Just keep on keeping on, no matter what.
What has been the best part?
The best part is really just the opposite, its the people we've met, the friends we've made, and the joy we've brought to strangers. I think, that if it was a fantasy world and the day we launched we skyrocketed and became the most popular project WAX had, I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much as I do still. I'd take for granted all of those people, and wouldn't be able to get excited when I see that someone bought a drop, or just left a comment saying how much they loved the art. The best part of all of this will always be the community.
What your family think of your project?
At first my wife thought it was really cool, and was happy I had something I enjoyed. Eventually though she got sick of hearing me talk about it lol. Now though, she is still my number one supporter, and honestly is the only reason I can get anything done. She keeps track of meetings, releases, and everything else for me to make sure I don't get too distracted and forget. Before this I worked a lot, and 99% of the time was out of town, so now that I'm able to work from home the majority of time, and only go to the office if I want to, everyone is much happier. I've got 3 kids, a 6 year old daughter, and twin sons who were just born 3 months ago. I missed a lot of stuff with my daughter growing up, so all she really knows is that Dad is home and can play with her all the time. She also loves to watch me work and thinks that I'm "the greatest computer drawer of all the internet"
What you like to do to unwind?
Well, unwinding is a little weird for me, I like to stay busy, so my version of relaxing is to work on something that isn't urgent really, or spend some much needed time on twitter interacting with other projects. Anymore the only things I do that aren't related would be a small indie game I've been developing for a long long time, and playing music. Which is also my answer to the next question,
Tell us something random about you?
Random Fact about me: I play the banjo!
Where is the best place to keep up with the project?
Best place to keep up with us at is our Twitter
https://twitter.com/OfficialNFTNT?s=20&t=-0RZ7EZYQd9ZnjB2Ui1F9Q, or if you only like some of our projects and don't want to follow us as a whole, each project has their own Twitter as well. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, and Medium, but all of these are slowed down at the moment, but will be back at 100% asap.
Where can we buy your NFTs?
We Consider NeftyBlocks our home, so you can almost always get us there. For everything we've got released or coming soon, we keep it together at https://linktr.ee/nftnt
Any chance of a competition for the readers?
ABSOLUTELY! Anytime we'd love to do a competition or something similar.
Before we finish up is there anything you would like to say or add for the readers?
Not really, I think I've covered just about everything in the world haha. But, if anyone in the wax community is looking for collabs, partnerships, or if you want to know more about how to get started with licensing officially branded NFTs, send us a message! Or, if you just want to chat, as you can tell I love to talk and can ramble on for hours, so, you've always got me! Thanks so much for everything you all do for us. Thanks for doing this interview Crackers, we'll have to get together again sometime!
To celebrate are meet the artist I have five packs of there NFTNT promo packs to giveaway to win check the link below.
https://twitter.com/Crackers832/status/1538956154491002881?t=N_yFjxfDRlCQJj8cRNb57w&s=19
