Meet the artist behind Waxdudes
I have to say I came cross this artist in the Waxitalia telegram and shock horror of course he is a Italian lol they are taking over Wax which I don't mind as there work is brilliant but he is bringing a reward system in with his project and if you haven't guessed oh yea its pixel project
Hey bro how's things?
Everything's fine bro and you?
I am good doing anything exciting tonight?
Nope lol I'm trying to write some stuff on my channel but I think I ran out of all my English for today🤣
Oh really that's a shame was LOL. How did you start in crypto?
Mmm I started buying some dogecoins about a couple of years ago
How did you discover NFTs?
Actually I started when I played this shady telegram game lol @DinoParkNextBot , it's a scam but also where I found out what a Bitcoin was for the first time🤣. I'm a 3d artist and I followed Beeple on Instagram since 2017-2018, so I discovered NFTs following his climb to success 🙈
What made you want to create NFTs?
I was very curious and I thought it was a great opportunity to share my work too. Even if I'm not doing NFTs with my 3d renders for now, I'm testing the ground and learning new things about all this world, I dusted off some coding skills from the university, learned about social medias that I never used, like twitter lol a lot of stuff that I'm actually quite happy to do 😅 Lol I'm sorry that it will take forever, the fault is of the Italian genome
No worries man so tell us what the is project all about?
I guess my project it's about WaxDudes, as the name of the collection says 😅 They're pixel art collectible characters, 64x64 pixel for a 16 colors palette. I liked the idea of people collecting them and, of course, trying to sell them like most of other NFTs, but I was also looking for some other way to incentivize people to get them, so I figured out my my own reward system, pretty basic right now, but I'm coding it all by myself and it guarantees a reward for all WaxDudes buyers! If they own they're VID Club Card👀
Can I ask why pixel art?
I'm not really sure🤣 I've a totally different background, as I said I'm actually a 3d artist, I make interior visualization most of the time and we're talking about a job where realism and attention to every little detail are fundamental. I guess I just wanted to try something different. I'll definitely brings my 3d works here too, but later, I can become too perfectionist when it comes to my 3d renders, and I still have a lot of things to learn, this NFTs universe is still quite new to me.
I know you only recently launched how did it go?
I think it's going well. I mean I managed to sell my first NFTs, it was amazing 🤣 It could probably get better, but I keep adjusting everything as I go along. As I said I'm learning a lot and I still have to figure out what's the best way to do certain things. However the main goal has never been to sell as much as possible but to build a small community around the project, and that's also why I decided to give back to buyers a substantial part of my earnings through the Reward System.
What was the first NFT you dropped?
The first NFT I dropped was VID Club Card, that is the NFT required to participate in the Reward System.
Tell us about the reward system?
The Reward System is quite simple: anyone with a VID Club Card (available on NeftyBlocks) can participate, and there is the Telegram group (https://t.me/WaxDudesNFT_RS) where I run the algorithms to assign the rewards. For now the most important algorithm is the one that assigns VID Club Points to all the buyers of main WaxDudes (from WaxDudes #1 to #25). VID Club Points are WAX backed NFTs, so after receiving them u just need to burn them to receive back the corresponding amount in WAX🔥
How did the community react to it?
I must say that they reacted better than I expected. We are already over 20 VID Club Members, and Reward System have already awarded all buyers of the first WaxDude released a few later
How many NFTs have you created so far?
The first season of the collection, which started very recently, will include 25 Waxdudes and they are almost completely ready, plus 4 Halloween Waxdudes and all the WAX backed NFTs for Reward System ... I could say I have made almost 40 NFTs😅but I still have to release most of them👀
Do you remember what was the first one you made?
The first one I made was exactly WaxDude #1 as well as my first human character in pixel art🤣 in fact, excluding the Waxdudes for Halloween, I am trying to drop the nft of the first season in the same order I made them
How do you create your NFTs?
Mmm the way I create them is probably unusual for pixel artists, due to the influence of my background as a 3d artist I think. I create them in photoshop for now, I use references as I would do for a 3d render, so I try to create a base layout from real images references, then I start drawing pixel by pixel in a more classic way
How long does each NFT take to make?
It depends, there is always an NFT that doesn't want to come the way I want and forces me to waste time, I would say they usually take a bunch of hours, while those for Halloween were a bit more demanding😅
What has been your favorite to create?
Hehe, despite the difficulties the one I had the most fun doing was the first Waxdude for Hallloween, drawing some spooky characters has been cooler than expected😆
Is the project open to collabs?
That opportunity has not come yet but for the future yeah, sure, why not😁
Who would be your dream collab?
I still have to look around me properly, I don't know many collections yet, but it would probably be cool to collab with some of my compatriots from WaxItalia or even with TheChairUniverse, the great master of sitting🤣
Who is your favorite NFT artist?
Hoping to not make any of my wax friends angry, I have to say that my favorite's artists are not in this blockchain yet😆 I think about guys like Zigor or Yo_Brilly, people I've been following for years on social media, well before NFTs, and they're real 3d art monsters
That's ok do you collect NFTs?
I do. I'm a funkopop NFTs addicted😆
What's the long term plan for the project?
I'm focused on the first season of the project for now, the goal is to bring new use cases for VID Club Points, which are the WAX backed NFTs u can win in the Reward System. I am also working on some alternatives for main WaxDudes, like a less expensive version but with a greater number of copies and different rewards. So there is still a lot of work to be done for WaxDudes Season 1, I also considered expanding the team recently but it's little more than an idea for the moment👀
What has been the hardest part?
Managing all social medias for sure, I've never been a big fan of social media, I've never even been on twitter before a few months ago, I downloaded it after discovering it was quite fundamental for what I was doing🤣. Also It's better if I don't think about it before I decide to start all over again 🤣 When you learn to do something while doing that thing, it's easy to realize that what you've done in the beginning it's not at the level of what you are able to do now, so if I thought too much about it I would probably want to delete and recreate too many things🙈
What has been the best part?
I'm happy that I'm challenging myself, all the new things I'm learning to do and seeing people who react positively to my ideas, you know, all the good things happening to the project, it's being a fun journey
What your family think of your project?
I don't think they really understand what I'm doing, but they're okay with that😆
Have you brought anyone into the NFT world?
I tried with some friends, but it's not that easy...I still see some mistrust, especially now that we are going through a bear market, I guess it'll be easier in future 😅
What you like to do to unwind?
Usually pretty nerdy stuff, a beer every now and then😅. Super easy Lol
Where the best place to keep up with project?
https://twitter.com/WaxDudes_nft?s=20&t=94jf67jXQj99-5dTbkmYzA
https://t.me/WaxDudesNFT_RS
Telegram channel, without the annoying Twitter character limit, but I'm also active there
Where can we buy your NFTs
https://neftyblocks.com/collection/waxdudesnfts/drops
https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/collection/waxdudesnfts
Any chance of a competition for the readers?
Sure! Il happy giveaway VID club card check the link here for the competition
https://twitter.com/Crackers832/status/1591083335472021506?s=20&t=94jf67jXQj99-5dTbkmYzA
Before we finish up is there anything you would like to add?
Well... if you hadn't got it from the props to WaxItalia, I'm Italian too, so pls forgive me for my English, I swear that I have great respect for this language but not being able to speak it properly is in my genome🤣
