Right guys if you haven't come across this project yet and your a football fan now is the time to get into it I got the pleasure to chat to the creators Noel and Ian to see what the project is all about and did they have something to say and there is even a little history of one there grandfathers being a footballer .
Hey hey how's things ?
Noel okie dokes, let's crack on! (watching gremlins on sky)
I am guessing your a football fans?
Noel Yep Newcastle fan born and bred. Living in Gateshead . You?
Die hard Liverpool fan so your part of the toon army lol
Noel Aye but don't have a season ticket lol, used to back in the 90's (the best time)
So Ian are you like noel and a toon fan for your sins ?
Ian Nope - I'm a Forest fan for my sins - born n bred - you? No bother with the toon though - good lads up there . One or two shady character mind
Liverpool
Ian Ah the pool - nice - playing great at the mo - loving this season - 3 front runners - anyone's at the mo
Its looking like a great season
Noel Yep we won our first game last week, it was like winning the league . (really was)
Ian Every season I keep thinking it cant get better - but it does. Champions league is hotting up nicely as well. haha - cant believe it was the first win of the season - I had to get my glasses out to make sure I read it correctly last week
Noel Leicester on Sunday
Ian They'll be feeling it after last nights loss - possible scalp there. We are at Swansea
Noel They've all got the Omicron ...so we'll win that .
Ian He their new left back?
You hope !!!!
Ian Hope is all we have - alright for you reds eh!
Noel Yep it's all about the taking part ...not the winning!
Typical Newcastle fan . So Guys how did you get involved in crypto ?
Noel I've known about it for years, I used to work with someone who had a small rig at home for mining bitcoin (we're talking years ago here), I thought nothing of it. Anyway roll on 7 years or so, I started just buying some alt coins here and there, then went down the rabbit hole, started buying NFTs (pixelated footballers, ultrarare etc) and then went from there - basically I explain myself here - https://vintageniftys.io/about-us/ my father in law has been a big influence, he is a massive sports memorabilia collector, I mean serious one, programmes, tickets, boxes full - i love the stuff and thought boom lets do this
Ian Through Noel really, I'd been aware of it of course but never dipped my toe in - just didn't see the attraction at first. Then Noel had his epiphany and suddenly i got it. Def opened my eyes . It's all about the creativity for me - Noel is the ying to my yang on this - He has always been the tech bod and me the creative. It's why it works well for us, well that and the knowledge our teams will never win owt We've always likened this arena to the Wild West. At the moment it seems anything goes, from rainbow unicorn collections and there mass appeal (not) to the scary stuff you see but the likes of Ultrarare - anything goes.
Was WAX blockchain was your first crypto ?
Ian She's my first and only
Noel For me no, I started with alt coins, Polkadot, Cardano, Tezos etc. I've built a little portfolio, got a hard wallet, ledger live
Ian I'm a one blockchain at a time kinda guy
Noel Then went down the hole stepped across Opensea - I bought a 8bit pixel of Ian Wright started buying "names" as well
Who came up with the idea for the project ?
Ian You writing war n peace Noel?
Noel After dipping my toe in Opensea and buying those 8Bit pixelated NFTs, I started researching anything to do with Football, stepped on Sorare (Ian and I having a running joke to tell about that), then found WAX just by accident really, found Ultrarare checked out their cards etc. I then had a moment, my father in law is an avid collector of anything related to old football, he has 100's of old cigarette football cards then I put 2 and 2 together and thought right, let's showcase these, let's turn them into digital cards .
So short answer it was my idea .
Ian got there in the end
Lol so this project came from an accident ! What the idea behind the project ?
Ian We like to call it organic sometimes ideas come at the oddest of times. We were all gearing up for the Euros and footy fever was gripping everyone - and we were heads down scoping out this project and how it could work and the pieces we needed to get it off the ground. It's quite a simple idea in truth - we want to bring back the stories and heroes of football that are being lost to time. These guys (and gals when we get to them) were pioneers of the game and many of their exploits shaped what has become the modern game we all know and love. I think Daglish said it not so long ago when yet another old Liverpool legend passed. " We were standing on the shoulders of giants".
I am guessing the NFTs will be copyright free and you don't need permissions for images ?
Ian Yes - we have looked into this extensively. These are artist representations, all lovingly hand painted (digitally) so we are good to go. Naming rights aren't an issue as they would be with modern players of course. We wouldn't do a Ronaldo for example, though maybe in 30 years, when he's just hung up his boots
Awh so you can do players from the 90s ?
Ian Vintage is the key here. Players that have long since ceased playing and are legends to their clubs and supporters. Of course there's alot of players some people will never have heard of and that's great. Their stories are just as valid as the poster boys. Currently we are concentrating on players from the early 1900's right up to the 60's. For sure we want to move into the later years but that's down the line.
Noel Yep, I'm sure we'll get to the 90's at some point!
What teams will you feature ?
Ian ill let you take this one Noel
Noel Oh tough one .
Ian Will we feature now or in the future?
Noel Well at the moment we're concentrating on several collectible sets featuring players from all clubs, club legends if you like .
Ian Series 1 which drops tomorrow (Dec 11th 17:00UTC) has 25 players from a variety of clubs, Liverpool, Man Utd, Leeds, Spurs, even Chester! The clubs are kind of secondary to the player - though of course they go hand in hand. Oh yeah - Newcastle are of course featured in Series 1 as well. As for future series - we have a tonne of different ideas that will also encompass International players - especially with 2022 being a World Cup year. We have a mini series in the works at the moment that concentrates on the games Hard Men. Called "The Enforcers" - that's coming along nicely and we are looking forward to sharing that with people early next year before Series 2 comes out .
And will there be club jerseys and crests in the series ?
Noel Good question. Club crests, or badges, is something we have discussed and it's quite possible that we'll do them in the future - something we need to have a chat about! I'd like to do badges, it reminds me of being a kid and collecting the panini stickers
Cool how many players will feature in series ?
Noel 5 players but 2 cards per player, the 1st card is their real name and the 2nd their nick name, so in total 50 player cards - combine that with 9 rarities, that's 450 in total. And... don't forget each card has a player biography on the B side - like a traditional trading card
Oh wow that is some amount are you excited for tomorrow ?
Ian Yep - there is a definite nod to the collectors of old with what we are doing. We are just bringing it bang up to date in the digital space where collectors seem to be congregating again and hopefully they will get what we are trying to do. It's a punt for sure. We aren't using modern footballers or doing horror, sci-fi, fantasy, unicorn llama rainbow cards - these are old footballers who many people have never heard of. I'm not selling that well am I! haha
Noel Er....not sure, a bit scared to be honest! It's been months in the making, spent ages on the cards, the biographies and I've done a lot of testing re: opening packs! I hope it goes well and I hope we sell some . But as I say to Ian, we need to manage our expectations!
Have you got a community going ?
Ian I am - it's that unknown - we've entered into this purely from the love of the game and the passion to put something out there that is quality. It's a unique time with NFTs growing in popularity and becoming more widespread. You barely go a day without there being some story in the main media NFT related so to have our own product which we have created from scratch is exciting. To see the drop tomorrow will be the culmination of long long long days and nights for us both so I hope it goes well. It certainly wont deter us if it doesn't. We are Newcastle and Forest fans remember - we live in hope
Noel Yes we have a small community brewing in Discord, early days but I've spent a lot of time fleshing out the server, trying to make it enticing for users - have introduced several games to keep users entertained and constructed a role system linked to our NFT ownership. It's an on-going project. And of course we have the Twitter side, which is where we started . Organic for sure and its down to the members to drive where it goes as well .
Of course the community has to have a say . Have you dropped many NFTs yet ?
Noel Yes we've dropped a ton of promos for free back in October, then we have literally being doing giveaways every weekend .
Ian Noel has been rampant on discord setting everything up - big kudos to him for that - Twitter has been interesting - people love a free meal so we've been feeding alot of people with promos and giveaways which seems to be working. The proof is in the eating though - so the drop tomorrow will give us a better indication of who's just about for free lunches and who wants to pick up the tab Ill move onto Bake off analogies if I'm not careful .
Of course all good when they take the free NFTs its when the come back and spend wax one thing I will say is wax is young so if you don't sell out don't be dishearten remember you are in the early stages . What was the first NFT you guys dropped ?
Noel Oh yes, our expectations are set. Always go with a pessimistic or realistic angle, you won't be disappointed .
Ian Indeed - well said - we are in this for the long haul anyway - we have so many plans we want to share with everyone who wants in. The more that are onboard the more we can do really. Spoken like a true toon fan .
Noel Exactly, not half full, not half empty, just realistic. 1st NFT drop was a football shirt I believe
Ian I could murder a half full pint right now .
Noel A Vintage Niftys on well 500 of them
Can we have a picture ?
Ian Yep - to push the "brand" we created alot of artifacts in VN livery, pin badges, scarfs etc. and some other stuff to giveaway and get us going. hold on just dusting one off
There you go
And here's a pin badge for you - Don't forget us .
Noel We've got to manufacture those, that's in our plan for the future! NFT linked to physical assets, so you can redeem your pin badge etc. looks fresh that badge .
Ian definitely - digital assets are great but the tie in with some real world items just makes sense and you hear more and more of that going on out there in the yeee haaa Wild West
So who is the creator ?
Ian I am the designer then Noel creates the NFTs and does his magic in NB . Ill create a design and push it over to Noel for his thoughts and we go from there - it's very fluid and quick in some respects as we have eat and slept this stuff for so long we just crack on with it
Ah so do you guys have your own favorites ?
Ian For me it's usually the last one I've done. I'm currently designing The Enforcers series and am loving the new look and feel - it's just a step away from the traditional type of cards we've done for series one. But I do love some of the rarities we've done. Some of the animation effects work so well and I love Relic Variation. Funnily enough that one isn't animated but it's designed to look aged. As for a player - the little known Stuart Grenville Williams is a cracking portrait. Full of character, you wouldn't mess with him.
Noel For me, it's Jackie Milburn, for many obvious reasons, he's a Toon legend, used to work down the pits, half time he'd eat pies and drink pop (non-isotonic). I also like Len Shackleton, the bloke was a true joker. Dribbling the ball to the goal line, put his foot on the ball and pretend to comb his hair and then tap it in! (true story) And we've yet to talk about Jimmy Cantrell!
Do we lol
Noel Yes, it's our link to the past, go on Ian
Ian He's my great grandad - played for Spurs, villa and a few other in early 1900's. We've still got the FA Cup winners medal he won in 1923. And he still holds the record for the oldest outfield player to score for spurs. Cracking player by all accounts. He's going to feature in Series 2 - I can't not put him in.
Oh wow that's amazing
Ian Anyway circling back to what we are trying to do... We just want to make collections that people will be proud to have and find some value in. Moving forward we want to create more and also bring in Gamification which is something we are working with NB on. Yep - it's in the blood - I showed my Mum the other week what we have been up to and she regaled me with stories of him when she was a little girl - a gentle gentleman apparently - he was also mates with Charlie Chaplin - played golf with him. Bizarre
I love that when people tell you crazy stories did you meet your great grand dad
Ian Unfortunately no - long before my time but doing this, this year I've explored more and more about him and found video clips of him in the cup final - crazy to see someone you've heard about for so long taking to the pitch in front of the King. Really makes it all very real. We did a promo of him in an art deco style .
That's mad man I love stuff like that .
Ian Yep - lends huge credence to what we are doing and brings him back for my mum which is odd in a way.
Of course it makes the project mean more to you as it features your family ?
Noel I would say that’s our most underrated card, when we gave that away the interest was quite slow. I think it’s a very unique card.
I think its class and the back story brings value to it .
Noel Yep brings a true genuine authenticity to the project. Unfortunately I don’t have any footballing heritage!
Booo lol
Ian Thanks, well he'll get some more Nifty treatment in Series 2 - will probably be the poster boy for that I think
Yea defiantly
Ian Probably some bare knuckle head heritage up there Noel? We can move to boxers if you want?
Noel Just panel beating, ship building welders etc.
Ah
Noel That’s my heritage!
Ian Built the nation!
Noel Chopped down my railings to make bullets to chuck at Hitler
Would of been better to shoot them out of a gun
Ian That's where we went wrong!
How do you guys create your NFTs ?
Ian In what sense - the artwork?
Well artwork to finished product ?
Ian Ill start this then Noel can do the tech bit. After choosing our shortlist of players we ship them out to our illustrator who gets to work. He uses procreate and photoshop to paint the portraits. When I get them back I go to work. I use Photoshop, Premier, Illustrator and After effects to create the cards and variations - there's alot of them to do in Series 1 so it took months. Creating the card variations was alot of experimentation and see what worked and what didn't - trying to create the "wonder" or "wow" and keeping them all aligned to the series ethos of authenticity and also bringing them into the modern age . So a shed load of design and editing to get then to where we were happy before I passed them over to Noel to crack on with his NFT creation.
Noel I take the finished article and upload to a our IFPS cloud server provider. I create the templates in atomic hub. Minting, pack configuration and blend creation is performed in nefty blocks.
How long would you say each NFT takes to create
Noel To be honest we don’t have really have a definitive answer for that! Depends on the piece I suppose. From a technical perspective the pack configuration was tricky, coming up with the pack odds etc and making it attractive. we also spent ages coming up with the variants, months of work
Ian Yeah it's a tricky one - for example the Relic variation we talked about earlier - whilst not animated, took quite a while to get right - quite a few iterations to get the "foxing" (the spots you see on an old card where the paper has degraded or been bleached by light) just how we want it. Something like that can take a couple of days. But then I have the format done I can then apply it to the rest of the cards one by one. (50 of them). So you can see it does tend to suck up time this stuff.
Noel Then I spent ages writing the player b sides, which no one reads!
Ian So 450 cards done manually one by one. But with each variation brings different challenges and disciplines needed. I do love this stuff though, I've been designing since I was a nipper so I'm at home We read them!! I'm sure someone else will at some point once they get it .
Oh wow so what has been the most exciting part of doing the project
Ian For me it's creating our own business and finally having a product we can hopefully sell. Something we have created and nurtured all the way and something we will continue to grow. It's funny to think it's taken this long from the first idea to the eve of the first drop but we have taken our time and made sure we are proud of what we have done. Loved every minute of it and cant wait to get the next series out and the ones after that .
Noel Yep couldn’t agree more. Loved every minute of it. Researching and the finding the right players has been a great journey, I love the history, the old stories etc. I smother myself in nostalgia, can’t get enough of it .
What has been the hardest part ?
Noel Time . Balancing full time job, as I call it BAU, business as usual, you know, the job that pays the bills. Doing that full time and then doing this in our spare time, it’s been quite tough . Every spare minute, has been ploughed into this project .
Ian Yep - and we both have families so carving out the time to do this requires sacrifice - needless to say we don't get out much these days!
I suppose you really cant do any collabs as its such a proper project about past superstars !
Ian Not at all - we are very keen to do collabs but it's about choosing the right direction. For example, we know some extremely talented well known football illustrators who we would love to to some collabs with. Also we want to do something about giving back to some of the charities doing research in the dementia arena. Alot of the old players who have or had dementia are being linked with heading the old footballs - particularly heavy when they were wet. So to do some collabs with featured artists where we can auction them off and give back to these charities is something we will be investigating early next year .
Is there any NFT artist you would work with ?
Ian We are keeping our cards close to our chest on that one so to speak. Don't want to jump the gun but there are so many talented artists out there which is another eye opener since Noel awakened me to all of this. It's not just abut who we want to work with, it's whether they want to work with us really. We hope after the Series 1 drop we can attract the sort of artist we are looking for .A passion for football and authenticity is key really. Have you got any fav artists?
Loads for so many different reasons . Do you collect NFTs yourself ?
Noel Yes footy inspired pixel art (from a variety of artists) and Ultrarare's cards
Ian Not yet!! I know - WTF!! As Noel has said, we've been so deep into the creation that coming up for air and looking what's out there is a luxury I've not had the time for yet - but ill be doing that hopefully over the holidays. Noel is the collector - but I hope to address this soon. I've been looking into NFT frames to showcase my collection once I start so it's just a matter of time. I'm guessing you have been collecting for a while now? Any pointers for a noob?
I have been collecting for a while and all I can say is if you like a project and you like it buy it . Have you seen any project on wax that you like ?
Ian Well Ultrarare are the guys that have really shone a light on what can be done with collections for us. They are the stand out for me. There are alot of projects that have gone down the utility route and there's is a huge amount of quality our there - some beautiful artwork and direction but I get lost in all the rules of gameplay. UR kept it simple. It was about the collections. I admired that from day one. Nice guys aswell.
Tell us something random about you ?
Noel: I have WW2 concrete bunker in my front garden. It has a light in it and door with a porthole!
Ian: I'm a twin, I have twin girls and my brother is married to a twin.
What the long term vision for the project ?
Ian I hope we can build an active community that encourages to push the boundaries of what is possible in this space and enjoys what we are trying to achieve. Football is all about community so it seem like a good fit having football in the NFT community. More collections, innovative gamification (we have something in the pipeline that could disrupt things) and Vintage Niftys being synonymous with high quality digital collectables.
Noel I would like Vintage Niftys to be synonymous with digital football collectibles. You think of that name, Vintage Niftys, and you know it's retro/vintage football NFTs.
Have you brought any of family into NFTs ?
Ian My 7 year old girls are loving the journey – harshest critics but love what we are doing. Considering they love rainbows and unicorns – I'm happy with that!
Noel Erm I wish I could say the same about my 10 year old, she's too engrossed with her phone and her mates...teenage years have started already!
What your family think of your project ?
Noel They're all behind our project but the person who I thought would struggle the most with the concept turns out to be our biggest advocate and that's my father in law. He's a true fooball memorabilia collector at heart so he has that collector mindset already but he's afraid of anything digital and is a complete novice when it comes to computers! But when I showed him what we've done he's been blown away and he loves the idea of not having to physically store them! He's old school though and he likes to smell and touch the old cards so you never know.. we may create some real-life cards in the future! Ian: My family love the idea especially with us featuring Jimmy Cantrell – that’s got my Mum tickled pink. My brother also look a lot like him so he’s happy
Where can the community keep up with your project ?
Noel They can follow us on Twitter
(https://twitter.com/VintageNiftys)
To keep up with what's going on and we have an active Discord server (https://discord.gg/7xV2eBeAxa) which is constantly growing and evolving. We want the Discord server to be completely driven by the community so feedback and suggestions are always welcome.
Where can we buy your NFTs ?
https://neftyblocks.com/c/vintagenftys
Any chance of a competition for the readers ?
Noel/Ian Yep we'd like our followers to get their pencils and crayons out and draw their favorite old (or new) footballer portrait. It can be any style and doesn't have to be perfect! Also what's more, we want them to write the B side of the card as well! A brief player biography, can be stats or some funny story! The winner will get a Full-Time pack containing 25 cards!
Anything you would like to add or say to the readers ?
Ian We appreciate this isn’t your standard crypto “area” but join us – Hopefully you will learn something about the beautiful game and some of the characters that graced it in the past. Oh yes – and grab some packs, we’ve put a lot into making them so hopefully you will appreciate that and start collecting. It’s just the beginning. We’ve got a mini series in the pipeline for the first couple of months in 2022. It’s exciting times.
Noel Yes please join us, come and check us out and fully submit to footballing nostalgia.. it's infectious!
Right guys and girls if your a footie fan this is the project just for you check them on Twitter and join there Discord and check there packs and maybe enter there competition and draw your favorite footballer .
Love it! Project really is infectious and nostalgic