Part 1
Welcome to part 1 of my series on how I created my first #3D full PFP semi-generative #NFT collection. While I know there are many articles and content on how this can be done; I’ll be focusing on how I creatively led the project with a small team, my thought process, and the many hurdles I faced to execute a 3d generative collection.
*Disclaimer: This article focuses on Design and Strategy for a collection not 1 of 1's.
A couple of months ago, I was commissioned to work on an NFT collection by a small team who were looking to explore the space in a fun and inclusive way.
While I was commissioned to just create some cute jpegs, I decided to use the project as my entry point into a space that is still very new but exploding. I learned so much about myself as a creative and found myself challenging myself in so many different ways.
The Timeline:
A lot of people ask me about this and there are two parts to this timeline. *Keep in mind, this was mostly done as a one-woman design show.
-The Initial ideation Process
-The Actual Creative Process
In general, A 3d collection will take longer than a 2d collection. It took me 3 months from the final ideation to the final group of the collection. 3.5 months if you count the final changes and render tests.
In short, the whole process took about 4 months since we had the holiday season and family commitments to contend with. If you are working with an invested/small team be prepared to put in a lot of time, especially if there’s an ambitious timeline because this space moves at breakneck speeds.
The Prep/Research:
One of the main starting points of coming into this project as a creative was arming myself with information about the space and other projects. There’s a saying within the NFT community: “Feel free to DYOR”. Aka: do your own research.
Twitter is the main social platform NFT social chatter thrives on.
Luckily, I had already found a group of people from my years of brand building and had noticed some trusted peers diving further into Web3. I also went to Opensea, an NFT marketplace, to see the trending projects. Once I found some projects I liked and that were doing well, I went to Twitter to find the corresponding influencers/founders to hear about their thoughts and process. (a lot of people in this space are not transparent)
I also joined their discords and checked in regularly to see how they were building the community. Keep in mind, that the community are your customers so unlike Web2 products you can receive feedback in real-time and iterate accordingly.
The community are your customers.
For the creative part, a lot of my research came from Youtube. Tik Tok is also great but can be a time suck since it’s not all long-form. I had to engineer my mind to work in 3d and a bit of my time was spent getting my workflow to a certain cadence. This is where I think I faced my first hurdle.
My Top Places to go for research:
-Medium
-Youtube
Just as I was diving further into the process, I had already created a meta mask wallet and Phantom wallet.
If you are a professional creative, regardless if you still haven’t made up your mind about the space, I would suggest setting up a wallet and going through that process. I also suggest buying an NFT and joining their discord to understand how purchasing and community work.
The Gameplan:
I messed up on the direction of this project quite a few times in the beginning because I let the space and what other collections were doing cloud my judgment. Having built a business in Web2 before, I decided to go with my gut and treat this not as a project but as a brand.
Treat every NFT collection not as a “project” but as a brand.
The second I decided to approach this as building a startup brand, it became easier to create a digestible game plan. Since the space is relatively new and there are a lot of first-time builders, it’s easy to feel a bit lost but there is no one right way to start an NFT collection. Sticking to your gut and other experiences as a builder and creator has to be my main piece of advice.
My design gameplan consisted of the following:
Branding
The Story/Roadmap
Initial Sketches and Hero Image development
Hero Images 1 to 3 main characters
Breaking it into subgroups
Creating and reviewing the rarity table
Test and Render hero images according to the rarity table
Final edits, final render light, and color tests
Generative Addon breakdown and run through
Create Social content
The site and social build
Go to Market
You can check out part 2 of this piece by heading over to my Medium page.
https://medium.com/@AnjniSingh