Patience. A lot of patience.
Building an NFT collection is actually quite easy. There are projects which were built and launched in a matter of weeks. Start to finish. Although most of them have proven to be rug pulls and others well, just stopped responding in DC and vanished. The ones which stayed and built over last few months, have proven to be 'IN IT' for the longer run.
Nine months ago my DM's were flooded with requests to collaborate and build NFT collection in the space. Back then I was still trying to establish myself as an 1/1 NFT artist. I actually happened to sign a couple. Some paid a very small portion upfront, others were banking on the industry standard of 7-15% mint share plus royalties. I was so happy to be finally 'Making it' in the web3 space. I was building, sculpting and rendering tirelessly. 5 projects in one go. I could finally smell financial independence around the corner.
And then crypto market crashed.
Down by 75%. Trading volume disappeared from Opensea overnight. Only the giants with the likes of Yuga, Azuki or RTFKT could sustain. As for my projects, everyone started disappearing. Thankfully, 'The one' surived.
AZGA was an idea which was brought to me 9 months ago by a crypto enthusiast and now a dear friend - Luke, over our conversation about the web3 space in general. The intersection of Web3 Collectibles, IRL Jewellery and Gaming. The idea was to create four relatable characters 'Assassin's' with a hint of norse mythology incorporated in design.
After building a simple brand guideline and generating a few concept art pieces for the world AZGA, I went straight to sculpting.
I actually found this process of discovering who the characters were and where do they come from while building them, quite enjoyable. It actually helped me establish very early on that I only wanted to deploy three elements, shader wise. Precious metals, leather and skin. The names for the characters came to me soon after.
Over the course of a couple of weeks and a few ugly test renders, we finally had four assassin's. Ezekiel, Myra, Zeke and Nora.
Ready to be setup for trait building. The hardest part.
As mentioned earlier, its actually quite easy to build a single character based 5k collection with 7-10 types of traits, in a limited amount of time. AZGA was a very different story altogether. I had the task to figure out how to setup layer system for 4 Characters in 2 poses + 2 Types of the same costume x 5 (With hood/ Without hood) evenly distributed. I turned to excel sheets. Days went by and I was still debating which layer should be placed where and how will I manage all four character previews. There were almost no answers to my questions as the space itself was so new to have any.
I hunted for compiling tools. Read articles and even installed HashLips to generate the collection. The trait layering for us turned out to be a bit more complex, but with Luke (Co-Founder AZGA), so well connected to the dev community, helped with a few answers by connecting us with the right people. At this point, the collection was looking good in renders. I was so happy to finally have conceptualised and built characters of my own. The discord gate opens. I make a cool video for the launch and Luke with an experienced team of mods and community managers now in place, we were ready to show what we have been building.
And then crypto market crashed. Timeline - AZGA.
Imagine being stuck in between a project where you've poured your heart and soul, with the overall web3 space taking a nosedive into the depths of darkness. Luna was driven to the ground. Three arrows capital goes bankrupt. Opeasea loses 95% trading volume. Mutants below 10ETH Floor (Still too much!!). While crypto bros were calling it a phase, the danger of a long-ish crypto bear winter was around the corner, instead of my financial independence. So we at AZGA decided to hunker down and keep building. Unlike other projects, we were out to build a brand which would re-define NFTs art quality, community building and IRL experiences going forward. To keep the engines running while we were extending the variation in the collection for a future mint date, we started our very own 2D art division.
The task was to rally the community around relatable characters by telling a convincing origin story. We partnered with a great comic book artist Evan, who would envisage the comic on the ideas we conceived collectively.
While we wrote pages after pages, we felt the the overall narrative of the story was missing. That very same evening I decided to sit down with a glass of single malt and start writing. The old school way. In the hindsight it did help me take my mind off the markets and focus solely on story-telling.
With prologue and few pages of the graphic novel now in place, I could focus completely on the collection. I continued to build traits after traits for months. Designed and deployed 10 weapon variations x 5 colours. Built legendary armour for all assassin's and incorporated lighting effects packing a punch in few select pieces.
Patience as always, was the key. To believe that this could be done. A collection like no other. A rarity system connected to the story line and future drops. Compilation however, was still a task. This is where I chanced upon StartNft app. A very intuitive way of building collections. The web3 space definitely had progressed from the time everyone was scrambling to build with devs using HashLips. We have web apps now, wow. Yet the problem of generating 4 characters simultaneously, remained. I continued my research looking for a solution which could help generate four assassin's in one go.
This is where I stumbled upon NFT Creator by mint.io. A beautifully designed SAAS solution for all collection building needs. I was overjoyed to see multi character support built-in the system. The cherry on the top was finding the visual logic builder to layer the collection.
This was a game changer.
While I spent hours creating the perfect logic on NFT Creator, we had to release the project website soon and samples we were getting from our partners were not exactly on brand. Armed a decade worth of experience in building web2 products and platforms, both Luke and I felt that this could be done in-house. Faster and efficiently. This is where I began my journey into the dimension of WebFlow. Designed, built and deployed a one pager website in a matter of days. Feel free to read about it here.
Here's the final outcome. AZGA.CO
So close. Can you smell it? I told myself. A very very very small portion of your financial independence may very well be on its way to you.
And then crypto market crashed. AGAIN.
This time the young folks at FTX finally decided to admit they were way in-over their heads. The third biggest exchange loses $16 Billion overnight. It's said to be the biggest event that has ever happened in crypto. The markets take a hit. Again. The great exodus may be near, the cypto bros have voiced.
So what next?
The answer may lie in how things unfold in the coming months. With over 9 months of hard-work poured into a project, we are driven to make sure it will see the light of the day. Irrespective of the market conditions. The team at AZGA are still determined to produce a quality collectibles project, and in the end, build a successful web3 brand. The collection is set to launch on 14th December 2022.
As for the final hot-take on 'A guide to building a web3 collectibles project', I am yet to find out. :)
