How to get into NFTs: A Little story How WAIFUS made me an NFT Artist

Before I get into my story. Let me give you a little bit of insight how to get into NFTs and crypto and what I think is quite important if you really want to get in on this stuff. I am definitely not an expert but I had a very good run for a while. Although the market is not very kind to most individual creators right now. There is still capital in the market, just not as much as there used to be, due to the current world wide financial crisis. But that shouldn’t discourage you. In the end it is a great space, with great and incredibly talented people. Which brings me to, probably to the most important thing. If you really want to get into NFTs and Crypto you got to MAKE CONNECTIONS. Pick an NFT project that interests you. Get into their community and interact with the people. Stay active and enjoy the ride. No matter what you want to do. Try to make good connections and the space will reward you in one way or another. Oh… and try not to get rekt.

How did I get into NFTs?

Got to go back a couple of years. For me it all started in early 2021 with a game called Axie Infinity. Those crypto games were popping off back then. Been following Marvel Contest of Champions streamer Seatin at that time, because I also played that game. Probably a bit too much to be honest.

One day Seatin jumped on the Axie train and wanted to start an Axie Infinity Scholarship program. I applied for it and he accepted me to join. Which was kind of wild. He gave me his Axies (worth hundreds of Dollars) to play. Earn money by just playing the game and split the rewards at the end of the month. I played it for around 2 months I would say, when Seatin came up with a new Idea.

He wanted to start an NFT project as well and he started looking for an artist on Twitter. I saw his tweet late at night and thought why not give it a shot. I already knew him from the Scholarship program so I sent him my portfolio.

He replied within a day I think and asked me if I could make a whole collection in a similar style of one of my drawings. I haven’t done any NFT art until that point. But I said let’s give it a go. Why not?

That was the drawing he referred to:

So we started with Waifu Gaming Dao!

WAIFU GAMING DAO

Thinking back, at that time I had no idea how to make an NFT collection. It was basically trial and error while watching some YouTube videos for guidance. At least at the start until I got a feeling for what I was doing. It’s not rocket science after all. The hardest thing, as so often, is probably where to start. It just takes some time to get into the groove.

Well we figured it out eventually. Start with a base model and throw all sorts of assets like hair, eyes, mouth and clothes on top of that empty model. It looks pretty silly when you look at that empty model. But when it all comes together it really does become very special.

Let me show you an empty model:

It does look a bit alien’esque doesn’t it? But got to start somewhere.

About Waifu Gaming DAO

Just a little bit of information about the project self and what Seatin envisioned WAIFU Gaming DAO should become. Well he is a big gamer and has quite a big follower base on YouTube, mostly from his Marvel Contest of Champions Content as far as I know.

At that time crypto and NFT games really started to pop off big time. The whole play to earn thing got really big as well and drew a lot of people into the market. Therefore Seatin wanted to create his own gaming community where people could hang out in Discord and share their alpha about new projects or exciting games that might come out over time. It didn’t end up as a massive community but he managed to bring a lot of people and degens together. And I tried my best to make them happy with my WAIFU art as well.

We did mint our 3333 WAIFUs I believe. Originally we planned for a 10k collection but closed it down at 3333. A big portion of the mint funds were invested into the most promising crypto game at that time called Illuvium. It all got staked and paid out to WAIFU holders in Mai 2023. And it looks good that the Illuvium game will be released at some point in 2023 as well.

Back to the Art

If I remember correctly it took me around 5 weeks to finish the whole collection. I designed around 100 separate traits for it. It was a very draining but at the same time also very rewarding process. Especially when you start to mix and match all the individual traits together.

It was a crazy time. I was living in Thailand and Seatin in England. Due to the very different time zones, it was a bit difficult to communicate at times. I would mostly send my work of the day to him and when I woke up, he already had put together a list of new traits for me to work on.

As I said it was a very productive but also energy draining time.

Let me show you a few of our WAIFUS:

I think we did a pretty decent job putting all of this together, considering we were total newbies in this space. It was a bit of an experiment, but it worked out quite well. And I was suddenly an NFT artist

The community was buzzing. They were happy about their WAIFUs and buzzing for those crypto games like Axie, Illuvium or Aurory.

Unfortunately what nobody expected was a massive market crash, what really put a lid on top of the crypto gaming scene. It got very quiet in our community in 2022.

Where are we at?

The excitement from the bull run at the end of 2021 has pretty much disappeared and the community has gotten quite a bit smaller. A lot of people have moved on from NFTs and crypto, but WAIFU Gaming DAO is still here and people are just chilling right now.

Seatin did a Rebranding and renamed the Project to Gaming Gods Guild, for which I also did a massive NFT collection (but more about that another day). And the people who are still here are actually getting a bit excited again for the release of Illuvium and the comeback of the bullmarket (in case it does really come back).

This is how I got into NFTs. Thank you for reading, if you have made it this far. If you are a gamer make sure to check out the Gaming Gods Guild and if you like Marvel Mobile Gaming maybe give Seatin a like or a Follow.

Gaming Gods Guild

Seatin

FOLLOW ME FOR MORE ART STUFF

If you like my stuff and want to support me, feel free to check out my social media platforms and consider giving me a like or a follow as well. Doesn’t cost anything, but helps me out.

Also if you like reading check out my previous post about the start of my art journey as a little kid. Hope you enjoy it. Leave a comment if you do enjoy it. And make sure to come again for more art stuff.

The Start of my Art Journey

Thanks for reading,

Unicris, OUT!

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