In web3 and crypto, artists’ wins and losses can be as unpredictable as the coins themselves. Wins are often celebrated, but many overlook or refuse to acknowledge failure, despite some of our greatest lessons being learnt through it as a result of the experience.
In the first of a new introspective series of posts, I’m going to focus on an “ambitious” project of my own which sadly never really took off, didn’t manage to sustain enough attention, look at them from the outside, and try to determine why.
Battle For The Wastes
In Jan 2022, I minted a series of 50 character NFTs called the Mechanighouls. The Mechanighouls were 50 unique 1/1 GAN AI Portraits of the “Undead Steampunk Aristocracy”. Created using Snowpixel (which at the time was a popular early AI text-to-image online tool), the series had a macabre, eerie fantasy vibe to them and proved to be very popular. Incredibly, the set sold out within six hours of dropping on Objkt. I was stunned!
Feeling an urge to capitalise on this surprise success, I then began working on a new follow-up 50 piece series called the Ghoul Hunters, in a bid to flesh out some “lore” behind everything and tie them together. “Handpicked by their lords & rulers to rid the realms of the vile, wretched Mechanighouls, this band of specialist hunters have sworn to bury the demonic machinations once and for all...”
This new series was released at the end of the same month. However, whilst warmly received the collection did not share the same success, failing to sell half of the pieces.
This should probably have been a clear indication to me that the original interest and excitement for the Mechanighouls was just not something that could be replicated so easily. But one piece of feedback I received from a number of collectors was “Why no female hunters?? Why all dudes?”
Why not indeed?
So, I got to work on a third series of female characters to compliment the other two, and establish three distinct factions that co-existed within a shared universe. Enter the Valkyries, which I dropped in early February.
“Guardians of The Wastes, these fearless maiden warriors pledge to strike down any foe who dares to tread the path of the unrighteous and unjust, whether that be man or machine.”
The reception for the Valkyries was much the same as the Ghoul Hunters, selling even fewer. But now I had these three factions of characters, and some barebones lore. I desperately still somehow wanted to make this work…
And then I had a thought.. What if they could actually battle each other? In a card-based battler?? (Yeah I know, WILD…)
And thus began several days of turning every single character into a fantasy card with their own attack and defence attributes. To take things a step further, I used Adobe Dimension to create fully rotational 3D assets of each card, with both a front and back design.
At the same time, I had separately been playing around with a series of abstract AI landscape pieces, which I had named The Wastes. This became the “battlegrounds” over which these three factions would war over. The Battle For The Wastes.
Feeling really pleased with the look of these cards, I went ahead and minted the entire collection, and to anyone who had collected one of the original pieces, I airdropped the card battling variant. I then used this as part of a “marketing strategy”, stating that if anyone collected a character or land piece from the 4 series (Mechanighouls, Ghoul Hunters, Valkyries & Wastes), they would receive the corresponding card for free, and also offered the chance to be approached as beta testers as the game progress developed.
However that’s where things stalled. The sales of the collections had already waned, and never recovered. The interest in BFTW just did not materialise, and by the time I had managed to import the collection into Tabletop Simulator to show off the cards and invite testers, the audience just didn’t seem to be there.. and the project was indefinitely shelved.
In hindsight, there were several things that were against me.
First off, it is very ballsy to just assume you can repeat the same level of success with one collection as you can with another. It is also not advisable to drop 2 collections in such a quick succession and expect great returns. With the Mechanighouls I had time to tease the series, show small snippets of the artwork and gain some organic interest. This just didn’t happen the same way with the others, and frankly the results proved this, despite thinking I was riding high.
The other key factor is that, looking back at these three main collections, neither the Ghoul Hunters nor the Valkyries manage to capture the same level of uniqueness and vibrancy of the Mechanighouls. They really had their own steampunk / Eldritch aesthetic which really made them stand out. By comparison, the others just didn’t visually compete and in some ways look like it was rushed. (which, it kind of was).
As for the 3D cards themselves? Well I still love the look of these. I think as a set they look fantastic, even though today’s AI technology and image generation is leaps and bounds beyond what Snowpixel could achieve at the time. However, if I’m honest, the notion to convert 3 failing collections into a card game was simply just too late an idea, and I can’t help but think that if I had come up with the card concept right from the start, and worked on a more consistent, high quality set of factions and lands to fight over, it could have been a much different story with a more positive outcome.
So what did I learn?
Well, it has taught me to not blindly believe the hype, success is never guaranteed, and that sometimes, much like the film industry, its best to let something people enjoy to exist on its own, rather than rush out hurried sequels to “cash in” on the popularity and damage the overall franchise.
Finally, it taught me that planning can be everything, and that on-the-fly “organic” creation is less likely to result in a clear cohesion.
I still have love for BFTW, and perhaps in the future I will devise a way to revisit and remaster the idea into something that go beyond a series of assets. This time, with the experience gained to devote plenty of planning, care & attention for the full collection.
