How I minted my own NFTs
Original Article: natewashere.com/blog
Opensea.io: https://opensea.io/collection/amongus-cards
NFTs is such a buzz word these days. Just weeks ago, I did not understand what the hype was about. Then a good friend told me, “if you wanna understand something, just throw yourself into it”. That triggered my curiosity. Having owned and operated an art gallery, curating traditional arts is not a strange world to me but NFTs definitely was strange!
Understanding what NFTs (non-fungible token) is, that’s one thing but knowing the technical spec and its potential, that’s a whole different thing altogether. NFTs can really be anything digital assets that can be transform into something non-fungible. So that’s another key word: non-fungible. What’s that? One might asks.
A non-fungible item is something that is one-of-a-kind… is unique. For example, a simple toothbrush is fungible but if you take a picture of it (thereby convert it into a digital asset) and mint it, it becomes an NFTs. Don’t take my word for it. “Somebody just paid 1.3 for a picture of a rock” — CNBC headline.
How does it work:
Most NFTs belong to a blockchain network of ETH (ethereum). Ethereum is a blockchain network much like Bitcoin. What makes NFTs different from a regular blockchain is that it stores extra information that makes it unique (a tag if you may). These information authenticate and verify transactions of an asset which can provide the proof of ownership. This process is called minting and it makes any photo that you take into an NFTs. Please note that I’m no expert at this. For more technical information, please find the links below.
What’s the purpose?
Just like any new technology, NFTs’ purpose is unclear. In today’s current market, NFTs made it big because people are trading them like digital assets. There are those who create NFTs and those who collect them. When transaction takes place over an NFTs, the buyers of said asset also receive the intellectual property rights. It’s up to the owner to flaunt their assets however they wish. Wanna put them on your social media profile? Why not?
Let me get back to why and how I minted my own NFTs in the first place. My honest answer is…. I don’t know enough and I wanna learn more. My instinct as a traditional curator (of sort) and a somebody who has a passion for art for art sake, brought me to the point where I had to find out for myself. So I spent one evening learning everything I can about NFTs and its market places. I found that there’s growing number of marketplaces where you can sell these assets. Admittedly, I was overwhelmed by the research and the overall information that I had to sift through. But then I wanted it to be a one-day challenge so I began.
Firstly, I researched on what’s hot and what’s not. By entering keywords into a marketplace called opensea.io. The result was overwhelming because every sort digital art imaginable was trending. Things I found were bizarre to say the least: they were something like animated cats to naked green aliens with genitalia. To my surprise, they were sold almost instantly.
After hours of grueling search on the www, I finally found something that I can relate to. They’re characters based on the game called ‘Among Us’. These are (what look like) astronauts in colored space suites. The game objective is straightforward: it’s to finish the tasks (you’re assigned) if you’re a crew member or to eliminate all other players if you’re an alien (sus). Without getting much deeper into the gameplay, I would say that I enjoyed playing the game with a group of friends some months prior. I did some digging and found that there’s a market for these characters on opensea.io. So there began my journey into NFTs minting.
Research, Research, Research..
After a quick search, I found that most of the best selling NFTs have some 3D element implemented. They are either made with 3D software or a object that is animated like a 3D object. So I decided to choose a trading card. The game does not play like trading cards but I figure why not make them. First, I decided to make 5 cards based on the five space suited characters (black, blue, red, pink, and green). Then I decided to give them some attributes: investigation, deception, task speed, volatility, and bloodlust. These attributes are based on the gameplay.
Illustrator + After Effects…
I made the layout for the card with Illustrator to create the background of these cards. Putting things together using Adobe Illustrator was easy enough for me. I just made sure to leave some spaces so that I can add some more floating elements once I export them to After Effects.
In After Effects, I turned the card (I made previously with Illustrator) into 3D object by adding camera into each of the layer and then the main timeline. These method quickly turns anything flat into a 3D object with its X, Y, Z axis displayed so you can push and pull along its axis. First I made sure each of the assets (character drawing, background, golden emblem, and the name of the character) are all on different planes along Z axis. Then I animate it by placing keyframes on the timeline. Initially, I made the animation about 8 seconds, but I quickly realised that it was too long. Based on my research, people who browse these NFTs go through them quickly and they buy whatever catches their eyes. So I made the adjustment to the timeline so that’s it’s less than 4 seconds.
Choosing the format (file type)
I needed to research on what file type I need to save in order for my assets to be accepted on opensea.io. Here’s a list of accepted file format:
JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG, MP4, WEBM, MP3, WAV, OGG, GLB, GLTF
with the max file size of 40 MBs
Opensea.io: Link
I decided to go with GIF file type because it can animated and is lightweight. I then prepared the animation with Media Encoder on After Effects and make sure to optimise the quality without being too big. I saved the file and I made an NFTs asset....so I thought. What makes NFTs an NFTs? I thought if I just made something original, then that's it! It's not quite done yet!
Opensea.io - Marketplace
My next step was to learn about how to upload the file onto opensea.io. Creating an account was easy. It requires a connection with one of their partner wallets. If you don't know what wallets are, please check out the link here. That step was straightforward for me since I already own multiple wallets; one of which works with opensea.io. You need a digital wallet for several reasons, the most important one being that you want to get paid when your asset is sold. After you initial sale, you would also get a percentage of a sale each time your asset is sold thereafter. That's the part that most people don't know about...I think.
How much do you pay in commission? Yes Opensea.io is just like any other marketplaces, they do take commission. They take 2.5%. So let's say you sell NFTs for 1 eth (ethereum), their commission is 0.025 eth (or about $80 at the time of writing). Welp, I guess that's about right. So I signed up, connected my wallet to the account, and uploaded my asset to the market. I thought that was it... was it? No!!
There's one more step in this. I needed to initialize my account (a handshake) between their network and my wallet and this requires gas fee. It's a one-time gas fee. What is gas fee? Read more about it here. So how much was it? It was $300 worth of eth tokens. What???!!
Yes, that's right. It was that much. But if you know gas fee, you'd know it fluctuates. The gas fee goes up when there's a lot of traffics in the network (eth network in this case). So I went back to the good old interweb and did some diggings. I found out that most people pay an average of around $60-100 for account initialisation with opensea.io. I decided to wait until the gas fee comes down below $100.
There might a bit more details that I missed but I'm telling my own story based on my experience (or the lack of experience). Please take it with a grain of salt. Do your own research and reach out to me if you have any question.
Wanna see my NFTs? Check out this link.
