Our NFT Project
Exploring, Understanding and Creating our own NFT's
NFT stands for non-fungible token, meaning the material is one of a kind and not able to be copied. Popular NFT’s are typically digital artwork or pixelated drawings that represent real world inspired pictures, usually exaggerated to draw attention to certain points.
These unique identifiers may be certain features, or specific colors or a particular style of art that brings focus to the NFT.
We have learned that the special footprint of the NFT governs its value and contributes to its popularity in rankings on websites such as OpenSea.
NFT’s may also unlock access to the digital universe and sometimes may also be used as entry to an exclusive event or investment opportunity. NFT’s may be purchased and sold with cryptocurrency, a popular form of digital currency.
We set out to incorporate the deep roots of the Armenian people into the modern day virtual marketplace. We wanted to draw focus to our small yet mighty culture, to inspire both adults, but especially kids our own age seeking a path in digital media.
By way of our two initial NFT characters, we hope to bridge the gap between Armenians and today’s digital ecosphere.
In the research stage of our project, we looked to different forums and digital marketplaces, such as OpenSea, and studied the top ranking 50-100 NFT’s, mostly looking for similarities among those leading artworks.
We picked up on a commonality in design, in that most of the popular NFT companies had one leading character who was transformed and tweaked into variations of itself for people to explore.
Each variation and form of these NFT’s seems to offer more relatable characters to real life.
This allowed us to then further develop our own idea of the Armenian culture being made more digitally relevant with the power of our very first two, male and female, NFT characters.
We knew that we wanted both NFT characters to look similar in their profile silhouettes, with exaggerated cartoon-like dominant Armenian features showcased in a friendly form, in the hopes of appealing to kids our age and beginner level Armenians seeking to get into NFT’s.
The design our characters began with detailing specific character features we wished to draw focus on, pronounced eyebrows and large dark eyes that represent all the injustice our culture has “seen,” given the Genocide of 1915.
We also considered color choices that were classic to our heritage, including deep plums and reds, evoking the power and symbolism of the pomegranate, a classic Armenian symbol of life.
Initially sketching out our rough design on paper, we then began designing using an Apple pen, as well as a drawing tool called “script” in Procreate, a digital app to create our NFT, using pixels, adding in the details and editing over the course of two months to prepare our images for release.
With our dad’s help, we finalized and published these two initial NFT’s in June 2022.
These two characters are only a starting point and we hope to add many more characters to our portfolio, so that all Armenians, particularly in the diaspora, outside our Motherland of Armenia, may be able to have a piece of their culture and ownership of a digital asset relating to their heritage.
Here’s our collection page for you to check out and the opportunity to be a part of (and even own): https://opensea.io/collection/built-in-armenia-448663351
We plan to stay consistent in our friendly form of design, with future characters significant to our culture, including grandparent figures, who will represent the familial ties and history we come from and traditions that bind the old to the new.
Being able to popularize our NFT’s essentially would mean that our community supports and promotes our brand and aids us in using digital technology to bridge old Armenian roots to the modern strength of the diaspora.