By Karsten Ivey / KarBel Multimedia (Illustrator and Co-creator of the CryptoPeops NFT project)
How it all began
The journey of our CryptoPeops project began a few years ago. I wanted to illustrate a diverse group of characters we could use in graphics for our own enterprise projects. Diversity in art is very important to me. I strive to create not just fun images, but images where people can see themselves in the art. I believe this can inspire, while also creating sense of self importance – especially for kids.
I wanted the base of the characters to be the same (eyes, face, mouth, feet, ears, etc.), but the hair, clothes, shoes, skin tone, etc., would all change to create a different character. I sat down at my computer and began to illustrate and develop the initial group of characters.
The first time I used one of these characters was for our Mother’s Day Spending enterprise graphic in 2019. I followed up with another character for Father’s Day, and made new characters (based on my family) for a Fourth of July graphic.
The pandemic holidays
I continued to have fun developing these characters, thinking of new ways to use them. But I didn’t get an opportunity to use them again until more than a year later in November 2020. I wanted to do a graphic on Covid 19 safety for the holidays and needed masked people for the graphic. I decided the characters would be perfect.
The NFT boom
In March of 2021, everything changed. A story about an artist known as Beeple sold an NFT of his work for $69 million dollars. This was my first time ever hearing about an NFT, so I started researching and learning about other NFT projects, including Cryptopunks. The more I learned, the more I wanted to be involved. I thought about those characters I had been developing over the years and what a great opportunity this would be to further develop them and sell as digital art.
CryptoPeops are introduced
Moving forward, I needed a name for my characters and my collection and decided on CrytpoPeops. It was only fitting since my collection was all about diverse, digital people. I get most of the ideas from my wife and kids, and some inspiration while people watching.
Once I made the initial set of characters (the first CryptoPeops character was inspired by my mom), I needed to choose a platform to use for listing the CryptoPeops and chose the OpenSea marketplace. The OpenSea process for starting an account and minting was pretty straight forward and they had a great Help Center. After going through the set-up process, I began minting NFTs for my new collection.
Great opportunity for creatives
My motive isn’t all about the money (although that would be great). It’s about my love for working on creative passion projects outside of client work. Before I found NFTs, some of those passion projects didn’t have a home. Now, I can take full advantage of an NFT process and a platform that will not only give those passion projects a home, but also a chance to benefit financially from them.
Supportive NFT Community
I have learned so much in the past few months and have been fortunate enough to virtually meet artists, photographers, musicians, etc., from all over the world. This NFT phenomenon is still pretty new for most of us, and this community is willing to exchange knowledge to make the NFT space better overall for everyone. The NFT community is willing to support in many ways such as buying, retweeting, liking, following and helping promote projects. The community is very easygoing and helpful no matter where your are on your NFT journey.
Learn more
Visit our OpenSea Marketplace or learn more about the CryptoPeops project using the links below.
I’ll be writing more blog posts about NFTs and updating our readers on our continuing journey in this space. Stay tuned! Thanks for reading!
