Vegzi

In the previous article, we discussed on what kind of creative works can be NFT art. So this time, let’s look on what kind of art you’d better not to create.

As an NFT artist, being strategic and has a marketing scope is important as much as purely pursuing the beauty of art. However, if you go excessively towards commercialism and follow commercial trends instead of building up your own art style, you will definitely fail in unsuccessful career building in the NFT market. So, let’s look on the typical 7 boring art themes and styles which collectors never want to pay for or never wants to collect even for free! If your art pieces apply to any of the following 7, either you are too lazy to have your own creative idea or simply you are lacking in talent (no offense, and I hope you have been just too lazy).

Note: I would not mean to say all works in the following styles have no value. There are of course many works with additional originality and I do love them a lot!

1. Symbol of Ether (Bitcoin or Tezos)

This is one of the most “basic” art theme that artists often adopt in their works when they have no idea on where to start their creation. Yes, having Ether symbol in your art is very convenient. With this, you can easily create a digital art which is at least related to cryptocurrency so thus NFT, without any effort of creating your own story.

Of course, there should be works with a meaningful Ether symbol, with a dramatic background story, I guess. But 99% is not. Sometimes they alternatively use Bitcoin or Tezos, depending on platforms or contexts, but this is basically the same. I recommend you using these crypto symbols in your art only when you are confident to tell the story behind or when you are confident to say you have added originality more than enough on it.

2. CryptoPunks (Bored Apes, or Pepe) Derivatives

Well, I would say the CryptoPunks was great and epoch-making. I fully understand the value of the aesthetics and minimalism of the 24 x 24 pixel art, yes. But these values apply to the original only.

Cynically, since the original CryptoPunks has built the record sales, many artists follow the style and created a great number of derivatives. I wouldn’t say they are copies, rather they are derivatives, as I admit that they are not copyright thieves but artists who followed the way of legend.

But as you can see, most of the derivatives are looking almost the same as the original CryptoPunks. Nothing new, nothing interesting. Who would buy them?

Of course, there are some brilliant works in CryptoPunks style with new ideas, but if you have your own creative idea, you’d better not to follow this style to get labelled as a “basic” artist.

3. Doge

Doge itself has a funny story, but how about NFT works with Doge in them? Are any of them ever funnier than the Doge itself?

This is a very common theme that thousands of artists are choosing to create, but if you want to take part in the trend and create something with Doge, you should note that this creation has a high risk to degrade your career as an artist.

Doge is one of the final weapon that artists would take when they fall into a terrible slump of idea creation. You might still have another tactic to take, before you exhibit your mediocrity in public.

4. Elon’s Portrait

ur welcome pic.twitter.com/e2KF57KLxb

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2021

Needless to say, it’s not interesting at all. Not new, not creative, not valuable, but sadly thousands of artists are creating art with Elon’s face with them. Why do you need to use Elon as the main actor in your story? Would he tell your story of art in effective way? Why don’t you create your own character to perfectly convey the story of your art?

Obviously, artworks with Elon’s portrait have no story behind. They might have a bit of superficial item descriptions, but you will get no meaningful drama from that.

Maybe, in a small chance, there are a certain people who wanted to express their love, anger or any types of emotion against Elon through their works, but you should note another thing, that it still has a risk of portrait rights infringement. Selling pictures of someone’s face (no matter how famous they are) without permission is basically prohibited by laws. Even though Elon is unlikely to sue against every single NFT, If you are an artist, please learn the basic laws about copyrights and portrait rights.

5. Trading Cards

The idea that a virtual 3D-looking trading card is spinning in virtual space is indeed quite interesting. But now too many artists are creating this kind of NFT works and there are no longer characteristic variations anymore.

The problem is, artists have been too lazy to think up a good idea of what content they should put into the cards, because the spinning card frame itself can look satisfying to them already. Through the creation, artists unfortunately tend to go blind and lose their ability to evaluate the quality of the art. This is why collectors think the trading card NFTs are all looking the same and they often skip those items.

To matter of worse, there are often combo of battle cards & Doge or Elon…

6. Invisible Property

Italian artist sells invisible sculpture for more than $18,000 https://t.co/6TJjYhMORG 😂😂😂

— Jesse Livermore (@Jesse_Livermore) June 11, 2021

Last week you were probably surprised to hear an invisible sculpture by Italian artist Salvatore Garau was sold for $18,300 and this brought up a controversy. Some people admire this as a sophisticated progressive art and others mention the idea is already old and it is nothing but “nothing”. Well, here let’s put this discussion aside, but now what I would like to say is that even a famous artist did not sell his invisible work without receiving negative comments so how can small artists sell invisible works peacefully?

Sadly, there are some artists or dreamers who are trying to sell invisible or excessively conceptual art (such as one-pixel art) but here is an advice, it looks easy, but it would never be easy to get the instant million bucks without lifetime story building.

7. Copyright Thief

Last but not least, actually the most importantly, as a creator, you need to thoroughly understand copyright laws but unfortunately there are many amateurs who don’t recognize copyrights sincerely or deliberately ignore. You cannot steal someone’s creative idea which is protected by copyright laws, including other artists’ materials and branded characters. Typically, copyright infringement commonly found in the NFT world is such as Nintendo’s yellow electric rat or the world most famous “Mouse” character.

If you create and sell NFTs with these copyrighted characters, you might get sued by the right holders in quite large odds. Even if not, sensible collectors will never pay for taking such risk. If you already made any, I highly recommend deleting all of them as soon as possible and clear your contaminated career by revising your portfolios and any online information about your artist page.

Create Your Own Ideas!

Learning from pioneers is essential for inspiring yourself, but following someone’s style is not always a great idea for your own brand building. If you have your own creative idea, keep sticking at it and you will get connected to right collectors sooner or later.

If you have been in the NFT market for more than a couple of month, you must know very much about Foundation (FND) or at least you have heard of it. Foundation is one of the most prominent invitation-only NFT platforms so not open to everyone, this makes emerging artists so enthusiastic to grab Foundation invites – the only limited number of golden tickets! So, for those who are running on all the long way struggles, hopefully this article will help to increased the chance to get invited to FND!

Why is Foundation So Great?

In case you are very new to this culture and still don’t understand why so many artists are looking for invitation to Foundation, let’s start with a quick explanation on why being a creator on Foundation is so admired.

Invitation system has been successfully performing for lifting up the fame of Foundation, as it allows only eminent artists to join the community as creators, which maintain the overall platform quality. Unlike Opeasea or Rarible, where everyone (including even spams or other non-artist business marketers) can register and list works, Foundation is a haven for mesmerizing creative collections. So, we can say the invitation system is working as a quality filter.

On Foundation, collectors are highly motivated to by NFTs as you have greater chance to find your favorite art on this sophisticated platform, compared to other open markets. This means, if you are a creator on Foundation, you will more likely to sell your NFTs.

You also note that sales value often goes very high on Foundation. We got thunder shock surprised when Edward Snowben’s Stay Free NFT raised 2,224 ETH (values $5.4 million USD on 17 April) and this is the forth highest-selling NFT of all time as of April 2021. We are recently amazed again by Itzel Yard’s Dreaming at Dusk NFT reached 500 ETH ($2 million USD on 20th May) which is historically the highest female artist’s NFT as of May 2021. These might be a mere dream only for one in a million, but there are many other NFT works which are collected for more than 10 ETH.

Also, any sales on Foundation, or even only being a creator on Foundation, will decorate you with an honored medal. So once you are on Foundation, you look greater, more appealing and convincing to collectors and this will lead to your sales on different platforms as well.

How to Get Invited?

Sounds very fascinating right? But it’s not so easy to get the invites out of a flooding number of enthusiastic artists. Invitation is only sent by creators who are already on Foundation and sold their works. There is no other way (except community upvote). If you want to get invited, you need to get connected with one of them and appeal you creativity to make them feel like inviting and welcoming you as a new member of Foundation. So Let’s look on some tips to take the lead in the competitive invites-begging race.

1. React to “Shill Your Work” Tweets

Twitter is a giant tool for all NFT creators and this is the most common and basic tactics to appeal your creativity to existing FND artists. There is a trend: when FND artists have sold their first work and get a few invite codes available, they often start invite giveaway campaign on twitter by tweeting like, “I sold my first piece and got some Foundation invites Shill me your work and I will choose one to invite!”. As this works for the organic growth of the number of registered users on Foundation, probably majority of the artists have got invited in this way, by reacting to those tweets.

The rule is very simple, you basically only need to shill (show) your NFT art in a reply to the original tweet and sometimes they ask you to do some extra (typically retweet and follow). So what we would recommend is, keep yourself updated by some trend search with hashtags like #Foundationapp and #FoundationInvite and react to as many tweets as you can.

2. Show Your Portfolio

To stand out, not only does a catchy artwork draw their attention. If you have any social media accounts, business accounts, homepages or other NFT marketplace accounts, shill them! Artists often put their Linktree link in their Twitter profile to make it easier to browse their artist profiles and portfolios. Preparing a website to exhibit your own works as well as your self-introduction as an artist and connecting it to Linktree, This would give a magnificent professional image on you as an NFT artist.

3. Make Yourself Look Bigger

Well, if you are a newly born artist and don’t have many to show off, then go with this one. Theoretically on social media, the more followers you get, the bigger name you appear to have. If you are the one who has invites, you probably choose to get more famous creators being connected to you on Foundation, rather than small names.

As Rome was not built in a day, normally it takes history to create a Twitter account with 1000+ followers. But as you already know it while being in the waiting line of FND invites, tweets with some trend hashtags often get engagements by many and it helps to trigger a great chance to rapidly grow the social media followers. Our previous article The Easiest Guide for NFT Artists: Get Connected to Your Potential Patrons describes some strategic tips to gain your followers quickly.

It’s also good to get connected with curators (LIKE US!) and let them exhibit your NFT works on their platforms, so that you can be confident to show your portfolios with external links (FYI, if you would love to exhibit and promote your NFTs, submit your works from our Submission Page!).

4. Don’t Disturb Artists Too Much

You are now gradually understanding that strategic uses of Twitter is a powerful dream catcher for FND invites. But you need to be aware that impertinent action on Twitter might be considered as a harassment and let you miss the boat! If you are trying to directly contact to some of the FND creators by direct message even though you are not followed by them, don’t to that.

It might have worked couple of months ago, but now too many users are rudely asking a limited number of invites so the artists are unwilling to communicate with those, rather it possibly encourages them to report your action to Twitter or Foundation for harmful attitude. Obviously this would degrade yourself and does not make any good to your career.

5. Connected with Foundation Discord Channel

If you want more fields to appeal yourself to FND artists out of Twitter, take part in their Discord community. Foundation is officially running a community Discord channel where creators, collectors and emerging artists who are waiting for invites can join, discuss and get inspired by each other.

If you are not a gamer Discord is not very familiar to you but it is a mainly chat-based online communication tool. In the Foundation Discord channel, FND artists are allowed to shill their NFTs as well as having a discussions on some technological topics, while also the non-invited artists can communicate with the FND artists under their guidelines and learn some topics each other.

Also you can find useful resources in the channel, such as breaking news, technical updates and report of server error. So if you are an NFT artist who wants to join in FND, keep yourself posted by subscribing it.

Extra: Our Foundation Invites Capsule Toy

There is a great news for you! We are offering a brand-new campaign called “Foundation Invites Capsule Toy“! This capsule toy (a.k.a. Gacha) randomly drops Foundation invites in a small proportion. Of course this won’t charge you at all, but it only gives our exhibition’s partnered artists more chances to get exposed.

This is supported by the donation system, as Foundation creator’s kindness helps us to operate this system. As soon as we receive Foundation invites donations from artists, we add the invites to this capsule toy. The odds are very small, like 1 in 1,000, but we hope we still have at least a great chance for you.

Again, this service is completely non-profit and you will never be asked to pay anything. Please feel free to play the toy and find what other artists create, and if you are very lucky, you will get invited to Foundation!

https://nftartexhibition.net/blog/2021/07/06/foundation-invites-capsule-toy-beta/

Go Easy and Spare Your Time for Creation

Now 5 (and an extra) tips are given to you, but my final advise for you is, go easy and spare your time for creation rather than sticking to a Twitter timeline whole day. It cannot be more painstaking if you are sending lots of replies to random artists and have got no invite after all. As well as being strategic on the social media side, cherish your time and energy to fuel your creativity and make new beautiful works. This may be the standard, but also the most effective way to reach out an FND invite.

When you are at the minting stage for the first time, you probably notice that you may manually set the two parameters “Gas Price” and “Gas Limit” to determine the Gas Fee. Can we set those amounts as low as possible? Unfortunately, no. If we set the mount too low, your minting will not go successful due to errors, or might take forever to mint only a single image file.

So, let me concisely explain what Gas Price and Gas Limit are and what they do.

Gas Price

When you ask the Ethereum block chain to proceed your request, you need to pay some fees for miners on the network. This fee is called Gas Fee and this is calculated as Gas Price x Gas Amount (We previously explained the overview about Gas Fee in the article The Easiest Guide for NFT Artists: Budget Plan for Minting an NFT).

So Gas Price is one of the factors that determines the final amount that you need to pay, and you might already know that Gas Price is always changing dynamically along with how busy the network is. The thing is, although the standard price is shown by Metamask, you are able to customize the Gas Price as you like.

When you open “Customize Gas”, you notice there are three price options labelled Slow, Average and Fast. It shows the higher price you pay, the shorter time you will take to mint your NFT.

And these price options are synchronized with Etherscan’s Gas Price chart too. So you can know what is the standard price as of now.

Customizing Gas Price

You can choose one of the three options, but also need to note that the “Slow” option might take several hours sometimes. So what I suggest you is, set more specific values manually by yourself.

So, open the “Advanced Tab” instead of Basic one on Metamask and you will find the two windows where you set the value. Here you can name your Gas Price as low as possible until a message “Gas Price Extremely Low” comes up.

“Extremely Low Price” alert is an indicator that you should not go further low otherwise your minting might take more than a few hours. So the best value that we recommend you to name is, just one or two Gwei higher than this threshold. It typically takes only a few minutes so you would have an affordable transaction as well as acceptably speedy processing.

Gas Limit

Then, you might wonder what value you should put in the “Gas Limit” tab. Although you can manually set Gas Limit you like, we strongly recommend you to leave it unchanged from the suggested value.

Gas Limit is a maximum gas amount that you permit the network to consume for minting your NFT. If the network use gas more than the limit you set, the minting process will immediately fail and ultimately you might waste your money minting nothing.

Gas consumption varies depending on the transaction and it does not always consume the 100% maximum amount that you set. So to make your transaction smooth and to avoid unnecessary expense, just setting it as suggested is the best way to minimize your payment.

Be Flexible!

So now I hope you understand how to set the right Gas Price and gas Limit manually! It is always nice to be flexible for setting value with some margin because Gas Price goes dynamically up and down. Minting multiples and experiencing trials and errors would be the key to success!