How I Made an NFT (and how you can too!)
In this video, I talk about NFTs: what they are, who makes them, how I made one, and how you can too. There's a lot of hype around NFTs right now and we could be in a bubble that may burst once the hype dies down.
Some NFTs are stupid, some are cool, some are somewhere in between! I'm not sure if they'll be the future of collecting or not, but it's something to keep your eye on.
What’s the Deal with NTFs?
I know that some people watch this channel for stock market–related videos and others are more into the creative ways to make money, so I thought I’d take a break from talking stocks to talking about selling art. More specifically NFTs.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a DM on Instagram talking about something called NFTs and the possibility of doing a collab that could bring in some decent money. Since this channel is all about exploring the different ways to make money online, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to give it a shot. So in this video, I’ll break down what NFTs are, how people are making money with them, how I helped create, and how you can sell your own NFTs as well.
NFTs have been getting a lot of buzz lately, but if you have yet to dive into the NFT rabbit hole or really take a closer look at what they are, I’ll try to quickly break down what it is and how you can make money from it. Then, we’ll get to the NFT that I worked on. If you already know what NFTs are, feel free to skip to the next chapter.
NFT stands for non-fungible token which – straight from Wikipedia – is a type of cryptographic token which represent something unique. It’s used to create verifiable digital scarcity and digital ownership. Lately, this has applied to things like crypto art and digital collectibles.
I first heard about this from digital artist Beeple, who started making his artwork available for purchase as an NFT. When I first heard about it, I was completely confused by the concept… because you could just download Beeple’s art as a jpeg pretty easily, so why are people spending a lot of money for it?
Many have made the comparison between owning a print of something like a Picasso painting compared to owning an actual Picasso.
By utilizing the blockchain, you could own an original piece of digital art by someone like Beeple… and just like other forms of collecting, you can keep the work in your collection or sell it to another collector.
For example, in October of 2020, an art collector spent $67,000 on a 10-second 3D animation NFT by Beeple. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, he sold that NFT for 6.6 million dollars. Not a bad return on investment!
Beeple also has an auction on Christie’s right now, featuring a mosaic of his first 5000 images from his everyday project he started 13 years ago. Bidding is now up to 3.75 million dollars.
But for the normies who don’t have millions sitting around to spend frivolously, he recently did a drop on an NFT marketplace called MakersPlace where he released 105 editions of his selects for only 1 dollar. This means 105 people could buy a Beeple collectible for just a buck. I decided to give it a shot and so did about 13,000 other people, and it crashed the site. They ended up doing a raffle the next day and while I didn’t win, I’m happy for the 105 people who can now flip that dollar investment into a 5 or 6 digit profit.
OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, said their monthly sales volume grew from 8 million dollars in January to over 86 million dollars in February. That’s some pretty explosive growth in not only the popularity of NFTs, but the amount people are willing to spend on individual pieces. As a niche investment slash collector market, this could be a bubble that bursts once hype dies down and could lead to big losses by those who decide to buy.
As someone who’s dabbled in 3D programs and really has an appreciation for 3D art, I love seeing artists I admire be able to garner pretty high prices for their work – thanks to this adoption of crypto art. NFTs provide digital artists a way to uniquely sell their work to collectors.
But it’s not just for digital artwork. The band Kings of Leon released three different NFTs for their new album, allowing the owner of the NFT perks like 4 front-row tickets for each of their tours for life. Those are currently being auctioned off, with the highest bid in the $12,000 range.
You also had Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey releasing his very first tweet as a non-fungible token. Right now, the highest bid is for 2.5 million dollars… for a tweet.
And the co-founder of Twitch – Justin Kan – (whom I once photographed) is selling some Youtube videos as NFT… stories? I dunno.
And then in the sports world, you have NBA TopShot which are like video trading cards allowing you to own a video highlight as a collectible.
And it’s just that – it’s a collectible. You don’t actually own the video clip and you can’t use these types of NFTs for commercial purposes. It’s just a collector’s item that can be bought and sold like anything else.
Here’s where I’m at with NFTs: I love the idea of artists being able to adopt NFTs to earn more money for their work. I do think that once this initial hype dies down, we’ll be left to see what people actually value as NFTs and what doesn’t work so well as an NFT. I think random people selling one of their viral tweets as an NFT might not be quite the investment as a piece of digital artwork from a notable artist.
But that’s where the other factor comes into play: social popularity. It seems the NFTs that sell for the most are from creators that have a large and established following. Of course Beeple or Logan Paul or Jack Dorsey can make millions selling NFTs, but it seems like a talented artist without a social media following may have a hard time standing out and selling their work.
Some NFTs have multiple editions available – like the 105 editions Beeple released for $1. Other times, there’s just one available. Obviously, this affects the price – supply and demand, baby. DJ Steve Aoki just did a drop of an open collection on Nifty Gateway with two NFTs. This allows for 9,999 purchases during the time the collection is open, which for this was just 5 minutes. The prices were set $2,500 for one and $5,000 for the other. He sold 618 of the 2500 dollar piece and he sold 280 editions of the 5000 piece for a total of 1.945 million dollars in five minutes.
I did find an interesting Twitter thread discussing how musicians could use NFTs to flip the industry so that the revenue share is a little more favorable to the artist themselves. Since musicians only get 12% of all revenue in the music business and with streaming taking over, music has been undervalued for quite some time. Even smaller artists with a dedicated fanbase may be able to generate some decent revenue by utilizing NFTs.
Pretty interesting.
My NFT Collab
Since 3D renders tend to be some of the most popular NFT art pieces, I was excited when 3D artist Jonathan Nash hit me up to collab on an NFT. He wanted me to create the music to accompany his 3D animation.
Since he recently had an NFT of an astronaut diving into an iPhone and my wife and I recently did a shoot with an astronaut skateboarding, I thought it’d be cool to combine the two to create an endlessly looping animation.
He got to work designing and animating and sent me over his first version. I then got to work creating the music.
Since I’ve had a lot of requests to cover more music production in my videos, I’ll dive in a little bit to Ableton Live to show you how I created the track and my thoughts behind making it work well for the video. Now if you absolutely don’t care about that process and just want to get to the final version, feel free to skip ahead.
Ableton Live
So I create my music in Ableton Live. But first, I wanted to get an idea of what the tempo was for the animation. Since we have the astronaut getting some airtime and then landing back on the halfpipe, I wanted the music to be in sync with the actions on screen.
Now, there may be a better way to do this, but I dropped the render into Adobe Premiere, figured out where it started looping, and then divided that section into four and placed kick drums on each quarter to get an idea of the tempo.
I then dropped this video with the kick drums into Ableton, which gave me a tempo of about 110 beats per minute.
My initial thoughts for this were:
1. I want it to have some synthy, electro instrumentation to match the look and concept of the animation
2. It needs to be fairly simple since I only have about 15 seconds to work with
3. I want it to feel somewhat hypnotic so when it loops over and over, it won’t drive you crazy.
I started with an arpeggiating synth bass that I got from Serum. I decided to go with A major for the key, because it sounded light and happy which is what I wanted. The bass just holds the A note.
I then added a pad, which provides a little atmosphere and texture. Once again, just holding the same note.
And then another layer, with a little bit of a lighter sounding synth. This has the A note holding throughout, and then I move to the D and then the E. The D adds a little bit of intrigue since it’s not in the A major chord. The E then resolves that, as it’s the fifth in A major.
Then, in serum again, I found another pad that emphasizes the upbeats. I made this essentially A major 2nd inversion because the E is now the lowest note. I did leave out the third – the C# – just to keep it light and airy.
And then I knew this needed a simple melody, so I stuck mostly to the A major chord. Nothing special here – I just messed around on my MIDI controller until I found a pattern I liked and then drew it into Ableton. For the sound, I chose this really nice pluck that has great attack and decay which helps it both stand out as a melody, but also blend in nicely to the atmosphere of the rest of the track.
I did add a plugin called Movement to this lead synth, which adds a filter that evolves and adds some subtle depth and interest to the sound.
Okay, since I’m relying on the pulsating synths to be the rhythm and not using drums, I also wanted to integrate the rhythmic sound a skateboard makes to further tie into the animation.
For this, I used a plugin called Arcade which is really cool and has a massive library of samples.
I actually found skateboard samples here that worked really well. I timed one of them to really emphasize the astronaut landing back down on the halfpipe. I also put some autopan on that track so it bounces from the left ear to the right ear.
We’re almost done, just a few more sweeteners were needed. I added this white noise riser to sync with the astronaut going down the halfpipe and give that neon rainbow light some sound to tie in with it. I also brought in this crispy whoosh sound so that every time the astronaut spins on the left side, that sound will trigger.
I wanted to embellish that spin a little more, so I added this arpeggiating synth roll. I added a flanger and then another plugin called RC 20 which gives the sample more atmosphere and movement.
I also added reverb to most of the elements with Valhalla Vintage Verb, and the track was finished.
I find sometimes simple is better, especially when I want visuals to the main focus, so there isn’t much complexity to it, but it’s satisfying.
Our NFT
So mostly thanks to Jonathan’s brilliant design and animating, here’s my first NFT I collaborated on.
We just dropped it over on Makersplace, so if you’re an NFT whale, feel free to place your bids!
But in all seriousness, I find this space to be interesting and innovative and I would love to create some NFTs to give to you, my lovely viewers, if there is ever any potential for them to be of any value. We’ll see.
Making Your Own
If you want to make your own NFTs, it’s actually pretty simple. Start by downloading a browser extension called Metamask. This serves as your Ethereum wallet. Then you can head to a site like OpenSea.io. You’ll create an account that’s connected to your Metamask wallet. Just follow the prompts to get it setup.
Then, you can create your first NFT by simply uploading it. This can be a jpeg or a video file or an mp3… whatever. Then you can choose the parameters of the listing, so you can sell it at a set price or do an auction. Now to start listing, you need to pay a one-time fee called a Gas Fee which is .035974 Ethereum, which is about $60 right now, but if Ethereum goes down in value, it could be cheaper for you.
One thing with NFTs is you can also collect a percentage of the sales when it re-sells on the secondary market, which can be another way to earn additional income.
And that’s about all there is to it! It’s surprisingly pretty simple to do.
Final Thoughts
Even though as it stands now, the NFT world seems like a playground for those with a social media following and those with a lot of money, if you are someone in the creative field that has yet to dive into the world of NFTs, I would recommend keeping it on your radar. Whether it’s collaborating with others or thinking of your innovative way to utilize NFTs to support your work, this could be the way the future of collectibles is heading, so it’s worth knowing about and maybe even releasing a few pieces of your own.