Interview with IC Spliffs: NFTs with a Blaze of Glory
We interviewed Doghy and Sined, co-creators from ICSpliffs, a project that, in the long term, aims to be the first comic-book NFT from the IC ecosystem, which will be educational and funny in equal measure. They are passionate about technology, especially blockchain, due to its high potential.
1. How would you describe your artistic style?
The ICSpliffsters are drawn in a comic-book manner, the NFTs being imagined by our team to resemble cartoon-like heroes.
2. What drew you to NFT creation rather than traditional canvas-based art?
With all due respect to traditional art, we could say that the main reason we directed our attention to the NFTs area is that we understand the value behind the concept. Ten years ago, NFTs were a glimpse of the future; now, the future is here. We want to be among the pioneers of digital art.
3. Are there any artists who have inspired you? What do you like about their work?
Our inspiration came naturally, but it has influences that have origins on blockchain at other projects and pop culture. One significant influence is the animated joint narrating Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa’s movie. The talking joint cracks jokes in the film as a starting point for our design, but the Spliffsters evolved a lot past that.
4. What made you create NFTs?
We were into NFTs for a while, and one day we were stoked by the idea of Spliffmeister and his Spliffsters. The whole story and a large part of the design concepts came naturally, and we figured that it could be entertaining and educational to try and build a project around it. Our artist's ambitions and hard work culminated in a beautiful community and a gorgeous and hilarious NFT collection.
5. Can you tell us about your project?
Our project aims to be the first joint collection on the blockchain, being veritable CHAINSMOKERS. In the long term, we will also be the first comic-book NFT from the IC ecosystem. It will be educational and funny in equal measure.
Another big motivation was to gather all the stoners or CBD users from this NFTs ecosystem into a large community and provide real-life advantages.
6. How many NFTs will be minted? Can you talk us through the process of how you create the art?
Like most of the collections, the ICSpliffsters will contain 10k NFTS. There will be 9995 ICSpliffsters, 4 Elder Spliffsters and, the one and only, Spliffmeister. The star of the show will be unique, his assets only appearing once. The Elders are the only golden ICSplifsters. We have some special mints, but my lips are sealed about this.
We had most of the project design sketched, but we did a few creative brainstorming sessions with the artist to get to the final form.
The art creation was pretty simple afterwards because our artist was able to draw the layers just as we imagined them.
7. Will people be able to breed, stake, rent your NFT, or will it ever be in a game?
As for right now, our focus is on the next phase of the ICSpliffsters project, the launch of the comic book. The holders of the ICSpliffsters NFTs will have significant advantages in the next phase.
8. What benefits do you think the Internet Computer has over other L1 blockchains when it comes to creating NFTs?
The main benefits we found in the Internet Computer ecosystem are the on-chain storing of the NFTs and the low fees.
9. What other art have you seen that excites you in the Internet Computer NFT ecosystem?
We are aware of most ICFamily projects and are collaborating with a great deal of them. We also hold some NFTs from other collections from which we do giveaways to our community. We like the artsy ones, but we love the ones with a utility behind them.
10. What excites you most about your launch, and which date is your launch?
Our launch is on the 11th of February, and we are thrilled that we are so close to bringing these bad boys on-chain. The Toniq Labs people are already preparing them for deployment as we speak, so our excitement is justified.
11. What advice would you give to anyone trying to enter into the world of NFTs?
For future developers would be to do everything with passion and build something great! And for newbies into the minting or buying NFTs would be to look at the art, the community, and the roadmap before investing in anything.
12. Do you have further plans to work with ICP Squad in the future after this initial sale?
Yes, we are determined to continue building with other projects from the ecosystem after the public sale. The end of the public sale is the start of the next phase of the project; the ICSpliffsters Comic-book.
13. Can you envisage a future where the most valuable NFT space is on the Internet Computer?
In my opinion, this will come with time due to the Internet Computer benefits. Don’t get me wrong, it gained considerable traction already, but we still have a long way ahead.
14. Why do you think NFTs have become so valuable in such a short space of time?
The NFTs wave is the natural way in which digital art should evolve. The value is taken from the early adopters and the visionaries. Everybody wants a piece of art they can own and show to everybody. It’s the beginning of a new era in the ownership of digital art.
We are convinced that when all the mainstream understands the value behind the technology, we see more things sold as NFTs. Things like cars, property, or even memberships for clubs or gyms. This is undoubtedly farfetched, but we see it as a glimpse of the future…a future we want to take part in from the early days!
15. Tell us about your team?
Our team consists of two co-creators and one artist based in Eastern Europe, Romania. One of us works in the IT field as a programmer and the other in the healthcare area as a dental technician. We got ourselves an artist experienced in animated designs to bring our ideas to life.
We are passionate about technology, especially blockchain, due to its high potential. Speaking of “high,” another passion of ours is the mother herb - weed! We came across NFTs about a year or two ago, and we wanted to step into the digital art domain.
16. What advantages do you believe you have over other competitors?
We don’t consider any other projects as competitors. For once, conceptual, the 10k Spliffs collection has no other joint collection to compete with. Also, we consider all the serious projects that are here to stay as partners or future partners. That’s one thing we love about the ICFamily projects; we are united, and we grow strong together!
17. Do you have partners? Tell us about them
We’ve partnered up with many other Internet Computer projects (ICPuppies, ICKitties, ICAliens, ICKoalas, ICSquad, ICKitsune, and many more) with Twitter pages of IC NFTs or IC news. We also have real-life partnerships with the weed&smoking accessories store “LegalizeIt” and with Kady’s, a fantastic artist that will do the statues of Spliffmeister and the Elders.
Our team also has community members directly involved in the pre-launch campaign, which helped us a lot.
18. Tell us about the challenges you face while building your project?
We had a lot of fun times during the development and, also, we had a lot to learn, and we perfected many skills.
One of the significant challenges was growing a great community organically. We aimed to unite such a large number of people, and it was a bit overwhelming, but we grew into it.
19. What are your short and long-term achievements and targets?
One the short-term specter, we are happy to have achieved a fully developed and ready to launch an NFT collection, and we target to be sold out so we can move forward with the development of the ICSpliffster Comic-book.
In the long term, we target to continue our great community's growth and obtain more benefits for the ICSpliffsters holders.
20. Give us some details about your roadmap?
Q4 2021:
-Point zero of our NFT project.
- We put together our team, and we come up with the idea, name, and design of the project.
- We created the Discord server and the Twitter page.
- Marketing, lots of giveaways, and collabs with other ICFamilly projects
- Negotiations with real-world brands and announce future collaborations.
Q1 2022:
- Project launch date was delayed to early February.
- Got new partners in our team.
- Hosted games for our community and lots of giveaways on social media.
- Launched articles on DSCVR and Medium, including the origin story of the ICSpliffsters.
- Launch of SpliffSters website.
- Started our collab with Kristian Dimofte, aka Kady’s, a well-known artist; you can check out his unique art at https://linktr.ee/Kadys"
- Public-sale phase is set to be on the 11th of February 2022 on Entrepot.
- Our sale will be structured into six tiers, starting from 0.5 ICP and increasing with 0.1 ICP each tier.
- When all the ICSpliffsters are minted, we’ll put 40% of the ICP from the public sale into the charity fund.
- The lucky minter of Spliffmeister will receive a gold statue of his NFT, made by Kady’s.
- The minters of the 4 Elders will receive a silver replica of their NFT.
- We intend to apply for the Dfinity Foundation grant that will help our development and facilitate the next steps of the project.
- Sold out of the collection marks the ground-zero of the ICSpliffsters comic-book volumes that we intend to drop next.
Begin the marketplace sales on Entrepot of the ICSpliffsters NFTs; significant mention: we’ll be putting 20% of our royalties into the charity fund.
- Continue to grow our community and reward them via giveaways and contests.
Q2 2022:
- The start of the marketing phase of the ICSpliffsters NFT comic book.
- Holders of the ICSpliffsters NFTs will get to participate in the open debates regarding the content of the comic book.
- Set up the main story arch for our comic book.
- We’ll sneak peek parts of the comic book and announce the launching date of the project by the end of Q2.
- We intend to continue our collaborations with the ICFamilly projects and give the community as much value as possible.
21. Any plan to move into Metaverse?
As for now, we are deep into the development of the ICSpliffsters Comic-book, and our efforts go 100% there. We are not saying “No” to Metaverse; we indeed will join the joint!
22. Will your NFT be tokenized in the future?
We don’t have an exact plan for this chapter. We thought to reward holders by airdropping them a certain number of “buddz” for a certain number of ICSpliffster detained by our community, but it's not for sure yet. We’ll announce news regarding this matter by the last quarter of this year.
Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions 😊