Interview with ICDinos NFT: The Jurassic Park of the Internet Computer
We interviewed Michael, one of the founders of ICDinos, who told us that their idea for their project is that users will purchase a dinosaur egg on mint day. The dinosaur eggs will hatch when ready, hatch into a baby dinosaur that will grow and be used in the future in a p2e game, including DINO tokens.
1. How would you describe your artistic style?
I would say that our artistic style is colorful, bright, and fun!
Dinosaurs are usually known as quite scary creatures, but we wanted to portray a cuter, fun, and loveable side to the dinosaurs - yet keeping in line with the realistic attributes that they did have for each species when they were around.
The feedback for the artwork of our dino babies has been incredible, with many of the community complimenting the high quality that we have for our dinosaurs, eggs, backgrounds, as well as our marketing material and website.
2. What drew you to NFT creation rather than traditional canvas-based art?
NFTs are extremely powerful - and they offer the ability not only to sell your incredible artwork but also allow these tokens to be used in many creative ways.
The flexibility of the Internet Computer has allowed us to change our NFT layers based on several factors - including time held, age, and allowing us to ‘hatch’ an egg.
Allowing users to buy their own NFTs will enable them to participate in the vision that we have for developing a fun P2E (Play 2 earn) game for the Internet Computer.
3. Are there any artists who have inspired you? What do you like about their work?
The primary type of inspiration for our project, to be honest, would be from Pokemon and Tamagotchi, and Neopets.
I always loved Pokemon growing up. I collected the cards and watched all of the shows. Tamagotchi and Gigapets were also extremely popular for me as a child. I mixed that with hours of playing the addictive online game “Neopets” - I think it is fair to say it has given me good inspiration for IC Dinos.
4. Can you tell us about your project?
Yes absolutely!
By minting an IC Dinos dinosaur egg, you will have, first of all, joined an encouraging community who are all passionate about the vision of the project of dinos.
You will receive your unique dinosaur egg, which in time, you will be able to hatch into a baby dinosaur randomized from over 20 dinosaur species and a range of different colors - including a possibility to get a rare breed that will be more valuable.
In the second stage of our roadmap, we also plan to allow users to grow these dinosaurs into teenagers and then adult dinosaurs - along with some fantastic perks and incentives for being holders in our project.
Our big plan is to develop an exciting p2e game in which all the dinos will be used to gain DINOS tokens.
6. How many NFTs will be minted? Can you talk us through the process of how you create the art?
Our supply for the project is 8888, and all the dinosaur eggs are generated from different layers.
The art is drawn and sketched, to begin with, and then it is touched up by our artist using tools on the computer, and we spend a lot of time to ensure our art is high quality and looks amazing.
7. Will people be able to breed, stake, rent your NFT or will it ever be in a game?
At this stage, we have decided not to go down the road of ‘breeding’ dinosaurs or giving genders. It is possible in the future, but for now, we want to focus on the ability to age the dinosaurs first and then include them in our dinosaur portal with the future p2e game in development.
8. What benefits do you think the Internet Computer has over other L1 blockchains when it comes to creating NFTs?
One of the big things for us was the flexibility to change layers in the NFTs with minimal gas fees. Our developers have become very familiar with Motoko and have made significant progress on our dinosaur panel on-chain to manage our eggs/dinosaurs.
DFINITY Internet Computer has excellent potential and is an exciting technology, and we are looking forward to seeing and being a part of its growth over the next years.
We have also been very encouraged by the welcoming of the DFINITY community into the space, making our job easier to create an exciting product!
9. What other art have you seen that excites you in the Internet Computer NFT ecosystem?
I love and have collected a large amount of NFTs launched on Internet Computer through Entrepot.
For example, the high-quality art of Pokedstudio and BTC Flower I loved and the simplicity yet attractiveness of other projects such as IC Kitties and IC Puppies. I also love the brilliant concept of Cronics, which the Toniq Lab team had done a fantastic job in.
10. What excites you most about your launch and which date is your launch?
Our launch date is very soon! March 6th on Entrepot.
We are incredibly excited to launch with Entrepot, and they have been an excellent team to work with and will be helping with a few technical aspects of the hatching of the eggs to begin with.
We are so excited and have received such fantastic feedback from the community and other IC NFT founders about what we are doing and look forward to kicking things off.
I know that users will love their dinosaurs and the huge plans we have for the future for development, and we believe it’s going to be pretty groundbreaking.
We recently have also been approved for a grant from DFINITY, which allows us to push forward faster on our plans!
11. What advice would you give to anyone trying to enter into the world of NFTs?
I think the most significant way to start is to learn by doing!
Start by investing in an NFT project that you like - do your research, the founders, the roadmap, get a feel for the community, and then learn as you go. The world of NFTs is fascinating, and it is changing all of the time.
With our collection, in particular, we have had some parents saying that they would love to buy some dinosaur eggs for their children to teach them not only about dinosaurs but also about investing, crypto, and NFTs - so we think that our project is a perfect opportunity for those who want to learn more about NFT’s.
12. Do you have further plans to work with ICP Squad in the future after this initial sale?
Yes, we are open to working with ICP Squad after this and believe that they are doing some excellent work for the IC community and helping promote different collections.
13. Why do you think NFTs have become so valuable in such a short space of time?
NFTs have changed what it means to support different projects!
You can show your support by purchasing an NFT that is unique, and it can reap amazing financial rewards and allow you to be part of a community.
Although this technology has been around for a while, it’s only really starting to hit the mainstream where I am in Oceania. Many people outside of technology backgrounds are beginning to see the potential and come on board.
In the future, I expect to see many things in society be used as NFT’s for example, supporting your favorite music artists, buying tickets to concerts, and more.
14. Please tell us about your team
I am the main founder of the IC Dinos project and have owned my own app development business for the last few years here in Oceania.
Because I have already been involved in the development scene in the past, I have been blessed to have a pretty good team already established, which has made the development of IC Dinos just that little bit easier.
We have an incredible UI/UX designer, illustrator, two developers who are working on coding in Motoko on-chain, an exceptional react developer that takes care of our website and portal, and an excellent helpful team for marketing and promotion.
We will be expanding the team when it comes to developing the p2e game, which we expect to see significant progress on over the next few months.
15. What advantages do you believe you have over other competitors?
Some exciting perks about our project are that our NFTs are actually “4 in 1”.
You receive a dinosaur egg, baby dinosaur, teen, and an adult dinosaur that grows with time - rather than just with one superficial NFT layer.
I believe our project has top-notch artwork, our brand is clean, our vision and concept are clear, our website and portal are fast and easy to use, and we can build things in a concise amount of time due to already being involved in app development.
We also believe something unique we have with our NFTs is hatching and then growing the dinosaurs. We also have multiple breeds, some rare species, and colors, and the more dinosaurs you hold will reap more rewards!
We will have our own DINOS token in which we are going to air-drop a certain amount to dino holders and implement this into our P2E game that will be under development.
Also, to top it all off, our dinosaurs theme is excellent because everybody loves dinosaurs, whether a child or an adult!
16. Do you have partners? Tell us about them
Throughout our launch, we have formed relationships with many incredible IC NFT founders - which has been helpful to us.
The IC community is one of the warmest and most welcoming communities I have faced, and this makes it easy to network and get advice and learn.
We recently have had calls with IC Puppies/Kitties, a few of the Toniq members, the Moonwalker crew, and many other IC NFT collections who have agreed on giveaways to their communities' whitelist spots or dinosaur eggs NFTs.
We are grateful for the opportunity to help build the IC blockchain alongside everybody and have been fortunate enough to have been involved reasonably early due to some connections with some amazing people!
17. Tell us about the challenges you face while building your project?
Well, although the vision for our project has been pretty clear from the start - one of the challenges we have faced is just getting all of the little details right. From the rarity of the dinosaurs, the incentives for holding, the up and coming air-drop, as well as working out pricing, supply, and when to launch.
We feel those minor details are essential to a successful launch, and we have finally got those things we feel right and are gearing up to the launch of the sale of the eggs on Entrepot!
18. What are your short and long-term achievements and targets?
Short term, we want to start by just launching the egg sale successfully - obviously, we would love to sell out of the dino eggs fast - which would give us funding to move forward with the vision of the p2e game and roadmap.
In the long term, we would love to see this turn into one of the blue-chip projects of the IC up there with the best, with a great community who love the collection and the play-to-earn environment we want to create.
We would love to be seen as the ‘pokemon’ of the internet computer - with users wanting to collect a variety of dinosaurs and color species which will later be used in our exciting p2e game.
19. Give us some details about your roadmap?
We have a carefully planned roadmap that we tick off on our website to ensure we are hitting each target step by step.
On top of this, DFINITY has just approved a developer grant which allows us to also stay accountable to them to meet certain milestones to receive their funding.
Initially, we will start with the presale and public sale of the dino eggs to the IC community.
After this, there will be a short period before the eggs can be hatched (2 weeks), and during this time, we will do extra marketing and promotion for the project, which will help drive the demand for the dinosaur eggs up before the hatch date.
On hatch day, we will have ensured that everybody knows about the rarities of the dinosaurs the perks for holding, and we would have made significant progress on our dinosaur portal for users to log in with their IC wallets to see their eggs and dinosaurs within there.
About a week after hatch day, we will be air-dropping an exciting air-drop to all Dino Holders, which will be able to be traded on the market at Entrepot. (more info to be announced on this after mint day!).
Moving forward after the hatching date, we will allow users to trade and buy on the marketplace. Users will assign names to their dinosaurs and see more attributes for each dino. Then we will activate the ability for dinosaurs to grow into a teen and adults based on some cool time variables.
The big picture is an exciting ecosystem of dinosaurs that can be traded and used within a fun and addictive p2e game to earn DINOS tokens.
The DINO tokens will be able to purchase some exciting things, and we will announce this in due time.
We are so excited about all of the things we will showcase to the IC community and encourage anybody to look at our full roadmap at www.icdinos.io to see for themselves.
20. Any plan to move into in the future Metaverse?
Yes, we are always looking for ways to adapt our collection and project to newer technology, and I believe having our own eco-system of dinosaurs is a great step towards this.
We have also mentioned looking into VR/Augmented reality options on our roadmap. We will always look at ways to add value to the project and move with any new technologies available to us.
We believe that our community will continue to help with many ideas, and the possibilities for our dino-verse are endless!
21. Please tell us about you- your name, position in the project, your achievements, etc. so that we can introduce you on top of the page in our blog where this article will be published later.
My name is Michael, and I am the main founder of the IC Dinos project.
I live in Oceania and have owned my own app development business for a number of years and been involved in developing mobile apps, websites, and marketing for a number of years.
This has allowed transitioning to blockchain development and the NFT world to be reasonably straightforward, and our developers have picked up and are learning quickly.
22. Do you have plans to reach out to other dinosaur communities to get them interested in your project?
Absolutely!
We feel that although we already have a reasonably good presence in the IC ecosystem and space, there is so much more marketing and expansion of our project that can be done.
Once the public sale has taken place, we will move to our secondary marketing plan, which will allow us to continue growing the presence of IC Dinos online and ideally bring a lot of new users across to the IC - perhaps even from other blockchains.
Not only this, but we want to target dinosaur-loving communities and get them introduced to NFTs, crypto, and the blockchain. We have already been in touch with some quite large dinosaur-loving communities to pitch our project to them with some great responses.
We also have had some feedback from parents saying they would love to buy dinosaur eggs for their children and educate them on investing crypto and NFTs as well as dinosaurs themselves!
Thank you so much for your time, and we look forward to seeing you hatch some dino eggs with us!
Graphic Designer - Jay Damani: Twitter | Instagram
Disclaimer
Sponsored Content : Dfinity Community does not necessarily endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim to provide you with information regarding important projects and developments in the Internet Computer ecosystem, readers should do their own research and carry full responsibility for their decisions, and this article should not be considered as investment advice. Please note that every effort is made by DC to vet projects we promote