#10: Nick Greenwalt - $15 million in NFTs, designing, building on YouTube

Hey everyone, welcome to Brain Blast. Today we got Nick Greenwald on. He is a motion designer and the founder of The Wanderers. They're an NFT collection that have done over 4,500 ETH in trading volume. That is like $15 million, $13.5, $14, somewhere around that. He is an incredible designer and has grown into a leader and so much more. Um, I'm happy to present this conversation with Nick Greenwald. Hello.

Hey, what's happening?

How you doing?

You hear me all right? Yeah, you're all— yeah, you're all good, man. How's your day going?

It's going good. It's really busy, but it's going well. How about you?

All good over here. Um, yeah, I know you're a busy dude, so we could just hop in if that's cool by you.

All right, yeah. So this is gonna be— it's a video podcast, right?

Yeah, we could post video. That sounds good. All right, um, let me get situated.

All right, from around—

yeah, so, um, I found Wanderers, I guess, maybe a few months back and thought the art was incredible. And then the floor rose like crazy, and I was like, ah, this is, uh, I'm not gonna be able to buy that. Um, and now I saw Wandernauts dropped, and I bought a couple. Um, I'm really excited about it. Can you tell me a little bit about the origins of the project and and the roadmap and what the future looks like?

Yeah, so we launched the original collection Wanderers in the summer of last year, in 2021, and that is a collection of 8,888 pilots' first-person point of view, and this is a story-based NFT collection with animation and story and sound— music, I should say. And, you know, our, our whole focus is telling an intergalactic story that kind of puts everyone at the forefront. And, you know, when we launched, we were— we've been very mysterious the whole time about what, uh, everything, um what everything means. And that's kind of what I think made the community so strong and what kind of drew everyone in is trying to figure out the secrets behind everything. Because that's what's different about a first-person point of view collection versus an avatar collection is we like to say you are the avatar. And people making stories about it, like, why does my pilot have a beer in one hand and a chicken wing in the other, and the windows are cracked, and then like, is this like a high-speed getaway or something like that? And so, you know, we had like, you know, there's secret traits that are invisible that are really rare and people don't know what they mean. And we, over time, dropped a lot of lore and mysteries and a really incredible, animated movie that, that kind of blew everyone's socks off when it revealed the origins of everyone's Wanderers and how they all tied together, which is expertly executed, if I may, if I may say so myself. This video is called Wanderers Genesis, for anyone listening, if you would like to go check it out on YouTube. A lot of people, they're probably like, you know, they've seen NFT movies and they're like, how, you know, how good is this? But ours is very good. Yeah, very—

I saw it, it's, it's incredible. Yeah, yeah.

So thank you. Um, and, uh, we've got a second one in production right now, very, very exciting. We're seeing how we can, um, really up the stakes on it, um, in like a more— you know, the first one that I, I like to think it was interactive because it involved everybody's characters in a way that like the twist was that everyone was the main characters, but that was like a passive experience. And with this next one, I would like to try to do something more interesting that can only be done with NFTs while you're watching it. We're making it right now. We don't know if it's possible, but we're making it. Hoping that it can be possible. So we'll see how, how this pays off. So maybe if you, if you're listening to this in 6 months, let me know if we ended up doing it. Um, but yeah, so that's really fun. We're having a lot of fun making this again. Um, so yeah, uh, then we dropped, um, our Planet Pass collection where everyone got a free Planet Companion And when you claimed them, you could name your planets. Planets were all— they had pre-generated names, but when you claimed them, you could name them whatever you want. And people just had so much fun and came up with such amazing lore and descriptions and names for them. And this will become part of a bigger ecosystem with planet visitation and management where you can— set visit prices for each other. And when you visit them, you can stamp your visit into a passport that is also an NFT and kind of flex on each other and trade them around. The whole Planet Pass thing is not fully realized yet. It's a pretty big dev lift on our end, but we're gonna be rolling this out in more and more phases. And then that leads to actually this week where we, where we've dropped our third collection, the long-awaited avatars that are revealing your pilots. Um, and so, you know, with each, uh, collection, we, we kind of really want to like make it more and more complex and complicated and, and different. So, you know, for The Wanderers collection, they were super, super complex in terms of animation, and they had 8 music tracks and, and tons of traits and something like almost 4 quadrillion possible variations. And then for, for the Planet Pass, they— we actually did generative sound where each like a layer of a planet had sound effects tied to their attributes. And when— so when The planets were all rendered. The planets could have different music that generated with them depending on what kind of— if you had a fiery planet and a rocky terrain, those two traits would combine and you have a unique musical component for that planet. And then now, and obviously the naming feature was really cool as well. And if you rename your planet, now, like, you know, you could rename it today, you could rename it tomorrow, and that's all metadata that's actually changing. Like, if you go on OpenSea and look at it, the metadata is really changing. And now, so now for the avatars, what can we do that's different? Again, we, instead of this, you, we, instead of having like one basic character throughout the entire collection We have 16 characters that all have their own pools of attributes that can mix and match and are all unique and also all unique to each hero. And they're all animated. All the heroes have different theme songs. All the heroes are— have their own highlight vignette animations that play in the middle. So there's just— we have around 900 traits, which is about like 9 times more than we did in— I think Wanderers and Planet Pets had like— were just pushing 200 to 300. So that's not 9 times more. I'm not a math guy, but maybe 3 times more. But still, like, just crazy, crazy amount more complexity. We're not— we didn't even try to calculate the, the amount of, uh, possible variation on this because I don't even know how to wrap my head around it. Um, but just like cranked it up in every possible way. And then they all have generative names, generative lore.

Um, yeah, yeah, mine is a bliss dealer. One of them is awesome.

That's awesome.

And then, uh, OpenSea's not pulling up right now, but I think one is It looks like a zombie or like undead of some sort. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

So they all have those generative names, descriptions, and we have a little feature where you can actually change the states of them by like, which is really changing the metadata on how you choose to display them. So, you know, it's not really like this, the I guess it's kind of hard to describe, but the, you know, if you want your NFT to only display as an image in certain areas instead of the whole thing animating as an MP4 with music, you can go onto our website and, and actually change the NFT state of it, right? I mean, we provide the options to download them all. You can download the MP4, you can download the GIF, you can download the the PNG, um, and just go ahead and do that. But we're also giving the option to actually change the metadata state of it. So like if you have like an NFT gallery, um, and you don't want it to be animating but you want it to stay as an NFT, you can actually toggle these states to it. And we have it, we have the ability to basically add unlimited states to it. So I think someone said like, you know, in 10 years if if MP6 becomes like a thing that everyone is like a default format, we can basically add that to the, you know, to the Rift, we call it, and that will become an option for everyone to change their NFT to. It's our way of basically future-proofing these forever.

Got you. And so who is on the team? I know on the page it says you, and then is it Emerald? He or she is a programmer in Scotland, is that right?

Yeah, so it's myself and Emerald. We met to essentially launch in August of last year. Emerald does all the smart contracts programming, basically all the big brain stuff. And then Lando does all the music and sound design. And Rupert Froggington does all of the lore and the script writing and basically like, I would say manages the characters. Like if there's anything to know about the universe and the lore, that's what Rupert does. And then there's also other artists on the team. Like I've basically been doing, you know, I would say I'm an art lead, So for Wanderers, I basically did all of the art and animation. And then now I've kind of been, as this project has kind of, you know, become more and more of like a real thing, you know, gone from like a project to a business essentially. Then now I've become from like the artist to like the art lead and now have been doing less and less art. So Planet Pass probably did, you know, 50% of it. And now on WanderNuts, like you know, like 15 to 25% of it and brought on another incredible animator who, and an illustrator to help out. Also, I can't draw faces, which was a big problem doing Avatar. That's why, that's a big reason why we didn't start with Avatar too, is because I can't draw, I can't draw faces. So yeah, so I brought another incredible artist to help there.

Yeah. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about how you were building on YouTube and if, It looks like you've been building for a while on here. It's not like you're just some artist who randomly dropped a collection. You've been building an audience and doing this for a while.

Yeah, I have been a professional motion designer for a long time. Worked as a motion designer at interactive agencies, have been teaching animation on YouTube. So, and you know, I have free Skillshare classes where you can learn how to animate from me. So if you want to learn how to animate, go on my Skillshare or go on my YouTube, I will teach you. And then I started doing NFTs on SuperRare, I would say early 2021, I think. Yeah, that sounds right. Early 2021. And then like later in 2021, really that's when collection started popping off big time. So then made like a hard pivot from doing like single edition artwork into wanting to run a collection.

Got you, got you. And so do you guys have a community manager? How has it been? I haven't jumped in the Discord. I honestly, I tweeted this earlier, but just been staying out of Discord and it's been Amazing. Um, yeah, uh, how's the Discord? Uh, what's the vibe like there?

We actually, you know, everyone's gonna say this, but we have such an awesome Discord. We have such an awesome community, and it's because of— I think really it's just because of what like the ethos of the project is. It's like, um, I think it's because of how we have cultivated a a vibe that really cares about art and story. And like, you know, most, most holders, they know all of the characters. We have 16 main characters. They know them all by name. They know the lore to them. So right now, you know, we're, we're— it's, it's Tuesday and the, and the reveal was on Sunday. They are looking for, oh, I want a Siren, I want a, a Formalin. These are characters in the story, right? They're like looking for people that they, that they vibe with by name, and they like And so like that, to me, that's really important and like signifying of like how deeply rooted this is in our core community. But yeah, we, we actually just recently hired a community manager. We didn't have one for a long time. We like, the team is, is very small and like, we are, I guess, unorthodox and just like how we are, we're not good at marketing. I know this, we're not good at like, we, you know, we, We just, it's a lot of, I think a lot of, uh, you know, projects, they are, they're just so, so good at marketing and like, we're just, we're a team of builders and that's just kind of what we've always focused on. And, and now we're, we basically have done everything backwards. We, we, we are, our third collection is making a profile picture and our, and we're 6 months later, we're hiring community managers and marketing people. And like, you know, whereas most— I feel like a lot what you're supposed to do is before you launch, you're hiring marketing teams and you're hiring community managers, and you're— and before you launch, you're making your avatar. Is it like we're just kind of doing it all backwards? And it's been working out, it's been working out well for us this way.

Yeah, when I checked last, it looked like there were only a few hundred left to mint, maybe 800 or 2,000, which is kind of solid. And it was a really easy minting process, I'll say that, especially for listeners as well. I'm sure there will be more drops, but I was actually on my phone and just sitting with some friends and I looked over to a friend, I was like, "Yo, I just bought some NFTs." It was kind of cool. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I also, my birthday's Halloween, so I want to get one of those pumpkin head ones really badly. Gotta make some.

Yeah, they're pretty cool. That's how a wizard— the wizard's the mask wearer and no one's ever seen their face. So that's a good vibe for a Halloween birthday for sure.

Exactly. Curious, is there, I guess speaking of the lore, I could see it going like two directions and maybe both, the games. Like potentially games and then stories or like comics and books and like that kind of stuff.

Is it both?

Is it one? Is it neither?

You know? Yeah, it's definitely both. We are super, super interested in moving in the direction of making games. I think there's a ton of potential. This was a big push for building out really strong IP of characters for both of these reasons, because, um, I see a need for, uh, not a need, a use case of, um, a universe where people are really attached to core heroes and how this can, um, kind of like lead the way in Web3 where, you know, you can essentially have heroes that people have a stake in, that are in games, in comics, in movies, you know, it just makes so much sense, right? That you could get a video game that your hero is in, right? That like, it just, when you see, when you kind of break stuff down like this, it just like, it all clicks. Um, so yeah, we are definitely I will say in, in pursuit of, um, we got some stuff in the works when it comes to games. Um, we've had some since, since we dropped Avatars, a lot of stuff has like kind of slid into place of, uh, all kinds of media. It was definitely hard, it was definitely more of a challenge with the Wanderers collection not having like figures to work with. But we do enjoy a challenge, and it's made it fun. But like comics could be really cool too. I mean, we've done so much writing, building out these movies, and I would like to kind of always explore like the, you know, the potential of kind of giving everyone, all holders, the tools to like build their own stuff. So like, you know, storylines that while we have like these 16 core characters, also everyone's character is an iteration of the core characters in the story. So how can you make books or movies or comics that are, that are talking about you specifically in that story is like a really interesting thread for us to go down.

Yeah, it's really exciting. It almost reminds me of like Mad Realities. It's totally different, but a dating show where you get to vote on the characters on the blockchain or whatever. And I can imagine if it was a video game and you get your hero, you have some attachment to them and that hero does well, does your value go up or your— your NFT go up or do you just root for them? Or, you know, there's, you have to do it to see, I guess.

Right. It makes a lot of sense. And there's a lot of interesting questions that get asked. So I'm very excited for it.

Yeah. Curious on some more technical stuff. I've been like a Photoshop dork since I was a kid, but have never really delved deep into animation. What software do you recommend or do you use? And yeah, I guess that's the main question there.

For, I mean, a lot of stuff that I use is going to be all Adobe stuff. So vector stuff like Adobe Illustrator for creating vector shape. Vector means that you can scale them up infinitely. They don't get blurry. And that's what I'll use to create a lot of shapes. Or alternatively, Photoshop, same thing. Well, not the same thing, but another Adobe creation. I use After Effects to animate. That's one thing that's like, there really is no competitor for. In terms of like 2D animation. A lot of like Photoshop and Illustrator, you can usually find like free competitors out there like Affinity or maybe like GIMP. But yeah, After Effects, there's really nothing out there to compete with it, for better or worse. Yeah, so that's what I— those are the main tools that I use in my— the whole All the animated collections, they're all rigged up in After Effects. Either we create assets in Illustrator, Photoshop, or something else, and then I bring them into After Effects and I rig them up. And that's how I'm able to preview everything by mimicking what our developers would do and running seeds and basically combining things. If you're not— animating, it's so much easier really. You just can make a bunch of layers in Photoshop, turn them on and off, and just be like, okay, this looks good. And then, and there's also, I've seen a bunch of really cool tools that can help you out. Like I think like Pablo Stanley, like the creator of Robotos, made a really interesting tool that basically can just help you make a whole collection. Like people are making stuff right now that can make it really, really easy. Um, I think it's just ours are so complicated. We actually, we actually had to develop, we actually developed a custom software for Wandernauts because they're so complex that they have like so many rules in them. Um, that like, you know, certain constraints are on at this point and that we, yeah, they actually, we had to like develop, we had to like contact a software developer to write this program and then learn how to use it to be able to run this, this software. So then I just, I just create all these animations in After Effects, render them out as PNG sequences, give them to the developers, our developers, and then it just becomes a ton of like either Google Sheets or Notion documents And then we mess around with rarities and stuff like that and basically look at everything and just do tons and tons of render tests and, and like say, okay, this thing should be less rare. It's appearing or it's appearing too much. Or, and then just kind of tweak it visually until the whole collection looks right.

Have you dove down the 3D, 3D animation realm?

Yeah, I've done some in like Blender. I would say I'm good at it. I've definitely— I've dropped some 3D NFTs. I think they were a hit, but I'm by no means like— I, I'm not a modeler. I'm not very, very good. I could do some basic keyframing. I would recommend Blender for anyone who wants to do it because it's free and it's super complicated and it will make you not want to do it anymore. So that's right, that's recommend starting.

That's what happened to me. I tried Blender, did the donut tutorial, which I'm sure you've seen, and never did it again. Well, no, I did it like 5 years later and then the same thing happened. So, but yeah, that's the main questions that I had for you. I guess one last one is figuring out the floor price and number of NFTs. How did you do kind of Like, why choose that, you know?

Well, we don't figure out the floor price, right? Everyone else figures that out.

Mint price.

Yeah. Um, so, you know, number of, number of NFTs, I mean, that's really at that, like, that's really just a stab in the dark. I mean, we did basically, we didn't want to do 10,000 because it just seemed boring. And then like, we just, so we just want to do less than that. I think, I think at this point, I mean We were, we launched in the summertime of last year. And at that point it was like anyone could launch anything. And it was like, it was just super, I guess I wanna say super easy. Like it was, it was basically impossible to not sell out last year in the summertime. Like, like, and I don't mean that in like a cocky way or something like that, but it was just like a different realm at that point. Like, you know, ETH and Bitcoin were going crazy. Everyone was just going crazy and everything. That was when Bored Apes like just started going bananas. NFTs, like if you look at like a Google Analytics chart of like NFTs are just going insane at this point. There's a new project launching every probably 5 times a day. There's new gas was just, uh, talking about Ethereum gas was just all at above 100 always. Like, it was just non-stop insanity, and it's not like that anymore. So we were just like, we just kind of picked— we're like, let's do— let's look whatever other people are doing, let's pick a number that like other people look kind of like— everyone's doing 10,000, let's just not do 10,000. So we did 8888, and I hope that isn't like ruin, like pull back the curtain a little bit. We're just like, listen, I'll do $10,000. And then like a price that's not like eye gouging. Cause like, you know, you don't, you don't need to like, you know, be like, you don't need to be so, you don't need to be like crazy greedy. And so 888 was the number, that's the number of pilots. So then for like, we just, we've just always done 888 now. Cause that's like the, that is the number there's. Um, so we do avatars, they're, they're tied to the pilots. There is one-to-one, so we have to do that number again. So then we did a, um, a pre-sale of them. This time we wanted to make it, uh, a really good, um, deal for, uh, we did planets that were for free, free claim. Everyone, everyone got them, but claim up for free. Um, now for avatars, we wanted to do, um a presale for holders and just make it really, really, uh, reasonable. So then we did half the price of the original collection, which was 0.08. So now we did 0.04. Um, and you know, I think that things are like, um, things are a little bit different now. Like it's, I think it's much harder for NFT collections. Like if you're just starting out, I would recommend like a, like a smaller amount, smaller collection size or a cheaper price, maybe even a free mint. If you haven't put in, like, if you're not like putting in a huge amount of time, I mean, we put in, we put in so much time. I mean, our avatars took like 3 months to build. Um, and you know, we're paying people on staff. We have people that are being paid on staff this entire time. We have tons and tons of expenses. So like, But like, if you're just starting out, I mean, like Wanderers, we were based at that point, we're 2, 3 people who just like, hey, let's try this out and see what happens. Right. That's like a different, so if you're just starting out, it's like a much different thing. Like we didn't even have a business set up at that point. Like we were like, once it sold out, we're like, oh shit, we have to like make a, we have to like register as an entity now. Right. So if you're just starting out, like the stakes are really, really low. So like you can, you have more leverage to just kind of like, let's just do a really, really low number, a low price, maybe even a free, free thing, and just try to like capture people into your community. Because once you have people captured, um, the stakes are lower. What, what is— what I think would be a worst thing to do is just try to like go for like a really, really high price, you know, like $0.25 or something like that. And then you either don't get anybody or you sell out, but then everyone immediately kind of like wants to jump out or immediately they feel like they need to get money out of it or something. If you, if you have like everyone having a good experience right away, then you just have a good vibe the whole time. And that's how I think we've, we've always just had a good vibe the whole time, which It's just been like really, really easy to work with. I mean, like even now, you know, like things like things, the thing, the graph goes up, the graph goes down, graph goes up. But if you have a community that's like, they've been there with them, they write, they get it. Like everyone, everyone knows that. And everyone like has been having, has been just vibing the whole time and they appreciate what you're doing. So it's really important to kind of like do things in a way that, um, is like respectful of the people that you're targeting, I think. For sure, for sure.

All right, yo, thank you so much for coming on. Uh, that was all the main questions. If you could stay on for a second after, um, just want to ask you about something. That's really it.

Okay, thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course. Um,