The Pixel Doodles

[Sumiez]

tl;dr

Our team would like to champion non-dilutive pixel art and animations for every Doodle to be integrated into Worldwide Webb3 (www3) or other pixel-based metaverses or games.

Team Introduction

What’s up Doodles! We are excited to introduce our team to the community! We bring together two life-long friends Sumiez (Doodle #9054) and Zach (Doodle #7525) with designer and pixel artist Favicon. Sumiez comes from the bay area, Favicon from New Jersey, and Zach from the Big Island of Hawaii. We want to use our diverse backgrounds and professional expertise to create something special for the Doodles!

Project Overview
We love our Doodles, and we also love the pixels.

• Pixel art provides a quick and simple method for Doodles to join the metaverse.

• To accomplish this, we need spritesheets to lay out the sequence of images that animate your Doodle.

• Here is an example of what a spritesheet and the concept animation would look:

  

• Projects such as www3 can pull this spritesheet through API to bring our animation to their game or metaverse.

• In addition to the spritesheet, all doodle holders will be provided a location to download their animated gif and still pixel Doodle images.

• There will not be a mint from this project!

Value and Opportunity
There are several opportunities that become available by producing this pixel art:

More art, more fun!

• We simply believe that this art style is beautiful and has endless potential for creatives to build upon.
• We plan to collaborate with Burnt Toast and the core team to make sure our final art and animations are consistent with their Doodles vision.
• Imagine how much fun our Doodles could bring to www3!

Metaverse Integration/Gamification

• The ability to use your Doodle as your identity in the pixel metaverse will provide immediate value to anyone interested in this space or artwork.
• Pixel art can be integrated into collaborative projects at a strikingly fast rate due to the lesser labor requirement.
• Just as early video games relied on pixel art, we believe that the first mainstream iterations of the metaverse/web3 will also be through pixel art.

Non-Dilutive Supply

• This pixel artwork will not be a dilutive derivative project, rather, an initiative to contribute another layer of value tied to every individual doodle.
• These files will be generated for all 10,000 Doodles already in existence and tied back to their root nft.
• This means you will receive the exact same properties/traits of the Doodles you currently hold and enjoy.
• The deliverable item will be an image directory containing your spritesheet and walk animation linked to each unique doodle.

Brand Awareness

• Doodles should pursue this opportunity to expand our brand in the metaverse/web3. The greater presence that the Doodles community has within this medium, the greater potential to generate revenue through branding.
• Ad revenue is generally based on how much traffic a particular brand or event can generate. Over a longer-term trajectory, we can reasonably expect a positive trend of users engaging in the metaverse.

Challenges
Our team has identified the following challenges that may impact the project:

• We expect to outsource programming aspects on an ad hoc basis or expand our working group.
• Our team members have full-time careers and the project’s scope is quite significant.
• Www3 may not reach its full potential and alternatives may not be readily available.

We have access to the skills and resources needed to address these challenges. In order to deliver a high-quality and consistent product, we hope to collaborate with the community and the core team. Please help us out with feedback and ideas!

Budget: Racks
The total expense to produce a spritesheet and walk animation for the Doodles collection is projected at 25 eth. We would like to propose our project is funded over multiple draw phases based on deliverables agreed upon with the core team. We will rely on multisig wallets to ensure that spending activities are reviewed and approved by the core team. The anticipated time-frame will be approximately 3 months from passing the preliminary snapshot (of course we’ll try our best to expedite it).

Final Words
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope we were able to provide you with a clear overview of our project and that our teasers brought a smile to your face. This is the first step of what we think could be something really great.

Our team sees a truly exciting vision of Doodles in a pixel metaverse. From playing games, building quests, attending community events, flexing your NFT collection, or selling Doodles merchandise, the possibilities are endless. Combined with the simple fun pixel art, we can make it all happen sooner than you think.

We would love an opportunity to work with the core team and community to build this vision.

Snapshot in Progress!

[jerjer.eth]

Looks like a great opportunity

[ayhth]

Well written proposal! I agree with the approach not to have it as a derivative.

Love how the animated pixel characters come to live and I think enabling Doodlers to bring their doodles identity into the metaverses they use is a great idea.

I can imagine pixel doods in world wide webb: https://worldwidewebb-temphost.web.app/

Questions
What do you think is the demand for pixel avatars?

I ask because it looks like with sandbox, clone x, decentraland, there’s a shift towards higher fidelity, 3D avatars (similar to Full Body Doodle Avatars NFT Collection) I’m not familiar with other popular worlds like world wide webb which are suited towards pixel avatars and would love to know about the others!

Suggestions:

1. Run a temp check on discord /snapshot on whether most doods want a pixel character for their metaverse adventures.

2. If demand is low (less than 500 positive responses): perhaps a made-to-order approach. i.e. fill form, make pixels for the submitted doods, base ETH fee + .00x eth per dood funded by doodlebank. So we vote based on the proposal + base ETH fee as opposed to 25 eth.

3. Would love it if all these official doodle avatars (3D, pixel, voxel or otherwise) are available on the doodles website.

4. Characteristics should follow doodleverse lore. Do comfy doods really have a rolling superpower ?

[we3die]

Looks really cool to me! I approve of the non-dilutive supply and love the 1-to-1 connection with the originals.

[Sumiez]

Hey Ayhth, thanks for the response!

We feel strongly that there’s high demand for pixel artwork in general based on the number of successful projects both within and outside the NFT space (i.e. CyberKongz, Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult, Stardew Valley, Shovel Knight, etc.). The most significant opportunity that this art type brings to the metaverse is the pace that content can be built. 3D avatars are beautiful, but it’s also very resource and time intensive, and will increase the barrier to entry for smaller budget projects. Pixel art can be produced on an expedited schedule, while still offering an artistic style that is simple yet very enjoyable.

@ayhth

• Run a temp check on discord /snapshot on whether most doods want a pixel character for their metaverse adventures.
• If demand is low (less than 500 positive responses): perhaps a made-to-order approach. i.e. fill form, make pixels for the submitted doods, base ETH fee + .00x eth per dood funded by doodlebank. So we vote based on the proposal + base ETH fee as opposed to 25 eth.
• Would love it if all these official doodle avatars (3D, pixel, voxel or otherwise) are available on the doodles website.
• Characteristics should follow doodleverse lore. Do comfy doods really have a rolling superpower ?

• We love the temp check idea; we’ll plan on putting it to a vote on Discord/Snapshot after a week or so of discussion/promotion.
• During our team discussions, we’re definitely open to the “made-to-order” model that you described based on the demand that we’re seeing. We’ll remain flexible to see what best fits the community needs in finalizing the financial and strategic model.
• Agreed! We love non-dilutive upgrades!!
• 100% on the Doodles characteristics following the lore. Our animations will primarily be a traditional walking motion, but we’re happy to discuss any creative options that are consistent with the character. There’s also the challenge of, “how does an ice cream cone walk?” We simply have him spinning as he ponders his next move…

[Jaffe]

Such an epic idea, you guys are killers. Please lets do this!!!

[Jingaling]

I think it’s a very cool idea and something that can add value to Doodles. I have just two questions:

• What format is the spritesheet and walk animation in and will it be easy to transfer this if one where to sell your Doodle? I’m sure the new owner would want this.

• Please can you provide some more info and a breakdown on the line items that add up to the 25 eth cost?

[Sumiez]

Hi Jingaling!

The spritesheet will be .png and animation is a .gif (the png will allow integration into www3). Both would be made available to everyone (ideally through doodles.app) to use freely, however, the use of your doodle in the metaverse will verify that you hold the underlining NFT.

As far as the 25eth, we projected it based on labor (approximately 20 to 25 percent for anticipated outsourcing costs) to build the assets for the entire 10k collection. We also considered a fair price per unit produced (0.0025eth each based on the current proposal). The final snapshot will have a few different pricing models to vote on based on these discussions and general demand!

[Ruggles]

The way I read this, it sounds like the idea would be to “Work with Burnt Toast” in order to essentially “incorporate the sprites into other metaverse projects”.

To me, this doesn’t sound like a derivative.

However, it does sound like, regardless of the community vote, something like this would need to be essentially green-lit by the founders themselves, as you wouldn’t want its output to contradict with other planned lore/animation/etc. tbd in the future.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[Sumiez]

Thanks for the response, Ruggles!

However, it does sound like, regardless of the community vote, something like this would need to be essentially green-lit by the founders themselves, as you wouldn’t want its output to contradict with other planned lore/animation/etc. tbd in the future.

So yes, the comment on ensuring a consistent product, lore, animation is a high priority for our team. During the development of the pixel art, we would include a step for quality control before any official releases are made.

Fortunately, since they’re pixels, it’ll be small adjustments to produce this consistent product (i.e. How does an ice cream cone walk? Do we want them wearing pants? Are all the pants the same color? etc.) Also, our art will be dynamic, so if there are any changes that are necessary after the fact we could definitely incorporate them.

Edit: The vision that excites us is that, as the lore continues to be built out, we can bring some of it to life in an interactive way. This is a longer term prospect depending on first passing the vote, and second, delivering a high quality product; however, we’re already imagining building out our individual spaceships to use as “mounts” in www3.

[wickedsunflower.eth]

Say LESS this is a great idea

[ayhth]

1. Integration into www3 makes sense. Littles did a www3 gathering and had a POAP for that. It was fun idea.

2. I guess the main discussion now is:

• Do for all 10k? www3 seems like a novelty experience, I may be wrong.
• Do it only for doodlers who opt-in? If doodlebank pays for it, would it be fair? or should doodlers pay for their commissioned pixies.
• What does @Poopie @tulip think?

Thanks @Sumiez for stirring this pot.

[Jecryptomy]

That’s a cool idea! I’ll keep an eye on progress

[Sumiez]

No problem, loving the discussion. Our team is prepared to do the full 10k collection. From a design perspective, doing 800 manually verses doing 10k programmatically shouldn’t be too much of a difference in effort. We intend to build out each individual trait, and then piece together the entire collection through an automated process. The custom and special doodles will be produced manually by the artist.

Regarding www3 and pixel art in general, it’s definitely a niche space. I’m personally a huge fan of it. The proposal’s upside if www3 is successful will be that doodles are positioned to take advantage of it with an early presence. The downside of course is that it isn’t successful, however, even in that case, we will have built a pixel collection for everyone to use on social media, or other fun personal uses. We will also be able to use these assets should any new pixel opportunities present themselves.

I could write a stand alone thesis on why I think www3 will be successful (team, artist, scalability, pixel art fanbase, apartment holders, etc.) but I’m trying my best to avoid shilling their project too much . However, I often find a good number of other doodle holders discuss em in our alpha channel.

[peej]

Could be a great way to prep for meta verse if that’s the direction we are going but not sure if it would dilute collection…

[MustacheDave]

wen we doods making this happen.

[rpiip]

Want this! And love the non-dilutive nature. How can we help with this?

[byhardy]

I like this idea a lot, and I think www3 is building something interesting from the time I’ve spent researching.

One thing I’m not super familiar with is how versatile the spritesheet would be for other games? If we’re extending Doodles to the metaverse as our digital identities, is this the best direction to go? For @Sumiez, why do you think it is?

I think this is an especially important question because it sounds clear that this is a one-and-done file drop, and if it’s not versatile, we’re only able to use it in very limited capacity.

However, using it in limited capacity and just having a cute gif may not matter as much if…

Has there been any thought into a mint? I ask because only 7,700 Pukenzas were minted. That’s 2,300 mints that the public could have. Even at .03 for those remaining 2,300, you’re easily surpassing your estimated budget.

If we were to consider a public mint, would the remaining doodles be generated? Or randomly assigned? Don’t know what’s best here or if the community would want either. Just something I wanted to throw out there.

Thanks for your post - think this is def a direction Doodles should look to take to extend our identities beyond pfps.

[Sumiez]

Yo byhardy, I appreciate the feedback!

One thing I’m not super familiar with is how versatile the spritesheet would be for other games? If we’re extending Doodles to the metaverse as our digital identities, is this the best direction to go? For @Sumiez, why do you think it is?

The spritesheet, and just pixel assets in general, will provide at least a starting point. It’ll all depend on the specs of the third-party project that we would want to get integrated into (assuming it’s web3 based).

As far as expanding into the metaverse, this is just one of many that Doodles can pursue. I imagine other people will champion projects for Sandbox/Decentraland to come. And personally, I think the more metaverses that we have a presence in, the better positioned we’ll be. I’ve described a few times earlier the potential of a pixel metaverse and why I think we should build for www3.

I think this is an especially important question because it sounds clear that this is a one-and-done file drop, and if it’s not versatile, we’re only able to use it in very limited capacity.

I agree that we need to be versatile; however, I do think that the capacity for utility already exists. We can use them as avatars in www3, we can use them to engage in social media (emojis, banners, animations), we can commission work to be built from your pixel to give pixel artists opportunities to produce artwork for our community.

Has there been any thought into a mint?

Due to concerns voiced by the community and guidance provided by the core team, we will NOT be considering a separate mint for our project.

Thanks so much for the engagement and let me know if you have any other questions!

[monwor]

This would be very cool!!