Rare Digital Art Pops onto the Art Scene

joechiappetta (60)in #art • 6 years ago (edited)

Rare Digital Art Pops onto the Art Scene:

How Cryptocurrency Opens New Opportunities for Cartoonists and Collectors

A fun comic strip entitled "Rare Silly Chain" (pictured in above video) is one of many new blockchain cards I have recently released. This isn't the 1980s, so I am not going to print it on photocopy paper in my latest fold-and-staple mini-comic. This isn't the 2000s, so I am not itching to add it to my latest print-on-demand comic book or eBook. No, this is 2018, and in these higher-than-high-tech-times, I put my comics on the blockchain (that same crazy invention that powers Bitcoin). Why would I do such a thing? Because it's cool, because I can... and mainly, because it is really good for business.

Like my other new comic and art pieces listed on a rare digital art market called Book of Orbs, this blockchain card is issued in a limited run of only 200 editions. Collectors can find my cards, and many others in limeded edition, in the CrystalsCraft portion of that marketplace. The blockchain makes it possible to verify that only 200 will ever be issued directly from me. So this innovation is basically a modern-day version of limited edition lithographs--but much cooler because collectors can keep the crypto art in their digital wallet app and show it to people on the go from any smartphone. Owners have the opportunity to show they they got this creation directly from the artist. Such features make the art digitally scarce, portable, social, and therefore much more valuable. This is true for those who like my design and equally true for speculators betting that the price will go up.

As mentioned previously, this digital scarcity is made possible though the global computer network that runs Bitcoin transactions. In the case of my art, issued on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, I would affectionately call that process "blockchainization." That's a term originally coined and made possible by EverdreamSoft, a Swiss mobile gaming company who also built the rare digital art market that I mentioned. Their Blockchainization Article explained how to transform in-game assets into tradeable/exchangeable assets that a user owns (and can sell) on the blockchain.

Simply put, let's say we are playing a game where somehow we earned four unicorns who can freeze an enemy. Cool, right? Through the process of being "blockchainized," we can then take that in-game asset (in this case, four unicorns), put that asset on the blockchain, and sell it or gift it to another player. More coolness, huh?

And even cooler still, artists can do this with their art through the same app (Book of Orbs) that gamers trade their blockchainized game cards. I realize that the original use of the term "blockchainization" was limited to digital things in a game that become tradeable things on a blockchain, yet I would like to expand that. For me, as a rare digital artist, when I took my digital art and put it on the blockchain, I have effectively "blockchainized" it. Therefore, similar to blockchainized game assets, my art too is now be traded on the blockchain.

Crypto Art Market Mavericks

What I really appreciate about Book of Orbs is their CrystalsCraft collection. Through this collection, rare digital artists, also known as crypto artists, can get on this new market now to issue fresh art, comic, or even meme works and sell them all from the same ecosystem. From the time an artist submits work to them through their web form, at the current rate of processing, it takes 5 business days for that new art to be fully available on the market for sale.

There is much that makes Book of Orbs stand out as a market leader and game-changer. Up and running now are both a desktop web app as well as a smartphone app to buy and sell rare digital art. Oh, that happens to be the same app that game players use to also hold their blockchainized game cards. Can you see the cross-promotional opportunities here between art and gaming? This is a brilliant strategy that serves to broaden the art market to the tangential industry of mobile gamers. Three key statistics researched by Chartboost in 2017 reveal the opportunities to come:

Over 50% of mobile gamers make more than $50,000 US per year.
The annual disposable income for 42% of mobile gamers is between $30,000 and $50,000 US.
47% of mobile gamers spend 3 or more hours per week shopping online.
Clearly, the growth potential here for capturing even a small percentage of this group as new and rare digital art collectors speaks for itself. In fact, with the blockchainization of in-game trading cards, these folks have already become rare digital art collectors.

While there are a number of other promising systems up and running to sell rare digital art, most that I have researched are not currently open to new artists yet. Why? It appears that these fellow pioneers have to pilot their existing marketplaces or operate test networks before they can scale up. That's completely understandable and wise in the crypto art space, because this is a new frontier tied to people's money. Don't be messin' with my Bitcoins, bro! Therefore things just need to work well on the very first time.

6 Innovative Traits of an Awesome Rare Digital Art Ecosystem

The race is on to create the best place for artists to sell rare digital art, wherein collectors can easily buy, sell, and trade these new digital art assets. As development stands now, I see Book of Orbs being a pioneer in that space. They have risen as a market leader in the ongoing issuance of new and rare digital art in the form of collectible mobile game cards, comics, and art trading cards. In fact, collections on Book of Orbs (CrystalsCraft, Gamicon) are some of the only marketplaces I know of where an artist can have access to all six of the following things now:

Issue new rare digital art now without being on a wait list.
Have access 24/7 to a trading marketplace for crypto art via desktop or mobile phone app.
Issue art without any coding or programming knowledge.
Issue art using cryptocurrencies that are already listed on multiple cryptocurrency exchanges.
Be on a trading platform that is interconnected with the mobile gaming industry (where more growth will come from in the arts through cross promotions).
Be supported by a team of active developers that issue a project roadmap on an annual basis.

If there are other innovative art ecosystems out there that have all six of these benefits (or even five of them), I would love to hear about it. I have seen a lot of things in the art world in my years as a cartoonist and publisher of Silly Daddy: markets that work great, and markets that are a complete waste of time. However, I have never seen any ecosystem as wisely crafted as Book of Orbs for artists, collectors, and crypto speculators all in one place. They deliver an easy and even inspiring way to connect to an entire ecosystem of rare digital assets. While I don't have the time to survey the entire industry, I have looked at a number of other platforms in the rare digital art space. And my conclusion, this far, is that EverdreamSoft (the makers of Book of Orbs) stands out as record-setters and history-makers in more ways than I can count. The arts and gaming community will be thanking them for a long time to come, I am sure.