TL;DR
We’re aiming to bring Nouns to life by animating all Nouns assets as public goods for cc0 use. We'll build tools for users to generate & access their own animations quickly and easily for use in any project. There's 20 unique and thoughtfully crafted animations to choose from with over 467,000,000 possible animation outcomes.
- Through a front-end app, anyone can enter a Noun ID or mix and match traits to create their own custom Noun and export animations on the spot.
- Developers will be able to programmatically access any of these animations instantly and seamlessly through an API and/or a URL.
- Interact with your Noun (including custom ones) through an interactive app on a daily basis with actions like eating, sleeping, playing, and more! The status of each Noun will change throughout the day and you can tend to it accordingly to keep it alive, happy, and healthy.
Introduction & Background
Hello Everyone,
I'm Jeff (aka heyjeff.eth, jefe) and I’ve been developing an app over the past year that aims to engage NFT collectors by bringing their NFTs to life. Quick backstory:
The concept was inspired by the popular Japanese phenomenon ‘Tamagotchi’ released in the late 90’s. Each handheld device contains a virtual friend the user must tend to in order to keep it alive, happy, and healthy. Interestingly enough, it’s a style of game that you don’t necessarily ‘beat’ or ‘win’. It’s more of an experience of having a buddy that you can play with, care for, and watch grow throughout it’s lifespan, forever.
I thought it’d be fun if people could do the same with their NFTs, so I decided to build a prototype. At first it started out as just a silly napkin sketch, but now we’re proud to say we’ve recently finished adding support for all 6,969 CrypToadz, each with 11 unique animations totaling over 75,000 files! (That’s 7.6 GB of raw toad data). For those who own a CrypToad, you can check out the app here.
Here’s some footage:
Motivation and Goals
What we’re aiming to do is leverage the tech we’ve developed for CrypToadz and adapt it to build tools so that anyone can generate, access, and download Nounish animations on demand for cc0 use.
To do this, we’ll develop an easy-to-use Build-a-Noun app through which anyone can choose a pre-existing Noun or build their own by mixing and matching traits at will or at random. Users will be able to preview animations on the fly and then instantly download any or all of the animations they like, with the option of exporting the individual animation frames as well. The app is future-proofed too, so every Noun that is born each day will be readily accessible.
Not only that, but any animation for any Noun configuration can be easily accessible via a back-end API and/or a URL for developers to use in their web apps instantly and seamlessly.
As an added bonus, anyone can immediately interact and play with their Noun or custom Noun through our other interactive app we’ve already built!
Ultimately, the goal of all of this is to empower people to actively use Nouns in engaging, refreshing, and easy ways to help spread the meme.
Build-A-Noun App, prototype & poc
(early prototype shown, does not represent final product)
The 20 total actions and states are: idle (breathing/blinking), happy/loved, laughing, talking, dancing/head bob, eating: pizza, mushroom, veggies, fruit, hamburger, playing a gameboy, sad/crying, drinking: coffee, water, tea, health/mana potion, tired, sick, and sleeping.
The above is an early prototype solely to convey the concept of the Build-A-Noun app. The final product will have a redesigned and intuitive interface, with way more options and functionality, such as:
- Select transparent or any background color (hex or rbg input)
- Quick select any existing Noun ID config
- Searchable traits by ID or name
- Randomize traits button
- Flip the animation (left-facing vs right-facing)
- Change output animation speed
- Apply an rbg tint to the animation
- Apply a black and white filter to the animation
- Resize animation to specific dimensions
- Export all individual frames for a given animation
- Pick and choose which animations to export
- Add text overlays
- Share-to-Twitter button to quickly tweet your creations
Flipped B/w filter
rbg(255, 5, 555) tint Sped up 3x Flipped, 0.75x speed, rbg(293, 65, 5) tint
Examples of animation customization options
In total, we’d pre-generate 8,700 animation files (435 Nouns assets x 20 unique states), each with an average of 30 frames per animation. That's a total of 261,000 individual frames to bring this vision to life! There are 23,377,200 possible combinations for a Noun, and 467,544,00 possible animations outcomes (23,377,200 x 20)!
Why?
Currently, there isn't a scalable tool in the Nouniverse that allows users to quickly produce a wide range of highly customizable Nounish cc0 animations on demand.
Game developers, content creators, and everyday users can benefit from such a tool as a building block to create even bigger and more Nounish things!
We're trying to fill this gap in the Nounscape by providing STOMMs (Super Tool of Mass-Memeification) in an area that is lacking. With this tool in place, I believe we'll see an explosion of new Nounish content for everyone to use and enjoy as they see fit.
Plus, being able to interact with your Noun deepens our emotional connection to them!
Sneak Peeks
We made the following animations for Lil Nouns for fun as a test, but the same concepts apply for Nouns. Here's a peek at 10 out of the 20 total states. Choose any background color you like, or none at all (transparent).
Idle
Eating pizza
Sleeping
Playing Gameboy
Happy
Sad/Crying
Drinking coffee
Sick
Tired
Health potion
Interactive App ~ Bonus ~
Anyone who owns a Noun or builds one with our Noun Builder app can interact with it on a daily basis through an app we've already built (works on mobile too)! Each Noun will be animated to reflect it's current state or action - it will truly feel like your Noun has come to life!
Here are the following mechanics:
4 Stats (each max val of 100):
- Fullness
- Energy
- Happiness
- Health
3 Player Actions (each grants XP needed in order to level up):
- Feeding – Increases fullness and happiness
- Sleeping – Increases energy and health
- Playing – Increases happiness, decreases fullness and energy
3 Conditions:
- Can’t sleep while starving
- Can’t play while sleep-deprived
- Can’t eat while sick
3 Items (purchasable with points earned from completing actions)
- Coffee – Triples the amount of XP gained, but cannot sleep for 8 hr
- Health Potion – Replenishes health to full
- Mushroom (can be easily reskinned to another object) – 1 of 4 potential effects, chosen at random:
- Jumbles stats at random
- Earn a random amount of XP
- Gain 1 level
- Eat a poisonous mushroom and die
- All stats decay by 2 every 4 hours automatically, forever
- Sometimes, at random, 1 of the 4 stats will be depleted to zero if all stats are non-zero
- If neglected for ~8 days, the NFT will die
- NFTs can be revived, but lose 1 level and costs points
- Highest levels are ranked in a public leaderboard
Nounish interactive gameplay demo (limited features)
How is this valuable to Nouns??
1. Public Goods & Network Effects
Everyone from experienced devs to everyday users will be able to generate & access Nounish animations on demand, either through the API or the front-end tool within a few clicks.
This means anyone -- enthusiasts, developers, and/or content creators can save countless hours by bootstrapping these animations to be used any way they like! Some examples include:
- Enrich existing apps or websites
- Use as stickers and/or emojis for Discord servers
- Use the animations to develop a game
- Use them to make merch and/or NFTs
- Enhance Nounish media like tweets, infographics, or videos
- Use as pfps
- Download the individual animation frames to make sprite sheets
- Use the frame data to create lip-synced animated avatars for video/audio calls
-- the possibilities are endless!
The end result will lead to quicker turnarounds for prototypes and media creations, and act as a catalyst for the proliferation of new Nounish content overall.
Quote from devcarrot, Nounder:
"This sounds like a very fun idea, I love the animations. Would you be willing to make the data accessible to other developers via a public API? Maybe with something like a license that requires attribution? It could be interesting to have Nounish characters hanging out on the various projects’ sites; imagine Timpers’ disco floor but with TinyCitizen characters rendered in real time.
The disco floor:
"
2. Rally community around organic and fun reward systems
Through the interactive app we’ve already built, it provides opportunities for users to earn rewards through quests.
As an example, we’ve successfully rewarded 80+ unique CrypToadz players with a CrypToadz hat and pair of Nouns glasses to those who reached level 10 with a CrypToad through the interactive app. Everyone shared how much they loved this event!
This provides a more rewarding experience because the merch drop felt earned rather than simply given. In turn, it promotes camaraderie and a sense of fellowship among the community who want to achieve a mutual desired result by partaking in shared experiences.
Any Nounish DAO that wishes to engage their audience can task their community with completing certain actions through the app and granting them an award upon completion.
Reward bundle: CrypToadz Hat + Noun Glasses + NFT NYC Coaster
pssst… This event is still ongoing! If you want a CrypToadz hat and Nouns glasses you can still grind for them! Find me on Discord :wink:
3. Tap into & activate new creators and builders
If we make these assets readily available for people to access in an engaging and easy manner, it could open up doors for new people to enter the ecosystem.
Those that need assets to build on Nouns in new or interesting ways but have no developer or animation experience can often feel discouraged not knowing where to start.
With the Build-A-Noun app as a building block, we can inspire existing Nounish community members as well as potential new ones to create something Nounish easily and quickly. Anyone can get up and running with tens, hundreds, or thousands of animations ready to use within minutes.
Deliverables
- Create an easy-to-use front-end tool + website where anyone can create and download unique cc0 gifs for any Noun configuration on the spot. The 20 unique states/actions are:
- Idle (breathing + blinking)
- Happy/Loved
- Sad/Crying
- Laughing
- Talking
- Sleeping
- Dancing/Head bob
- Eating
- pizza
- mushroom
- fruit
- veggies
- hamburger
- Drinking
- coffee
- water
- tea
- health potion
- mana potion
- Playing a gameboy
- Tired
- Sick
- Create a back-end API, where anyone can instantly grab any animation for any Noun configuration for use in their web apps programmatically via an API key and/or a URL
- Revamped front-end design with mobile-friendly version to generate animations on the go!
- Integration with our existing free-to-play side-app where users can interact and play with their Nouns (already built)
- Publicly host the raw base64 encoded png frame data for all Nouns assets in json format so anyone can use the animation frames how they like
Timeline
Total: 10 weeks
Each individual trait needs to be manually animated for all 20 states. That's roughly ~1,000 files per week (435 x 20 / 8). Some take shorter than others because they're static in a given animation, or they mimic the same motion as another animation and can be ported. Regardless, there is a lot of upfront work to be done.
Weeks 1-4:
Front-end work, complete site redesign and development. Mobile-friendly optimization. Developing gif creation software with various customization options.
~50% of animations files complete
Weeks 5-8:
Back-end work on API creation. Work on image processing and manipulating animation frame data. Create hosting solution for animation data.
~100% of animation files complete
Weeks 9 & 10:
Hook-up back-end to front-end. Allow 2 week buffer for testing & bug fixes, or any last minute optimizations/improvements.
Who we are
heyjeff.eth - Full-Stack Dev / Design / Vision / Logistics
I’m an engineer, problem-solver, and purveyor of ideas that I believe are worth telling.
I've been involved in the NFT space since early 2021 and became Noun-pilled a couple months ago through some people I’ve met within the CrypToadz community. Since becoming a recent Nouncillor, most of the free time I have is spent in Nounish discords meeting cool new people, discussing ideas, and learning as much as I can about all things Nouns!
Some of my credentials include:
- 6+ years as a professional engineer/designer
- 3 separate CrypToadz proposals funded
- 185 total “for” votes, 0 total “against” votes across the 3 props
- Total of 21E funded (most funded individual from within the CrypToadz community)
- All proposal deliverables fulfilled
- 1 CrypToadz Prop house round funded
- Created a hosting solution to make 75,000+ unique CrypToadz cc0 animations publicly available via URLs
- As an example, here's CrypToad ID #5500 in it's idle state. To see any toad in action, replace '5500' in the URL with the desired ID!
pssst.... try appending an action to the trailing ID, i.e., 5500-pizza.gif
PixelFowl - Pixel Artist / Python Dev / Power Metal Enthusiast / Former Chicken Parent
"Hi! I’m Pixelfowl, also known as Johannfowl. I’m a Brazilian pixel artist and animator that loves coffee, power metal and writing short stories. I used to be a freelance copywriter, but I always loved art and indie games. So, in the first opportunity I had, I tried pixel art — that hooked me instantly.
During this past year I had the amazing opportunity of working with Jeff and it really changed the game for me. After learning a lot, creating hundreds of animations and writing thousands of lines of code, we’re making things that we thought were impossible, and now we’re going even further!"
PixelFowl's credentials:
- Lead pixel artist behind 75,000+ CrypToadz animations
- Made all animations available for cc0 use
- Developed core python script to automate the generation of CrypToadz animations
Current Success Metrics (as of Oct '22)
As for our interactive app, CrypToadz holders seem to really enjoy it. Here’s a few metrics that show it’s stickiness. Note that no capital or time has been spent on marketing or advertising up to this point.
Retention Rates:
Day 1 Retention: 25% (Industry average)
Day 7 Retention: 15% (Industry average)
Day 30 Retention: 9% (Above industry average)
Active Users:
Daily Active Users / Monthly Active Users = 28% (Above industry average)
Proposed Funding
55E for Deliverables within Timeline (10 weeks)
(immediately converted to USDC to avoid volatility)
At the proposed cost, it works out to around <$8 per animation file, and $.00015 (not a typo, 1/100th of 1 penny) per possible animation using this tool.
Testimonials
A lot of people have mentioned how much they loved their toad animations and seeing them in action, some even buying their first toad because of the interactive app! I think it’d be fun to provide this same experience for the Nouns community.
"This sounds like a very fun idea, I love the animations."
-devcarrot, Nounder
“Big fan of Toadzgotchi personally; Love what you're building.”
-HEEEEEEEEEEE, CrypToadz founding team
“Excited for lore and Toadzgotchi as well.”
-Gremplin, pixel placer extraordinaire, artist for CrypToadz and Nouns
“I love my animated toad! Thank you!
"Diggin the game.”
-Adam Fern, Founding team @ CashApp, Head of Product @ Square (Loans)
“Omg the Toadzgotchi proposal is cool. My wife who isn’t into crypto much that was one of the first things she asked me about NFTs ‘so do you have to like feed your toad and stuff or what?’”
-Toadyhawk.⌐◨-◨, Nouns delegate and The Nouns Square Founder
(Toadzgotchi was the initial name of our app circa 2021)
+many more AMAZING supporters who couldn't fit on the page! THANK YOU!
Future
In the future, we'd like to add more animations and more Nounish subcommunities (Lils, Gnars, etc), plus explore the idea of letting anyone upload their own animations to the builder in a review style process. This way, we can accrue an expansive database of assets to be used by all as the go-to solution for Nounish animations!
Thank You
I sincerely appreciate everyone who spent time reading this. I am excited and eager to help contribute to the future of Nounish animations together! If you'd like to reach out for questions or comments, please do so - I'd be happy to chat!
heyjeff.eth#3954
