Nouns Comic: a proposal

Nouns and storytelling.

Humans change every second of everyday, but there’s one small feature about us that never changes ~ the “art of storytelling”. We’re all storytellers trying to share our stories. From cave drawings and sharing tales of discovering fire TO building a virtual universe, we all want to share a part of us that we find interesting, amusing or any other generic adjective that comes to you Nouns!

Why Comics?

Our goal is to share our story with others, right? Massive adaptation only comes when there’s a fun engaging incentive behind it. Can you think of anything “funner” than exploring a story? Being a tv-show, a graphic novel or… you already know what I’m going to say next, right?
Comics are the perfect way of exploring the Nouns story. As 4156 has put it multiple times, it’s so fun to find value in these “goofy-looking” characters, but wouldn’t it be amazing if they came with a story, a tale, a quest or any sort of backstory behind them?

How would Nouns Comic economy work?

Where there’s a story, there’s a storyteller ~ and when there are Nouns, there are “Nounic” stories to be told. Following that pattern, Nouns Comic will be tri-weekly NFTs, coming out as that fun and engaging asset that we so were looking for to bring Nouns public. (Note: Numbers are subject to change)

Here’s what happens every fortnight (Comic Tokens):

  • 4500 comics available for a very affordable price (0.02-0.04)
  • 486 comics available as rewards for those that interact with the Nouns DAO website
  • 14 comics given away on a daily basis for the duration of the fortnight (Twitter, Discord, Instagram, etc)

Here’s what happens every fortnight (Funds):

I have a couple of ideas on what to do with these funds, here are some of them:

  • It can be added to the treasury for more builders (Artists, builders of any kind, programmers, etc.) to join all the fun
  • It can be stored into a vault and used as a bid in PartyDAO to acquire more Nouns for Noun natives (So basically a DAO inside a DAO inside another DAO which helps all 3 DAOs as a whole)
  • It can be rewarded to original Noun holders, this way they are earning passive income with a 14 day ROI

Who’s behind this?

Oh! Hello there, I’m The Oracle. Merely some pebbles travelling through the air… view me as magic dust, but also the creator of The Undead and in charge of The Void.
I’ve been a content creator my whole life, from drawing comics for my peers at school to quitting my job to bring my collection live on the mainnet. My main project “TheUndead” is a beautiful mixture of DeFi and NFTs where holders receive a percentage of the entire revenue generated for holding their Undeads while their assets get featured in comics, shows, graphic novels, merch or anything! The possibilities are endless and forever growing.

Proof of Work

I’m here to learn and deliver. Here’s what I’ve done so far:
I’ve built The Undead from absolute scratch. Bringing unique characters, stories and an entire world to the mainnet while building a strong community and economy around it.
I’ve already put out 3 different series of Undead Comics, ranging from 1-sheet Mini Comics to a full on Comic (7+ pages).

3 Phases of execution

Phase A:

  • 10 days of creation, from writing stories to interacting with the Noun community
  • 15 to 20 ETH budget:
    • 60% Artist (The Oracle, yours truly)
    • 25% Storyteller (The Butcher)
    • 15% Smart contract artist (Hopefully the DAO helps to put us in touch with a talented/approved
      engineer for the contract

Phase B:

  • 4 to 7 days of designing, bringing the stories to life
  • No budget needed, only time investment

Phase C:

  • Launching the comics
  • Performing the giveaways
  • Sending 486 comics to NounsDAO for the reward program
  • Getting ready for Nouns Comic #2 and the next tri-weekly cycle
  • Deciding what to do with the fund

Final Note
Thank you for reading through. I’ll constantly be checking this proposal to answer questions and write back; but also feel free to contact me on Discord, I’m available as: “TheOracle#1964”
I don’t have an active Twitter account, but you can still reach me by DM’ing TheUndead’s Twitter.

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Hey Oracle. Thanks for writing out and sharing your proposal.

I like the idea of a Nouns comic as a way to tell the Nouns story. It would be cool to see key aspects of the project be told via the comic stories - concepts like the Nouns artwork being public domain, the daily cadence, the purpose of the treasury, the ethos of the project, etc. Or even just giving each Noun a personality via interview with their respective owners. What did you have in mind for the stories?

Also, having each story be released on-par with Noun o’clock would add on to the already dopamine inducing event that is the birth of the next Noun at auction end. To go with Nouns-native cadence, something like “all Nouns ending in 3, 6, 9” will have a comic released alongside it.

My only push back with the proposal is the Nouns Comic economy feature set. It feels unnecessary and cumbersome. If the core value prop here is the storytelling, I think it makes sense to be funded for you to go wild with just that - the storytelling via comics.

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Hey! Thank you for writing back.

I’ve already laid out the story for Nouns Comic #0 which revolves around what the DAO is really about, so basically sharing a universe where Nouns are born and how the different concepts take action as they get delivered to their respective owners from Noun 'o clock and how we gather around everyday at a certain time of the day to execute that action to treasury and building. I think it’d be awesome to have that “WTF?” handbook of ideas as the #0 comic for two reasons:

  • It’s a way more amusing way to go through for an outsider
  • Visual storytelling always beats plain text

I love the 3,6,9 correlation and am so down to make that happen, by either interviewing the owner as you suggested or coming up with how I think that certain Noun fits in the universe; however I believe that the decision is best made by whoever wins the mentioned Nouns.

We can totally get rid of the economy set, my goal was to give the DAO the assurance that the comics also come with an economy plan, but I’m down to adjust, make changes and tell the best Noun tales.

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I quite like the idea of having a treasury backed asset that is also a piece of history. Which leaves room for further building as well. From pixels to comics to shows is exactly like going from the past to the future.
Loved the proposal and would love to see what this turns into in the end, all and all, it’s a good step forward to bring more normies - for the lack of a better word - into crypto and DAOs.

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Absolutely love the idea of releasing issues on-par with Noun o’clock. Of course, a daily comic would be tough. Even a comic every 3 or 4 days seems like it could be a lot, but if @TheOracle can do it, that would be wonderful. I could even see an issue being released for every Noun ending in 1 (the party Nouns) being a cool idea, adding to the mass excitement that already comes on those days.

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An issue for each Noun ending in 1 would be fantastic as I own fractions of Noun 11 and am a member of PartyDAO. I would also suggest getting another correlation going, i.e. every Noun ending in 1 is a PartyDAO party, every Noun ending in 2 comes with a comic, every Noun ending in 3 comes with a sculpture, etc.

Memes and dreams ~ we’re building the internet culture today, so having all these forms of artistic expressions tied to a correlated system would be super cool.

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If we were to scrap the economic feature, what would the budget look like and how many comics would you be committing to over how long?

Also, can you post links outside of The Undead as supporting work? I think it would help garner support from the community.

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As many comics as the DAO decides; I’m not going anywhere and I’m here to build and create history. As long as there’s a certain correlation going on ~ I will be delivering.

A little bit of unshared work here ~ Proof of Gas (Pog) is a series of 1-sheet comics in the form of a daily observation of what goes on in the NFT world.

  1. “rare gm” - 1559x1559

  2. “I bought the dip” - 2078x1559

  3. “The NFT Influencer” - 1559x1559

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These look great! Thanks for sharing.

In regards to the work and budget - before the proposal goes on-chain, there needs to be an explicit amount of funds requested along with the work you commit to doing. So it would be helpful for you to state in this forum so the community can see what exactly you are proposing.

Personally, I think something along the lines of “[x] amount of ETH for [number of comics] to be published alongside Nouns ending in [3, 6, 9] over [x months]” makes sense. What do you think?

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I appreciate that, Thank you!

0.5 ETH per comic to be published alongside Nouns ending in 3, 6 and 9 over the span of 3 months. Which brings the total to 13.5ETH for 27 Nouns. The mints will be free for the Nouns community with a royalty set at 5% for me as the creator.

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Thank @TheOracle for this proposal! In the comics, please connect me with Jean Grey, she’s my type thanks, I love that she can literally read my mind and I’m using literally correctly here.

You laid aspects of the story for #0 out. Can you expand more about the style and tone you’d use for these comics. Would there be serial narratives or purely episodic? Would it be absurdist humor? Would it be straight? Would it be consistent? What would the througlines be? “Memetic Consistency is the key to Nouns Global Domination” is something I repeat because memetic consistency is the key to Nouns Global Domination.

Or are you leaning towards the @seneca 's structure of interview per noun + art? That is repeatable and consistent and creates almost a visual comic wiki of lore but also leaves you and your team’s storytelling out…

But I really want to get more sense of your artistic vision.

Structure-wise, you’d be releasing on the 3 6 9 nouns, but would you be writing only about the 3 6 9 Nouns, or all the Nouns in sequence starting with #0? That was lost on me.

Thanks,
12

Haha, true!

I agree with you that Memetic Consistency is quite the base of what Nouns run on and I would love to keep building around that. My original proposal was for an episodic series of Nouns Comic; starting from Issue #1 and moving ahead. Also having Issue #0 being the birth story of what Nouns are about. So that when you start reading into the world, you have that #0 handbook of explaining what Nouns are and how their world keeps moving forward.

In regards to tone and style.

Tone: I’ve said this before and I think I’ll keep saying it, but we’re all children of internet one way or another. You know how there’s that “We’re all living the same life” moment when you encounter specific memes? It’s because we speak a specific language, we find specific things funny and through community we find same values. I can not promise a tone approved by everyone, but I promise to deliver and bring that fun joyful interaction of going through a meme written by internet people for internet people.

Style: My style of art is defined, but subject to change. What I mean by this is that I had this vision in mind where I draw the exact pixels of Nouns in the first few pages of Issue #0 ~ but they start to change and become “flesh” as they get delivered to their owners. What I can assure you is that key aspects of these Nouns won’t change, and they will be very easy to recognize.

The interview-based comic would be difficult to do and while I like the suggestion I believe that it would kill narrative/storytelling and it’d turn it into an autobiography rather than what a comic would be. As well as some owners might not be interested in doing so (Not interested in sharing personal info, or some might be owned by a group rather than one sole owner).

I would love for it to be about Nouns and Nouns community rather than those specific Nouns ending in 3 6 9. This way, no Noun will be left behind, all Nouns will be featured ~ and there will be consistency.

Hope that answers your questions 12! :))

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It helps, thank you.

To help me clarify, let’s go to #1 as a live strawman example. What would a #1 be like? Would this would be a short narrative that has like Nouns 2, 25 and 47 in it doing something together? Or would it be more generally about Nouns and not focus on specific nouns? And you say each issues would be episodic, so that means its story would not continue in #2?

And in what issue would my birth via my parents coming together and pouring their beer mugs into an emtpy mug feature?

It may be helpful to do almost a pilot of 3 issues for us to judge what the product would be like and the feel of whether it vibes with our DAO. Something a lot more basic than requiring 15-20 ETH.

Yes, I would say that it’d be a short narrative between a couple of Nouns and their Verbs. My original vision was to keep it episodic where there are different stories happening each Issue.
If we decide to keep the story going, the DAO can decide on what Nouns to choose as main characters or basically decide what characters should appear in the serial narratives where the stories continue, so that I know what I’m exactly working with.

Nouns Comic #12 sounds about right for that or maybe #1.2?

I can deliver Nouns Comic #0 to give the DAO a taste of what I’ll be cooking which I think is better than what 3 pilots would come out as. I’m confident it’s something the DAO would 100% vibe with, I believe in my work and I take pride in that.

I’m now understanding the concerns about funding so even if we end up going with the original plan we can split the pay between phases.
I’m here to build, to grow and to continue doing so ~ I’m not worried about the payment, my work will get me there one way or the other.

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I think there’s general consensus that we want to see to this happen. I like @Noun12’s idea of a pilot. How about we do a Noun Comic #0 as you said and proceed to a formal proposal where the DAO funds something like 6 months of “regularly scheduled” comics?

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Understood! I’ll start working on Nouns Comic #0 immediately!

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Awesome. I think the art style of the 3 pieces (I especially like #1) that you linked aligns with a quirky internet-native tone that I think would mesh well.

When it comes to interview vs unique storyline, I am in favor of the latter. I think the the best art comes when an artist is allowed to let his creativity run free. While it would be cool to have a comic about how great and cool I am for being Noun 22, I think it’s so much more beneficial to the project as a whole for a cool unique comic that would have a much better chance at garnering widespread appeal. I also don’t worry about this being “canonical” and defining what Nouns are - this is just one artist (of hopefully many) who will infuse meaning into Nouns. Over time, I think we will see certain tones, narratives, and styles win out in the battle for memetic supremacy.

So, I hope you go wild @TheOracle and see where this takes you! I’m really excited to see the results.

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I really appreciate artistic freedom and I agree with you ~ interviews kill narratives.

I’ve been working non-stop for a couple of days now and I’ll share the animated cover for Nouns Comic #0 in the next couple of hours. I’m very excited to share the results!

Update: Here’s “Nouns Comic #0” featuring “Noun 0” to serve as the “WTF? Handbook”.

“Nouns Comic #0” Introduces Nouns and their world in an amusing comedic way for those that are new and unfamiliar with NounsDAO and sharing all the necessary key details about Nouns and their ecosystem; embodying concepts like Noun o’clock, memetic consistency, Nouns’ treasury and more.

Here’s the full version of issue #0:

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