Proposal: Create "WTF are Nouns?" Animated Video

NounsDAO NounsDAO Proposals
#1

Dear Nouners,

Our first proposal! I’ve been digging in here and in Discord (Matto#1231) and very much appreciate the warm welcome so far. Thank you for taking a look at this and sharing your feedback, tips for iteration or anything else you care to!

Best,
Matto

“WTF are Nouns?” Nouns overview explainer animation

Created by: Thousand Ant v1 - 4/28/2022

TLDR: We’re asking for 20 ETH to create a 3-5 minute animated video which provides a fun, concise and stylish overview of the Nouns protocol to help people quickly understand the core ideas.

:mag: Proposal Objective

  • To provide a framework that details the scope of work and commercial terms to be submitted to the Nouns DAO proposal process

:dart: Goal

Nouns DAO seeks to proliferate the Nouns meme. One challenge to proliferation is understanding. By creating a concise, stylish and informative animation we can give interested folks a quick way to understand the project.

:thinking: About The Team: Thousand Ant

Thousand Ant is an agency with a focus on realtime 3D and game development. We work with clients like Unity Technologies, Google, Microsoft and JuiceboxDAO to help them create games, animations and educational content to inspire developers and creators.

Matto (aka Matt Schell) is the Managing Director of Thousand Ant and a generative artist working with code, real-time visuals and procedural audio. He’s released music for respected labels like Warp Records and also formerly served as the global head of online evangelism for Unity Technologies. He is a member of the Friends With Benefits DAO and is a community contributor to web3 projects including Crypts and Caverns, Terraforms by Mathcastles. Thousand Ant has recently released our own first NFT collection Hypercastle Explorers, a project which is building a game engine SDK for Terraforms.

Suspicious Seaweed (aka Tom Schell) is the head of operations for Thousand Ant and the Chief JPEG Officer at OfferbotDAO.

Some of our relevant video and animation work can be found here.

:date: Project Phases

:mega: Phase 1: Briefing, Proposal and Voting

  • :white_check_mark: Initial discussions to explore proposal viability in Nouns Discord #proposal-ideas channel by Matto#1231
  • :point_right: Thousand Ant shares proposal on Discourse for feedback
  • Nouns community reviews, feeds back and votes on proposal
  • Proposal is approved
  • Scope of work signed

:memo: Phase 2: Art Production

  • Script brief
    • Thousand Ant team gathers script reference materials from Nouns DAO members
      • Existing script drafts
      • Other marketing materials explaining the project
  • Script writing
    • Thousand Ant creates a first draft of the video script and shares for feedback
    • Nouns community provide comments and edits on script document
    • Thousand Ant finalize script draft based on input
  • Gather art assets
    • Thousand Ant sources existing art assets from Nouns community
    • Nouns NFT pixel art images
    • 3D noun models from various extension projects
    • 2D derivative noun images
    • Existing nounish animations and drawings
  • Storyboard
    • Thousand Ant to provide storyboard which will convey basic beats of the video, shot framings and an idea of camera movement based on script and approved concepts
    • Nouns community to provide feedback on storyboard
    • Thousand Ant revises storyboard based on input
    • Storyboard finalized
  • Voice over recording
    • Thousand Ant suggest voiceover artists, gather community input
    • Record finalized script voiceover
  • Music creation
    • Thousand Ant provides a musical mood board / playlist of stylistic references for community input
    • Thousand Ant composer creates 3 original musical sketches and shares for community input
    • One musical sketch selected for final arrangement, mixing and video scoring
  • Animatic creation
    • Thousand Ant provides rough blockout / animatic with voiceover and rough music for review
    • Nouns community provides feedback on animatic
    • Thousand Ant revises based on feedback
    • Animatic finalized
  • Final Animation Creation
    • Thousand Ant creates final animation and music based on finalized animatic

:mag_right: Phase 4: Review and Delivery

  • Complete draft of animation shared for Nouns community review
  • Thousand Ant incorporates community feedback into final animation
  • Final animation video render delivered for publishing
  • Assets open sourced
    • All video source materials made available under CC0 license for creation of future Nouns related projects including:
      • Video footage
      • musical parts
      • animation files
  • :checkered_flag:Final project delivered

:recycle: Revisions

  • Up to 2 revisions per asset

:crystal_ball: Timeline

  • Approximately 9 Weeks from signing of SOW

:gem: Payment Terms

  • 50% at signing of SOW and 50% on delivery and approval of final deliverable.
  • 20 ETH

:running_man: Next Step

  • Thousand Ant to post proposal for voting via Discourse
3 Likes
#2

i think it’s is a great idea, and i appreciate the super thorough timeline breakdown. i also liked the Juicebox video from your channel.

i think nailing the tone is going to be the most important piece, since it’ll serve as a true “intro” to many new folks. will you try to work with the script from 4156 or write a new one?

i’m excited to see this progress!

#3

Thanks for taking a look cdt! We’d definitely want to find an appropriate tone, and are open to feedback and collaboration on it. I spoke briefly with 4156 and would be happy to use the script he’s written as a basis for this. Normally we have a few rounds of feedback and rewrites to incorporate folks ideas so I think basing it off what he’s written would be a great place to start.

#4

a lot money for a short period of time. Would love this figure to be challenged. (alternatively Mad realities can produce something much cheaper I believe)

#5

Thanks for taking the time to read and reply, really appreciate it.

We ourselves could also quote a much lower price if we had the sense that this was an organization with limited funds where something simple, cheap and quick was what was needed. My intuition, however, is that Nouns is a premium brand/meme and would want the same level of treatment that our clients at Google, Microsoft and Unity are looking for.

Investing more in making the animation means that we can profitably spend more time, effort and money on raising the quality and iterating on it with the community. There are many ways to do things that are really cheap, in this case we are proposing a budget that will allow us to create something high quality.

If the consensus is that something much smaller with a lower investment is desired I’m happy to submit something much simpler.

Thanks!

1 Like
#6

@goldy.mov and @Noun142 would love to get your thoughts on it as well after our conversation on the voice chat last week!

Also @4156 I am happy to use the script you’ve got as a starting point if you’d like to share it.

#7

that sounds great, best of luck! looking forward to it

#8

This is by no means a big budget for this kind of video from my point of view. Obviously pricing depends on the quality you are aiming to produce. If i was making this proposal I would be asking for more ETH.

1 Like
#9

was my thought as well but not in the video space (i an but a humble photographer) at all so wouldn’t presume to know. glad to hear this from you.

1 Like