This looks amazing and I love that it’s as much about creating and making assets available cc0/open source for others to use. I can see this being incredibly beneficial for students, especially those in digital media design. Would love to see this funded but concerned that the large ask may be a challenge. Is there a way to break down the budget into smaller chunks that could be tacked onto specific deliverables?
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Thanks for the props! and totally agree students would benefit quite a bit from digging into the assets and using the whole toolkit as a platform for learning storytelling, animation, motion capture, etc. Yeh with ETH continuing its sad drop, Stephen and I have been tossing around some ideas.
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Dreaming about all the possibilities this can unlock is like drinking a full can of Amsterdam in one gulp! Can’t wait to see this come to life. Happy to help any way I can.
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haha, once I can materialize the Amsterdam on earth you’re getting the first can! But I can’t be held responsible 
Now we’re cooking with gas!! 
You’re My Boy Blu!
Love this prop, and love what you did using www.3Dnouns.com assets. Best extension of an extension, and this is exciting to see a creative CC0 stack in the making.
I am not going to pretend that this isn’t a very large ask, and I would prefer to see it broken into phases if possible.
20 Eth for rigging 12 face+body and 24 body assets is a lot since the assets are pretty much ready out of 3D nouns website (even though I’m sure they need a bit of fine tuning, mesh optimisation and paint weighting).
I also would be curious to see the style of the environments you are going to make. I know this can be a lot of work depending on the resolution and I feel like they play a huge part in defining the mood and aesthetic. Would like to see some drafts, concepts, or even one or two assets finished to get a sense of the aesthetic and if they can be reused for other purposes down the line (say a video game, that would add a fourth layer to the cc0 stack). I would not be so stoked of the assets felt too generic and bought online instead of crafted the nounish way (devils in the details).
Characters and assets are adding up to 100 ETH and, as a 3D person myself, I feel like this is a little too much (although could be acceptable depending on the quality of env assets). For that price I think you should get ALL nouns body and face rigged and open the floodgates for nounish CGI and filmmaking using game engines.
3D nouns gave you the models and textures, let’s take it one step further.
Obviously I love the work, and the way you approached the community (dms first, then twitter, then discourse etc you set a great example). Great vibe overall and would absolutely want this prop to succeed, I just feel like a bit more details are needed to fire up such a large transaction.
As a general comment, I would like to see large props broken into phases using sablier or multiple on chain submissions.
Thanks for the prop, very exciting!
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I would personally prefer more Nouns and less environments. We have 242 Noun heads, and to get only 12 of them fully rigged seems like a missed opportunity for other creators to express themselves with these characters. I’d prefer the story and video length be scaled back in order to accommodate more Nouns.
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Thx for the input Coralorca and your props on the prop!
It was awesome grabbing the 3Dnouns for the proposal video but I’m planning to build all the episode / toolkit nouns from scratch in a different style. It’s super important to me the Nouns faces have a vibrant ability to express themselves using facial capture / mocap. Given the style and variety of nouns faces, this translation is a fairly big undertaking and will involve an elaborate custom face rig for each character depending mainly on their mouths and how their overall face can deform, etc. It’s not a trivial thing to make sure each unique character has a great smile, frown and talking style that fits their personality. It’s one of the qualities I think makes Blu connectable and I put a lot of effort into those details when building him. Same with the bodies, they will be unique per hero noun and take on a certain design + level of rigging for animation and motion capture.
Overall I’m approaching this through a Pixar lens, meaning a lot of energy will go into the quality, design, expressivity & uniqueness of both the characters and the environments. Not saying we’re going to hit Pixar level per se but we’ll strive too and I think we’ll blow some minds with where we land. I’m a world building fanatic so you don’t have to worry about the environments being generic or not nounish. Plus I’ll be sharing concept art with the community from the get go and consider all feedback to make sure it hits the bullseye. Nouns are super iconic and the world I’m going to build will do it justice!
I also would love nothing more than to have the entire Nouns lineup be setup at the
‘Hero nouns level’ but this first initiative is focused more on establishing an amazing translation of the Nouns universe into an exciting 3d world with incredible character expressibility & animation.
The idea is from here, a great blueprint for expanding the environments and translating / creating hero nouns will have been established and made available where others can continue to build on and expand the universe within a cohesive style and quality. Plus the story will act as inspiration and will have established characters and story arcs that can also be built on & expanded.
A phase 2 proposal could easily be made to use the recipe and build out the rest of the Nouns in one go.
Speaking about phases, I understand you guys don’t know what’s in my head so there’s a bit of faith in what will be delivered but I can promise you I’m coming into this at the highest level I can achieve (as I do all my projects) and you will not be disappointed! The current proposal structure will give us the best shot at making/starting something incredible given our team size, timeline and pace of creation.
Hope that helps clarify a few things, I realize I should have put more of these details into the proposal. Don’t hesitate to hit me back on any of this!
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Hey 9999! Copy that on your feedback. Take a peek at my reply to Coralorca and let me know if that helps clarify our approach to getting this off the ground while paving the way towards building out the full noun cast.
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All good here. I misread and misunderstood the term ‘rigging.’ There will actually be 36 completed Noun heads that will exist in xanadu (12 with, 24 without, mouth rigging), which is 3x as many as I thought. Thanks for the thoughtful response!
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This looks like an amazing prop Blu. Particularly the toolkit that you’ll be creating and making available to the community. We think the “How to Docs and Tutorials” if done well will be really beneficial to creators. RTFKT have done a great job with their release of CloneX 3D models and tutorials for holders, turning collectors and enthusiasts into builders that help proliferate the brand. One of the co-founders, Benoit is a raven head Noun holder. Busy guy, but might be worthwhile trying to get in touch with him for some Nouner support. We’d love to see Nounish builders create content once they have the rigged assets and tutorials to help them build.
Would love to hear more from you on the toolkit details and what you plan on creating in terms of docs and tutorials. Will this be aimed at experienced builders, or will you be developing tools for the lowest common denominator user? The latter would be great.
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Thanks for the detailed and thorough answer. You convinced me! I understand that getting the face rigs to express each individual noun is not an easy task, I know that from making AR filters.
I believe we can expect some outstanding work and attention to details coming from you guys!
Looking forward
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Thanks ThaSwami and good idea to reach out to Benoit!
Our aim for the toolkit is to make it as easy as possible for a beginner to make cool content so most of the docs and tutorials will be aimed at the beginner and a few things intermediate. I would point out the toolkit will be rooted in the Unreal Engine which is free, insanely fun and amazing but like any big software, there’s a real learning curve involved. Our tutorials will assume basic understanding of the Unreal Engine and there’s tons of tutorials online for that.
I’ve seen a few people pick up the unreal engine really fast (Non 3d people) and start making amazing stuff in a short time so I’m confident if there’s a creative will to create in this Nouns Toolkit sandbox, learning Unreal won’t be a problem! Just be prepared to get addicted 
Hi, awesome proposal! Really looking forward to see it happen.
During discussion with nouncilors we noticed that you wrote “a story world made by one dude with godlike creation powers forging a new category of entertainment” but in the project description there is a list of big production team. Are you going to work alone or you have a production team?
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New Noun holder over here, although I’ve been a big fan of the community for some while now. Just wanted to say, seeing how well thought out this proposal was and the conversation from the community after it is the reason I ended up buying Noun 422.
Glad this passed, and excited to hear how any other Noun community members can be of any help while this is being made.
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Thanks for the props and support!
Good question; I was using that line to draw attention to what’s possible with just one dude (all previous Xanadu episodes were made by just me) so imagine what a small talented team could do… that kind of thing. The Nouns episode is a big big one mainly because it involves designing and building a big slice of the world including a cast of new characters so a team is essential, plus they’re gonna help elevate everything way beyond what I can do myself 
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Awesome to hear Noun422! The NounsDao+ has some special mojo goin on
As for Nouns community member involvement, keep tabs on our new channel on Discord, that’ll be home base for various ops as we get ramped up and rolling with production. I’ll likely make some form of roadmap showing the different known opportunities and I’m sure some will spontaneously erupt along the way. And don’t hesitate to just throw stuff out there, nothings off limits for discussion.
Thanks for reply and congrats on getting funded. Would love to see your team expand and take on much bigger projects in the future! All the best!
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