How to create an NFT collection
Meta Battler: Series 1 is coming to the Wax Blockchain very soon!
I’ve created many NFT collections at this point, so I’d like to think I’ve picked up quite a few tips and tricks along the way. Now, I’m not talking about a Profile Picture collection. I’m talking about a digital trading card collection. Something that has real collectability and trading potential — the kind of thing you would’ve traded with your friends on the school playground. There are several key areas you need to think about, if you’re going to create something that drives the collectors wild.
CONCEPT
At the foundation of every creative project, concept is key. Without a good concept, it doesn’t matter how great the execution is because the project will be fundamentally flawed. Road test your concept — get feedback. Listen to people. Is it too similar to something else? Push it a few degrees. If you want to build something that lasts, you need to build something unique. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, just a fresh take on an old genre. Or a twist on the familiar. Whatever it is.
When we originally created our first NFT series, The Horrors, we looked at the marketplace and what DIDN’T exist. We didn’t aim to copy the many GPK styled art sets out there — we aimed to do something different. There wasn’t much in the way of darker, more adult art — something we loved — so we felt it was a niche in the market we could fill. Did it work? You bet it did! Our original Horrors series grossed over half a million dollars in primary and secondary sales!
With our new game Meta Battler, we’ve again looked at what doesn’t exist. Our game won’t reinvent the wheel, but it will offer something fresh and fun to our space that is sorely lacking in freshness and fun… ness. Rather than go for a quick buck and stick NFTs into a game that already exists, we’ve built a game for NFTs. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s all-important. And as the space matures and we lose the ROI mentality that is unfortunately pervasive here, games such as Meta Battler — we believe — will be what drives us forwards.
ART
While beauty might well be in the eye of the beholder, if you’re creating an NFT collection, I think art is the most important thing. Create something that collectors will love, which they’ll be proud to keep in their wallets. If you’re an artist yourself, all power to you. If you’re not, and you’re collaborating with artists, find the best artists you can.
When we were starting out with The Horrors, I put a call out on social media for artists. From that I found our lead artist for The Horrors, Macauley Etherington, as well as establishing a relationship with the legendary Kev Hopgood, creator of Marvel’s War Machine, who illustrated our first NFT comic, Beasts and Butchers, as well as adding characters to our new Meta Heroes collection.
There are many ways to find good artists. Ask around. Look on Instagram and Art Station. Ask some questions. Strike a fair deal. As we say in the North east of England, shy bairns get nowt.
And don’t scrimp. With Meta Heroes, I created and commissioned over 70 characters for an ultimate set of 40, whittling down and refining until I was very happy with the result. Which brings me onto my next point…
LOVE
I’m a sentimental soul, but I firmly believe it — if you pour love into a project, we can tell. Passion, energy and love — those things can take you far. People can sense it, they can feel it and they’re drawn to it. If what you’re doing is cynical and cash-grabby, people can sense that too. Ask yourself a few questions about your collection. Do you love it? Would you spend your hard earned cash on it? If you don’t and you wouldn’t, how can you expect anyone else to?
VARIANTS
Often overlooked, but variants are a vital part of any trading card collection. Who wants a dumb old base card when you can have the shiny ultra rare? They make pack cracking exciting and more variants ultimately means a lower mint count, which we’ll come onto later.
Now, I’m not saying you should stuff your project full of dull, half-arsed border variants, but if a variant is thematically appropriate, if it makes the art feel fresh and new, and if it looks cool af, get it in there. I love variants and I love creating variants. I’ll spend days and weeks at it. I’ve led a rich and varied creative life, but part of my background is in experimental film as well as graphic design. So I experiment a lot with variants. I play about, I test things. A lot of it doesn’t work, but when it does and I create The One, it’s an amazing feeling. Whilst it goes against my humble British sensibilities, forgive me for blowing my own trumpet, and saying I feel I’m one of the best around when it comes to creating variants. I’m very proud of the work I’ve accomplished in the space to this date, and I’m exceptionally proud of the variants I’ve created for Meta Battler: Series 1.
I use a combination of Adobe software — Premiere and Photoshop mainly, but you can use whatever you can your hands on. My advice would be to have fun, mess around, see what you can come up with. I think it’s one of the best parts of the job.
SET STRUCTURE
One thing I can say with absolute certainty — mint number matters. Like really matters. No collector wants a mint in the hundreds of thousands, so the lower you’re able to keep your mint count, the better. So how do you do this? Well, referring back to my other points on how to create a kick ass NFT collection, you pack it with art and variety. You pack it with rarity. Keep people coming back to crack those packs. And if you give them low mint numbers, they’ll never be unhappy.
SET REWARDS
I love collecting. I love collectors. Proper collectors are the salt of the NFT world. Which is why I like to reward them as much as I possibly can, because great collecting deserves great rewards. This is one of the cool key differences between collecting physical and digital — you can reward digital collecting in a much easier, clearer way. You have all of X NFTs in your wallet? You’ve earned Y NFT as a result.
Ever since we started Ultra Rare, rewarding collectors was one of our key priorities. Because prior to this, we’d been collecting in the space ourselves, and we’d felt our efforts weren’t being fully acknowledged. So when we came into the space with our own project, we wanted to do more. And boy did we! Collectors still talk about the rewards they earned from collecting series 1 Horrors back in early 2021, and this is again something we’ll do with Meta Battler’s first series. Rewards rewards rewards!
I like to reward not just the odd NFT for collecting, but a new set in itself. With the Horrors collectors earned a new corresponding subset if they collected all the characters in a specific variant. With Meta Battler: Series 1, collectors will once again be rewarded with a bunch of new character NFTs. As well as this, if a collector collects a specific character base through super ultra rare, they’ll earn a “rainbow” reward. I won’t say what that is yet, but it’s a nice fresh Meta Battler twist on what we’ve done before. Additionally, if anyone is able to collect all the 1/1s of a certain character, they’ll also earn something super cool, and rightfully so, because that’ll be some elite level collecting right there!
To conclude, if you have a great concept, great art and variant work, a project full of love and passion and good mints, you’ll be doing okay. I might even collect it myself :)
Meta Battler: Series 1 is coming soon.
Interested in becoming a Meta Battler partner project? Apply here.
