Anime Punks
History of Aps. OGs of ALTPunks.
Alt-punks are a crypto-native art movement that began as an organic social collaboration and an homage to the CryptoPunks in February 2021.
In February 2021 Madebyrvk and Shikamaru created Anime Punks — one of the first ALTPunk Collections, inspired by CryptoPunks and Anime. There was a time before BAYC, when frens supported artists and had a great time.
Each Anime Punks were individually hand drawn by Madebyrvk, making them all 1/1s. As generative projects became the norm, such collections simply don’t exist anymore. 10 months of work to create a full collection of 1,000 Anime Punks, let that sink in. Meanwhile we have seen the NFT market fluctuate both for better and worse, but our base community has stayed strong, true diamond hands experienced fam.
Now we are working to upgrade v.1 collection on new Metaverse NFT Worlds Lands in collab with our fellows Shonen Junk team, our SpacePod Gallery by RTFKT, new SmartContract ERC721A, community governance wallet and more you can read here.
What is a CryptoPunk and an AnimePunk diffirences?
The CryptoPunks are 24x24 pixel art images, generated algorithmically. Most are punky-looking guys and girls, but there are a few rarer types mixed in: Apes, Zombies and even the odd Alien. Every punk has their own profile page that shows their attributes as well as their ownership/for-sale status (here’s an example).
The Anime Punks are high-resolution pixel art images created by 1 artist, Madebyrvk, without the use of any generators, and not a single Crypto Punk trait is used in our collection. While they may have a reminiscent “punky” appearance they resemble anime styled girls, guys, aliens, apes, titans, mechs, and too many more to list. Every series has its own unique background color (here’s an example).
As you can see in the side by side comparison of random CryptoPunk #4552 vs. Anime Punk #142, they are completely different.
“They look like Anime Characters, are there potential IP law issues?”
As you may be aware, you cannot sell Anime fan art without licensing/permission to do so. Although resembling Anime, Anime Punks is not a fan art collection, it is a parody of CryptoPunks and Anime.
While fan art can be construed to be in violation of copyright law, pieces that can be proven to be parody work (as opposed to plagiarism) can be offered for sale on enterprise ecommerce platforms under the tenets of the Fair Use Doctrine.
