Voilà Couré: My 1st NFT

I Am An Artist

My time in KERNEL came at the height of 2 realizations. I am an artist. I am a teacher. However, I have always been a griot but mostly through writing and speech. Does being an artist and a teacher just add flesh to this skeleton?

While I was writing a blog on “The Tokenized Art Renaissance,” which is still unfinished by the way, it began to transform into something new. At first, I adjusted the language. Then, I began to play with the incentives. Around the same time I was thinking through a curriculum to teach high school students about podcasting. Ultimately, the ideas converged to create The Griot Games, a social token game to create NFT podcasts. Merging Web 3 research with digital media strategy unlocked a path to imagination. This encouraged me to use my power as a griot to tell a story about the world where The Griot Games lived, Khwarizmi.

The name Khwarizmi (hu-riz -me) is borrowed from Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi’s last name. Khwarizmi introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and algebra to European mathematicians. As a result, “algebra” and “algorithm” come from his name.

Also, I was falling in love with new tools for telling stories like Adobe Illustrator, paper and color pencils. My muse was the Boabab Tree or Adansonia Digitata. While I was in Senegal, I had been amazed by its size not in height but diameter. The diameter for the tree averages 16 feet. I had tasted the milk of the Boabab fruit. However, around the inception of The Griot Games, I became increasingly interested in the architecture of the plant. Baobab Trees not only have enormous trunks and sweet fruit with many purposes, they have flowers that hang upside down and seeds with roots and canals.

My 1st NFT

My 1st NFT is titled, “Voilà Couré” (this means “Here Is Couré”). Couré is a character from The Griot Games. The Griot Games is being designed as an open-sourced game for creating popcasts or gamified NFT podcasts. The most important part of any game is the story. I want to create this story with you. So, I will be sharing what I learn while I learn it.

Couré is from Khwarizmi, the land of Khwarizmians. Suddenly, she is forced to leave her hometown to escape the Blue Dust Storm. Her courage and self determination has led her to become my 1st NFT. She is a dreamer that was imagined during KERNEL Block III. This NFT is the only copy of her original birth as a digital image.

On June 27th, Couré’s design started as a pencil sketch on paper. Next, I added some flavor with color pencils. Then, I took a popping picture by hanging my sketch pad on a hanger and using the iPhone portrait feature. Lastly, I created the digital version with Adobe Illustrator.

After I had my completed digital file, it was time to mint my NFT.

To do this, I got help from #Uncryptd. Uncryptd is an incentivized learning experiment that provides an easy and understandable way for beginners to onboard onto Web3.

How to Mint Your 1st NFT

Get help…

1. Go to @uncryptd on Twitter and click their linktree
2. Click on their website which will lead you to a Notion page
3. Scroll down and click “Walkthrough/Tutorial — ROUND 1”
4. Watch Uncryptd’s video with Robin Roy. Note: This was an easy to follow and semi-funny video. It is kind of long but you can fast forward the parts that seem to move too slow for you.
5. Review Uncryptd’s checklist

Get started…

1. I already had a Metamask wallet installed on my Google Chrome browser but you may need to set this up first. Note: Watch this video to set up a Metamask wallet.
2. Be sure to secure your secret recovery phrase.
3. I already had a few networks in my metamask wallet but I needed to connect to Matic’s Mainnet to mint with Polygon. Minting on Polygon is cool because there are no gas fees making it free.
4. To add Matic’s Mainnet, open your Metamask browser extension. Click on the Network selection dropdown and then click on Custom RPC.
5. It will open up a form with 2 tabs on the top, Settings and Info. In the Settings tab you can add Matic Mainnet in the Network Name field, URL https://rpc-mainnet.maticvigil.com/ in the New RPC URL field, 137 in Chain ID field, MATIC in Currency Symbol field and https://polygonscan.com/ in Block Explorer URL field.
6. Finish up by clicking “Save”
7. Visit matic.supply. On this site, you can get MATIC from “the faucet”. This is basically where you can get a small amount of funds to start using a cryptocurrency without having to buy some.
8. You will need to connect your Metamask wallet from the MATIC Mainnet network to access 0.0005 MATIC. This funding will allow you to do basic transactions on the Polygon Network.
9. Once you have received your matic from the faucet, you should see a transaction link. Click this to view the proof of your transaction on Polygonscan.com

Mint your NFT…

1. Go to Polygon’s NFT minter, mintnft.today.
2. Next, connect your wallet.
3. Next, scroll down and follow the steps on the screen. This will prompt you to upload your digital file like a .png or .mp4 file. Remember that the max size is 10 MB.
4. Then, you will need to add a name and a description but remember this will be recorded on an immutable ledger so double check for typos
5. For token type, select ERC-721
6. Finally, click “Mint NFT”

View your NFT…

1. Got to Open Sea’s website. Note: OpenSea is one of the biggest NFT marketplaces and one of the most popular places to check out your NFTs.
2. Click your avatar in the top right and connect your wallet.
3. View your NFT in the “Collected” section of “My items”

So… you minted your 1st NFT… what’s next…

I minted my 1st NFT “Voilà Couré” on July 14th. It received its 1st bid on July 16. I was so hype when I saw this bid come through. However, I did not accept the bid because I am still adding value to Couré’s story.

The beauty of decentralized systems is that communities determine the value of things. The possibilities with NFTs are endless, and Couré’s story has just begun. If you want more blogs on what you can do with your NFTs, how to market yourself as an artist or even more technical things like how to transfer your NFT to another chain my DMs are open. Send me a message on twitter @thetagan.

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