What Happens When We Psychoanalyze Our Polymorphs?
you’re about to find out… the first episode premieres in less than 24 hours…
To a purveyor of NFTs, the Polymorphs may embody the typical crypto project. However, there’s so much more to this than meets the eye. The infinite level of creativity that drives a high level NFT project is fascinating. The people that gravitate towards communities initially formed by this creativity are even more so. What I have noticed that has been missing for as long as I have been paying attention is that most NFT projects are lifeless post mint. After all the time and effort put into building out creative IP, none of it really gets a fair chance at being brought to life. I’m sure I’ve missed some drops, and there are undoubtedly some projects that have incredible storytelling to go along with their characters, but what happened to all of the fun?
When the Polymorphs were born, we thought about who we were as a community. We call ourselves degenerates, but the reality is that we are a community of artists, introverts, innovators, and intellects that often don’t give ourselves enough credit. Let’s face it, being interested in any of this is akin to traveling down an unmarked trail and can frequently lead to the people in our lives being concerned for our mental well-being and recommending us some well-needed “Therapy.” Thus, the idea of Polymorphic Therapy was born.
For the entirety of my time working with Universe and even beforehand, I’ve spent most of my free time making visuals for Polymorphs. Whether they be silly memes or 3D renders, I have always enjoyed bringing our little Polymorphic friends to life. I’m a huge fan of South Park, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Rick and Morty (to be honest, I also enjoyed some Powerpuff Girls, even though I would never admit it as a child because my dad and sisters would make fun of me). What about the Rugrats? Rocket Power? Spongebob? I think we can all appreciate cartoons to some extent, and this nostalgia drove my feeling of what was missing from the NFT space. Animated storytelling has, in a way, lost its shine. It’s just the same commercial IP repeatedly on our televisions, so it is in our belief that it is time for the Polymorphs to get some of that love and appreciation.
So, we have taken the Polymorphs to therapy! I am so excited for all of you to watch the first episode. Thanks to our talented friends at Universe + Dav, Jason, and Jon, we came up with some pretty entertaining animated visuals and comedic skits that truly bring Polymorphs to life. Each one starts with a rough script which goes through multiple rounds of revisions internally before Davram and Jason do the voice acting. They do a fantastic job considering the visual appearance of each of the Polymorphs featured to influence its attitude and demeanor. Next, the audio files are sent over to Jon, where he works his magic creating puppets, scenes, and animations. He then does the strenuous work of pairing it with the voice recordings and adding critical sound effects. It’s an amazing process to be a part of.
Oh, one last thing! You may be asking yourself, why the first episode is called episode #5515? Don’t worry, and you didn’t miss the first 5000 episodes. Every Polymorphic Therapy episode features an actual Polymorph who’s unique genome string exists on-chain. The episodes are named after the token ID numbers as the episode counter instead of having it be linear. We truly hope you enjoy this next phase of our creative efforts — we have a lot of ideas down the pipeline! We’d love to have you join us in this process and tell us what you’d like to see… and there may even be an opportunity to have your favorite Polymorphs featured in future episodes!
If you’ve made it this far, I feel like I should introduce myself… I’m Zach @transmental, a street photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. When I first dove into the world of NFT’s almost two years ago, I was fascinated by the abundance of creativity and intellectual passion that filled it. This space drove me down many rabbit holes: I’ve picked up 3D modeling and rendering, spent an ungodly amount of time reading through smart contracts that (at first) I didn’t understand in the slightest, and have learned more in the past year and a half than I could ever imagine. I am thankful for everyone that I have crossed paths with because of this amazing community of like minded individuals, a lot of y’all are more like family to me rather than just random internet friends.
