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How to create NFTs (General Explanation) + Extravagant Whales Collection
After months of hard work, I have finally released my NFT collection called Extravagant Whales.
At first I wasn't really sure about NFTs, but the more I dived into the NFT world, the more I was convinced about finishing my collection.
NFTs are unique tokens which can be images, videos, audio files, and any other types of digital files. NFTs are deployed on the blockchain and use blockchain technology to generate a public proof of ownership.
I didn't create my NFTs for the money or the fame of being recognized. I did it for the learning process and what's behind creating NFTs.
I'm not an artist, so I used programming and some tools which were already created by some awesome people such as Daniel Eugene Botha (HashLips) and Rounak Banik (Scrappy Squirrels) to generate my collection. I did create the art myself though.
Before you start generating NFTs, you need an idea of what you want to create, in my case, whales.
I created all the necessary layers to create multiple Extravagant Whales and their accessories/elements by using Adobe Photoshop, but you can use any other image editing software.
Most NFTs require multiple layers which are stacked on top of each other to generate a final image of whatever you want to generate which is the NFT.
Once you have all layers needed to create your final image, you have to use a programming tool to place all the layers on top of each other and generate a ton of images, usually people generate collections made of 10k NFTs, but you can do more or less. My collection is made of 5188 Extravagant Whales.
In my case, I used 4 to 5 layers to generate an Extravagant Whale.
For example, the image above is generated using four different layers which are placed in the following order:
Background Layer
Base Layer (Whale Body)
Eyes Layer
Head Gear Layer
After you have generated your NFTs, you can proceed to deploy them on an NFT Marketplace such as OpenSea.
Before you deploy them though, you have to generate metadata which has to be complaint to the standards of the NFT marketplace.
Metadata is just information about the NFTs. In the case of the Extravagant Whale #81 which is shown above, the metadata is the following.
- Background: Orange
- Base: Dotted
- Eyes: Up
- Head Gear: Cap
As you can tell, this information is just a description of each layer that makes up the NFT above.
You can use the same programming tool used to generate the NFTs in order to generate the metadata for your NFTs.
After you have these two things, you have to host the NFTs and their metadata somewhere on the internet. In my case, I used IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) which is a decentralized system to share and store data.
Once you have hosted your NTFs, you have to choose a blockchain where you want to deploy your NFTs.
Some popular blockchains are Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana.
Ethereum is the most popular one but the cost to deploy an NFT collection is too expensive for many people, including me. This is why I chose Polygon since it's really cheap to deploy there.
Finally, to show your NFTs to the world you can go to OpenSea and manually upload your collection or you can create a contract to deploy your collection on the blockchain directly.
If you have a 10k NFT collection, it would be extremely time-consuming to upload each NFT manually to OpenSea.
I recommend creating a smart contract to upload your collection since this simplifies the process a lot and allows users to mint NFTs by interacting with your contract.
There are many tutorials with smart contracts already created (HashLips one) that can help you deploy your collection.
After deploying on OpenSea, there are other things to be done such as pricing the NFTs, creating a Dapp to mint NFTs, marketing, and more.
Some of the things I have learned by creating my NFT collection are:
Art is extremely difficult to create. I have an immense respect to all the artists for what they do day to day especially those who put everything in the line in order to do what they love.
Creating a strong community around your NFTs is key for your collection to take off and reach a large audience.
NFTs with a purpose > NFTs with no purpose
The Extravagant Whales collection has been released on the Polygon blockchain which makes it really affordable to deploy, mint, and allow people to buy them.
Crypto is taking over the world slowly but surely. Whether you agree with how things are turning out or not, cryptocurrencies are here to stay.
In my opinion, the best option is to learn and embrace this new ecosystem in some sort of way regardless of what will happen in the future. This is the reason why I decided to partake in the crypto world by creating my NFT collection.
I learned a ton by creating my NFTs. I plan to make videos on my YouTube channel and release tutorials on how to create NFTs for others to learn as well.
I would really appreciate it if you could check out my NFTs, consider buying them (if you find them affordable enough ~ $20), and most importantly share them with others.
I'm still working on deploying the website, roadmap, merchandise, and others things which depend a lot on people liking the collection. I also plan to donate some of the profits to TeamSeas.
You can find the Extravagant Whale Collection in the link below. Enjoy!!
I have minted 100 NFTs so far. More coming soon!
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