A online game business veteran on making the artwork behind well-liked NFTs • TechCrunch

Welcome again to Chain Response, the place we unpack and clarify the newest in crypto information, drama and tendencies, breaking issues down block by block for the crypto curious.

For our Tuesday episode this week, we talked to James Zhang a 24-year veteran of the online game business — first as an artist, then as a founder and investor. Zhang, founder and CEO of NFT artwork consultancy Idea Artwork Home, began his profession as an idea artist at LucasArts, the studio behind the Star Wars video video games.

Idea Artwork Home launched 14 years in the past with a mandate to offer artwork to online game firms, and in that point the corporate has helped ship over 1,000 video games, Zhang stated. However in 2021, the corporate honed its focus to completely serve clients constructing web3 video video games as Zhang saved figuring out alternatives at that very intersection.

“During the last two years, we’ve had a complete pivot into web3, and there’s sort of no wanting again,” Zhang stated.

Idea Artwork Home has labored with each artistic manufacturers trying to construct a presence by way of web3 video gaming and crypto-native firms that lack expertise in gaming and artwork creation, in line with Zhang. The corporate has labored on tasks with NFT big Dapper Labs, the corporate behind NBA High Shot, and comedian e-book creator Frank Miller, best-known for writing and illustrating “The Darkish Knight Returns.” It raised $25 million from investors final October from traders together with Animoca Manufacturers and angels corresponding to Axie Infinity creator Jeff ‘Jiho’ Zirlin.

However regardless of Idea’s preliminary wins in web3, the crypto bear market has hit NFTs significantly exhausting prior to now few months, making its work way more troublesome. Zhang stated crypto winter has had three most important results on his enterprise — first, that low token costs have brought on folks to be extra cautious about what NFTs they purchase, second, that enterprise funding has to last more, and third, that new token launches are not a significant catalyst for progress within the NFT house.

One among Zhang’s most important areas of focus lately is on serving to artists monetize their abilities inside web3.

“We wish to create a very highly effective artists’ community that may credential and establish who an artist is and what they’ve labored on in web2 and web3. So as an alternative of making one [piece of] IP, we wish to create a platform that’s actually pleasant for artists in web3,” Zhang stated.

Compensation for the artists behind NFTs has been a controversial matter, with artists corresponding to Seneca, who illustrated the pictures behind the Bored Ape Yact Membership mission speaking up about not being compensated in a lucrative way.

Zhang sees each side of the difficulty, saying artists usually are each “underpaid, and so they’re paid what they’re presently price” primarily based on market worth. He thinks artists have some company to enhance how they’re compensated and sees web3 as a software that may assist them in that course of.

“The artists who’re extra financially savvy, who perceive group, have extra energy. They want much less brokers, much less middlemen. That’s sort of the promise of blockchain,” Zhang stated.

“I feel sooner or later, you will notice this fork for {most professional} artists — do you wish to attempt to perceive funds extra, your function in it, your function in the neighborhood, your function in know-how and contribute as a extremely expert artist? Or do you wish to simply paint and draw very well?”

You’ll be able to take heed to the total episode to listen to extra of Zhang’s ideas on how artists can place their ability units in web3 in addition to how he thinks about mental property and possession points within the NFT world.