🧪Art
How did Shamanz come to be?
History
The Shamanz art style was born 5 years ago in 2017. Originally named Wiccecraeft, it was a project artist Derry Maulana had started just to exercise his mind and explore new styles, at the time Derry was focused on painting mediums.
"The idea of Wiccecraeft is to explore different personalities from each character through simple styles and uniform shapes in a fun way"
Derry M
Shamanism and the mask themes take inspiration from The legend of Zelda Majora Mask and The Witcher 3. Seventeen original characters were born.
After the original characters were painted, Derry converted the group into digital format and uploaded the whole project to Behance. After release, the project was a hit and got featured by Behance twice and received a ton of traffic.
Derry made even more mural paintings to further explore the characters at the time-
Time and life went on, Wiccecraeft was finished and Derry moved on to explore new projects. During these years a relationship had formed between Derry and the project team while working on various other projects. Fast forward to the end of 2021 when Derry was asked to revive the Wiccecraft project with new and robust lore, thus Shamanz was reborn as an NFT project.
Design Process
All of the Shamanz graphics are drawn in vector using Adobe Illustrator to ensure they can be produced at the highest quality.
Shamanz have a simple art style that is often presumed to be easy to create but is actually quite complex.
"The challenge is to make complex real-life objects in a simple and clean shape, in such a limited canvas. When making Shamanz there are certain rules that need to be followed..."
Derry M
The main 'rule' is using consistent line sizes. There 3 line size that Shamanz constantly use - normal, small and thin.
The other rule is to not to use color with more 'value' than the outline color to ensure a crisp clear image.
The first step of the process are the sketches. The sketches need to capture key objects that need to be drawn in a simplistic way.
The second step is to import the sketches to vector programs such as Adobe Illustrator. It starts with the outline, and can then be completed by tracing and combining the basic shapes together.
The third step is coloring the base.
The final step is applying patterns and gradients depending on the concept art.
Generative Process
After the designs are finalized the full set of layers is sent over to Rumple who breaks each layer out into a canvas with all other existing Shamanz assets. They are placed and adjusted to work with pre-existing placements. They are then exported with transparent backgrounds and organized into the trait index.
There are three different configurations:
Short/no hair
Long hair
Dreaded hair.
The configuration types are due to the front and back of the hairstyles needing to be separate layers for the long and dreaded-haired Shamanz. The separation between these three types is purely mechanical and is only in place to prevent conflicts on the generator's export.
The code for generating Shamanz creates a unique DNA hash for each output. The code will pick a random layer from each of the 22 trait families and compile it, this combination of assets is hashed to create the unique DNA. The program then checks for the existence of this DNA against already rendered DNA. If the DNA is matched the program attempts again, this ensures that the collection will be randomized and no two Shamanz are alike.
Details
Shamanz are rendered at the highest quality possible and the projects priority with the art is to ensure there are no anomalies on render, a rather difficult task when one looks at the complexity and layering of the assets.
Shamanz are rendered in 5000x5000px and will live on the permaweb forever with Arweave
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