{"id":13347,"date":"2022-08-26T23:42:36","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T23:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/art\/emojis-failed-moodies-nfts-aim-to-add-depth-to-online-interactions\/"},"modified":"2022-08-26T23:42:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T23:42:40","slug":"emojis-failed-moodies-nfts-aim-to-add-depth-to-online-interactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/art\/emojis-failed-moodies-nfts-aim-to-add-depth-to-online-interactions\/","title":{"rendered":"Emojis Failed. Moodies NFTs Aim to Add Depth to Online Interactions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In American culture, there exists a brutal expectation to be happy, said the Visual Artist Tomer Hanuka in a recent interview with nft now. \u201cIt\u2019s equated to success. If you\u2019re not happy, something is wrong with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t present a happy face, you\u2019ve probably failed very deeply in your journey,\u201d he continued. \u201c[With social media], you need to show the storefront of your life as something that is successful, sleek, polished \u2014 you jump between vacation spots, coffee shops, great meals, great desserts. The idea of social media and emojis is flat and easy to consume, but has zero depth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The award-winning designer, whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 includes crafting graphic art for The New Yorker<\/em>, National Geographic<\/em>, Netflix, and Sony, believes that the art of expressing emotions online \u2014 and in the NFT space \u2014 is painfully one-dimensional.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an increasingly salient point. Emotional depth and mental health in Web3 are not words people often associate with the NFT space, which is very much to its detriment. And it\u2019s this lack of emotional topographic variation that Tomer and his twin brother Asaf Hanuka \u2014 an award-winning illustrator and instructor at Shankar Graphic Design School in Tel Aviv \u2014 aimed to address with their recent Moodies NFT project.<\/p>\n

The generative-art collection, which was minted in early August, features 7,401 NFTs that visualize a broad range of emotions expressed through symbols, references from pop culture, and storytelling. Each Moodie NFT is a portrait made up of five traits that modify 32 unique emotions that the two artists mapped after Robert Plutchik\u2019s wheel of emotions.<\/p>\n

\n
via Moodies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also something about celebrating winnings all the time,\u201d added Asaf Hanuka, speaking to nft now alongside Tomer. \u201cWith NFTs, there\u2019s always a celebration of winners. But this ecosystem is volatile. In the end, there are people behind it, communicating through screens and icons. And we thought that it would be interesting to just put that on the table, the fact that it\u2019s a mess and that you feel a lot of things at the same time. And then the big challenge was visualizing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFTs in the Moodies collection are undeniably gorgeous and diverse. They also reveal aspects of the twin brothers\u2019 respective artistic styles, which both oppose and complement each other.<\/p>\n

\"\"
via Moodies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDrawing became the tool for me to tell a story,\u201c Asaf Hanuka said of his creative eye. \u201cAnd I notice that I\u2019m trying to really draw what I have to draw to make the information pass [to the reader] and not make the drawing too accurate. This way, there\u2019s something in the flow. The real art is the eye going over the image and reading the page, and then imagining something.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Tomer Hanuka, however, the image takes priority over the story. Significantly influenced by Italian illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti and Japanese graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo, he believes that stories are vehicles for visual experiences; opportunities to make something interesting happen on the page.<\/p>\n

A pay-what-you-feel minting mechanic\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Instead of setting a minting price for the NFTs, the Hanuka brothers instituted a pay-what-you-feel policy, keeping in line with the project\u2019s themes of personal expression and emotional variety. Several Moodies fans on Twitter lauded the approach, saying it brings in an element of conscientiousness to what is otherwise a robotic minting process.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Absolutely love the concept of pay what you want, its a super unique feature. Personally gonna go decently big to support!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Zurfilo (@khobi123) August 8, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The Hanuka brothers had hoped that, through this minting mechanism, people would slow down and take a moment to consider the art, the artists, and how much they value those things. \u201cWe built The Moodies for almost a year in the darkness,\u201d Tomer Hanuka explained. \u201cAnd we really wanted the community to write that next chapter. And we wanted to see what people would do, For them to say, \u2018Okay, there\u2019s a human here, I\u2019m present, I have a heart, I have feelings. Now, I\u2019m going to think about these people and the project.\u2019 And the reaction was that the absolute majority paid zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hanuka brothers chalk this up to the realities of the current bear market but also appreciate how the collectors\u2019 response shifted the story\u2019s emotional focus back to them. Both had anticipated the possibility of most people paying nothing for the mint, but it\u2019s a reality about which they both continue to decide how they feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was surprised. But at the same time, I told myself, \u2018What were you thinking? Of course that was going to happen,\u2019\u201d Asaf Hanuka noted. \u201cBut it was a conceptual decision, and everything we\u2019ve done with the project has aligned with [the values of the project].\u201d<\/p>\n

Bridging the digital and the physical\u00a0<\/h2>\n

The Hanuka brothers emphasize that there are two arcs to the Moodies project: the art and the IP. In designing the NFTs, they made sure to create high-resolution files that will allow collectors to print and own high-quality physical versions of their NFTs.<\/p>\n

Asaf and Tomer Hanuka wanted their art to help create experiences with people in the real world. There are 32 Pure Souls NFTs in the Moodies collection that are the templates from which the rest of the project\u2019s traits blend to form the 7,401 unique pieces in the community. These 32 pieces have been touring the world, making appearances in Los Angeles and at NFT NYC 2022. Their next stop is Tel Aviv, where the Hanuka brothers will display the pieces at a cave-shaped gallery in Jaffa.<\/p>\n

But the Hanuka brothers making the NFT files high-resolution is a critical component of the upcoming stages of the Moodies project. However, the two remain tight-lipped about those details for the time being.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
The Great Moodie and The Soul Ray, via Moodies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The project\u2019s NFT storytelling takes a literal form: One of the main characters in the Moodies\u2019 story is what the graphic design pair call the Great Moodie, a psychiatrist from the turn of the century whose creation was inspired by stories of Freud.<\/p>\n

\u201cFreud wanted so badly to win the Nobel Prize for science, but he never did, because the Nobel Prize Committee said that psychoanalysis is not a science, it\u2019s closer to literature,\u201d Asaf Hanuka explained. \u201cThere is this split between science and a kind of magic. The Great Moodie is like this, and he went on to invent the Soul Ray, which is basically a machine that can see through your soul, and see what kind of archetypes and symbols are inside your psyche. This character is central to the narrative branch of the project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Storytelling through NFTs<\/h2>\n

The brothers say that they have a \u201cnarrative production\u201d in the works that includes some serious writing and voice talent, in addition to a \u201cbest-in-class\u201d production studio, although they can\u2019t reveal any more details.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a campaign going on now on our Twitter and Discord, with a letter dropping every day,\u201d Tomer Hanuka teased. \u201cOnce the sentence is complete, I think a lot of things are going to become clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking more broadly about how NFTs are an excellent format for storytelling, the Hanuka brothers drew some interesting parallels between blockchain-based tech and comic books.<\/p>\n

\u201cNFTs are a format for creation,\u201d declared Asaf Hanuka. \u201cComics started as funny strips in the newspaper. And then, for 30 years, it was almost only superhero comics. But in the end, comic books are a language. You can talk about everything \u2014 depression, the Holocaust, something funny, or a journey that changed your life. It\u2019s a language. NFTs are the same thing. They\u2019re a format for storytelling through images. This is just starting, and it\u2019s very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothers consider the Moodies project as the first \u201cfine art PFP\u201d collection of the NFT space. You could argue that it\u2019s not the first, but the NFTs are vibrant and chaotic \u2014 each capable of evoking a flurry of emotions that tell unique, self-contained stories. The collection also reminds us how, despite all the gms and WAGMIs, the people who carry the NFT space forward are real, nuanced, and inherently driven by contradictions. Bringing this lived reality into center stage is truly heartwarming.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n