Dear NounsDAO,
Welcome to Xanadu… a story world made by one dude with godlike creation powers forging a new category of entertainment that twists fiction with reality and collides pop culture with the coolest things on the internet. It’s a wild, novel genre that’s inspiring a new generation of creators, artists, and storytellers.
Click image to watch Blu present the proposal
We’re a team of two with a shared passion for bringing avatars and worlds to life. We want to help bring Nouns into the 3D metaverse with our unique storytelling and world-building skills. We propose a XANADU x NOUNS collaboration consisting of two parts:
Part One - Nouns Episode of Xanadu
We would create a mega-episode of Xanadu where Blu, the hero of Xanadu, teams up with Nouns in an action-packed deep dive into the Nouns Universe.
The episode features Blu questing through Planet Nouns desperate for the Nouns help to save him from a posse of intergalactic gangsters. To satisfy the bounty on his head, Blu must submit a winning proposal to Nouns DAO which kicks off a wild escapade through the Nouns City Center, the historic Nouner Capitol building, and the Nouns Underground. Along the way, Blu meets a master Noun who gives him a crash course on NounsDAO, how it works and why it’s awesome — education disguised as Hollywood quality entertainment. But it doesn’t stop there…
Part Two - CC0 Nouns Toolkit
Unlike a Hollywood feature where all the creativity and work vanish after the movie’s made, all of the Nouns assets created for this episode will be crafted into a Nouns World Toolkit that will live on in an innovative and powerful new way — in the hands of the community, available CC0. This is more than a simple library of assets…
Because Xanadu is built in a game engine (Unreal Engine 5), it’s a story world that can be cinematic, interactive, gamified, live-streamed, or experienced in VR. So, armed with this massive toolkit of AAA animatable Nouns characters & pre-lit, animated environments — complete with how-to guide books & tutorials created by us — the Nouns community can inhabit a Noun for VTubing, Zoom calls, or create cinematic content, marketing materials, NFTs, or even build a Nouns VR experience, game, or metaverse. It’s our hope for this to become the beginning of a dynamic Nouns repository that grows over time and is contributed to by other builders. (Full list of Toolkit deliverables below in Extra Details)
How does this benefit NounsDAO?
- The Episode — Exposure for NounsDAO in a novel, powerful narrative – with analytics & insights (average results per episode: 2.7M impressions, 321K views, 12K watch-time hours)
- The Toolkit — 3D tools that enables Nouns creators, creations, remixes with other IPs, and continued proliferation of Nouns to a new degree.
- Our Vision — Inspire creators with the episode, enable creations with the toolkit, and catalyze a cohort of Nouns as VTubers and next-generation virtual avatars.
Community
Working directly with the Nouns community is key for this project in several ways:
- Help choose what Nouns derivatives to feature such as LilNouns, SharkDAO, skateboards from GnarsDAO, and art pieces from prop house. We love the extended Nouns community want to infuse this thriving ecosystem into the Toolkit and Episode.
- Help define the 3D style of the Nouns characters and environments, as well as how Nouns express themselves using motion capture and animation.
- Help choose Nouns characters to be featured in the episode. Some Nouns will be chosen for story purposes but we’d love the community to vote on what other Nouns get featured. Those Nouns holders will have the option to voice & motion capture their own Noun (assuming there’s dialogue).
The General Timeline
- Phase 1: Concept & Design + Episode Writing. starts immediately (est 2 months)
- Phase 2: Asset creation. Starts as concepts complete (est 2-3 months) Will overlap with Phase 1
- Phase 3: Launch Beta Repository. Nov 2022 Assets are made available as they are created.
- Phase 4: Episode Production Starts Jan 2023 *When assets are finished (est 3 months) Est Episode completion March 2023
Toolkit Repository Timeline
- Phase 1: Launch Beta Repository. Nov 2022 Post assets as they become available
- Phase 2: Create Beta How to Docs & Tutorials. (these will roll out starting in Dec thru March)
- Phase 3: Launch final Toolkit Repository. March 2023 We will be sharing fun BTS & asset creation along the way via YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram content.
Our Ask & Budget Breakdown
We are asking for a total of $307.2K USD (192E @ $1600)
- Toolkit Concept Art & Design — $20,480 (12.8ETH)
- Toolkit 3D Modeling & Texturing — $99,040 (61.9ETH)
- Nouns Character Modeling & Rigging — $33,440 (20.9ETH)
- Toolkit Assembly & Episode Production — $141,280 (88.3ETH)
- Toolkit publishing & maintenance — $12,960 (8.1ETH)
The proposed budget + 15% to cover volatility will be converted to USDC immediately, and everything in excess will be retrurned to the DAO. If, due to high volatility, there is insufficient ETH to cover the proposed budget (307.2K USD), a second proposal will be made.
- Total: 192ETH * 1.15 = 220.8ETH
Extra Details
The Nouns World Toolkit Repository
The CCO repository will consist of the cast of Nouns characters and environments made for the episode. Everything will be set up in the Unreal Engine (Free game engine software) and we're going to include all the scenes, cameras, lighting and animation from the episode which means, the Nouns City center will be alive with ambient animation and amazing cinematic lighting. Additionally, the scenes from the episode will provide a starting point for making new content that looks amazing. All the Nouns characters will be rigged and ready for motion capture style animation (Both face and body similar to how Blu is setup in Xanadu). For those with the right gear, this means you can instantly puppet any of those Nouns for V-Tubbing or creating your own cinematic content. We're also exploring 'off the shelf' webcam mocap solutions (Cheap or free but body motion quality not as good as the expensive mocap suites) to include, if possible, to make inhabiting the nouns characters more accessible. This would also allow using Nouns for Zoom calls, etc.
Nouns World Toolkit Details
- 12 Hero Nouns (Face & Body fully rigged for motion capture)
- 24 Secondary Nouns (Body fully rigged for motion capture. Minimal to no facial animation)
- Beautifully lit and fully animated environments:
- Nouns Downtown City Center (exterior, like Time Square) * Buildings reflecting the Nouns extended family
- Nouner Capitol Building (Exterior & Interior)
- Nouns underground city / town (Exterior)
- Noun masters Dojo (Exterior & Interior)
- General modular city assets *for building new structures
- General nounish props & furniture
- Nouns transport vehicles
- Wide Establishing model of the Nouns Planet
- Guide Book & Tutorials on using the Toolkit to create Vtuber & Cinematic content
Technical Details
- Unreal Engine 5 project - CC0
- Assets performant in Real-time (Streaming)
- Assets performant in VR
- Fully animated Hero scenes from episode included as examples * All hero Nouns characters ready for motion capture (Face and Body)
Production Team
- Art Direction, Episode Writing & Directing
- Producer
- Lighting
- Motion Capture
- Animation
- Cinematography
- UE4 Integration & Tooling
- VFX
- Actors
- Editing
- Music
- Sound Design
Episode Details
- 20-30 minutes
About Xanadu & beyond
The heart of Xanadu is its zany stories and wild characters, but its soul burns to bridge and play in other universes. Thus Blu wants to help bring to life the budding spectrum of web3 Pop-Cultures from Nouns, cloneX and BAYC to small burgeoning Avatar projects backed by talented teams or individuals. All so they can collide on a bigger, more wild stage, with bigger, more wild crossover stories! Think Ready Player One and the Marvel Universe but creator content style!
FUN BONUS IDEA: Wild Story Twist!
Blu’s adventure with the Nouns will live on beyond this episode in a ‘first-of-its-kind’ melding of entertainment & reality; After this episode airs, Blu’s fictional proposal (The one he formulates in the episode with help from the Nouns) is actually a real proposal that he submits to the Nouns DAO… and the outcome of that proposal dictates Blu’s future storyline – Will his proposal be good enough for approval, or will Blu have to evade the gangsters and find another solution to survive?
If you haven’t seen Xanadu yet, check it out Xanadu on YouTube and our original proposal teaser.
Thank you, Cory & Stephen