NFT Creation Video Training for Non-Techies

This project will teach NFT creation and successful sales to creatives with no technical/cryptocurrency experience. The focus is showing the how, while also explaining why certain choices might be made.

Prerequisites - It is assumed that the student already has creative works of value and is using this course to translate those creative works into an NFT.

Required Materials - A computer or smartphone and internet access. Creative works they own the copyright to, such as those they have created themselves. Minimal funds for minting or transferring NFTs created, if so desired within one’s strategy.

Learning Outcome Objectives - Students should come away with an understanding of the how and why of including NFT artistry within their artistic career, plus their first NFT.

Detailed NFT Creation Training Syllabus:

SECTION 1: FOUNDATION LESSONS

Lesson 1 - What’s an NFT? Talking points: Review of cryptocurrency, blockchains, and wallets for storage. Fungible vs non-fungible tokens. Unique and indivisible. Tokenized assets: art, collectibles, music, videos, representation of real estate, and more.

Lesson 2 - Why create NFTs of your creative work? Talking points: The easiest way to think of "why create NFTs" is to ask yourself, why not? If you're an artist, it's a new way to monetize your work and a new way to imagine and create. You can sell digital-only versions and you can sell digital/physical versions (reference the Beeple 1 a day Christies sale). NFTs as a new way of engaging with your audience that build stronger connections and engagement. New ways for royalty distributions that weren't possible before for artists. Because NFTs are programmable, you can add programming during creation that sends a royalty payment back to the artist each time the NFT is sold in the future. As a performer, create NFTs for ticket holders, or issue the ticket itself as an NFT. Program into the NFT how much the price can be increased before the event date to limit scalping profits and share some with the artists and/or organizers.

Lesson 3 - How much can you expect your work to sell for? Talking points:

• Strategies for earning more: Scarcity, uniqueness, launching and drops
• Benefiting from resale profits: setting royalty amounts In terms of how much you can expect to make from your work: this answer will range from pennies to millions. There are many examples of artists selling NFTs for very little on the marketplaces, and there are many examples of artists selling NFTs for millions. Key differences between the two, like with all art, can be the story behind the artist and the artwork and their connection to a community of appreciators. Why would people want to spend a little or a lot on it? All the same considerations transfer over to NFTs (scarcity, appreciation for the artwork/artist, the story behind it, etc.) You can build scarcity and meaning/cohesiveness into an NFT by releasing it as part of a drop, with marketing in advance similar to how a product launch would work. This is as opposed to trickling out one random NFT at a time without pre-marketing the release of them. Similar to the non-NFT art context, good advice is to jut study who did it well before you and to see what qualities you can mimick. The most general rule is to be active and engaged on social media with NFT collectors. Twitter has tons of communities. Discord as well (especially with the rise of social tokens, which essentially are communities that all own a particular token which gives them access to specific Discord channels). If you already have a social media presence, the transition and marketing elements of this all is easier. Editions and scarcity is all a personal choice. You can launch a collection where you have 1 or 10 or 100 or 100000 versions of a single NFT, or you can launch a collection with different versions that all resemble a particular theme (see the Crypto Punks or the more recent Hashmasks). You can also create different "rare" elements within a collection. Within the Hashmask example, there are different qualities contained in each different Hashmask that combine to make it more or less rare. There's also a "naming" element to it, where the owner can change the name with NCT tokens that they earn for each day that they hold the Hashmask.

Lesson 4 - What are tools you can use to create & sale NFTs (with benefits/drawbacks)? Talking points:

• Open marketplaces where you choose to sell on your own
• Closed marketplaces where you have to apply to sell there
• Combining open and closed - releasing on closed marketplace and listing on open ones also
• Platforms specializing in music NFTs In terms of tools, the most basic are the NFT marketplaces, which is where you can both (1) mint and (2) sell NFTs. The most popular ones are the open/permissionless one. There are other kinds of marketplaces as well that are more selective, where only approved/selected artists can sell their work: e.g., SuperRare. There are also other tools for NFTs that start to get more technical. Things like NFTX aim to make NFTs more "liquid," so that a single NFT can be fractionalized, so that multiple people can own a right to a single artwork (like if thousands of people could own the right to the Mona Lisa or to a Prince song). The benefits/drawbacks between the different marketplaces include (1) access; (2) cost, since minting a NFT as of today is not free. It cost fees, which is also called gas, that needs to be paid in ETH, however, the different marketplaces are all implementing various techniques to bring the minting costs down; 3) Exclusivity and easier attention to one’s work; and 4) ease of use. The space is continually changing and implementing new features all the time. At the moment, marketplaces are offering new features like "lazy"/batch minting, the ability to have royalty rates transfer to other platforms, as well as the ability to have a auction market and royalty rate transfer to a NFT purchaser.

SECTION 2: HANDS-ON HOW TO LESSONS

Lesson 5 - How to work with MetaMask Installing the browser plugin on laptop/desktop or app on your phone. Adding some Ethereum (ETH).Adding ETH with Wyre or Transak. Getting help with starting ETH from Mint.af (application required and support not guaranteed). Review of basic wallet features. Recording and securing your seed phrase. Caution: No one should ever ask for your seed phrase, so if you find a project that you think is sponsoring you, if they ask for your seed phrase, it's a scam.

Lesson 6 - How to create your first NFT: Mintable Demo Step-by-step walk through of minting without paying any ETH gas fees and then again paying the fees to mint up front. Review of benefits/drawbacks of either choice. Intro to Eth Gas Station. See completed video here: https://vimeo.com/526665660/96592841c9

Lesson 7 - How to create your first NFT: Rarible Demo Step-by-step walk through of minting on Rarible, including setting royalty amount and upcoming “lazy minting” feature similar to Mintable. Review of how Rarible items show automatically on other secondary markets like OpenSea but with ‘Rarible’ as the owner instead of the artist.

Lesson 8 - How to create your first NFT: OpenSea Demo Step-by-step walk through of minting on OpenSea, where you may also see your work receive the most secondary sales.

Lesson 9 - How to create your first NFT: Zora Demo Step-by-step walk through of minting on Zora.co, including special features of that platform and potentials for impact in the overall NFT space of that protocol.

Lesson 10 - How to put your NFT up for sale elsewhere & track revenue Transfering to Wallet to list on all marketplaces connected to that wallet (if you did lazy minting originally). Linking wallet to different platforms and putting NFTs up for sale there. Upcoming features in the space to make this easier across platforms. Viewing transactions on Etherscan to keep track of sales across platforms.

Lesson 11 - How to display your NFT work in your studio Apps that allow any monitor/TV to show rotating images of your artwork. Printing and framing. All the tokens and NFTs in your Metamask wallet (and all wallets) are open and viewable by anyone. So for example, Opensea knows that your wallet has NFTs in it, and displays them in the marketplace. You can go onto the marketplace and ask for a specific price for your NFT, but otherwise anyone is able to place a bid on your item without your permission.

Lesson 12 - Practice: Create your first NFT Choose one of the 4 training videos on minting on different platforms and turn one of your creative works into an NFT. Create a marketing plan. Submit works for feedback.

We coordinated and communicated on Discord, combining our knowledge, assigning roles and giving each other feedback as we went.

Val provided the technical knowledge on NFT creation and related issues. Matt created graphics, including the presentation on target audience and outreach. Indigo created the syllabi and training videos, using Camtasia.

We have uploaded the materials to a combination of Google Drive and Vimeo. We will use Moodle to present lessons to students in an organized fashion at no expense to them or us.

We made as many of the training videos as time allowed and will continue building out the full course according to the curriculum you see above under "Long Description" after the Hackathon ends.

We're toying with the idea of turning the completed course into an NFT, with unlockable content after someone signs up. The issue is that we teach how to create a wallet to hold NFTs in it during the course, so can't presume new students already know how to access the "course as NFT." Still exploring the idea for later.