The NFT market is now a huge submarket of the art market.
It is a huge market that overlaps not only with art works but also with entertainment and music.
Among them, a single work of art can fetch an exorbitant price of billions of yen.
Now that a little time has passed since the first year of NFT art, it is important to know which artists are getting high prices on NFT.
Artists who made big money with NFT
Beeple
Official site
First, let's take a look at Beeple, the artist whose work sold for the highest price in the history of NFT art.
Beeple is the artist name of an American digital artist named Mike Winkelmann.
His "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" piece began with the simple rule of "make one piece of artwork every day," which started out as just a drawing on paper.
As the title says, he continued this simple rule literally every day without a break for about 14 years, and the digital collage of 5,000 pieces of his work, which was combined into a single image, was sold at Christie's Auction for a very high price.
What started out as a simple drawing gradually transformed into a high-quality CG work using 3D software such as Cinema4D, and he continues to publish CG drawings full of improvisational ideas and content reflecting the social situation in the U.S. at the time on Instagram every day without changing.
CryptoPunks
Official Site
CryptoPunks is a series of NFT works released by Larva Lab, a group consisting of two individuals, John Watkinson and Matt Hall.
The works themselves are very simple illustrations compared to the previously mentioned Beeple. They were generated by an algorithm that produced 10,000 illustrations, each with similar elements but definitely different from the other.
At first, the illustrations were distributed for free, but gradually they were auctioned off, and now a single 24 x 24 pixel, 8-bit dot illustration fetches a very high price of over 2 billion yen.
The project began in 2017 and was presented at a time when it was the first NFT work. As the first to make use of the medium of blockchain and virtual currency, it has been recognized by art historians for its historical value.
PAK
Official website
There is an anonymous artist named PAK, who created the second most expensive NFT work in the world.
His work, Clock, "marks the time that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is locked up in a London prison. All proceeds from the sale of this work go toward the release of Julian Assange and his legal action.
PAK has been active in blockchain technology since its infancy, about 20 years, and has sold 66,616 pieces. Its total sales amounted to $527 million ($5.797 billion).
SNOWFRO
Art Blocks official website
SNOWFRO is the NFT artist name of a man named Erick Calderon. He launched the Art Block organization in 2020 and has sold 7,777 artworks to date.
Art Block offers a variety of curated, high quality NFT artists' work for sale.
NFT works often have the concept of editions, like prints. An edition is a system in which the work is a reproduction of the same data but in a limited production run of, say, 100 copies, each one with a unique number.
This makes it possible to have an edition of 10 of a particular work, and so on.
Artists who made big money with NFT｜Domestic
Let's take a look at famous NFT artists in Japan.
Naoki Saito
Official Twitter
Naoki Saito is an illustrator of Pokemon cards and official "Pokemon" illustrations. He is also the creator of the NFT project "MEGAMI".
MEGAMI is an NFT collection by illustrator Naoki Saito that was released on July 16, 2022.
The first feature of "MEGAMI" is that it is a PFP, which refers to digital art used primarily as profile images on social networking sites. The original designs are designed by Naoki Saito and others, and variations are generated by AI.
This project also has 10,000 designs available to the public, and many people have purchased them as icons for their own SNS accounts.
Another important feature of this project is that it can be used for commercial purposes up to $5 million. In most cases, NFTs are collections, and although they have ownership rights, they cannot be used to make money. In the case of "MEGAMI," however, the official permission allows for commercial use, so it is possible to make a profit as a game, manga, or Vtuber through derivative works.
Zombie Zoo Keeper
There is also a third-grade artist who made a total of 3.8 million yen by creating NFT art.
He goes by the name "Zombie Zoo Keeper," but his original motivation was to do free research during summer vacation.
At first, he drew pixel art on his iPad and exhibited it at the NFT Market as part of his free research.
After that, it spread rapidly, and once it became a famous DJ's Twitter icon, the price went up significantly.
As of September 2021, the total transaction value was 3.8 million yen.
Since they are still being traded at high prices on the secondary distribution market, the amount would be substantial if resale commissions are included.
Takashi Murakami
Takashi Murakami, a well-known contemporary artist, also has a presence on the NFT market.
Flower's work includes approximately 10,000 images, and the total value of his transactions ranks second only to the Astro Boy Boots Project among NFT projects related to Japanese people.
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