arkayana.eth
COLLECTION BACKGROUND
When I set out to make The Atomic Ballroom I wanted to bring together different cultural elements from my academic studies and combine them with a dark, psychedelic aesthetic to create animated profile pictures! Every piece is a 1/1 unique, with every profile adding a little more lore to the magical-digital cross-over in a Dark Souls-esque fashion. Partly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and MMORPGs, every PFP also comes with a variety of RPG traits, such as classes, races, accessories, and variety of unique traits for rarer profiles.
Rather than mint my work through OpenSea, I decided to launch and mint on my own contract with the help of Manifold Studio. This gives me complete provenance over my work and control of my contract, allowing me to stream 2% of trading royalties to a charity donation wallet, and establish a community around charitable giving, with 50% of all initial proceeds going to a charity from my curated charity list!
THE STORY BEHIND #001 CRIMSON KABUKI
“The Metamorph prizes secrecy above all else. With none knowing their true face, or their true abilities, they navigate The Atomic Ballroom like a silent guardian…”
This first piece is inspired by the famous Geisha 「芸者」, the popular show Ghost in the Shell, and my memories of living in Japan.
Originally codenamed “The OG”, a vibrant and somewhat bloody style burst forth from the mask, reminding me of another popular art form with a rich history in Japan: Kabuki 「歌舞伎」. This lead to the name Crimson Kabuki for the first piece in the collection.
Crimson Kabuki would have been the first assassin class in The Atomic Ballroom, but as I progressed with the piece I came to appreciate the illusive, mask-like nature of the profile. Eventually I elected to make the first piece in the collection have some unique traits, namely, the Metamorph class – A mysterious changeling with the ability to take on the form of those that meet her gaze, and none knowing her true identity or intentions.
This piece helped set the overall tone for the rest of the collection, but also encouraged me to dig deeper through my experieneces, cultures, history, sci-fi, games, and fantasy, to search for more unique sources of inspiration and create new thematic fusions of fun!
My next story will be about #002 TOXILOGIC, and the little piece of MMORPG history that inspired it!
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CONTRACT ADDRESS:
arkayana.eth
0x3b72992488a93757da45cc5b43172010b9db0e47
