How Invisible Friends Are Making Profile Pictures, Invisible
So you saw a badly drawn photo of an ape being sold for more than what you make in a year, let’s face it, the whole NFT thing is a bit of an unbelievable analogy when it comes to the tech world. And it’s only getting crazier by the minute.
A few months back, there’s was quite an uproar on Twitter when an artist by the name VincentVanDough, a “purveyor of shitcoins and fine art”, took the fursonas of over 110 people, turned them into an NFT collage resembling Pepe the frog and sold the piece for over a $100k.
Now while the whole incident was frankly mind-boggling, the real issue here wasn’t the sale of the NFT, it was the fact that those fursonas were people’s profile pictures on Twitter.
Now, when it comes to selecting a profile picture for themselves, most people put up their best front when. Now it’s one thing to use a good photo of yourself that your friend took when you looked a solid 8 that one good night of the month, and entirely another when you spent time and effort to make a ‘fursona’ or whatever weird creation they come up with for themselves.
The truth of the matter here is that the internet is changing. In a world where we’re constantly being pushed into the realm of virtualities, using your own photographs as your profile pictures might just seem old fashioned. And this is where things like fursonas, and NFT GIFs come into place as the scope for expression is just lightyears ahead. And since you’ll be spending more than a kidney on a GIF, you can be damn well sure you’ll be showing it off to as many people as you can, and the best way to do it is by using it as your profile picture.
Invisible Friends Leading The Charge
Speaking of expensive GIFs, there’s a new GIF NFT collection that’s going around and leading this charge. It’s “Invisible Friends” which is a collection of 5000 animated character GIFs just walking around. They do look cool though, but are they 4.8723 ETH-cool? Well, that’s subjective.
The collection is made by Markus Magnusson, "a Swedish dude" who has been into making walk cycle animations since at least June 2018 alongside tutorials on his Patreon. For context, a walk cycle is “a series of frames or illustrations drawn in sequence that loop to create an animation of a walking character" which justifies the enveloping hype around it.
Apart from this, the reason for it being so warmly received can be attributed to how refreshing not just the format is but also the animated artworks for it's a sign of times changing and evolving with boundaries being pushed. Invisible Friends are also lauded for how clean the animated artwork looks, being equal parts incredibly simple, easy to consume and stimulating in the sense of the eclectic, quirky personalities it brings forward.
Invisible Friends is also the third collection in the Random Character Collective, the previous two being Slim Hood and Mood Rollers with 5000 pieces each, all of which have been minted at the moment.
Now, coming to the starting price of the Invisible Friends series, it is expected to be around 0.15 ETH or roughly about $2,753. The base price of other NFTs in the Random Character Collective is around 1.8 ETH so that’s where you can expect it to floor as well. However, keep in mind that cryptos fluctuate more than your toxic ex, there’s no saying how high or low this thing will go.
The exact cost and availability of Invisible Friends aren’t known at the moment. They were expected to start minting on January 28 but that has been delayed and the site reads “minting in February” at the moment, along with “hiding in the Metaverse”. There’s a good chance that they’ll launch early, considering the hype around the series.
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