Web3 has seen many examples of Bored Ape holders monetizing their NFTs, taking full advantage of their IP rights through monkey-branded clothing brands, food stores, or other ventures. While there are 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs, some have gained more popularity than others thanks to these creative business endeavors.
A good example is Jenkins the Valet, a fictional character created by Tally Labs and dramatized around Bored Ape #1798, who acts as the Head Valet of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. But Jenkins’ story is not that simple. To help tell the story, along with the story of Tally Labs’ controversial Azurbala project, we spoke to co-founders Valet Jones (VJ) and Safa. We discussed the lessons they’ve learned over the past six months, how they plan to rebuild trust with their community, and the beta launch of their Avenue software platform.
Who is Jenkins the Valet?
Jenkins the servant started out as an internet personality sharing stories about other apes and current events on Twitter. After building a large following and community, the creators of Jenkins decided to launch their own collection, The Writer’s Room. Holders of the genesis NFT can contribute to Jenkins’ story arc in the metaverse and vote on the creative direction of Jenkins’ debut novel.
After its launch, the Writer’s Room began to gain notoriety as an example of a successful NFT literary project known for using the community’s imagination to cultivate fictional reverse narratives. In 2021, Jenkins became the first NFT to sign with Creative Arts Agency to be represented across media such as books, TV, film and podcasts. CAA’s A-list of Hollywood talent has the likes of Steven Spielberg, Ariana Grande, and Ryan Gosling.
Azurbala: A world within a world
In July 2022, the Tally Labs team published digitally Bored and dangerousa community generative NFT novel set in the fictional world of Azurbala written by ten-time New York Times bestselling author Neil Strauss. The project attracted 4,075 Ape and Mutant holders to license their characters and was positively received by the community, selling 14,800 NFTs at issue.
Tally Labs saw this as a proof-of-concept for large-scale licensing of NFT intellectual property and an opportunity to launch a profile photo project (PFP) called Azurians. The project would center around Azurians, a native species in the jungle capital of Azurbala, a fictional destination in the metaverse. Given the team’s past performance, expectations were high for the success of the project.
However, in September 2022, when the Azurian PFP art was unveiled, the fanfare quickly faded. The Azurian characters immediately received a lot of criticism from the community and the larger NFT space. It was an almost unanimous disapproval.
The artistic quality of Azurians took the brunt of memes and public ridicule. “How on earth is this not a joke?” replied one Twitter user. Another wrote, “The art is even better when I close my screen.” As a result, rock bottom prices of Jenkins the Valet Writer’s Room assets plummeted by the hundreds of dollars as investors scrambled to abandon the project.
Reflecting on the community’s reaction to the Azurian PFP reveal, VJ now told nft that in the month that followed, the couple felt “a huge mix of emotions — a lot of embarrassment, a lot of regret” and found it “really hard to find out what went wrong.”
“As challenging as it was for us, it was probably more challenging for our community,” added Safa. “They put a lot of trust in us, spent countless hours engaging and were super excited about the reveal. We can only imagine what it felt like to take the wind out of the sails.”
In the immediate aftermath of the reveal, VJ and Safa hosted a two-hour Twitter Spaces, allowing their community to openly share criticism and concerns about the quality of the art.
Feedback on the art included dissatisfaction with the The expressionless faces of AzuriansAn absence of 3D perspective and proportion, and a visual mismatch between their reptilian humanoid form and photo-realistic clothing. In addition, some noted that the creatures lacked a sense of aspirational familiarity, often referred to as the uncanny valley effect. Without this quality, people would be less inclined to buy an Azurian and display it as their PFP, they argued.
Rebuild from the ground up
After gathering extensive community and council feedback, the team went back to the drawing board and started from scratch. “We were in the war room that night looking at actionable next steps,” explains Safa. Over the next few weeks, the founders took a democratized approach, opening a token-gated portal for Writer’s Room holders to share written feedback desiring to reimagine the Azurians’ innate design and thematic influences.
VJ and Safa recognized the strategy of brands such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Doodles and Pudgy Penguins to use their static PFPs as a foundation to expand into animation, film and music derivative markets. path.
“We underestimated the importance of the PFP,” admits VJ. “We originally created characters to bring to life in all these different animated ways, but we didn’t test them in the way everyone would use them — in the [Twitter] circle.”
In addition, holders could upload images that inspired them creatively. VJ revealed that while some participants chose to share hand-drawn works, about 75 percent of the art uploaded came from AI image-generating platforms Midjourney and Open AI’s DALL-E 2.
“Our goal was not necessarily to use AI,” said VJ. “But we’re certainly impressed with how many people used that medium as a way to express the direction they think things should go.”
Next comes the team established an art council consisting of Waheed (AllSmilesss), Bryan Brinkman, Mando and OSF to advise the team’s new Creative Director, Ty Carter, an Art Director at Netflix Animation with previous experience at Disney and Pixar. In addition, an eight-member community council was convened in November and tasked with overseeing the redevelopment of the Azurian PFPs.
Municipal Councillor Lola now told nft that they were given almost complete autonomy to share their ideas, noting that a digital vision board on Figma became a place to “provide visual input on the traits we want to see Azurians wear.”
“From weapons to headwear, facial expressions to wardrobe, Tally shared all of our ideas with Ty and his artists, who in turn adapted some of them into Azurian features or took inspiration from them,” she revealed.
Tactical advice from investors
In May 2022, Tally Labs raised a $12 million seed round led by a16z crypto with additional participation from Dapper Labs, Odell Beckham Jr, and Lionel Richie, among others. The blog post announcing the round outlined the team’s diligent evaluation process for investors, stating, “Can we call them with bad news and expect to find a partner?” A16z crypto led PROOF Collective’s $50 million Series A investment in August 2022, and their portfolio includes Yuga, OpenSea, and VeeFriends, among others.
VJ and Safa wanted to emphasize again how important it is to work with people you can turn to and trust if something goes wrong.
“One mistake we made in the first round was not showing it to anyone [the artwork]”, said VJ. This time, he revealed that the artwork has been shared with a wider internal audience, asking for much more feedback and perspective. In addition, figures such as Chris Dixon, general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), were on hand to provide “tactical advice.”
“There’s nothing he hasn’t seen,” said VJ, calling individuals of his caliber “students of space” who are closely associated with both the upper echelons of the business world and local community trends.
Avenue beta launch
Tally Labs recently announced the beta launch of Avenue, a software platform where Writers Room, Azurbala and many other projects within the space can nurture their community in a token-gated social space and reward holders through gamification for engagement. Collections that have gained access to the platform so far include Tankies, Justin Bieber’s Inbetweeners, Moshi Mochi, and more.
Started from the PFP, now we are here
Six months later, after much revision, the team believes the new Azurians are visually incomparable to their predecessors.
“One thing we focused a lot on for v2 is not reinventing the wheel. Innovate where it makes sense, but also lean on best practices and look at what makes a great PFP and what made it successful,” says Safa. “I think we’re doing a really good job of establishing familiarity, but also pushing the boundaries in other areas.”
The new Azurians are thematically categorized as “jungle punks.” In addition, they are two-dimensional models that resemble a more human figure than their animal predecessors. Aesthetically, there has been a transition from James Cameron’s avatar to a character more analogous to the sci-fi fantasy Dune in terms of atmosphere and clothing.
“We have a lot of confidence in the team and the steps we have taken. We feel we have made as good a step forward from an arts and preparedness standpoint as any PFP project has ever done,” said Safa.
Time will tell as the PFPs will be unveiled in May 2023. Details on the minting requirements and combustion mechanisms have yet to be announced, but are expected to be similar to those announced during the first release.
Editor’s Note: The list of collections that have been access granted to Avenue has been updated. Furthermore, the article has been updated to note that PFPs will be revealed in May.
