Galverse #10 - Fast Times in Tokyo!
WAGMAA! We're all gonna make an anime!
Welcome to the tenth Shinsei Galverse monthly newsletter, shooting across time & space to make the galaxy a better place! Here’s the rundown this week:
1️⃣ First character design revealed!
2️⃣ Tokyo Team Adventures!
3️⃣ New WAGMAA developments!
Subscribed yet? The fast, free way to stay up to date with Shinsei Galverse!
WAGMAA! Character Reveal - ‘Gal 08’!
Galverse anime production is well underway with production partner ARCH and the anime studio in Tokyo! Director Ayaka has been super busy finalising character designs, image boards and storyboards, making good progress every week.
Even more exciting is the co-design and co-production process we’ve begun with you - the Shinsei Galverse community! WAGMAA is an amazing process where anime fans get to have real insight and input into creating an anime from scratch.
We’re excited to reveal the first character design to emerge from the WAGMAA process!
Meet ‘Gal 08’!
We received hundreds of high-quality submissions from the Galverse community, using sketches, moodboards, descriptions, and lots of AI art generations. It’s super easy to take part with the creative tools available in the #ai-workshop!
Even better, Director Ayaka has shown her work in process, drawing the final character design and scrolling through each contribution to show where and how the community influenced the design.
You can check out the community contributions, Ayaka’s full video breakdown, and even more WAGMAA activities running right now in our Discord! Verify your Gal and check out #staff-announcements!
Ayaka’s final design will get passed to the studio’s professional character designers to be turned into character sheets for the animators to work from.
We’ll be sharing some of those materials soon too, stay tuned!
WAGAMI AI reveals 2x Gals!
We launched the WAGAMI AI discord bot at the start of the year. Its neural network has been expanding, growing ever more powerful and intelligent!
The latest update is a double-sized, AI driven improvement to the entire Shinsei Galverse web3 collection!!
Your Gal PFPs are now available in 1200x1200px via the WAGAMI AI discord bot!
The original Gals, seeking to capture the classic look of 90s anime, were made at a fairly small resolution of 600x600.
But, we’ve seen people printing stickers, posters, and making all sorts of creative items with their Gals, and a lot of the Galverse community have asked for higher resolutions!
You can summon yours today! First, join the Galverse Discord.
Then, call up the WAGAMI AI using the following command:
/gal type: 2x nft_id: <your Gal's ID#>Inside of Discord, the command will look like this - just replace Wai’s ID with your Gal’s!
Upscaling them while retaining the same quality and nostalgic ‘noise’ of the originals was a hard task - the team experimented with heaps of upscaling options and AI tools before finally finding one that nailed the Galverse aesthetic at a bigger size.
Tokyo Team Adventures!
Team Galverse reunited! It’s been a while since we were all together in Tokyo. With the anime underway, a thriving grassroots community across the city, and plenty of events running, this trip was long overdue!
We had a great set of meetings across all elements of Galverse - anime production, web3, promotion and marketing, Galverse community activation and much more! Every day of our time together was full of action and hard work on Galverse!
It was great to meet with the team at ARCH in person! We also sat down with some of the key staff on the animation and creative side that will be helping us bring Galverse to life.
Our team also did some filming, interviewing them about their expectations for the anime and asking questions submitted by the Galverse community. So stay tuned!
The Never Ending Galverse Karoake Party!
Since we launched Galverse, Japan’s web3 community has exploded! We were so grateful to meet many of the Gals who make up a core part of the Galverse culture online and IRL.
We had to throw an event to get everyone together and show the power of the Galverse community. And, of course, to give away some stickers and T-shirts. Superstar Asami shared some footage of the event below!
It was thrilling to meet all the superstars we’ve been talking to online for months. Creative, cool people making amazing things! This year, the team will be focusing on Tokyo and our super strong community there with more events and activities to come.
Devin and Wailoaloa also made sure to stop by Tokyo’s top Web3 hangouts and see the culture on the ground level! Sticker hype!
Taking Galverse to the Top!
The team even went to pitch Galverse to the highest levels of Government! The Japanese government has a lot of initiatives promoting Web3, AI technologies, and ‘Cool Japan’ - spreading innovation and culture across the world.
Taira-san heads up the digital agency and sits on the government’s Web3 and AI project teams! So we had to make a pitch about everything that Team Galverse has been working on in these fields. Taira even has his own Anime character!
‘Gal Pals!’ NEORT Gallery Exhibition + Mint!
The day Devin and Wailoaloa left Tokyo, an exhibition opened at NEORT++ Gallery right in the heart of the city! Organised by Benoit, produced by NEORT, promoted by MUTEK JP and curated by the Shinsei Galverse community!
It’s running until the 19th of March so be sure to check it out if you’re in Tokyo!
Gal Pals! is an exhibition showing the power of URL and IRL friendships. A curated selection of Gals are projected on the wall, bouncing around each other. Community members submitted their Gals and passed on submission forms, just like chain letters back in the 90s!
We also had a live VTuber display for people to try out the latest in GalTech, and some awesome screens showing the Galverse Origin Story. Even the music was sourced from community members! (Thanks Nautiluss!)
The team sourced an NFT drop from the community as well! This time-limited edition is open until the gallery closes on March 19th JST, and is available for 0.01 ETH. Artist Tony Huang did an amazing job portraying his vision of the ‘Galverse Pioneers’!
Cosmic Burn IDs Live!
Did you participate in the Cosmic Burn event last month? Chamakou’s custom Discord IDs are live and can be summoned in Discord now!
If you collected all three episodes of the Galverse Origin Story, your Discord ID is now a super-charged flame card! Check it out!
WAGMAA Assignments!
We just finished up another WAGMAA assignment! Cosmic Creature design!
Director Ayaka wanted to peer into the dark corner of your mind..! She is thinking about evil creatures that will attack a Gal's home planet as part of our planning for a Galverse scene.
She says: "Just as the Gals were born from the energy of Mother planet... these creatures were born from the energy of a black hole. A striking, scary design might be nice!"
This one just closed up, but we’ll be opening another task this week! So, make sure you jump in the Discord and take part in making anime with your ideas!
Web3 + AI!
After heading out of Tokyo, Devin and Wailoaloa were super grateful to be invited to SouthStart conference in their hometown in Australia, to present the story of Shinsei Galverse and how we’re using AI technology to build and proliferate the IP across the galaxy!
There were a few hundred people in the crowd, and many of them looked shocked to hear about all the ways we’ve worked with AI, and some of the wild stuff we have planned!
This talk was full of alpha. We’ll be recording a version with our VTubers to ensure every Galverse community member can hear about our plans for Galverse AI.
We were super happy to shoutout our amazing Galverse AI community here, including Jarvis, Myelo, and more!
Gals in the News!
Check out this amazing article on the Japanese crypto creator scene! Written by community member Benoit (busy guy!), it dives into a multitude of projects based in or working with Japan’s web3 scene.
“Many people buy NFTs for speculative purposes, but I think lots of local Galverse holders are part of the project because they enjoy the community,” Galverse’s artist, animator, and co-founder Ayaka Ohira added.
“In Japan, there is a culture of secondary creation, such as Comiket culture, and a culture of Oshikatsu (推し活 ~ act of supporting or cheering on something or someone you really like), and I can feel these vibes in the Web3 space.”
United Neko Alliance!
We were lucky enough to spend a bunch of time with Sunrock and 0xNeil, hosts of the United Neko Alliance Twitter Spaces show, during our time together in Japan.
They invited the team on to talk about Galverse’s mission and the community in Japan! It was a great chat and well worth listening to the recording linked above.
We can also say, they have the best English-language Spaces there is to learn about what’s happening on the Japanese NFT scene - alpha + culture!
Gals in the Verse! Community favorites!
It was a super busy month for the Galverse community! Wailoaloa and Devin were deeply inspired by meeting many of our amazing, creative community members IRL and seeing their Galverse creations in person (Emi and Ayaka get to see it all the time!). Many are working on their own incredible projects too!
Yama-chan shared a glimpse of her amazing web3 stickerbook here! Now the whole team is rocking Galverse and web3 stickerbooks too!
EDOLENA, metaverse princess and VTuber idol, visited the NEORT gallery and shared this cool selfie! Thanks Lena!
Lena also showed off her stickers acquired during the latest rounds of Tokyo meetups!
Superstar Kay made a set of custom digital earrings featuring the Shinsei logo! These were a huge hit at the Galverse party - and modelled here by Nao!
Community Favorite artist Geek Girl Pyon had her own solo exhibition this week! She had her Galverse cosplay outfit and Galverse AF1s on display. Super cool!
Kona picked up a… Galverse T-shirt?! This was a small run item for people who attended the meetup in Tokyo. Don’t worry, we’ve got more, cooler stuff on the way.
You can see superstar Asami rocking the Galverse shirt at the official Shibuya Meta party with Devin and Wai! It’s a look! Asami style!
Menji, fashion designer extraordinaire, showed up to the NEORT opening! We had a special gathering for Gal Holders on the launch night.
We’re always excited to welcome new members to the community. Thanks for joining us!
Asami-style, again! This time, double trouble with Hsuan and Asami taking first place with their VTubers in APEX LEGENDS! It’s popular in Japan!
Flamingo DAO. Thanks for the shoutout! Callie Skip, what a Gal!
So happy to meet creative superstars like Ava at the party! Thanks for coming!
Ava even grabbed this badass Gal after we all met up. That’s cosmic energy for you!
Everywhere we went, we handed out Galverse stickers and cool stuff. Thanks for spending time with us, Nanami sensei!
Enough said - securing our place next to legends like Oda and Leiji!
Jarvis has been doing amazing work with Galverse Diffusion and LoRA models this month! AI is starting to pick up on Galverse traits and accurately recreating them in new poses and scenes. Watch this space.
IWD! Close to our hearts in Galverse. Thanks for sharing jewel!
Okay, this isn’t strictly from the community, but if you scrolled this far, you deserve some alpha from Director Ayaka.
Jutsu is over 70 days into their Gal of the Day posts! Yuuna Magnetar is badass!
And of course, one more sticker book to finish things off. It’s Gal style..!
That’s it from Team Galverse this month! Thanks for reading everyone
