Galverse #5 - Vogue Japan, Art Competition, VTubers Beta and more!
Gals en Vogue!
Shinsei Galverse was featured in the October edition of Vogue Japan!
Wow! It's amazing to see our project's name up in lights like this - Vogue Japan is huge! This edition's theme was "Fashion's New World" which fits in with Shinsei Galverse's worldview perfectly.
Emi and Ayaka gave an interview about being metaverse navigators - how they got involved with the space, and what's next for Shinsei Galverse and Japanese creators in Web3.
Ayaka was even asked to draw a special Gal for Vogue. She created a Gal with the theme of "nostalgic X futuristic" - inspired by 90s ideas of futuristic fashion, and most of all, with a badass independent vibe.
Art Matsuri Announced!
The first ever Shinsei Galverse art competition is now live! This one is super exciting - over 8 ETH in prizes, 4 categories, guest judges and more!
Art Matsuri Prizes!
Matsuri = festival! We hope this great competition will bring out a lot of creative work to expand on the world of Galverse, from within and our community and from new members and friends!
Category 1 - 2D Art! - Digital or physical 2D artwork, like drawings, paintings, animations, illustrations, etc.
1st Prize wins $1,500 USDC! - 5 runners up each win a Gal NFT!
Category 2 - 3D Art! - Any kind of 3D art - 3D models, physical sculptures, clothing, papercraft, bento boxes, omurice, etc!
1st Prize wins $1,500 USDC! - 5 runners up each win a Gal NFT!
Category 3 - Chibi Gals! - Beginners rejoice! Draw a Gal in traditional "Chibi" cute style!
1st Prize wins $500 USDC! - 5 runners up each win a Gal NFT!
Category 4 - 4 Panel Manga Strip! - A vertical 4 panel comic! Tell us a cool or funny story in the world of Galverse!
1st Prize wins $500 USDC! - 5 runners up each win a Gal NFT!
Bonus Prizes! Community Favorites! - From the 24~ winners in the above categories, Gal Holders will vote on their favorite piece! - The winner will get a pair of custom Nike AF1 sneakers by @SekureD featuring their Gal! There'll be Gal art commissions from community artists for runners up too!
We're already receiving amazing entries. Our special guest judges will be revealed over the next week or two!
Art Matsuri Rules!
Who can enter? Anyone can enter - they don't have to be a Gal NFT holder, so please let your friends know!
How do I enter?
Post your artwork on Twitter. Use the hashtag #GalverseArtMatsuri and tag us @GalverseNFT
Submit the entry form here: http://matsuri.galverse.art/ It's not required. We'd love to see your work in Discord too!
What are the rules?
All entries must feature a Gal character. You can feature your own Gal, ask another holder for permission, or use any Gal from the Team Vault.
One entry per category - but you can enter all the categories if you like.
You can only submit your original work, no copies or commissions.
You must submit it by the due date - Midnight PST, October 7th!
We can't wait to see what you come up with. There's a super active chat happening in our Discord, open to everyone, so drop in and say hi!
VTubers - Galverse x Voltaku
This one moved very fast since our last update! In July, we were still deciding on the best path forward between several tech solutions and potential partners.
But after engaging with one special member of the Galverse community, the choice became very clear to us.
We're excited to announce our partnership with Sally Danger, a pro FX engineer, and Voltaku Studios, to bring all 8,888 Gals to life as VTubers!
Sally has years of experience in Hollywood working with digital puppeteering, speaks Japanese, loves retro anime, and was already a member of the Galverse community - a perfect match!
Her proto-Gal VTubers were of very high, hand-crafted quality, and her work with Voltaku had already explored bringing lots and lots of characters to life with clever workflows.
VTubers - Beta Testing Now!
Sally has already been in our Discord, live-streaming progress on VTuber-fying Gals! This perfectly matches our approach to developing WAGMAA in the open with community input and feedback.
We've found around 20 members of the Galverse community to take part in our beta testing program, and most of them have already got their VTuber Gals and are creating content right now!
With their help, we're putting together a VTubers 101 guide, to help people get started on PC, Mac, Iphone or Android.
We'll have more news on how we anticipate distributing Gal VTubers in the next couple of weeks. To begin with, these are hand-crafted items made in small batches - Sally is currently creating about 10 per week.
The team will be prioritising onboarding Gals who have an active interest in VTubing and creating content - we don't want snipers jumping into these early batches and flipping their VTube enabled Gals!
Work is progressing quickly, and once all traits are rigged we'll be able to get these out exponentially faster! We anticipate that all Gals will be ready for the VTuber upgrade well before the end of the year.
In the meantime, our beta testers are already uploading amazing content with their VTubers. Check out the Favorite Tweets section of this newsletter for a few peeks at their creations!
Gals in the News!
Galverse was featured in GINZA Magazine - a super cool fashion and culture magazine in Japan. We sent them some Gals that our holders submitted for the Haneda Airport exhibition but didn't make it into that set.
We also made it onto the front page of Business Insider Japan! This one is cool - we give some hints and tips on the NFT market, trends and meta - and you can also get a glimpse of Devin's secret tattoo, and Ayaka's Gal era!
What connects the members is the common childhood memory of 'Japanese anime in the 90's'.
WAGMAMANGA!
The latest Manga pages have been released for holders on galverse.art! Ayaka is working on the next few which will be up by the time the next newsletter rolls around - keep your eyes peeled on our Twitter.
Gals IRL!
Emi and Devin are heading to Paris in September to present as part of NFT.in Europe - a prestigious conference that's in its second iteration after a brief stop in the USA.
Emi and Devin will be giving behind the scenes looks at the creation of Galverse, and telling their Web3 story.
There's also an exhibition taking place where 5 Gal NFTs will be displayed. Of course, we put this chance out to the Galverse community again and picked five awesome Gals to display, including from a couple of our members from France!
We're Hiring - Visual Designer!
We're looking for a freelance visual designer! We're planning some updates to the website and need some help from a visual designer who is comfortable working with the nostalgic anime sci-fi style we're looking for. If you know someone incredible who might be a good fit please share the tweet below with them. Please share this one with your networks!
Gal Collabos
Ayaka minted and sold her first ever 1/1 artwork as part of a special collaboration between crypto culture DAO "FWB" and OpenSea!
Friends with Benefits DAO held their first ever 'FWB Fest' - a multi-day event for creators and web3 pathfinders in Idyllwild, California. 10 artists, including Ayaka, were selected to create and display works at the FWB Fest Exhibition.
At the same time as the exhibition, FWB took over the front page of OpenSea with curated collections and an online exhibition and auction of the special edition artworks.
Ayaka's piece sold for 1.35 ETH to lucky bidder gangnam. You can see the artwork on OpenSea here.
WAGMAA on the Way!
Our discussions with studios, producers and advisors continue! We are receiving proposals with pricing and schedules now!
The team talked about it in Town Hall, but we are not able to be as open with the community as we initially hoped for many of these meetings. Talking to studios, they prefer to keep things under wraps or confidentiality before arriving at an agreement.
While we anticipated coming to the community with a list of possible studios and the pros and cons - maybe even interviews with the teams working there - in reality it won't work out like that.
Studios can be booked out for years in advance - some of our favorites have work on their books until at least 2026! Animators are also in short supply in Japan for a variety of reasons.
So, when we engage with studios, there is usually a limited window of availability. They are actively trying to book anime to keep their pipeline of work going! We need to move quickly to secure a deal and push forward.
If this was just "MAA" - making an anime without any community input, this process would likely be much easier! We could also look at studios in the US, South East Asia or elsewhere who produce work of decent quality - but Galverse has always had its creative heart in Japan, and we want to show the community how anime is made in Japan!
So, while we'd love to share more at the moment, these discussions are mostly under NDA just now. We also want to respect our potential partners - and they will be our partners to get this world-first animation project done!
Rest assured - we are close to locking something in, and once we do, the WAGMAA floodgates will open!
Our favorite fan art!
Okapii's sense of humor is endless. Another 4 panel gag manga - we hope they are entering the art competition!
Sawaco-sensei! In Chibi style - an amazing entry by Minui into our Art Matsuri!
mwrote animted this Gal in voxel style - that dance is infectious! The team are practicing these new moves right now!
ta2nb blowing minds with this pixel art work! It's a whole new way of looking at those Vortex Tails!
Tweets of the Month!
Special shout out to our superstar Gal Cadet, Sawaco! She has been working extra hard this month, translating many of our English announcements into Japanese, and making sure the Japanese artist community is onboard with the Galverse Art Matsuri.
So, thank you Sawaco - for going above and beyond for us! Thank you as well for compiling this list of Gals who have given anyone permission to use their Gal PFPs in the Art Matsuri too!
Jarvis has been making amazing videos about cleaning up Japan, crafty maker projects and more! Even though Jarvis' Gal wears a mask, they are still super expressive!
Asami has been testing out her Gal VTuber in many different, contrasting ways. First up, she shared a some clips and photos from her recent summer holiday to Naoshima Island.
Then, she shared her gameface streaming Apex, lighting up a bad guy!
EdoLena is a super talented VTuber and has taken to her Gal VTuber amazingly! Thanks for sharing Lena!
Okay, one more for Asami - we love to see Gal Pals meeting up IRL!
The path forward!
We ticked a lot of boxes this month - VTubers are well and truly on the way, and our art contest has officially launched! Stay tuned next month - there'll be more to reveal!
Coming soon!
Over the next few weeks, we'll be dropping some very special Galverse content. Please keep an eye out on our Twitter account!
And that's it!
