Galverse Newsletter - Issue #3
Listen to our monthly update for June 2022!
Gals in New York City!
We had a great time in NYC! It was a real rush to get organised after the team's time together in Japan, but worth all the effort!
Internally, we often divide Galverse up into two streams of work. There's the WAGMAA side - which is working with studios and creators in Japan.
And the NFT side - which is working with other projects, communities, and driving forward our cutting edge tech!
NYC was a great chance to meet all of our Web3 friends IRL, talk shop with other projects, make new connections and push business forward, and get together with holders!
While it's not hard to work remotely in a space like this, nothing beats getting together and forming or cementing friendships, face-to-face!
If you missed the party, don't feel like you missed out entirely. You can check out some videos of the event, and listen to the stream of the amazing City-Pop inspired DJ set we had playing on the night (link below).
Thanks to DJ and retro-Tokyo vibes connoisseur Kevin Yoo for putting it all together!
This month marks the end of our travel for a while - now it's time to knuckle down and get to work in our home bases for the months ahead!
Manga has arrived!
Ayaka has been hard at work on the manga prequel chapter, and we're proud to say the first pages are now live on the official Galverse website!
Full colour
Japanese & English language
Custom token-gated manga reader tech
100% illustrated by Ayaka!
Aya-sensei is an animator by trade, not a mangaka, but we think she knocked it out of the park - every page looks amazing!
The GalTech team built a new token-gated manga reader, which you can find over at https://www.galverse.art/ - click Manga in the header.
Please stay tuned for more pages to drop in the future! Ayaka is working hard on the first full chapter, coming soon!
Gal Collabos
In the middle of the wild week in NYC, we also decided to launch one of our biggest collabo's yet.
Our friends at The Pssssd just launched one of the most hyped NFT drops in months.
Instead of just giving away spots to holders via a simple raffle, we ran an awesome, world-first ARG collaboration with their amazing team!
A portal opened up between Galverse's Discord server, and The Pssssd's!
Community members on either side of the channel had access to unique hints and clues. Each community had to work together to solve riddles and puzzles across three stages!
The first Gal to make it through won a Pssssd NFT from the team, and the first Posse member to get through won a Gal! The Pssssd team also put up a heap of allow-list spots for the brave portal adventurers who got through to the end!
One thing we didn't expect was how big everyones' brains were. We set aside 5 days for this one, but it got solved in about 14 hours...
We've got more information dropping on Twitter soon about the tech and technique behind this collabo. It's just the start of Galverse's commitment to enabling cross-community collaboration!
We also had more great giveaways for holders, including David Choe's Munkos, a wonderful initiative by our friends at DoGoodAlpha, 'Pride Pass', and more cool stuff!
The team are already lining up more awesome utility and partnerships for the month ahead, so please stay tuned and keep an eye on the discord.
Gals IRL!
New York was the major event for us this month! We had such a good time meeting holders, friends, advisors, and other teams and artists!
Fan Gal moment. Crypto Coven was a big inspiration for us before launching, and it was awesome to sit down for a very long coffee with the team.
Thanks to Arial, Maurice, ChickenThigh and the rest of the Starcatchers team for welcoming us to their awesome event.
Emi and the team ran into Seneca at the Deadfellaz afterparty! Seneca is behind the BAYC art and continues to make awesome stuff herself.
Before NYC kicked off, Emi was also invited to speak in Tokyo about the future of NFTs. She was joined by other influential superstars like Sputniko!, VERBAL, Sean Bonner and Jaeson Ma.
Anime Legends!
Shinsei Galverse collaborated with one of Japan's largest companies, Mitsui, on a series of talks about Web3, anime, and the future of Tokyo!
The first session was hosted by Cowboy Bebop Producer Masuo Ueda, and mechanical designer Hidetaka Tenjin who has played a key part in the MACROSS series.
The second session featured Terumi Nishii, Animation Director of Jujutsu Kaisen, Shingo Tamagawa, animator and director of Sunrise Studio and creator of acclaimed independent movie 'Puparia', and Naoyuki Kato, a famous sci-fi illustrator who worked on classics like Space Battleship Yamato!
The third and final session saw the team joined by Masuo Ueda again, as well as our new friend Koji Morimoto who has worked on amazing anime like AKIRA, Animatrix, Kiki's Delivery Service, Space Cobra, and much more.
Right now, the videos are only in Japanese. We sent our own film crew in to capture highlights and will be uploading these with English subtitles soon. The first snippet is on the tweet above, click through!
We think it's a cool chance to own a piece of anime history on-chain.
Gals in Primetime!
Japan's national broadcaster, NHK, featured Galverse in a major segment on their primetime show about Web3 and the metaverse!
They even had a famous voice actor, Soma Saito, dub over Devin & Jack's voices. But... why does Devin sound so cool, and Wailoaloa sound like a clown?! Check the video below:
Friends of Galverse!
Another one of our roadmap items for last quarter was minting the honorary PFPs that Ayaka had made for our friends, supporters, and special superstars!
We're happy to say that the new Friends of Galverse contract is live. The first NFT minted is 'Allison Aurora', for our dear friend Allison Harvard - also known as Creepy-Chan!
The Friends of Galverse are lore-friendly, with fully custom metadata: names, descriptions, story and traits.
Over a thousand years later, long after the first Earth Catastrophe, the Mother planet exploded and released 8,888 Gals into the Galaxy.
As a thank you to the many kind people Mother had conversed with, received advice and help from, a select number of special Gals were also brought to life.
Born from the collected memories and experience of those who imprinted Mother with humanity, these were known as the 'Friends of Galverse'. They make their own life among the stars, sharing the Gals' mission of peace in their own way!
We're giving these, for free, to the people that the NFTs represent. This is a fun gallery of honoraries, not a commercial project! The 8,888 genesis Gals remain the core of everything we do and build on.
If you're a superfan, you might want to take the time to read through the special details on each of the FoG Gals.
We'll start by minting all the existing Friends, and will be adding new Friends over time as well. The team thinks FoG will be a great new outreach channel to introduce more people around the world to Galverse.
Speaking of which...
Alisa is a fashion icon, DJ, model, designer and singer. She's well known for embodying the Gal Mindset we always talk about. Welcome to Galverse, Alisa!
The Gals were also super happy to meet one of our original Friends of Galverse in real life again. Emi and Elise Swopes met years ago in the US! Swopes Stargazer will be minted soon.
WAGMAA on the Way!
Emi and Ayaka met with a bunch of studios and anime producers over the last month!
Mr. Hosoi Shunsuke, CEO of Enishiya Studio and producer of Beastars.
Mr. Hirasawa Nao, CEO of Arch and producer of Promare, PV of Jujutsu Kaisen, and much more.
Mr. Nishibe Makoto, Producer at Bilibili Japan, worked on Carole & Tuesday.
Mr. Matsukura Yuji, Director of J.C. Staff and producer of countless titles including Bakuman, Hachimitsu to Clover, Shoujo Kakumei Utena, Shokugeki no Soma and more.
Mr. Watanabe Tetsuya, Producer in Dentsu Japanimation who has worked on many animations.
Mr. Maruta Jungo, CEO of W Field and producer of Summer Wars, The girl who leapt through time, Paprika and more!
Maruta-san also gave the Gals a tour of Marza Animation Planet, which is a leading CG animation company in Japan. They had a studio tour to see some of the latest CG tech they are working on for animation.
The whole team are super fans of Paprika! So it was a real highlight.
If you listened into the Town Hall, you may have also heard the team's latest thinking - something we're keen to get your feedback on!
The long-term goal for Shinsei Galverse is a long-form production, like an OVA or series.
But we always knew we'd want to create something shorter, like a trailer, in the interim.
Why? Because it takes a long time to make anime, because it's a great tool to expand awareness of the project, and because it gives us a chance to get to know a studio a little better before a full production kicks in.
We think Galverse should kick off with a music video, not a trailer!
Ayaka's career as an animator has been centred around making music videos - she's familiar with creating and directing them already.
Emi is a musician and well connected in the world of music.
It serves the same purpose as a trailer as far as showing the style and form of the longer anime.
We can use the music video as part of the longer form anime production - for example, the intro, credits, or as a sequence in the production.
We can partner with a well-known artist to really push Galverse out into the world beyond our normal audience of NFT fans!
The idea seems obvious, but really clicked when we all met in Japan. We started sharing ideas when we were together.
In NYC, we had some early meetings with record labels and artists to see if it was something that would click on their side too. There's definitely interest!
Nothing is set in stone - we want to hear from you too. Head to our discord if you'd like to share some ideas or thoughts with the team.
Our favorite fan art!
This adorable Gal portrait had our heart this month! She's a better artist than most of us (except Ayaka of course) too.
Tweets of the Month!
Lots of amazing NYC posts from our community this month - we were so happy to meet amazing Gals in real life.
Shout out to MoodSlime and his amazing custom Galverse hat!
Emi said on our Town Hall, that every Gal Holder she met, man or woman, had the best Gal vibes! Gal mindset!
Ayaka was amazed at how diverse our community is, especially since it's only about six months old!
For the team, it's real thrill to meet people who love the message and mission of Galverse as much as we do. Overhearing conversations about Galverse, or seeing the artwork people make - even seeing a Gal on a phone lockscreen. It's awesome!
The path forward!
A hot topic in the big city was Roadmaps. Well - getting rid of them!
We spoke to a lot of projects and communities that weren't satisfied with the roadmap meta, and we have to agree... in their current form.
While it's great to keep teams accountable, it also has a few limitations:
They're naturally pretty short term - which can lead to teams prioritising short term goals over long term ones to the detriment of the project.
Roadmap items are 100% public, so it loses a bit of the surprise and excitement when dropping something new.
Projects naturally change priorities over time, and traditional roadmaps don't provide a great way to illustrate changes like that.
New opportunities come up, and older ideas might become less attractive after some research and work.
They don't show all the other great work that goes on beyond the roadmap.
Galverse made a tonne of progress on the business side, some secret projects, tech uplift in the background and a lot of other things. But our initial quarterly roadmap doesn't really capture most of that!
We've come up with something new, which combines the old roadmap with a broader view of the project.
We call it 'The Road to WAGMAA', and it covers our active projects, secret projects, regular comms, WAGMAA progress, and anything else we want to add to it in the future.
This will chop, change, and get updated each month and provide a great overview of what the project is looking at.
We consider it our 'path' to the future - a living document which guides us in our day-to-day work, as well as longer term strategy.
Market Talk!
It's always a good day to wake up to a gem sweep.
As always, you can talk trades and markets in the Broom Closet over at the Shinsei Galverse discord!
And that's it!
Thanks, as always, for reading up on Shinsei Galverse.
The team is working harder than ever, and we've got more amazing announcements and reveals to come this month and beyond.
