The Quppy Monstick NFT: making digital art out of disruptive financial technologies
As the title of non-fungible tokens states, one NFT token cannot be replaced with another one. This is the core feature that differs NFTs from Bitcoin or any other digital currency. Yet, this key feature does not mean that the NFT token should always be a unique piece of digital art — a limited number of copies of any NFT can be created. For example, you can think of collectible postage stamps or collectible coins that are produced in a limited edition for the most devoted collectors and admirers.
Many world famous and popular brands have already released their NFT tokens. For example, NBA released its own NFTs with highlights from games, Pizza Hut released the so-called NFP — Non-fungible Pizza, Taco Bell together with artists released 25 NFTacoBells, Pringles released CryptoCrisp — the first chips with a virtual NFT flavor. Procter & Gamble created Charmin digital toilet paper — NFT (P) — Non-fungible Toilet Paper, as the most popular portal Reddit created its CryptoSnoos NFTs that gained a great popularity among the platform devoted and active users.
Quppy project, together with the ARTLION team, authors of the virtual world of Monsticks, have released a unique NFT card with the Quppy Monstick. This co-brand NFT opens a Monstick limited collection where every card has 100 copies only. According to the ARTLION creative team, the process of integrating the two concepts was both challenging and inspiring. The creators admit that it is always interesting to work on a piece of digital art introducing specific solutions and style of one brand into the existing stylistic framework of another. The Monstiks from the main collection already have a well elaborated style. They are different in appearance, but have some common features that stand out from the first glance: the proportions of their arms, legs and heads. The first and most obvious decision was to work around the key colors of the Quppy brand identity while bringing to life this co-brand Monstick.
There are tons of other recognizable or easily readable details: a card with the Quppy logo in one character’s hand and a lollipop with the Bitcoin logo in the other as far as an Ethereum pendant around the Quppy Monstick neck. These are all quite obvious references to the Quppy neobanking app core services — the ones with digital currencies. The ARTLION team states that to integrate the two ideas, they took as a basis not only the Quppy brand book, but also the character from the Quppy sticker pack in Telegram they had previously created for the Quppy project. Integrating the style of this character into the existing style of Monsticks, the designers found a number of unique details. They not only used the Quppy colors for the Monstick character, but also placed the logo on the side of the character’s body. For more resemblance to the Quppy Wallet sticker character, the Quppy Monstic’s head was made not round as other Monsticks have, but angular with an asymmetrical green fin, which appeared by analogy with the banknotes sticking out of the Quppy Wallet sticker character.
However, there is a key difference between these two characters, inspired by the same brand identity. You can see that the Quppy Monstick, unlike the Quppy Wallet sticker character, turned out to be one-eyed. Despite the fact that characters with a very different number of eyes appear in the Monsticks gallery (not all Monsticks are live yet), the Quppy Monstick got one eye and a sweet smile. This very smile is, of course, a reference to the Quppy logo perceived by many app users as broad and joyful smile.
There are currently three Monsticks available on Rarible. An attentive user could have noticed that each Monstick is given its unique number. While the first two have numbers 0001 and 0002, the Quppy Special Edition Monstick is numbered 0008. According to the Monstick creators, this out-of-line number was given due to the fact that several more NFTs are coming in the near future. Welcome soon Monsticks that already have serial numbers and who will be linked to the amazing tokenised art world of Monsticks. Moreover, the ARTLION team revealed the creation of a Monstick secret NFT. The Monstick holders will receive this secret card after purchasing the entire collection of “classic” Monsticks. The ARTLION designers promised to create a Telegram sticker pack with all the Monstick characters including the Quppy one. The ARTLION team highlights the importance of the Quppy Monstick NFT card in the framework of the entire collection, since it is the first brand collaboration. The Quppy NFT therefore not only occupies a privileged position in the Monstick collection, but also offers its owners some special privileges to be announced.
