Designing Indian Avatar NFTs for Valentine’s Day: Adding Desi Representation to the Metaverse
February 11, 2022
As Silicon Valley founders of a metaverse app with nearly 3 million users, we, like so many others, have been following the rise of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and web3. While there has been an increased presence of Indian founders and NFT investors recently, we want to ensure that translates to increased representation for web3 — the next stage of the internet.
For Valentine’s Day this year, we were inspired to create a collection of special Desi NFTs based on avatars from our metaverse app, Krikey. Our company, Krikey, builds Augmented Reality gaming and social media apps for iOS and Android with the help of a very skilled in-house team for 3D modeling, design, and animation. For years our focus was on mobile optimization and downsizing visual assets for mobile; however, with the growth in popularity of NFTs, we realized that our audience could now access the full beauty of the characters we were creating. They could become a meaningful and personal part of our user’s experience. Users could purchase these NFTs to serve as their Twitter profile images or as special collectible art.
When creating our Desi characters, we envisioned designing special Indian clothing attire. To create a sari for our female character, we studied several embroidery designs and different ways of draping the fabric. We had to collaborate closely with our 3D artists and animators to ensure the cloth simulation looked natural as the character extended a rose, for example. For our male characters, we incorporated a sherwani with high gloss and shine to make the gold, silver, and teal-colored cloth shimmer with every movement. Our artists played around with digital lights in the software to find the perfect angle — just as if it were a movie studio!
The final result is a set of unique NFTs featuring animated Desi Avatars with Pixar quality. We have created an NFT collection of 300 LOVE KryptoKrikey Valentine Collectibles – custom 3D avatars built with a variety of unique traits. Each KryptoKrikey is designed and animated by the Krikey team with care and thoughtful artistry. The Rose and Flying Kiss NFTs were designed specially with Valentine’s Day in mind. For those brave enough, we also have exclusive Proposal NFTs for the ultimate metaverse proposal!
The Valentine’s Day NFTs we created are available for the next week here: https://opensea.io/KrikeyApp — you can gift one to yourself or a loved one!
The video below shows the NFTs we have created for the metaverse.(Our favorites are the Sari NFTs and Sherwani NFTs!)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WK-lA3rA_I
If you would like an NFT, they are available now here: https://opensea.io/KrikeyApp
Krikey is a metaverse app that enables users to create 3D Avatars, make videos, and play Augmented Reality Games. Reliance Jio led Krikey’s Series A round and the app is live on iOS and Android. Krikey was named to the Fast Company list of Best Apps and Games of 2020 and has 2.8M+ users.
