Imennikian, an open-source intellectual property (IP) based on the Ethereum NFT series, is expanding into TV's Imennikian, an animated series for adults. And the series, created by independent creators and initially funded by a grant from the Nouns DAO community, is sticking to its roots by selling the pilot episode through an NFT access pass.
"The Nouners" uses the Nouns Project's colorful pixelated characters, based on a wide variety of objects and creatures, all wearing glasses (or "Noggles"), to create a cartoon aimed at an adult audience. The absurd atmosphere is reminiscent of such unusual hits as "South Park", "Robot Chicken" and "Aqua Teen Hunger Force".
The 11-minute pilot episode has a low-fi look that matches the pixelated avatars and has a distinctly meta approach, showing how the creators come up with different projects to try and spread the Nouns brand. Only here they turn to an all-powerful creature with a Wizard of Oz-type combination — plus lots of profanity, sex, drugs, and other adult content.
"The Nouners" was actually given to "Nouners". The DAO is a collective (or decentralized autonomous organization) of Nouns NFT holders who control an ETH treasury of nearly $43 million as of this writing. And the treasury helps finance projects, including toys, comics, parade floats, and brand partnerships, among many other initiatives.
"The Nouners" was created by executive producer Mike Recola and his colleagues, who created the minute-long animation and pitched the DAO project last August. Nouns were created using a Creative Commons 0 (CC0) license, so anyone can connect to the IP and create a similar project without DAO approval. It is completely open source.
However, in this case, the DAO approved a $15,000 USDC request through its Small Grants Committee to fund the pilot episode. Show co-creator Sean Flanagan told Decrypt that the experience of navigating the DAO proposal process and interacting with pseudonyms on the Internet helped inform the storyline of the pilot episode.
"It was difficult to navigate the waters of an organization of faceless people around the world," he said, comparing it to the traditional world of film. “This process was very mysterious and new - that's what led to the creation of Wizard of Nouns in our pilot project. We made educated guesses based on the voice of the man behind the curtain. It became an inspiration."
Recola said his team made a relatively modest request for funding for the pilot episode after seeing other creators asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars for things like a noun-based Bible and animation — "anything but the finished product" in his opinion
The pilot episode of “The Nouners” is indeed finished, but you need access to NFT to enter the token portal and stream the video. The subscription costs 0.003 ETH—currently less than $5—and Recola said they will need to sell 3,200 NFTs to finance the completion of the second episode, which is already half done.
A pilot with an episode based on nouns and financed by nouns about Nouns and the funding process seems ready for an established audience of Web3 enthusiasts. However, Recola said future episodes will explore a wider range of topics and not be as meta.
Like many projects that Nouns DAO has funded to date, The Nouners is an experiment, and its creators are eager to see how it catches on with viewers and whether there will be enough demand for the next episode, let alone a full season.
This is another foray into the growing world of Film3 to see how Web3 technology can help finance and realize creative projects in a variety of ways. In this case, it's also built around a decentralized property that many people collectively farm with their creations. For Rekola, Nouns are a vast playground full of creative possibilities.
"Nouns is the perfect partner for the show because it's IP undefined, CC0, and completely ready for exploration," Recola said. Decipher. "Nouns are not limited to children or crypto-brothers. Welcome everyone to the Nouns community. This is why the Web3 space is amazing. No legacy media company would ever allow random filmmakers to have fun with their brand.”
“Do you think Disney will ever allow us to experiment and make an adult Mickey Mouse cartoon? I don't think so," he added. "But nouns b."