Project Lead and Team Information

Mafriends Team (@Mafriends#1731 on discord @MafriendsArt on twitter)

Mafriends is an art collective active since December 2020 producing original work on the NFT space, including more than 50 FRWC derivative works in the form of pixel art, paintings, illustrations and 3D. We are also holders of FRWC with a combined amount of 6 wizards, 3 ponies, 15 warriors and 1 soul.

We love the energy and magic of Forgotten Runes and have dedicated a significant amount of our time to build with and for the community.

Art Direction, Concept Art and Illustration: Ozzz (@ozzz#2875 on discord @ozzzmabro on twitter) – If you hang around the #art channel in FRWC discord there’s no way you haven’t seen work by Ozzz. He’s been creating artwork in unique styles, having worked with several members of the community in many commissioned pieces. Check out the cover of the Book of Lore to have a glimpse of Ozzz’s spin. He has the power of surprising us with beauty and creativity. I often think I’ve seen his best work, and then he just comes up with something even more amazing!

3D modeling, animation and SFX: Ianzits (@i4nzits on twitter) – Ian is a Blender Wizard, he’s been working with motion graphics and 3D for more than 17 years. After the short 24-seconds animation he made and we posted on twitter, the community opened our eyes for the possibility of creating something longer. It’s amazing to work with him and our team chat is already full of ideas on how we can bring this animation to life!

Original Soundtrack: Choonaikos – This will be the first time we show Choonaikos to the world via Mafriends, but he’s been creating music for over 15 years. Nowadays he works full time on his personal cave home studio. We believe an original soundtrack will add way more value to the final animation.

Project Management and communications: Shimeji – I take care of most of the technical side of the team, strategic thinking and communications. I am the one posting this proposal and who answers the twitter DMs. I’ll be the project manager and make sure we have an open and frequent channel of communications with the DAO (and everyone who’s interested) to update about our progress while we build the best 3D short film we can!

In this project the full team will work together on the development of the script and creative details.

We would never imagine that summoning our first wizard from opensea, 10 months ago, would lead us to this amazing adventure. In these last months we have produced more than 50 2D Forgotten Runes derivatives, 3 3D models of wizards and a short 24 seconds animation in low poly 3D with a fully rigged character created from scratch.

At this point I believe we have a proven track record that shows we are capable of delivering something unique and special that the world will love.

We are really excited to work on a bigger and more complex project and bring a full animation featuring a wizard in 3D.

Summary of Project

We are going to create a short-film in 3D featuring Sage Celah of the Steppe (the one on this short animation we posted in twitter 4).

We aim to work on this short film for 3 months and have a finished product ranging from 3 to 5 minutes. We prefer not to limit our creative output with a set amount of minutes and seconds for the final video, because many ideas will come up during the process, writing the script and drawing the storyboard. Instead, we made an estimated schedule to be planned and executed with our best. The first details of the storyline are written down below on “Project Specifications”.

One idea is to release the final 3D animation also as an NFT and have an auction following reveal day, splitting proceeds of the auction with the House of Wizards.

We love the possibility of getting funded to work on such an amazing project, and thought that this could bring a positive feedback loop where part of the funding could flow back to the DAO treasury, if people love the final animation and the auction is successful this could even return a profit for the dao, making it possible to fund even more projects in the future!

(The possibility for doing an auction is just one idea, we are totally open to hear what other wizards think about it and adjust accordingly, the final video NFT could be sent to the treasury or not even minted if we decide to do so!)

Project Goal

Wizards are much more than pixel art on the blockchain.

Getting to know the FRWC community showed us that an artwork that looks simple at first sight can reveal several layers of depth, with several amazing individuals working together to make something bigger than themselves.

We believe that having this new layer of possibility, bringing a character that started from Pixel to be created and animated in 3D, with his personal lore coming to life, will help bring new eyes to FRWC project and contribute to make the wizards reach more people, also bringing beauty to the world and increasing the numbers of NFT related projects doing serious and respectable animation.

There’s also the possibility of sending the animation on short-film festivals around the world.

Proposal Specification

Specifications

We plan to do our best and put full energy on bringing an awesome animation to the world.

Our proposal is to work 3 months on the project of the film and we calculate we’ll end up with a 3-5 minutes film. It could be longer or shorter, but we won’t be satisfied with nothing less than outstanding.

We will keep the DAO updated on how the project is going during this time.

For this first animation we plan to feature Sage Celah of the Steppe (FRWC #8521) as the main character, which we already modeled and have fully rigged in 3D, we may or may not include other characters at this time, our present script idea is focused on him and his green bullfrogs.

If the final result is well received by the community and the world we would love to create other animations, possibly including more characters and making longer films too.

Story Line

We will tell the story of Sage Celah along the lines of his lore, please read it in the Book of Lore for better understanding.

These are the key events for the story, that will be unfolded during the creative process:

-The story starts with Sage sleeping on his armchair in his living room -All of a sudden he wakes up, surprised -He stands up a bit grumpy -Sage Celah grabs some items like his hat / staff / bag and leaves his shack -He walks to the swamp -Finds a frog and hunts the frog -Some challenges show that it’s hard for him to catch the frog -He finally catches the frog and licks it -He falls to the ground and a psychedelic trip starts -He goes to an astral dimension -The trip flows smoothly until he meets another being on the astral plane, (maybe Diabolist Ghorhoth of the Astral Plane 2 of whom we’ve already done a 3D version) -The being tells him something. If it happens to be Diabolist, he could scare Sage Celah, causing a sudden bad trip -He enters in accelerated free fall amidst random noises and images, coming back to his body, like “AAAAAH” -With a raw cut we’re back to the same initial scene where he’s asleep and suddenly wakes up. -THE END

We’re open to community feedback on the storyline, but will likely have the final creative decisions on it.

Funding Requested

Funding Total expected time for 3D and animation by Ianzits is ~6h per day at a rate of 360 usd per day during 10 weeks. We set it at 60 usd per hour, considering that industry rates vary from 45 to 200 usd per hour and that Ianzits will dedicate the largest amount of hours to the project, we would usually charge a higher rate per hour on smaller projects, but considered the daily rate here. Total expected time spent on Script Writing and management is 60 hours. It’s difficult to measure total time that will be spent by Ozzz on Art Direction and illustrations for the project beforehand and we think it’s better to think of it as a fixed fee instead of per hour. The full team will work together on the creative side of the project and some of the functions will be shared (like script writing/storyboard development). 3D modeling and animation: 360 USD per day (~6h each), 6 days per week, 10 weeks: $21,600 Art direction, illustration and storyboard: $5,500 Script Writing and Project Management: 60 hours at $75/hour = $4,500 Original Music and SFX: $2,700 Render Farms: $180 Auction possibility If we all agree with auctioning the final animation as an NFT, we propose sharing the proceeds of the auction in these terms: 70% flowing back to the DAO treasury and 30% going to Mafriends treasury. Funding Requested Total: $34,480 Our proposal is to receive 50% before starting and 50% one day before the delivery of the final animation. We are of course totally open to hear what works best for the DAO. We’ll be ready to start as soon as the proposal is approved.

Additional Comments & Notes

May the !magic be with you. -Shimeji, Ianzits and Ozzz. Mafriends