NFT-UNIVERSITY-BASICS

You are an artist who found out about the NFT before most people, and now you want to be a part of it? No problems, we have created this guide to help people create their own NFT art.

Whether you are a skilled digital artist or you enjoy drawing, NFT might be a good option for you. Ever since Beeple sold his NFT art for $69 million, people want to learn more about NFT and how they can benefit from it.

First, let us introduce you to this guide by explaining the NFT meaning to you.

What is NFT?

The classic definition is that NFT (Non-fungible token) is some kind of a digital asset that’s stored on the blockchain.

If you are confused right now, don’t worry, we didn’t get it at first either. To keep it simple, let’s just say that NFT is a UNIQUE piece of digital data that belongs only to one person or company. Every owner has it saved on his digital wallet, a special kind of wallet that supports NFT.

To compare it with real-life examples, let’s just say that there are fungible and non-fungible items:

The main difference between an NFT and real-life items is the way they are stored. If you buy a painting, it can go bad over time, but an NFT cannot deteriorate. The only way an NFT can go bad is if the whole internet gets shut down permanently since NFTs are stored on the blockchain.

Since NFT is stored in a digital wallet, it can’t go bad, and what also gives it a big advantage over physical art is that it cannot be counterfeited. Each NFT art has a unique identifier, so you’ll always know if it’s the real deal.

When you create an NFT, you can sell it on special kinds of marketplaces. The artist will decide if he’ll set a fixed price for his art, or he’ll choose an auction kind of a sale. Once the art is sold, it is transferred to the new owner’s wallet address and the artist will get the amount he sold it for, minus the transaction and marketplace fees.

You might be wondering, but how is NFT actually created?

This creation process is something that’s called minting. In this process, your digital art is turned into a part of the Ethereum public blockchain and it becomes a public ledger that cannot be changed anymore.

Who can create NFT?

Alright, as we cleared out the theory about NFT, let’s talk about who can create it.

As we have previously mentioned, selling such art is done on special kinds of marketplaces. In order to sell on those marketplaces, you’ll have to follow their rules. Some marketplaces like OpenSea will allow anybody to sell an NFT art, while others may require you to become a “verified” artist first.

Whether that’s a process through which the community will rate your work or the moderators, you won’t be able to sell until you are verified. That is of course if the verification process is required by the marketplace. Some NFT marketplaces are invite-only, so unless you are a known artist, it might be hard to get in.

Anybody can create NFT once they are approved, but it’s not possible to mint it without a little bit of help. The minting process requires a marketplace that will complete this technical task for you. However, that doesn’t mean you need any technical knowledge about the minting process, once you are approved all you have to do is upload the art, define the price and selling format.

OpenSea.io provides “minting on the fly” as they call it. You can upload your digital asset and when you sell it, it turns into an NFT. This process can save you money as you can basically publish your NFT without any fees.

Other marketplaces such as Foundation might require you to mint it right away as you upload the art. If you are just starting out and want to see how the system works, we suggest going with OpenSea or any other marketplace that will mint only when you sell the item.

To conclude the question, anybody can create an NFT art. It really depends on what marketplace you choose to publish on and what type of art you are creating. Some marketplaces might not charge you anything until you sell an item, while others will charge you for the minting process right away.

How to create NFT art?

This question is most likely the reason why you are reading this guide, so we’ll explain it step by step. If you are wondering how to create NFT art, follow these steps:

Explore the marketplaces.

You might be a digital creator ready to turn your digital assets into an NFT, however, you have to check if the category of your assets is supported by the marketplace. For example, there are some of you that are creating virtual worlds and they are not available on all marketplaces.

Most artists create digital art in the shape of images, video, or music formats. These categories are present in every major NFT marketplace, so if that’s your choice of art, consider yourself lucky.

You can also go through our list of best NFT marketplaces to see what would be the best choice for you based on the different features that they offer. From there, you can see the rankings on different marketplaces. What’s the point of selling NFT on a marketplace that nobody visits or buys at?

Create art.

Once you decide which marketplace you’ll sell on, it’s time to create the art. Perhaps you already have it ready on your PC or you are going to create it after reading this guide. The beauty of NFT is that you can sell anything you made as an NFT art, whether you have created it 5 years ago or 10 minutes ago.

For the sake of this guide, we’ll focus on the creation of digital art as an NFT. Also, the marketplace we’ll guide you to post on is OpenSea.io as there are no fees for the minting process and it’s the biggest marketplace around.

The supported file extensions on OpenSea marketplace are:

You can see there are plenty of different file extensions that are supported, so if you are a digital art creator, this is quite a paradise for you.

The maximum file size that’s supported is 40MB, but if you are doing a collection or uploading multiple items, we suggest you limit it to 20MB for faster upload and load time.

How you are going to create the actual art, depends on you and your skills. If you are an experienced digital artist, well you already know which software you’ll use. However, if you are just starting out, the most popular tools for creating digital art are:

These are just some of the most popular software for digital drawing, but you can use any that you like. As long as your digital art is in the format that’s supported on the marketplace of your choice, you are good to go.

Upload your art

As previously mentioned, we’ll focus on the OpenSea marketplace, and right now you are about to see the necessary steps you have to take in order to upload your art.

1) Register on the marketplace

The first step is to register on the OpenSea.io marketplace. In order to do that you’ll need one of the supported digital wallets which you can see on the image down below.

For the sake of this guide, we’ll install “MetaMask”. Simply select the MetaMask wallet in the list and once their website opens up, all you have to do is select “Install MetaMask for Chrome” (Browsers also supported: Firefox, Brave, Edge)”.

Select the install button and install it through the marketplace. When the installation is complete, you’ll see an icon show up next to the search bar in your browser.

Select the new icon on your browser toolbar. You’ll get on the first page of MetaMask, now select “Get Started”.

You’ll see two options:

Select “Create a Wallet”, decide if you’ll let MetaMask gather your usage data by choosing either “I agree” or “No Thanks”. This is not necessary for the normal function of your wallet, so decide on your own.

Select the password that you’ll be using, make sure it’s at least 8 characters long. Accept the terms of use and press create. Once you have created your password, it’s time to get your secret backup phrase. We suggest you safely store it where nobody except you can find it.

If someone knows your secret backup phrases, he can easily restore your wallet and take all your funds. We recommend watching the video MetaMask made so you can understand what it is actually for.

Once you are ready to proceed, press the next button. You’ll be taken to the page where you are able to see your secret backup phrase. Click to reveal the notes, write them down and select “Next”.

Select “Next” and repeat the words in the exact same order on the second page. Once you do that, press Next and that’s it. You have successfully created your NFT compatible digital wallet.

As the NFT world continues to grow, we expect more marketplaces to allow polygon transactions, but you can decide on your own which blockchain to use.

Once you have sorted everything, press create and you have successfully added your NFT to the OpenSea marketplace, it was easy, wasn’t it? Now it’s time to define the price and sell it.

Go to your profile, open the NFT you have just added and select the blue “Sell” button that will show up above your NFT. Here you can define the selling format and desired price as you can see on the image down below.

 

In this example, we’ll select the “Set price” fixed selling format. We will set the price to 0.01 ETH and you can see the fees on the right side. Each marketplace has its own fees and OpenSea will take 2.5% on each transaction.

Select “Post your listing” and you’ll see a popup show up that says “To get set up for selling on OpenSea for the first time, you must initialize your wallet, which requires a one-time gas fee.”.

You’ll only need to pay this fee once, and every other item you post will be free of cost. Once you have defined the price, you can create or edit your collections, but more about that later on.

How to sell NFT art?

Now that you have completed the process of uploading your art to the NFT marketplace, what’s next?

First of all, you’ll have to edit your profile on the marketplace. As in the example before, we’ll use OpenSea marketplace to write the steps. Please note the exact steps might differ on other marketplaces.

Open your profile page

If you are not already, make sure you sign in with your wallet to OpenSea.io

Hover over your profile icon in the upper right corner of the website and select “My Profile”. Once you do that, it will take you to your profile page where you can see all your details such as Name, Wallet public address, date of registration, items you own, and those which you have created.

Change your name

You don’t want people to see you as “Unnamed” with the default picture. To change your name, follow these steps:

Once you have filled in all the necessary info and saved it, you’ll have to confirm the email. Check your inbox and open the confirmation email. Please allow up to 24 hours for the e-mail to arrive as the website can be quite busy, also make sure you check your spam folders if you are not getting the email.

Change the profile picture

Head back to “My profile” and you’ll be able to see the new username and description that you have just added. From there, you can change the profile picture and banner as well. Simply hover over the profile pic and you’ll see “Edit” appear.

Select “Edit” and you’ll be able to upload a new profile pic. These profile pictures help you stand out, so make sure you change it from the default one.

The same process applies to changing your banner picture. Hover over it and select the image you want to upload. Most artists will create a banner that’s related to their NFT collection somehow.

OpenSea suggests using a 1400×400 size image for the banner.

Create and name a collection

Our first item belongs to an “unnamed” collection. You should always put a name on your NFT collections as it will help the users to find it. There are plenty of other things you can do with collections:

As you can see, collections can be quite a useful feature. You might have noticed we had “Royalties” in the list. 

What are NFT royalties? You can charge a fee every time someone sells an item you originally created. Each month you’ll get a payment to your wallet.

How awesome is that?

Promote your NFT work

If you design cool digital images, it’s possible that the users will be able to find them through the marketplace with the “Explore” function. That being said, if you only rely on users finding your work manually, you are limiting yourself to the marketplace your art is on.

How can I promote my NFT art?

1. Create different social media channels to promote your NFT work. You can sign up for Facebook and take advantage of the “Groups” feature. You can submit your work on Reddit, for example, use a subreddit called NFTsMarketplace. Twitter can also be super useful because the whole crypto and NFT community uses it daily.
2. Create a website. What’s a better way to showcase your art than to have it on your own website? You can host a pre-sale or include the most important information about your NFT collection here.
3. You can also list your NFT on our website. Let us promote your project which will greatly increase the chances of sale. We have plenty of visitors daily which will see your project highlighted on our list.
4. Host an Airdrop. What’s a better way to attract people to your project than hosting a giveaway where people can win one of your NFTs. We can list your airdrop for free.

Advertising is a big part of every successful artist. Imagine if the world’s greatest artists never had their art in a gallery, but if they had hung it on their house window. Do you think they would ever sell something that way? Exactly, they wouldn’t, therefore, work on your advertisment.

Congrats, you have reached the end of this guide. By now, you should know the basics concepts of how to create your own NFT and how to publish it on a marketplace. For other NFT related guides, you can take a look at our NFT University.