Catbolic AMA Altcoinbuzz

Catbotica recounts the development of a hand-drawn, generative NFT collection. With a rich and engaging story, packed with suspense, secrets, and romance.

So, Altcoin Buzz General Manager Anindya (Ani) Baidya anchored the Catbotica AMA session with Jin Kim, CEO of Catbolica.

Segment 1: IntroductionĀ 

Q ā€“ Tell us a bit about yourself and your involvement with Catbotica

Sure, my name is Jin Kim (@wayofjin on telegram and twitter). I serve as the co-founder and CEO of Catbotica and the parent company Genesis Arc. Have been in NFTs since Jan 2021 and have about 600+ NFTs. Love the Web3 space and when I finally understood went all in and went full time with the Catbotica team.

Q ā€“ How big is your team and where are you located?

We are based in Canada, US, Europe and Korea/Asia. We have approx. 15 people but have had been as large as 30 people as we scale up.

Segment 2: Deep Dive

Q – So, what is Catbotica? Give us its background and what it is now.

Catbotica is a whole universe ecosystem that was born from the minds and hearts of our creative team primarily Will and Rawls two of our co-founders. They have almost 20 years each of experience in film and animation for Netflix and other top level entertainment and news outlets. Our two other founders, Koichi and Rene, come on the technical and pipeline side of things as well as over 40 years of business experience.

We launched Jan 2021 and minted out 12k collection in about 10 hours. A lot of our holders are from Korea and so we have a presence both in the US market and Korean markets. Our primarily focus is developing the brand and IP of Catbotica to both a Web3 digital presence as well as a offline IRL experience.

Q – When you say brand, what kind of Brand are you trying to build? If you can elaborate.

Sure, Catbotica is comprised of 12k characters all generative PFPs that each have their own personalities/personas. The brand we are trying to build is a narrative and character based world that will exist in both the digital and actual realities. Our focus is a family friendly brand that allows for families to be able to enjoy the art and the tech that is being created and developed in the NFTs/collectibles. Our experience with Hyundai Department Store showed us how critical it was to make sure people were able to craft and print offline, color and get both digital and actual experiences.

We believe everyone has a deep pool of creativity that is waiting to be revealed and expressed. So the brand will emphasize the creation of tools and resources for holders and our community. Therefore, this will let them create and express with their Catbots and future collections that are being developed.

Q – So tell us more about Catbots. How to you plan to integrate them in this whole picture?

We start off with our 2D Catbots which serve as our Genesis NFT. Holding this NFT is important as it will be NFT that gets you access to future airdrops/redeems in our collections. We airdropped a NV1 which is a utility NFT that allows a holder to take the 2D Catbot Genesis NFT and do a 1:1 conversion to the 3D Catbot or “Replicat”.

The 3D Catbot “Replicat” are in the family called the Catboticans as we will have the ability to created “Descendants”. These are variants of the “Replicat” that the holder can select and retain some traits. The facial features will also be retained so the “lineage” of the 3D assets will be maintained.

We are also going to be expanding not just from the NFT collections but also to the develop the ecosystem. This will make us be involved in developing a marketplace to trade items and wearables, games, animations, metaverse(s), among other 3D assets. We are focusing on creating an expansive ecosystem to create assets based on the NFT collection users acquire. Huge shout out to our community, they are incredible and we wouldn’t be here without them!

Q – So everything is well planned

We are constantly pivoting to the demands of the market place and community. But, we remain firmly committed to making high fidelity products that allow our community to create. Much of this is still in the beginning stages but as we continue to roll out products and more specifically services and tools.

The community will create some incredible content themselves. So part of this will become a community driven project so they can determine.

Q – What type of community have you been able to create and how do you ensure that they relate to Catbotica?

Communities are a very interesting sociological phenomena and they make our project grow based on the sense of belonging. When we launched we had 2300 unique wallets and after about a month it was around 1850. So for over 11 months we have retained our community strength virtually intact throughout that time.

We have met with our community members almost once every one or two months. And each time we meet, the feeling of togetherness grows. At the last holiday event it felt like this had grown into a fam. I know some of the holders’ families and kids. We have spanned major exhibitions, to boat cruises, to picnics, music fests and everything between.

Unequivocally I saw we have members who are people committed to good vibes. This is the Web3 community I have always wanted and am proud to have our holders part of this journey with us.

Q – What happens to the 2d Catbots once the 3Ds are minted?

They are the Genesis NFTs and will be the access to future collections. I consider them to be true collectibles as they each have their own distinct character. They are not burned, you will have a 2D Genesis and a 3D Replicat. Future Descendants will be generated from the 2D Genesis, hence the name.

Q – What kind of toolings have you developed till now? We checked the Catscanner, that’s pretty cool.

Catscanner is the brainchild of our tech guru Fulvio. We also have a fun application we created called MyCatbot. It is a web based builder that allows you to assemble your own 2D Catbot for fun with the accessories and wearables. We included an option to turn it into a black and white PNG that you can print and color offline. This is the first of several tools we would like to roll out to showcase its 3D pipeline.

In our most recent video howcases our V1 of the pipeline. This takes 2D assets and converts them to 3D. It also produces several outputs one of which is the high color renderings you see as the head shot and body shots on OpenSea for now. We are finalizing the full 3D asset GLB that will allow you interact with the file and use it to enter into a virtual environment. This pipeline will also eventually allow you to place your 3D Replicat into a preset animation or sequence and render out your own video and content.

Segment 3: Community Questions.
Q – How will CATBOTICA ensure that the attributes of the 3D Catbots are sufficiently varied while maintaining the uniqueness of all NFTs? What measures will the company take to prevent the creation of counterfeit or low-quality 3D Catbots?

The number of variants we have is sort of ridiculous, let me try to remember how many. This is where the code that runs the catscanner is tied into the code that does not allow any multiples of the same character.

Regarding counterfeit and low quality 3D Catbots, I can with confidence challenge someone to try to match the fidelity of our resolution and quality of the 3D assets. We are currently rendering only at 2K. But, due to how much time we spent to make all 12K characters to be essentially film ready, it would not be cost effective to try to replicate the collection. Apart from using blockchain to let our community to know which contract addresses they should verify before minting. We unfortunately are subject to the scams in the current marketplaces.

I believe it was several million for every human on earth today. The number of variants was staggering.

It’s important to mention that part of the system is designed to make sure that within the “lineage” from a 2D Genesis Catbot that one creates a Replicat that has Descendants that all share the same facial features to maintain a family likeness, it will reject any combinations that will create a duplicate Descendant within the family line and over the entire collection now and in the future.

Q – What is the process for constructing the graphics that make up the image of the Catbot utilizing the hand drawn graphic elements of each attribute variation?

The 2D assets jave ere composed from a palette of over 450 assets. In comparison for example, BAYC has approximately 150 assets. Its based on the metadata/json that were created through an algorithm to maintain uniqueness. In 2D, its basically a very complex layering system that requires the 2D artist to have the experience of dealing multiple variants to make sure there are no conflicts or cover another assets. Rawls our 2D artist and co-founder worked on Plants vs Zombies that also had several hundred assets that gave him the experience and know how on how to manage the process.

I would like to just thrown in there that the complexity goes up in magnitude with the 3D assets where each asset is not just layered but has a z axis component and when you rotate around it, many more conflicts arise. Our pipeline guru and co-founder Koichi wrote approx 2K lines of code to handle all of those conflicts that came up in 3D. This was no small undertaking.

It took a combination of Koichi and Will our SFX and 3D maestro to make sure we were planning ahead as much as possible. This will let us handle those conflicts and navigate the team to build the pipeline to automate a lot of the processes. For example, the first assembled 3D Catbot took four straight days to make work. To multiple that over 12k, would have taken us literally 100 years to complete the full collection.

Q – Can you provide some concrete examples of how the royalties collected from Catbotica 2D Catbots will be used to fund the development of future collections and metaverse projects? How these projects might enhance the overall value proposition of Catbot NFTs?

To be perfectly honest, royalties did not manifest in the amounts we had imagined it would. On the flip side of things, I believe we are a NFTone of the best hidden secrets in the Web3 ecosystem and as we finalize our content creation engines. So, we will be able to focus on getting more eyes on the project as we are doing today. One thing to note is that we have had roughly a 50-60 ETH volume on an average monthly basis, which is enough to cover some expenses but not nearly enough. With that in mind we have been building very lean and mean in this bear market and will keep that profile as best as we can even when the bull market comes back.

Those factors, more holders and interest in the project to drive more royalties and our efficient operations will be a much bigger variable. As we continue to build and add value and interest to the value of the collections as we roll them out. So for now the impact is limited but will only increase as we continue to grow and build.

Q – What is the significance of the rarity system used in the Catbot NFT collection, and how does it impact the value of individual NFTs? And How do the physical elements of the Catbot NFT packaging contribute to the overall value and collectability of the NFTs?

Great question. Rarity does play a role in that the number of assets and surfaces that will be available in the total number of collections and the 3D assets. Overall rarity will also have an effect in how we will be engaging with the community. However, as with other NFT projects and with collectibles, some of my favorites are not the most rare and don’t have to affect the values. Each of the main traits will have some utility and function in the game/metaverses.

Q – What happens to new users who only mint the 3D model? Will they also have access to future collections as they lack the 2D Genesis NFTs?

Those who mint the 3D model will have access to the future collections as they would have had to have the 2D Genesis. So, unless they sell the 2D Genesis after creating the 3D Replicat they retain that access. For someone who buys the 3D Replicat on secondary, they can go to OpenSea or other marketplaces and purchase a 2D Genesis.

The 2D Genesis NFTs will give access to airdrops/redemptions/allowslist for future collections. All future collections will be available to purchase on the secondary market.

Q – It was excellent speaking to you @wayofjin. We wish you all the best and getting more excited about Catbotica!

Thank you for joining us today! Pleasure meeting your community here. Please make sure you join us for our live AMA on Friday 9:30AM EST, come to our Discord for more information or our Twitter.

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Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment, and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to the accepted levels of risk tolerance of the writer/reviewers and their risk tolerance may be different than yours. We are not responsible for any losses that you may incur as a result of any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments so please do your due diligence. This article has been sponsored by Catbolica. Copyright Altcoin Buzz Pte Ltd.

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