Date: February 11, 2023
By: @TWX MonkeDAO
It’s been a few days since the passing of the first Official MonkeDAO Collection (codename: OMC) proposal, and the team is already busy working on the next stage of this project. We’ve got a long way to go, but a pass rate of nearly 86% on the most voted-on internal proposal of all-time ****really does give the team confidence to continue in the overall direction we’ve taken.
It’s a very different dynamic to most NFT projects, in that we have an existing community that expects a higher level of transparency and participation than nearly any other before. We understand that MonkeDAO means so much to our members, and we’re dedicated to creating a project that we can all be proud of.
So with that in mind, I’m going to try and post a regular design update, where I highlight what we’re working on, and what our thought processes are around certain issues that we encounter - welcome to OMC Design Update #1!
The Art Objectives are the cornerstone of the art direction for OMC, they’re what separates our art from most other projects.
Firstly, the most important thing for people to understand is that we created this art with a number of objectives in mind. This is important, because it allows the team to refer to these ‘north stars’ whenever we need to make decisions that have potential tradeoffs. It’s important for readers to understand that the art wasn’t created in a vacuum, it was designed specifically to solve the issues in the image above, it took a number of iterations to get to where it is today, and we’ll continue iterating until we get it right.
This week in particular has been quite disruptive to productivity because of the first DAO proposal, but it did provide us with the opportunity to gauge the initial reaction to our art reveal via internal member survey. In general, we saw some common themes in the feedback. I won’t cover all of them this time because I’ve only had one or two days to process these themes, but I will highlight the common concerns that align with what we’ve been actively working on.
First up is the tail. This was a very common topic and opinion varied wildly as expected. The reason I knew it would be polarising is because it’s been a hot topic of conversation with the team and early stakeholders ever since it came into existence 3-4 months ago! In its current iteration it adds a potential trait slot, provides much-needed personality to the monke character, and it reinforces the specific aesthetic I’m attempting to achieve (which is simple and pixelated, but distinct from retro gaming). The downside is that it overlaps with larger traits in other slots, and it complicates an otherwise clean and “legible” silhouette.
The monke tail issue is the perfect example of the trade-offs that we face in the art decision-making process, each have their own unique pros and cons.
Our main choices are to keep the current option, give the monke a smaller tail (which would solve the overlap issue, but further complicates the silhouette and leans too far toward a retro gaming aesthetic), or remove the tail completely (which leaves us with the cleanest, most easily recognisable pfp, but loses some personality from the monke character overall).
We’re keeping the tail in its current state for now, but will continue to monitor its effect on traits and the silhouette. I’m not against making a decisive change here, especially if our primary focus is to support the recognisability of the pfp in public by removing the tail altogether.