Steve Aoki, Seth Green Will Let NFT Holders Shape Animated Short
Shibuya, the Web3 video platform from artist pplpleasr, will host the stop-motion short that lets NFT owners call the shots.
Just two months after raising $6.9 million, Shibuya—a Web3 video platform co-founded by digital artist Emily “pplpleasr” Yang—has revealed its next web video that NFT holders can help shape, scene-by-scene: a stop-motion animated short from electronic musician Steve Aoki and actor Seth Green’s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.
Aoki and the studio behind the Adult Swim series “Robot Chicken” will bring their “Dominion X: Level 2” project to Shibuya, with a six-week, interactive production process that will unfold in collaboration with the community. Each week, NFT holders can vote on how each new scene will conclude, and then the producers will film the segment accordingly.
It will all add up to a single stop-motion animated short that will be viewable by anyone via the Shibuya platform, but only NFT holders will be able to vote during production. Those holders will also receive a reward NFT in one of various rarity levels, depending on how much they participated during the process.
For Shibuya, “Dominion X” marks its second IP launch since the platform debuted in March 2022, and it’s the first to be developed externally. Pplpleasr told Decrypt that it will provide a different flavor of interactive content creation for users than “White Rabbit,” the anime series that debuted with Shibuya.
“This is really exciting because it's going to show, as a very first step, where Shibuya is headed,” she said, adding that the collaboration was long in the works.
“Dominion X” first launched a series of animated scenes sold as Ethereum NFTs in August 2021 through Nifty Gateway, apparently selling out the collection in a matter of seconds. A three-minute "Dominion X: Level 1" short was produced, spotlighting the fuzzy pink lead creature (Character X) and other pals via the stop-motion style that Stoopid Buddy Stoodios is known for.
In September 2022, the collaborators released a series of NFT profile pictures (PFPs) based on the project, with each serving as an access pass to a virtual writers’ room and community to help shape the upcoming series. They initially offered up 7,777 NFTs at a price of 0.10 ETH each (about $170 at the time), but then cut the supply to 4,000 NFTs at 0.05 ETH ($85) apiece.