Exoteric

Tag: art

  • Art on Uncut

    Many Exoteric : The Only Shadow NFTs are available on Uncut.Network.

    Here’s the link to my page. The entirety of *Only Shadow* will be available through Uncut first.

    After The Only Shadow concludes, I will make the NFTs available on a larger market. As the series nears its end, I’ll be publishing 3 PDFs. Pricing info TBA. One is a in-story relic. One will contain a full length original story, and the last will include both, as well as all images that were minted.

    • Jack Lhasa

    All content copyright Jack Lhasa, unless otherwise noted. Art and articles are copyright Jack Lhasa, 2001-2024(and further).

    This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

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  • The Only Shadow + Sara

    Sara Wade

    This is Sara Wade. She’s wearing her ninja garb, as this is in the game, the Only Shadow.

    In the real world, Sara is quite the computer nerd. She works for Jack Lhasa as a set designer. Shes responsible for all the little details of Japan in The Only Shadow.

    In Only Shadow, she’s a precise killer. From this vantage point, she watches as two other kunoichi clash below. Biding her time, she’ll strike the victor, as soon as they relax in victory.

    Only Shadow

    The Only Shadow is a fiercely competitive game in the VR universe of Exoteric. It takes place in a Japan that is several hundred years from now. This Japan is ruled by a totalitarian shogun. He has outlawed the practice of ninjitsu, making it punishable by death.

    Players take on the role of one of the last practitioners of ninjitsu. They were brought into this martial art by their parents, or other close relatives. Taught in secret, by necessity.

    Now, the last surviving Kunoichi, are hunting each other down, in a desperate play to be the last standing.

    The Only Shadow is a massive PvP competition. Players must stay off the authority’s radio, while constantly watching for other ninja who may be stalking them. The game runs in seasons, and each season players have only one life. If they are defeated in battle, that’s it. They can reenter after a winner is crowned and a new season begins. First place receives a very large monetary prize that is dependent on the number of players who join in that particular season.

    Extraordinarily popular, perhaps because of the incredibly high stakes, more players join every season.

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  • Only Shadow

    For sometime now I’ve been selling the art from *Only Shadow*, a vicious VR game in the Exoteric world on a site called Uncut Network.

    Here’s a profile link and a few of the images.

    Exoteric on Uncut

    Some of the images released so far.

    I’ll be telling the story of the *Only Shadow* here, and releasing it as a PDF containing all associated art. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Go check it.

    • Jack

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  • The Process

    The method I use to create NFTs

    ((Published to listed.to and my paragraph ))

    Interview Answers

    • questions from https://warpcast.com/lampphotography

    From Farcaster Conversations

    My process

    (published as replies on Farcaster)

    Questions were asked by Lauren at Lamp Photography

    https://far.quest/lampphotography

    (How did you create it?)

    I use a really complicated method for most of my art.

    It started with a photograph. I then tweaked it with GiMP, creating the color swatches and removing the background. Then I put it into an AI, in order to make it not look like a photo. After tweaking the AI multiple times, I got a nearly finished image. This I took and ran back through GiMP and Snapseed, getting rid of marks that were out of place, toying with the full color settings and filters. And this got me to the final image.

    I do this(roughly) same process for most of my nft art. I try to put in the extra effort so it’s not an AI image, just an image that I used AI during the creation process. This also keeps my work free of any copyright issues.

    ——

    (How long does it take?)

    Well, it’s not as big a deal now. I’ve been refining the process for about 18mo.

    I don’t like the way AI is generally used for images. Anyone can type stuff in. Although there is an art to crafting prompts.

    I wanted my work to be free of any accusations of copyright infringement, and to keep the commercial rights free.

    I can’t say exactly how long this image took, but in general, images I create this way, I do over several days. Some parts of the process are quite fast. Others not so much. I’ll generally work in 3 separate phases.

    1. The photo or 3D render, and its first adjustments.
    2. Working with AI changes(this is the real time consumer)
    3. Final image processing.

    If I know exactly what I want as the end result, I can finish one in a few hours.

    ——

    (You must be one of the first authors in the world to use such a process)

    Well, it’s also very personally tuned. There’s nothing stopping others from using the same applications, but I spent months playing with the order I did things in, trying dozens of image editing apps, and dozens of AIs.

    Something I think everyone should do is keep notes on their process. This can make things much more streamlined in future creations.

    I save every AI prompt I use in a notebook. I also keep notes on filters and tools that I use often.

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    (Do you recommend any apps?)

    There are tons of good ones!!

    But, Drafts is by far my favorite. It’s only available on iOS and Mac Though.

    I also use Obsidian a lot. It’s great for writing long form.

    Logseq is also an excellent app for notes.

    I recently started using Standard Notes, because you can publish a note as a blog entry directly in the app.

    And Omnivore is absolutely wonderful for taking notes on web articles as you read them.

    I try out every new writing app I can as soon as I can. Always looking for a better or unique method.

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  • Future Provings

    The most pressing feature of dapps that no group is doing is NFT curation. Like a lot of people, I have tons of NFTs. Music, video, lens posts, art, literature, etc. and it’s nearly impossible to find any single NFT without trouble.

    We need searchable galleries. We need to be able to organize them in a variety of ways. Some apps allow the user the ability to ‘spotlight’ or grouping into niches, but they don’t go very deep.

    This is also a really important step to widespread adoption of crypto and NFTs. Owning hundreds or thousands of NFTs without a smart organization tool is incredibly draining, and eventually leads NFTs to be treated like piles in a hoarder’s house. How can mainstream users ever understand the capabilities of NFTs while their oldest NFTs sink to the bottom?

    If anyone knows an app that is already doing this, please reply and let me know. As of now, orna.art is the best in this endeavor, but they are limited to Lens, and therefore don’t provide the necessity of doing this across chains and protocols.

    • Jack Lhasa

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