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NFT Girl And Tommaso Sandretto Of Blockchain Creative Labs (BCL), Fox Entertainment’s Creative Force In Web3 Media Dropping Krapopolis NFT & Comedy Series
The power of NFTs is unlimited, it can be used in so many more mediums. NFT Girl and Tommaso Sandretto of Blockchain Creative Labs had this same idea and decided to collaborate with Dan Harmon, the co-creator of Rick and Morty. The collab gave birth to the Krapopolis NFT based on Harmon’s upcoming comedy show Krapopolis. The “Krap Chicken” that you buy can actually impact your experience in the show. You get to participate in events and even vote on which characters you want to see more of. Join Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger as they talk to NFT Girl and Tommaso Sandretto about their experience in collaborating on Krapopolis. Learn how you can utilize NFTs within more like like film and TV to bring more people into Web3. Discover why in order to thrive in this space, you need to differentiate yourself from everyone else. Find out more about the “Krap Chicken” and be a part of Krapopolis today!
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NFT Girl And Tommaso Sandretto Of Blockchain Creative Labs (BCL), Fox Entertainment’s Creative Force In Web3 Media Dropping Krapopolis NFT & Comedy Series
In this episode, find out how our guests came together in classic Web3 fashion through a chance meeting at the airport.
Also, how ancient NFT chickens are plucking their way into mainstream animation future.
How Tom Cruise and a container store could help create life-changing experiences for our guests. All this and more on this episode.
Also, don’t forget, we put together a little soiree called NFT LA that brought out thousands of the world’s most innovative doers in the NFT space. Head to 2023.NFTLA.live to get on the white list for tickets to our bigger, bolder, better but also as intimate and impactful event happening in Los Angeles from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023. See you there.
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This episode features NFTGirl, AKA Lex and Tommaso Sandretto, the Chief Revenue and Investment Officer of Blockchain Creative Labs, BCL, Fox Entertainment’s Web3 Media, and Creative Technology Company. NFTGirl has partnered with Blockchain Creative Labs on their upcoming utility-focused Krapopolis NFT launch. Originally from Venezuela, Lex, better known as NFTGirl, is a collector and host of the shows, The Joy of NFTs and If You Know You Know.
She has curated over 500 art pieces and collected over 150 NFT products over the last few years. NFTGirls’ mission is to uplift artists and creators, enable connections within the Web3 community and educate the masses about Web3 and NFT. Lex is also featured as a collector at Sotheby’s and is recognized among the Top 100 Most Influential Community Leaders in the NFT space.
Tommaso oversees and creates alignment between all of BCLs teams that affect revenue generation to ensure effectiveness and maximize profitability. Furthermore, as Chief Investment Officer, he is responsible for setting BCLs investment strategy, vetting business opportunities, and managing portfolio companies. Prior to BCL, Tommaso was CEO at Sole Resorts, where he doubled the company’s property portfolio and led the pandemic emergency and turnaround.
He also cofounded SF Partner, a New York-based lending platform with more than 650 million in transaction volume. Tommaso began his career as an M&A investment banker at Citibank. BCL provides content creators, IP owners, and brands end-to-end Web3 solutions to build, launch, manage and sell NFTs and fungible token content experiences directly to their fan base and audiences. It’s great to have you both on the show. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having us.
You can’t really go very far as a community without true leaders. Click To Tweet
Can we get some qualified candidates like guests or something? What’s going on? Talk about blowing up the backgrounds here. It’s great to have you.
In typical Web3 fashion, this came across our desk, and we couldn’t resist having you guys on the show to talk about this incredible partnership between BCL and the NFTGirl and then a good team. It sounds like a whole total realm. How did you guys connect?
I will start Lex, and then you can tell me where I get it wrong. BCL has focused effort on Web3. It’s easy for the community players and members to understand that you can’t go very far without true leaders in the communities and the space. We work with other partners such as MoonPay, and they gave us a couple of names that they felt would be relevant.
We attended the NFT 100 with Lex and didn’t know each other back then. She came out as one of the Top 100 Most Influential NFT Players in the space, so it was obvious to us. For the Zeneca team, one of our team members, Matt, had known Zeneca for a while because he did a couple of our projects before, and Zeneca was a fan of his. That was a very easy connection as well.
On his part, there’s a part that he doesn’t know, which is how I connected with the MoonPay guys, and that was random. At an airport, I was coming back from NFT.NYC. I’m waiting for my bags, and I start seeing this baby, and the baby is smiling back at me. I’m making the baby laugh. The dad comes in, and he looks at my shirt. I was wearing an Ape vest merch shirt. He was like, “Were you there for the NFT conference?” I’m like, “Yeah. What do you do?” He’s like, “I’m with MoonPay.” I’m like, “I know who MoonPay is.”
Krapopolis NFT: Krapopolis is a show that is based in ancient Greece. It’s about a family that’s not trying to kill each other. The NFTs represent the three chickens in the show.
We started to chat after that, and a week later, he was like, “I have some folks that would love to talk to you.” We hit it off pretty easily. I’m a fan of Rick and Morty. I saw BCL in South by Southwest with what they did with Dolly Parton. I had seen them around but I hadn’t met them in person. It was cool to start that conversation with them.
It’s cool things coming together. Dan Harmon, Fox Entertainment, and Krapopolis are chicken-inspired NFT, as we understand. Ahead of the debut of this new comedy Krapopolis and as you said, Dan Harmon is with Rick and Morty and Community. It’s very exciting. Everybody loves chicken-inspired content. Tell us a little bit more about what the details are.
We had this unique opportunity of building on this incredible name, which is Dan Harmon and Rick and Morty. It’s such an incredible quality of animation and content. I have had the chance to see a couple of their episodes, and you guys are in for a treat. Once we started cooperating and after the launch of BCL within Fox, we thought this was the perfect IP for us to collaborate and do something around Web3 and involve the community and the fans in terms of a variety of different options.
A couple of words on the show. The show is based in Ancient Greece. They are reinventing everything, and it’s a family not trying to kill each other. We chose the chickens because it’s three main currencies. One of the all is the shoes, the sandals, and chickens. We went to the chickens, which is a very important part of the show.
I got a chance to study Ancient Greek when I was in high school. I look forward to some fun references there. I got the Iliad and The Odyssey. It reaches back far into the tradition of storytelling. I’m sure there are going to be some subtle nods to that with folks like this on the team.
Also, they weave in the whole concept of blockchain, and you will see we weaved it throughout the entire season, and in future seasons, the whole concept of blockchain references. It’s going to be very fun.
What are we thinking in terms of utility here? You have such a treasure chest of assets and possibilities to choose from.
Do you want to know the things that I can tell you or the ones that I cannot tell you?
We always ask, if you get it out of the way and tell us the things we are not supposed to hear, then we know at least.
We have such a long roadmap with this IP, so we must build up slowly what we can do. We started to weave the key items like the token-gated merch. You are going to have a token video library. You are going to have a lot of access to IP because you are a fan, and you want to participate. In the medium term, we will be able to vote on how the episodes end, trend, who survives or who gets resurrected in the future.
Krapopolis NFT: The Joy of NFTs Gallery is about opening up conversations between artists and collectors. You get to really see the creative process of each artist.
There are tons of ways that we can work with the writers to build this. We call it the chickens and the NFTs within the show. Hopefully, this is a ten-plus season. In ten-plus seasons, we will be able to let the fans drive the narrative in there. There are also a couple of things that I can’t share with you that is going to be a lot of fun for everybody.
I guess there’s nothing impactful that happens in the land of NFTs and Web3 without partners and the Community. We have you both here, partners in this venture. How are we all working together to bring this project forward and also, with other partners, like third-party influencers and whatnot? What are you all doing to amplify this thing and get it moving?
In the partnership that we’ve had so far, I’ve built this community or my community that I’m part of. I am always curious to learn new mediums within the space, whether that’s regular, traditional art or photography. Now, films and TV shows. It was a natural curiosity that I had to learn more about it. The first step that we took was to have the team from BCL and Krapopolis on the If You Know You Know show to pretty much explain how did this initiative come about and what’s BCL is all about?
Also, you touched a little bit on the utilities and the fun things that new fans can utilize to their advantage. For me, it was more about, “I hear about this new way of utilizing NFTs in a medium, which is TV film. I want to share with the people that I talk to every single day what I’m learning about them. That was the first step, which is the most natural one, I feel.
If I can add one thing. We are all here and trying to educate. With Lex, as well, what brings us together is to try to onboard this big of a community and educate as much as possible, which is why a partnership with Lex is going to be so successful.
Will there be an NFTGirl character floating around in this animated series somewhere or something? Is there anything cooking on that front? That would be fun. Lex, when you think of distribution channels to reach and elevate your community, it seems like and there are so many different forms of traditional media that are right there in front of us. Nobody has cracked that nut yet as far as somebody with the crypto native community making their way into the mainstream. Is that something you all are thinking about on your roadmap?
All of those are exciting possibilities. Krapopolis is the first show, as Tommaso and I discussed before, on this long-term road of having Web3 initiatives with traditional media, and it’s the same for me. This is the first experiment on what collaboration can be. I don’t know the details of how it all will play out but I’m happy to start that relationship and see how they do and how I can keep helping. If I end up on a TV show helping a chicken, then that could be a possibility. I don’t know the details on that so far but that would be cool. We will see what happens.
It never ceases to amaze me how much of this industry has grown from serendipity. You met at the airport. How Jeff, Eathan, and I got together was quite random. We talk about it a little bit in episode 100. We’ve gotten advisory clients at the airport. I’ve sat next to someone that ended up sponsoring NFT LA. You never know what’s going to happen in this industry, and that’s the power of that mix of the physical and digital world coming together and why we need events in our lives in addition to thriving on Twitter spaces, Discord, and all that fun stuff.
It’s exciting, and I’m sure not that unusual in this crazy space of ours. We talked a little bit about collaborations here but maybe understand a little bit more about your respective roadmaps for this year. You are doing this cool project together but this is the only thing either of you is doing. Taking a step back and learning more about your individual roadmaps might be helpful, and then we will see who you meet at the next airport.
Lex, you can start.
Krapopolis NFT: Remember to keep in touch with all your different communities and influences so that you can produce what’s best for these communities. Every community is different.
Is this about what I’m working on?
Yeah. We would love to know more about it.
She’s like, “The more I say, the more I’ve committed myself to it.”
I can share on an individual path we launched The Joy of NFTs Gallery. That was a show that I created making reference to Bob Ross, the Joy of Painting. There, I wanted to open up the conversation between artists of the space and collectors and also see into the creative process of each artist. We have a section of the show where we have them take a word and then start a sketch based on that word so people can see how they start creating and how that turns into the final product, which they then turn into an NFT.
We were able to land an independent gallery space on SuperRare, which is one of the biggest Art 101 marketplaces in the NFT space. All the pieces that are created for the show then go for sale in the Joy of NFTs Gallery. Also, thank you to BCL. They started their own collection of fine art by purchasing two of the pieces that were auctioned off in the first drop. We have dropped every single month, and BCL was able to participate on the very first one, which is very telling about their intentions and the importance of giving back to the creators of the space, which is the heart of the whole NFT ecosystem. That’s a little bit about what I have been doing on my lane. We have many drops in the coming months with that gallery, and that shows that I’m excited to show.
Giving back to the creators is really the heart of the whole NFT ecosystem. Click To Tweet
Tommaso, go ahead.
I also had some time to think. We have so much work, and some of the heavy lifting is huge to get Krapopolis done. I can’t even tell you the team hasn’t slept in a few weeks, and that’s number one. We then have to develop a mint day on Wednesday, and Thursday is just the beginning. The future is what keeps us up at night and makes sure that we keep on producing and delivering because it’s our responsibility. The fun starts, and we also have our projects with the WWE.
We hold the IP rights for WWE, where we are doing constant drops every month. We have the USFL. As you maybe know, not Fox owns the United States Football League, and we are doing a whole player and team tokens launch around to provide better utility to both the players in defense. We can’t forget back to entertainment, to The Masked Singer.
We have the MaskVerse that we give a life every season. We have 2 or 3 new projects that we are cooking on the side that are still under wraps but very exciting. Nevertheless, we must keep in touch with all the different communities and influencers and how we can respond and produce the best that we can for the needs of our communities because they are all different.
It’s a safe space where I can admit that I was a huge wrestling fan when I was growing up. I had my Hulk Hogan Hulkamania wrestling buddy. I used to try to get behind the stage, and those guys were my idols. When you think about collectible assets and fan loyalty, there’s something about that community that’s special and continues to live on and evolve over the last few decades.
Krapopolis NFT: The one thing that you should try to answer is what you can do to stand out in the world of NFTs. Even though NFTs are still very new, you’re already seeing a lot of people doing kind of the same thing.
I agree with Josh. That’s a richly complicated and beautiful art form. Most people agree at this point. In movies like The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke was in there. It was an intense movie, and there was some really impressive content made about the world of wrestling.
For us, it’s a great opportunity to speak to a different community and audience. Krapopolis speaks to a very specific audience. The WWE is a completely different audience, and again, our goal at Fox at large is always to onboard as many people and to drive them out of Web3 as far as possible. Having the opportunity to work with these IPs is an incredible way to do it.
I’m going to take a little bit of left turn here before we end the interview portion of this. Lex, you mentioned something fascinating about giving people a prompt and asking them to create a sketch around some things. A little-known fact, Jeff, Josh, and I have all at least studied to a small degree like comedy improv. You enjoy the improvisational aspects of this show. You have some great synergies in collaborating and making creativity happen. I’m curious. Maybe this is for Lex or both of you. What do you think about prompting creativity and collaboration and making those things happen?
I ask on Twitter. That’s literally how we do it. At the beginning of every show, I share with the community, “I’m going to have this artist and this artist. It’s going to be cool. What do you think would be the right word to inspire them?” We select a random word from there, and that’s even better because once the people see the final product, it involves everyone. It involves the community. It involved the artist and me. Everybody is in the creative process.
For me, as far as coming up with creative things, honestly, it’s brain power. Sometimes I sit in silence or maybe with some music. Most of the time, it is in silence, and I have an internal brainstorming in my head. At the end of the day, the one thing that I try to answer is, “What can I do that can be different and can stand out.” In the world of NFTs, even though it’s very new, you already see a lot of people doing the same thing.
People are getting known for being a derivative of this other well-known project. You see a lot of similarities in different projects. For me, when I come up with something, the one thing that I ask myself is, “How am I going to be different, and why do I want to be different?” Answering those two questions is always my exercise for coming up with anything.
“What new am I bringing to the equation?” That having been said, we might have to steal your technique and have a word of the episode that we devote out on for Twitter, and we have to incorporate it into the interviews or something. That sounds fun. Tommaso, any comments? No pressure?
No, not at all. Picking up on what Lex was saying, this space moves quickly. You guys know better than I do. You have some of the biggest leaders here, and it’s so complicated. It’s time-consuming to try to stay at the forefront and provide value and value that lasts for a time. Now, things come and go, disappear, and are a fad. Long-term values are what we try to achieve, which is the most complicated thing to do.
One last comment on that, which is interesting. Again, reaching back into Krapopolis being set in Greece and this wonderful mix of coming up with new things but also recognizing the roots. All the stories always lead back to the same old ones.
That’s amazing. We are keeping a close eye.
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Nokia phone.
Do you have any laying around?
I do. My mom kept a few for me. It was very nice.
It’s nothing fun.
It doesn’t have to be.
I plead the Fifth.
Your significant other is going to watch this.
That was an easy one. I would say my family.
Yet, you still sold the motorcycle.
Tommaso, how about you?
Important Links
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The Joy of NFTs – YouTube
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Episode 100 – Previous Episode
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@NFTGirl – Twitter
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Instagram – NFTGirl
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@NFTGirlArt – TikTok
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@Krapopolis – Twitter
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@BlockchainCreativeLabs – Twitter
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Instagram – Blockchain Creative Labs
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@AnimationDomination – Twitter
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Spotify – Edge of NFT
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iTunes – Edge of NFT
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@EdgeOfNFT – Twitter