Lucky Ducky is turning an NFT collection into a TV series

0:01I'm Ashton Addison from blockwest capital for investment pitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have Jeremy Fisher the founder of lucky ducky Jeremy welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thanks for having me this is uh great to be here you're very welcome I'm excited to dive into uh the nft collection of lucky ducky and how the community is

0:21growing out and the ambitious plans that you and your team have for 2023 let's just break it off at the top level with what is lucky ducky and the nfts and how did that idea come about so um I'm a animator from uh working in La for the past decade or so on like shows like Robot Chicken uh worked for Hallmark um I do a lot of claymation and a lot of uh work and stop motion with my hands

0:48so um seen projects like cool cats and board apes and all these uh generative collections uh this past year and two years really got me thinking about how to bring something that's handmade and very like um very much what I do in claymation into that space so I started working with a developer and a team and we came up with this concept of lucky ducky

1:15which is all handmade claymation characters and it's all each trait is sculpted in my garage we we um we built it we shoot it and it's all animated and every character is uh kind of like a little little character you can almost feel like you could hold um which is very different from a lot of the stuff you see on on the NT side um and on top of that with my background

1:41and animation uh I've also I have a background storytelling and and coming up with characters and and um we really wanted to start the ground floor to make a series and make it into a show um so it's like kind of the perfect opportunity for us to work towards building something that's um larger than just an FP project a lot of projects they uh after they

2:09launched they're like well what about a cartoon series and they have to work backwards from those characters to make it into a series um so from the day one we started developing the characters and thinking about all the traits and what they mean uh with the series and and thinking about like what stuff is age-appropriate what's not uh and trying to really just

2:32make the best um project that could be now brought to Studios and and brought into the mainstream so that's kind of where we've started and kind of where we're in the process of taking it to right now very cool and that's great to hear you know that great expertise in in the animation and claymation actually providing value in other ways to nft projects and and finding a way to to

2:59stand out and bring the community together I feel like you know you need to have extra value you know nowadays because it's uh not just enough to just have a Graphic and turn it into an nft and people hold it because you know in what ways will that accru value or bring the community together so I'm interested to hear on on how your team is working out with you know this television series

3:21and you know maybe it'll be the next Robot Chicken lucky ducky except for you know with nft holders uh sort of contributing to the process in some way um with the actual you know owning of the nfts uh will there be some you know decentralized governance or how do people sort of contribute as an nft holder to the future of the project so there's a couple ways um one being if

3:47you're in the Discord you just have access to me as as the founders like you can hit me up and you know share an idea and some of our best ideas have come just from the community saying like oh this character is you know like what if his name was this and we just go that's brilliant let's use it and um that's very like you know simple level of it but on a a more in-depth way we're

4:09actually building um Community involvement with uh storytelling right now with um we have this project called backstage past where um if you're a holder you get to now tell a story with us in this project where every um every element we're telling the story through the first um the first paragraph through the last is voted on by the the community and

4:35there's actually a writer's room where you can pitch ideas and you can share what you think the next part should be and then we're compiling it and letting people vote on each step of the way so it's not something like um very basic where you get to choose the color of a shirt or like you know what kind of hat it's more like you know which direction do they go and and that

4:55really is more like a teacher on adventure style um so we're building the story with the community's input and there's going to be chances for them to actually feature their characters in the story and it's going to be really kind of fun to like have little Easter eggs and little pieces along the way and really the best chance to get your ideas featured in

5:16something that is to this level of an animation or stop-motion and um you know we're we're trying to um walk on uh two levels here we're working with the community but also we have a hand with the studios that we're trying to pitch and develop so some things have to be kind of kept a little bit more guarded as far as the our direction of it and we can still have

5:43this community side where we want to like really focus on what they want to see him there's some mixing between but yeah there's going to be great opportunities if we if we do get picked up as a show um we want to do some stuff where maybe there's a way you can get your character featured on an episode as a background character um so there's a lot of different ways to

6:05affect the um the Rarity of of your character if you have like a floor level ducky that you're not like super thrilled about maybe it gets to be a background character in an episode and or gets to have a speaking role now it levels up a little bit because now you're on screen and people really see it so it kind of changes the the mix a little bit um so just thinking like really fun ways

6:30to involve the community but also change up the makeup of these uh metrics that we have in on nfps very cool and from what I've seen you know in in multiple sort of use case Industries for for nfts for example in in game five it's great if a game has nfts but if the game isn't fun to play uh or you know it's sort of just like fun for a few minutes then it's not

6:56really going to last you know it actually has to have that fundamentals of being a good game and I feel like this would be the same case for a production or a show you know it's great to have nfts but you really have to focus on the traditional business to ensure that it's going to succeed and you know I'm sure you have the experience working with all these shows

7:14and animation you know large-scale animation shows that it needs to have the fundamentals and the nfts is a nice added value but you know if the show is not a good show nfts are not going to save it you know so how much are you focusing on you know making this as serious as something that you know will have so many viewers and become big like like Robot Chicken did

7:39yeah it was a huge consideration from the start that um you know there was a lot of pressure on us from the early days to have um very like web 3 specific iconography and and um even traits from other projects that were you know maybe six months a year ago were very popular and very like uh in Vogue um but having the the foresight of a year two years from now like all that

8:05can change and we didn't want to have memes and stuff that was relevant like six months or a year ago and then had to explain this videos were like well that's the trade that you know was popular six months ago and now like no one remembers that project anymore and um so we want to keep things very tight to the story and the concept and it was difficult because you know there's a lot

8:27of uh a lot of projects that do that sort of work where it's like they involve all the other community projects and it starts to get a little watered down that way um but you know there's um I think there's a way to have fun with it still where you can have this community side and you can do the fun stuff on the on with the community while you're also

8:46developing a real fine-tuned Studio work and that's what we're trying to uh to do is kind of walk both sides and there's you know there's still space for both I think that you can have a little bit of overlap and uh but we just don't want to have a show where there's a bunch of like characters from other projects popping in every moment and then like if

9:07someone's not in the antique space they go like what's the reference like why am I I don't get that um so that's why um you know I'm trying to take my knowledge from uh working in the studios a little bit and and kind of Infuse that into this and just think about like what's going to be relevant for us five years from now or ten years from now and trying to have that

9:28longevity uh to the project yeah I think it's great to be looking that deep in towards the future and you can have success of uh like Family Guy or The Simpsons where you know 20 years later they're still they stay current and there's so many references in those shows um to sort of Pop Culture but you know different age groups some people pick up on it and some people have no idea but

9:51it still makes sense if you don't know what they're talking about you know yeah no that's that's a good point like Robot Chicken was really great to work on and um the stuff is like has to be like Mass Appeal and that's the thing we're still working on with uh with web3 um you know if we are going to be on a series for streaming or for even though like a web series

10:16um it has to have uh appeal outside of the nnp space and right now we're still working on that um that appeal um so you know we're trying to make these characters something that everyone can enjoy whether you're in nfts whether you're not um that's kind of our secret sauce I guess you say but the the thing that really I try to remind myself is like this is something that like uh I can

10:42show my mom and she's going to appreciate or is it something that like I had to explain to her what the joke is in the nfts or you know that's kind of the hump is like if you can get you know your friends and family that don't understand web through space or aren't on top of the latest uh jokes and stuff then that's I think where the the thing is for finding mainstream appeal I think

11:07we'll we'll get there eventually with bringing them into the space but these are kind of like the first steps we have to take to get there um definitely yeah and with you know the industry overall and animation and television uh based on your experience where do you see sort of the industry in in doing what lucky ducky is doing where you know they're looking at implementing

11:30nfts into mainstream animation you know are there other players that are doing this or do you think this is still you know the very Inception in early days I think it's um we're still we're still seeing like the very first steps from these Studios who are able to like maybe throw a little budget here and there to uh test it out and they have maybe like

11:53a few people on a team for you know for their metaverse you know side uh I'm looking at like uh teams from Disney doing the I think the Eve is that VV um they're doing more the collectible side and they haven't really dabbled too much in a full collection of characters um I think Nickelodeon has done some work with uh recurrent and they've done some uh

12:18projects that are very nostalgic oriented like coming back to with the stuff that we grew up with and launching those as nfts uh which you know I I think is a really a good effort on on getting um the stuff that works um the problem being though is like once you have those characters out there like what do you do with it and what do you have as a Next Step

12:40um so you know it's I think all these these bigger players are still kind of testing the waters um I'm looking at crap office and they have and they have a chow mein yeah and they have characters now T's um so they're kind of in a good place right now to really kind of position themselves as like Hey we're a new player we're doing nfts uh we can kind

13:03of bridge the gap a little bit um and it's kind of a fresh uh fresh show and fresh in a T-Series um so stuff like that I think is really kind of starting to get into where I see things going but a lot of them are are still kind of like they throw out a little thing here and there and just kind of see what happens and and then they kind of pull back a little bit and

13:24then they test again yeah yeah so we're still kind of in a very early early phase of that and these huge companies uh for anyone who's worked on at like this big Studio or a big company it takes so long for them to like try things out um when I worked at Hallmark it took us like a year to produce A New Concept um we were we would probably be the best

13:47position to do activities at the time like to you know say you could get a card with an empty attached to it for your birthday or Christmas but that probably would have taken like five years to like develop and out with um just because so many people who are in their like older ways of development and just don't want to try new things so um any any studio trying this out is

14:12like they're very timid and very like slow to work this out and they're I mean I'm sure there's been people working at these Studios but just it takes a long time um definitely I know what you mean and we actually did speak to uh Fox TV and krapopolis you know in the in the previous months as well and I was impressed you know to see uh some of these major news networks are looking at

14:34nfts in their show and I feel like it's something that can catch on as long as you you know play the fundamentals right and actually have a good show that people want to watch it could be a funnel for more people that you know not just the people that already have nfts and they're already like crypto native like people to actually get into it and realize that the value of it from the

14:54show and from the value that that the nfts are adding into the show yeah no I I like to think of it like um Adventure Time how like this that joke uh is I mean I guess people now for kids and for adults and uh but when I was first launching um they took years to try to go to different Studios and try to like Pictionary here and finally when um the I think the pilot got leaked then

15:21it went viral and people really got attached to it and then finally uh Cartoon Network took notice and and wanted to work with them and and bring it about but like imagining a different world where it started as an nft series and people could really get into the characters and you know start you know trading and adding value to the EMTs we could have seen a different process to

15:45it getting picked up and turned into a a full series and entertainment so you know that's what I get excited about is just kind of flipping the script a little bit on pitching and building a community and we have all this fan art now and this the community has all these ideas and stuff that they want to bring which was impossible um like maybe a decade ago when I first

16:08started pitching shows um it was like I was just a small potato at a Studios and saying like hey can you uh come with my idea and come along with me on a journey and they're like we have no idea whether you're gonna do anything with this or like what the value is but now we can point to all these things and we can show the the community we can show the value so we have all these

16:30metrics now that really add to the story we're trying to tell that's exciting and moving into 2023 what are some of the next stages for for the growth of lucky ducky and what you're looking to accomplish yeah so um we we haven't really stopped since the uh since the mint day like it's been um a long process but we're um really excited about all these things we get to

16:56now try out and experiment with and showcase what we can do um on the short term we've been doing some really great work with um expanding into uh we're looking at other side we have a other side plot where we've been developing um we have a animator who has been working on a lucky ducky character that's gonna be playable in the game so once we have the full SDK we can now

17:21go into our space and run around as a ducky hopefully and we're experimenting that well obviously there's like still a lot we have to like learn about and figure out on on the SDK side um we're also working with uh worldwide web 3 the um the art the 8-Bit game so you have a playable ducky that you can run around in that game uh and then beyond that we're also uh we

17:48have a pitch deck we have been pitching Studios um and that's been a Non-Stop development uh and with that we've partnered with a new advisor uh Pete Levin who I work with over Robot Chicken and we've known each other for a better apartment decade now and he's super excited about the the project and um he's helping with us as far as the production goes so he's

18:16recently worked on uh Marcel the Shell he was the assistant director on that and he's really great with knowing the nuts and bolts of a production so if we go to a studio and say they say like how much will an episode cost he can break down for them you know each episode of his claymation there's stop motion and they say we only want if it's two-dimens

18:402D and you know we have to make that decision he can break down the cost he can figure out time frame he's a really great person he's also a great animator on top of that so a really great person to have on our team to advise and I'm kind of like bringing him into the nft space a little bit and kind of walking through the crypto side of things but he's helping us with the uh the

19:04production side so it's just kind of a helping us get really serious about this this work we're doing and uh you know that we have the connections to make this into a real thing um you know it's not just like a pie in the sky idea we want to do it's actually like we have a full address book of people where we're reaching out to and uh trying to bridge that gap for studios

19:31in in our project um well on top of that we've also just worked with uh Rich Zim uh who is also an awesome animator and he is uh most well known for like Nightmare Before Christmas uh James the giant peach he has an amazing claymation style that he brought to lucky ducky that he did a airdrop with us back in October for Halloween so we were able to give out

19:57his first uh nft he's ever done he worked on with us for the past like three months and uh full-on claymation characters like bouncing around um I'll try to send that to you so you can see what the animation looked like but yeah just to have somebody who worked on all these crazy projects and now he did a project for Lucky ducking we're now bringing him into web three

20:20it's just like cool to get to like work with all the people I look up to and admire and now share what I I know and and bring everybody together for that uh for this project wow incredible and yeah but both great additions to the team um I'll definitely take a look at uh that video and I can leave it in the description box as well for for the viewers to to take a look that sounds

20:44really great and you know I love the Giant Peach and some of those old school ones so yeah it's great to have you know the traditional Heavy Hitters getting involved with these nfts so that's great to hear Jeremy now what is the best way for people to just follow along with these updates that you're talking about and just stay deep involved in the community if they want to learn more

21:06yeah so um the quickest way is uh Twitter is uh lucky ducky in a tea um we're posting like pretty much every day on updates and and keeping up with the community that way um Discord is also great we're doing activities and games um um the fun side but we're also uh right and we have a writer's channel so if people want to get involved and maybe share their uh their ideas uh best ways

21:33to pick up a ducky and then you get invited into the writer's room and you can be part of the storytelling we're doing um it's really fun to get to see what people bring to the table and and yeah there's still four stages of or storytelling we're doing for this um this animation so um Discord I can't remember the name off the top of my head but it's like Discord

21:53slash uh lucky ducky nft um I'll share your link with you later but yeah that's the two best ways to get involved sounds great Jeremy thank you so much for your insights and yeah I will leave those other Social Links as well in the description box below all the best with lucky ducky moving forward into 2023 and let's follow up in the near future yeah thanks a lot thanks for having me