I love seeing the creative ways in which artists are using animation in their NFT avatars and I think the three projects highlighted here are great examples of this. They’re all launching at the end of March, so you’ll have a chance to get in early if you’re interested.

As always, none of this is financial advice. I’m primarily highlighting these projects for their artwork. And while I do believe they’ve got what it takes to become good investments as well, everything in this space is obviously highly speculative and as risky as it gets when it comes to investing.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s look at some cool animated NFTs.

Embers

Update: Since writing this article, the founders of Embers have been charged with an NFT fraud and money laundering scheme. I strongly recommend you DO NOT mint any of these NFTs, at least until we get some further clarity on the case!

Although the Embers artwork seems to be somewhat inspired by another top NFT project, it’s still super unique and arguably the main selling point of this project. I’m a big fan of it myself.

Artwork

Embers is a collection of 5,555 colorful avatars created in the popular thick-line cartoon style. Their facial expressions vary from the happy, to the sad, to the confused, and their heads are shaped like burning flames — hence the name of the project.

What’s more, their heads are actually animated as burning flames. This really is the part that sets the artwork apart and makes it as interesting and unique as it is.

As I already said, I’m a big fan of the Embers art style and the fact that they’re animated. The only small negative is the floating eye trait. Not because I don’t like it but rather because it’s such a signature trait of the Doodles, one of the leading NFT avatar projects.

Some people argue that other collections shouldn’t reuse a trait like this. I’m personally not quite in that camp. I think the Embers avatars are sufficiently unique to not be considered Doodles derivatives and to deserve their own place in the world of NFT avatars. But I’m curious to hear what you think!

Utility & Roadmap

The short-term roadmap for Embers is decent but doesn’t exactly aim to revolutionize the NFT space. It includes the formation of a community DAO so you, as an Embers NFT owner, will get a say in the direction of the project.

It also includes merch and potentially other physical items that “will be more unique than the typical hoodie or basic merchandise.” You’ll also get whitelist spots and special access to partner projects, something that can potentially be extremely valuable depending on which projects the team collaborates with.

The most interesting item on the roadmap so far is the launch of the $EMBER token which you’ll be able to earn through staking. The token’s utility is still unclear but it does show the team’s ambitions to build out a larger ecosystem, aka the ‘Emberverse’ mentioned by the team.

Team

As far as I can tell, the team is — unfortunately — completely anonymous. They have done some live audio AMAs though, so at least the community has had a chance to interact and connect with the founders.

I completely understand and respect a team’s desire to remain anonymous, and the founders of Embers have put a great statement explaining this. That being said, as an investor in a project I will always prefer a doxed team over an anonymous one.

Community

What’s not a big negative is the Embers community! With almost 60,000 Discord members, 54,000 Twitter followers, and lots of engagement on both platforms, there seems to be plenty of demand for these cute little flames.

To be fair, most of their recent tweets have been whitelist raffles which always get more interactions, but even announcements on Discord get more than 1,000 reactions. It’s always interesting to see how much of this converts into actual buying once the mint goes live, but it’s definitely a great starting point.

Launch

Speaking of the mint going live, there are a few things to note here. First up, the pre-sale kicks off on March 26 at 6 pm UTC and runs for 24 hours. After that, there’s a 1-hour break before the public sale goes live.

The mint price in the pre-sale is 0.1 ETH. The public sale will be a Dutch auction with a starting price of 0.3 ETH and a resting price of 0.15 ETH. For a collection with animated artwork, a rather low supply, and this amount of hype, I think the price is completely fair.

• When? March 27, 7 pm UTC
• How many? 5,555
• How much? 0.3 to 0.15 ETH (Dutch auction)
• Discord: 60,000 members
• Twitter: 54,000 followers

Impostors

Founded by one of the leading figures in the crypto and NFT space, Impostors is building a social gaming ecosystem in the metaverse. Their Genesis avatars give early access and significant advantages in future play-to-earn initiatives.

Artwork

The Genesis collection consists of 10,420 mischievous 3D aliens. 420 of these will be reserved for the team, marketing, giveaways, and promotional events. The art sneak peeks we’ve seen so far are super detailed, colorful, playful, and really unlike anything we’ve seen before in the NFT space. I’m excited to see the variety when the full collection is revealed.

What’s really interesting and rather unique about the Impostors artwork is that you’ll get 3 different formats: A 360 video so you can see your alien from all sides, a short ‘emote video’ with your alien showing some emotions and making a little move, and a regular, static image format.

Utility & Roadmap

The Impostors project is all about social metaverse gaming. As a Genesis holder, you’ll be able to stake and play to earn the native $BLOOD token as well as new NFTs. The phase 1 roadmap includes new launches of UFOs, pets, materials, and cosmetics chests for your Alien to “look fly in the game”.

The first game mode will be of the ‘social deduction’ kind, aka a game in which players attempt to uncover each other’s hidden role or team allegiance. Thank you, Wikipedia. Here’s how the team describes it on their website:

“Players have the role of either Innocent or Impostor in a murder mystery-themed gameplay. As an Innocent, your goal is to find the killer and vote off all Impostors or complete all tasks before the Impostors try to kill you -and everyone else. Impostors have only one goal: kill them all!”

More games, custom game modes, and larger metaverse expansion plans are all part of the longer-term roadmap. Check out this video to get a sense of both the Alien avatars and the general theme and vibe of the project.

Team

As mentioned, I have a strong preference for NFT projects with identified founders. I have an even stronger preference for NFT projects with well-known founders. Elliot Wainman, the founder of Impostors, is one of these.

Better known as EllioTrades, Elliot is one of the most popular crypto experts (and influencers) with 684,000 followers on Twitter and 589,000 subscribers on YouTube. Not only does his public brand make him extra committed to making Impostors a success, but he’s also got the experience, network, and outreach to really help out in that process.

Elliot is also the founder of SuperFarm, a cross-chain protocol that makes it easy for anyone to deploy DeFi and NFT farms. You will also be able to use SuperFarm’s own native token, $SUPER, in the Impostors mint.

Community

Impostors has a solid following of 46,000 on Twitter and 25,000 on Discord. The engagement is quite good as well. Combine those numbers with the size of EllioTrades’ own community and you’ll have plenty of eyes on this launch and the project going forward.

Launch

The pre-sale begins on March 28 and runs for 24 hours. The exact time, as well as the mint price, will be revealed closer to launch. There’s a range of different NFTs that give you the chance to get whitelisted until March 24, so check this out if you’re interested!

• When? March 29
• How many? 10,420
• How much? TBA
• Discord: 25,000 members
• Twitter: 46,000 followers

Mutant Shiba Club

I’ve been tracking Mutant Shiba Club (MSC) for a while and it’s grown to be by far the most hyped of these three projects, as measured by the size of their Discord server and Twitter account.

Artwork

The collection consists of 10,000 crazy-looking, cyber mutant Shiba dogs. Most of the sneak peeks we’ve seen use prominent, bright colors — but very sparingly. Most of them use an almost neon green, which could become a signature color of the Mutant Shibas.

The artwork uses animation in a similar way as it uses colors: sparingly. The majority of the artwork is a static 2D image, which makes it perfectly suited as a profile picture. But then it’s also got these cool little animations that really bring the artwork to life.

I personally really like the use of animations and the almost monochrome artwork with just a dash of contrasting color. I can also see how the choice of character will help the project succeed.

The Shiba Inu is a popular meme figure in crypto, especially known from the highly valuable Shiba Inu coin. Many people in the NFT space will associate mutants with the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, the extremely successful addition to the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem.

Utility & Roadmap

Up until today, the team didn’t really share any details about the mission for MSC, future utility, or anything that resembles a concrete roadmap. It seemed to be mostly about the art, the community, and the meme, which isn’t necessarily a problem at all. It’s just important to know as a buyer.

But today the team shared some information in a Discord announcement about the short-term value they plan on bringing to the community.

Holder-exclusive merchandise will be available in April. IRL events will be hosted in various locations around the world with an emphasis on networking and collaboration opportunities within the community.

The latter will also be facilitated through private Discord channels where you’ll also get access to knowledge, education, alpha, and opportunities from the team and other experts.

I’m glad that we got a peek into the future of MSC. There’s nothing unique about the upcoming utility though. Rather, the value of the events, private Discord channels, and access to exclusive information will be defined by the people who create or co-create it.

With almost 80,000 Discord members with a shared love for the art and the meme, MSC has a better shot at succeeding than most other NFT projects with similar plans. And then there’s the team.

Team

The founders, aka the Alpha Team, consists of four people. Brett Berry is the creative lead and artist and has worked for clients such as NBA, Ubisoft, MLS, Bogle, Jeff Koons, PAC12, Nikola, and American Airlines. crazyJUMP is the web3 developer on the team, Gaba is in charge of strategy and operations, while Lord Slabs runs marketing and communications.

As you can probably tell, most of these team members don’t use their real names. They’re also using MSC avatars as their profile pictures on Twitter and Discord, and even on LinkedIn in the case of the artist, the only one using his real name. All they’ve told us on Discord is this:

• We have extensive, real-world business experience
• The founders hold multiple undergraduate and professional college degrees
• Sit on advisory board for Fortune 500 company
• Sit on the Board of Directors for 501(c)3 non-profit charitable organization
• The average age of the founders is over 30 years old
• Connections with and member of a think tank with former Google and McKinsey & Company consultants

The team members’ large followings on Twitter (between 16,000 and 19,000) do add some credibility. However, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would always love to know who I’m giving my money to.

Community

As mentioned, the MSC community is one of the core pillars of this project. And the numbers do look impressive. With almost 211,000 Twitter followers, MSC is one of the largest NFT accounts in the space.

Having 80,000 Discord members is impressive as well, but the engagement is even more impressive. Every announcement gets between 2,000 and 8,000 reactions, something we’ve really only seen in massively hyped projects like Invisible Friends, HAPE, and MekaVerse.

Discord reactions aren’t necessarily a good gauge of a project’s success though. They might come from bots or from people who might not buy when the time comes. If the engagement is real though, and if these people all want to buy a Mutant Shiba, the launch will be wild.

Launch

The MSC pre-sale kicks off on March 30 at 8 pm UTC with a mint price of 0.16 ETH. Instead of a public sale, there will be an ‘MSC Community Sale’ 24 hours later. This won’t be fully open to the public either, but the details are yet to be announced. Stay tuned in their Discord to learn more.

What’s also yet to be announced is the mint price in the community sale. You should expect it to be higher than 0.16 ETH though.

• When? March 31, 8 pm UTC
• How many? 10,000
• How much? TBA
• Discord: 80,000 members
• Twitter: 211,000 followers

Recap of the 3 projects

I love the friendly, welcoming, cartoonish style of the Embers artwork. I’m also excited to see the launch and utility of the $EMBER token. The main drawback is the anon team, although I fully respect anyone’s desire to remain anonymous. I hope I get to buy in at the lower range of the Dutch auction.

The Impostors project seems ambitious with lots of plans for social gaming and metaverse experiences. I believe they’ve got the team to pull it off though. I don’t plan on minting an Alien but I will be following the project closely, starting with the launch and their first social deduction style game.

Last but certainly not least, the Shiba Mutant Club appears to have one of the largest and strongest communities in the entire space. If the numbers are real and convert to sales, that is. The art is really well crafted and builds on the meme culture and other references. I’m very excited to follow this launch.

And until next time, if you want to learn how I’m finding these drops early on, check out this guide I wrote.