NFT – 3D Basquiat Tribute

The innovation of blockchain technology has enabled opportunities for self-organization. One of these opportunities are non-fungible tokens which enables us to explore new modes of transference and ownership of digital art through the tokenization of assets. This excites me because it means we can create, distribute, and collect, interactive digital art.

Over the past year, I’ve developed a custom workflow for the production and distribution of 3D NFTs. This is both a highly technical and artistic process. When creating a 3D NFT, you’re no longer limited by the boundaries of a 2D frame. This produces the need for additional considerations in regards to the scope of 3D elements.

The Project

I was contracted by Makelismos and René Mäkelä’s team to reinterpret a painting and transform it into an immersive 3D scene. The painting, a tribute to Basquiat in the form of an adorned skull.

The Process

After many small failures and lots of trial and error, I constructed the 3D scene. Sophisticated animations and textures brought unanticipated problems that I found workarounds for. Export errors, performance issues, and all sorts of other things were troubleshot for many hours.

Rough Draft preview:

Nearing the final scene:

The final result:

Check out the final NFT here:

Skull Basquiat Tribute – 1/100 Edition – Skull Basquiat Tribute 3D Concept | OpenSea

GOLD SKULL BASQUIAT TRIBUTE | Nifty Gateway

Full-screen version: Skull White Edition (crufro.github.io)

Skull Gold Edition (crufro.github.io)