It is actually quite uncanny the amount of amazing buildz, projects, and people involved across this little metaverse we call home has become.  The Uplift World BLDRZ blog is intended to be one avenue where we can feature projects, individuals, and teams doing amazing builds within multiple sectors of the Uplift World.

This week we will be diving into another fascinating build in the Genesis sector of The Uplift World from the team over at Grim Folks, an NFT series on WAX.  The art behind the series was created by Alex Gallego, a freelance illustrator, flash animator, caricaturist, cartoonist, concept artist, storyboarder and designer. Despite a long list of both past and present attributes to his name, this collaborative effort with Santi represents something new in the sense that it is a blockchain based creative endeavor utilizing NFT’s.

“The Grim Folks series came out when I was approached by Santi at the very beginning of all this NFT madness and he explained the basics of what the world of the NFTs was all about. It looked like professional illustrators had not entered yet at that time on the NFT world. Just a month later, while I was already developing the collection, I could start seeing some remarkable NFTs in some places, like OpenSea, Foundation, etc… Also Santi told me that it was an “investment” World, more focused on earnings rather than the art itself.

I was naif enough to believe that I could try to start changing that trend by offering a top quality artwork, in my style (a style similar to MAD Magazine’s satirical comics), because I thought that NFTs are a great opportunity for artists like myself to make a living from your own art. I wanted people to buy my cards not because they could raise price in the future, but because they would think: ‘Wow, this is so cool. I need to buy it’.

As an artist, this is what you want. In my case, I don’t want to become rich. I just want to make a living and I want my art and comedy to be appreciated by the audience. That’s all.

I love monsters and I wanted to create an IP that was ours only – one that could be perceived as a kind of horror comedy with a special care for the quality of art. For what I could see at the moment, there was nothing similar around in the world of the NFTs.  I decided to partner with Santi, my mentor and the “manager” of our projects together and he helped building the community, creating partnerships with other collections and handling all this crypto-thing which is still somewhat unknown to me. I could not have done it without him because when you know nothing at all, you need someone with expertise to guide you. I was lucky.

The work for the NFT series itself was done in original Bristol paper and using permanent ecologic archive inks, then scanner and colored by computer. I wanted them to have a vintage classic trading card look like the ones you got in the waxpacks sold by Donrus or Topps in the 70s and 80s.  I love the old cardboard look and I was sure that was a style that would fit very well with the monsters themed collection.

Then we did the variants: First I thought that the NOIR versions would be a really cool fit, as it reminded me of the classic Universal Monsters… And after that, the animated ones, with glitch and VHS fx, which reinforced all that 80s look.

Every character has his own story and some of them are intertwined on purpose. I wanted to give some depth to the whole thing (although it’s non-sense comedy, of course), so all the characters where part of a whole, linked between them with common pasts. Besides the fact that they all haunt the same castle together!!”

From a gloomy and somber land in the center of nowhere, covered in dry ivy and black clouds, here come the GRIM FOLKS: Monstruos and feared creatures, ready to wreak havoc wherever they may be. Each one of them, with their awful origin, fills the hearts of the inhabitants of their land with fear, in which their terrifying intertwined stories are told. Or, perhaps,  they cause more laughter than fear. Who knows?

Discover first hand the fright of the Grim Folks in their home over in The Uplift World Gratitude sector at 1100, 3100.  It’s hard to say whether it was the stories or the Grim Folks themselves  that drove all the villagers that used to reside slightly East away, but one thing is for certain, the home they have created on the snowy hilly now desolate terrain over looking a frigid bay is well worth a gander – just make sure to keep an eye out for what might be lurking around the corner…

Grim Folks & Their Journey in the Uplift World

Learn more about the art and NFT series involved with this live interview and in metaverse walk through on theUplifters Journeys Through the Uplift World Communities series Grim Folks feature.

Gratitudes

Alex: “I’m personally grateful that I can make a living myself as a professional artist (outside of the NFT world). Not many artists can do this and I realize how fortunate I am, besides all the effort and hard work put into this since I was very young.  On the NFT front, I’m totally grateful to Santi because he’s been always very supportive, encouraging, creative and very open minded and has worked very hard giving life to the Grim Folks Collection and using his influence and expertise in this project.”

Santi: “I am grateful for all the support from Marcos (Radaquest) who kindly helped developing our custom smartcontract, all the support from Neftyblocks, the fantastic welcome to the ULW from you guys and of course all the WAX collectors who got our NFTs. I am also grateful from meeting Alex and him joining into this great venture.”

Grim Folks

• Homepage: https://www.grimfolks.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FolksGrim
• Telegram: https://t.me/thegrimfolks
• Discord: https://discord.com/invite/fEyxzwVmv2

Alex Gallego

• Homepage: https://www.alexgallego.com/en/home.cfm
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gariebo/

As for your personal builds, we are always open to submissions in various forms to showcase all those unique and amazing things being done of within your personalized regions of our shared metaversal existence.  For more on this, please be sure to check out The Path to Featured Buildz & Events Inside Your Uplift World to get in touch with all the dynamic possibilities for you to display and interact with the rest of us.  And feel free to reach out to Jimmy D on Telegram, Twitter, or Discord anytime for assistance on putting whichever best suits your preferred vantage point into motion.  In the meantime, thank you for dropping on into our official blog and if you happened to enjoy this piece and all the others, please do like and share this out so that we can show the world at large just how amazing this collective place we call home truly is.

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Note: Article published by Jimmy D with images taken by Gary the Architect.