We cover the arrival of the Ordinal season and BTC NFTs in the latest issue of the Redlion Gazette cover artwork. Dudly has created a masterpiece in under 48 hours to depict this BTC NFT season.

“Wen 3D cover?” was a question during our discussions for the artwork. It has been a while since we last created a 3D artwork for the cover. Several ideas were thrown around but a day later Dudly came up with the idea that it could be done in pixel art style depicting an underground factory. If you check out his feed you can clearly see his love for pixel art. Dudly brought to the table the works of Octavi Navarro whose style we decided would be the inspiration for this artwork. Little did we know that it would take a crazy marathon to finish this artwork on time. 

The concept was to show an underground factory where bootlegged Ethereum NFTs are brought in, unpacked, stripped of all their ETH properties, and then repainted and packaged into BTC NFTs. The mood is dark and eerie as the operations have to be stealthy and efficient.

Once the concept was clear Dudly set out to create the artwork, part by part starting from the top. While he was at this tedious task I helped in making the sneaky humans at work and some small animations. We knew it would take a few hours more than our usual turnout time, but it went a little beyond that too. Some Gazettes call for it and we give it everything we got and that’s why nobody does what Redlion does in NFTs. It’s not about having a large workforce but having an efficient one that will step up when the time comes. 

The artwork once finished was imported to AE to create complex animations. This consumed most of the hours as there were over 180 layers to sort through. We are always going for seamless loops and this requires serious efforts. In the end, after the animations were complete, the audio was injected in to bring the ambiance to life. 

The finished artwork was a masterpiece, and one Dudly will be super proud of having finished within our excruciating deadlines! We keep pushing to bring you the best Gazette week in and out. See y’all next week with another great one!