As an artist, I never know what is going to happen. I love the magic. I love looking at an artwork I made and thinking: “this is amazing. If I had tried to plan this, to imagine it prior to making it, I would have failed and it would have been bad." Art is my way of experiencing god. Some go to church. Some pray at home. I create. The fact that I only make good art when I am not trying to control anything always reminds me that there is something greater than all of us out there.
Not knowing what will happen next is scary. But it is also the best way to react fast and good to any changes and new information. It is a strategy that creates fear and confusion and that can lead to criticism. So for some time I thought the growing confusion around the iwwon project was due to this. But for some reason I felt compelled to answer to criticism, despite being warned by many BIG names not to do it. There was something in the comments that I agreed with, but I couldn’t figure what it was.
A painting is a project. A brand is like a thousand paintings. You do not decide where the art is going to bring you. If it tells you to "erase" the face you have been painting for 200 hours by hitting a big brush of yellow paint across it, you have two choices. One, you resist. You put the yellow, but only around the eyes. As a result the painting is shit. Because your ego wanted to protect what you worked hard to make. The second choice is harder to do. You accept the faith of the painting. You make the eyes disappear. You make yourself disappear. You accept that you do not decide, that you are nothing but a tool like anything else in the world. That's when you get art. And that's when you don't care about you being the creator or not. Three days ago I realised that I had been resisting what the project was becoming. That I was answering people who complained because they were the evidence of it changing, and becoming something different than what I thought I wanted.
I wanted to do art, linked together by utility until I could make the universe of my dream come true. Besides quick artworks to make like paintings, I have been writing a story. A universe. With its own mythology, creatures, language. I have been working on it since I was twelve years old. I have always thought it was my dream project. At first I thought it would be a movie. Then a book. A few years ago, my dad and I had an idea for a video game and were looking for investors. But without any experience, it was a very complicated task. We decided to create our own little game first. It is at that time that I realised my story would be better expressed as a game. As the years went by, our little game became more ambitious, and us more tired and unable to financially support the project. It was at this time we realized NFTs were a perfect opportunity to fund our dreams with a new creative outlet. We realised this could be our chance to create our dream projects. He would be able to develop his initial game idea; I would be able to create the game of my dreams.
It is important for you to understand that there was no such thing as roadmaps, communities, or utility when we started. Except for Axie infinity and a few others, everybody was looking at Foundation and SuperRare. It was all about the art. Communities, roadmap and utility as we know them today truly appeared with Bored Apes. So at that time, inspired by ghxst, we created the iwwon project. Collections of art by iwwon, that all bring you free stuff from the next collection until we have enough funds to create the game for the universe. The iwwon project was, as the names suggests, the artistic world of iwwon and all the artistic creations that led him to his masterpiece project. In other words, artist as the brand. But 2.0.
And that was it. Art was the utility. Sometimes utility was also PFP. And once you buy one work, you get some free. Eventually, once the game is made, you get to own a work of art from the artist that created a whole universe. Imagine "owning" Darth Vader, Mario, or Bilbo. That was the idea. A game based on the art from iwwon so that collectors could own the foundation of a huge project.
But the Mories themselves became huge. The space evolved. It was no longer about art but about community. And we were excited by this. We changed the roadmap and adapted. What I failed to realize, is that the project was no longer the project I had planned. We created this project focusing on the artist as being the brand. But as the project grew, it became a brand of its own. No longer being able to handle it myself, I started building a team with Los Samos owners that had been supporting me since day one. Little by little, active community members from the Mories joined us to make the team we have today. At first the Mories were under the iwwon project, but eventually grew to stand side by side with it. If we succeeded to build a team accordingly, we failed to understand what it meant in terms of branding and communication. We continued to communicate as if the brand was iwwon, whether it was something much bigger. This caused confusion about what my role was and the amount of work I was doing in every aspect of the company, including collaborations and partnerships.
We have been working very hard to define what changes needed to be made and how to communicate them to you. With this in mind we created the FaMorie roadmap to demonstrate the objectives led by the team in parallel to those led by iwwon. However we need to pursue this movement deeper as we believe it is what is needed to unlock Morie’s full potential.
We are going to be working hard on this in the coming weeks in order to achieve clarity and offer you a better vision of what is being made and how it is being made. We will come up with details about what is to come including utility and partnerships and how the whole project is going to be organized.
As an artist, I never know what is going to happen. I love the magic.
Until we communicate more precisely on this, I would like to share with you a bit of what we have been working on behind the scenes.
We have been focused on the tokenomics strategy and partnering with real life companies for utility. We have also of course been working on the game. It was important for us to plan this thoroughly. The danger of limited funds and outsourcing is to see money and time being wasted. We were planning on doing three games, and have all of them adapted on mobile. All of the games had to be playable by all collections, no matter the artistic differences. Moreover, the work on the first game had to be made in a way that it could be used in the second more sophisticated game, and also in the third.
The release will be made in 4 stages.
- First stage, the two first games.
- Second stage, a few weeks later, the integration of all other collections.
- Third stage, the adaptation on mobile.
- Fourth, a bit later, the third game and it's adaptation on mobile.
We have been told the first two games wouldn't be ready before November. However, because of some partnerships we made, we need to introduce POM earlier.
Therefore we have decided two things:
- One, we increased the budget for the first two games to hire more devs to work on it. This will give us a chance to have it done before the estimation date.
- Two, we create another game, much more simple, to be ready this summer. We had thought of this before but it took us some time to come up with the idea of one that we thought were interesting enough to make.
I would like to thank every single one of you that have taken the time to share your thoughts with us. The close connection to our community is the force that has made the Mories more than we ever imagined. Once again, your passion to make this project grow has allowed us to understand what changes must be made and how we must evolve. We will continue to utilize our community and communicate as we implement these changes. I have no doubt about how bright and amazing the futur is for us.
Have a good weekend FaMorie.
Much love.
