Candy Girl
Fabulous Japanese Artist Yoshitaka Amano's NFT Project
Official Presentation:
Legendary Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano's "Candy Girl", the exquisite artwork featuring 108 angels, is coming to Astar Network as an NFT Collection.
MINT DATE: Late-Nov
MINT PRICE: TBA
MINT SUPPLY: TBA 108 Features
WHICH CHAIN: Astar Network
WHICH TOKEN: $ASTR
Project Introduction:
Astar Network, one of Asia's most well-known Blockchain, has partnered with Twin Planet, a TMC(Talent Management Company) that represents Yoshitaka Amano and other popular artists.
It is the first time that legendary Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano’s Fantasy World will be presented on the Blockchain.
Yoshitaka Amano is known for his artwork in Fantasy World, including Speedracer, Sandman: The Dream Hunters cover art, and most notably, Final Fantasy.
Sota Watanabe is the founder of Astar Network, and Masa is the founder of AstarCats, one of the most popular NFT collections on Astar. They are the core team members of this project.
It is a rare case that an NFT collection is supported by the Official Astar Network, with over 350k followers on Twitter.
Twin Planet's five-year roadmap will provide unprecedented utility for IRL and Metaverse NFT holders.
1.Team and Background
The project primarily partnered with Twin Planet. Twin Planet is a Japanese marketing and talent management company based in Shibuya, Tokyo. It focuses on Marketing & Entertainment industry, founded in 2006. Most recently, Twin Planet has hosted the Thailand Comic Con 2022, Thailand’s most magnificent subculture event of The Fujunbungaku Girls Musical Revue, as well as arranged for artists(e.g. Akari Suda) to regularly participate in TV programs. As a company registered in 2006, there are over 116 proficient employees, specializing in Talent Management, IP, and promotion.
Team Members(*DC Announcement)
@Fukuyan Founder
@Naruya | TP Twin Planet Member
@himeno Twin Planet Member
@Masa PM
@Sota | Astar - Never DM Founder of Astar
@Suguru | Astar Astar Member
To sum up, Astar Network's founder Sota Watanabe and AstarCats's founder Masa are the core team members of this project. As the founder of Astar Network, Sota's direct participation is apparently invaluable. Japan is one of the countries that favor minor public chains in the NFT market. Such as the previous "Attack on Titan"(e.g.) is also released on FLOW public chain.
The selection of mainnet is related to team’s background as well. Masa(Product Manager), the founder of AstarCats, is mainly involved in and in charge of products and cooperation. As one of Astar’s veteran projects, its achievements and advantages could be enumerated: Ranked Top2 at the Tofu Marketplace’s 7 Days ranking; Adorable style; A total volume of 7,777. All the above illustrated that the team had delved into the mainstream market(ETH NFT).
AstarCats serves as the first kitten NFT collection on the Astar Network. More than just another PFP project, AstarCats had promised many utilities and benefits to holders, which would be fulfilled in the forthcoming future. Furthermore, supporting prospective projects on the Astar Network by those creative resources provided by holders is the ultimate mission of AstarCats. Currently, AstarCats’ support manifested in the form of long-term operation of Open DAO with 16.6k Twitter followers.
2.About Artist
Yoshitaka Amano is a legendary Japanese designer and illustrator. Influenced by lacquer art since childhood, Yoshitaka Amano established fundamental skills of art in the process of studying traditional Japanese painting such as Ukiyo-e. At the age of 15, he began working in the animation department of Tatsunoko Productions and captured what he needed from various western artistic genres, in order to progressively building potential energy for his own artwork. Among his creative activities, there are animation character design, video game concept design, book cover design and illustration, scene design, background art design, costume design and so on.
His paintings spanned multiple creative fields, including animation character design, video game visual design, book covers and illustrations, scene design(Dancing, Drama and Film), background art design and costume design, etc.. From "N.Y. SALAD" to "Machine Robo Rescue", Yoshitaka Amano's fantastical illustration of characters caused him peculiar among artists. For his detailed, flirtatious and fanciful painting style, Amano was popular in the West and he has curated travelling exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Lyon, Cologne and Hong Kong.
Since the 1990s, Yoshitaka Amano has been creating and exhibiting paintings featuring his iconic retro pop icons in galleries all over the world, primarily painting on aluminium box panels with acrylic and automotive paint. He is a 5-time winner of the Seiun Award, and also won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Dream Hunters. Amano is arguably most well-known for characters design and illustrations in the famous video game "Final Fantasy" Series1-6. And also, his illustrations in "The Heroic Legend of Arslan" and "Sohryuden", collaborated with the prominent Japanese fantasy writer Yoshiki Tanaka, are conceivably widely known.
Influenced by lacquer art since childhood, Yoshitaka Amano conceived the famous ‘Amano Flow’ artistic style only if thoroughly master the advantages of traditional culture, anime, science fiction, games and art, literature, drama and etc. in the process of learning. As art critic Lu Rongzhi said: “It is obviously common that the unique beauties and heroes are cross-cultural characters in Yoshitaka Amano’s artwork. That weird and fantastical character would instigate a mixed ecstasy of real and virtual intertwining.”
What's more, Yoshitaka Amano has built his own personal VR Museum for fans to experience. Over 10,000 hours of devotion, 100+ 3D copies of paintings, and $20 million in expenses collaboratively built the Yoshitaka Amano VR Museum. Amano Sensei was personally involved in the design and construction of the museum, including the style of the gallery, the lighting, and even the movement of the paintings, reflected a fantasy world in your mind. Through Amano's website, the distinct fan economy would be embodied: Covering O2O(Online To Offline), both the digital entity and peripheral products, you can participate in Amano Sensei's activities in different timelines by subscription to fan sites. Therefore, Yoshitaka Amano and his team demonstrate a highly engagement and in-depth understanding in digital art. It is generally believed that Amano Sensei could be competent and more involved as an NFT artist than the traditional web2 artist.
VR Art Museum Link:
Personal Official Website:
Representative Works: Character modeling and visual concept design of "Final Fantasy" Series1-6; the visual concept design of the movie "Onmyoji II"; the creation and art direction of "Vampire Hunter D", "Angel's Egg"; "Candy Girl"; "N.Y.SALAD"; etc..
3.About NFT--Art Analysis
As mentioned in the official announcement "108 Angel Features", we can see that there would be a total of 108 angel girls in various patterns as the protagonists of this NFT project, and these pictures present high-degree of Yoshitaka Amano’s style : a little traditional painting, elegant lines and strong contrast in the use of colors.
Romantic and ethereal strokes are applied to depict the spirit of Candy Girl’s eyes and demeanors. As always, it is full of fanciful imagination and creativity. The head shots of PFP and great sense of camera, also lead it very suitable for being set up as an avatar. From the current revealing of collection, there are at least 8 traits: hair style, hair color, eye color, headdress, exposed body parts, posture, background, and face. Hence, the degree of homogeneity is not expected to be high.
4.About WL (Always to check in their DISCORD for newest info!)
There are few types of Whitelist roles:(Nov 9th Update)
@Candy List - is one of four community whitelist roles, which is given to our early engaging community members. Holders of this role have priority access to our mint sale. (100/100)
@GummyList - is our second community whitelist role. Community whitelist role can be overlapped with other whitelist roles. (100/100)
@Candy List(GA) - is a whitelist role which can be given through giveaway events and project collaborations. You can only get one role.
@Wallet Submitted - is given to those who have submitted their wallet address after attaining one of those whitelist roles.
More to be added and roles are subject to change.
These two roles can overlap, meaning you can acquire both roles and enjoy both benefits. Whitelisted members will have priority access to our mint sale. More details to be announced.
How to get in Candy List?
Candy List is granted to most engaging, helpful and respectful community members via handpick by the team or moderators. Although a criteria for the handpick is not determined, you can catch our attention by actively joining community chat, inviting your friends, showing your creativity in #|fan-art, helping others, and most importantly enjoying being in the community.
The reason we have not published clear WL criteria is that we want to reduce grinding as much as possible and give WL to community members who are involved in the project on a long-term basis. This is not an easy process for us but we believe this will increase the long-term value of the project and build a strong community.
@Candy List = White List
How Candy List?
Candy List is granted to most engaging, helpful and respectful community members via handpick by the team or MOD.
Although a criteria is not determined, we could actively join community chat, invite our friends, show our creativity in #|fan-art, help others and most importantly, enjoy being in the community!
Special Roles
Aside from @Candy List , you can acquire a special role which makes you stand out from others by making certain achievements:
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@Initial Booster: First 20 people to boost the server.CLOSED -
@Helpful : Help others and team.
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@Artistic : Show your creativity and receive many reactions from community in . (Hint: We want to see our stickers and emoji)
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@Lucky : Win or achieve something special at events.
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@Amano Lover: Tell us and others how much you love Amano-san and his works. You can share your story in any chat or thread like Your experience with Amano Yoshitaka-san
FYI: Team has stopped giving active roles already, Candy List and Gummies List is full already, only Lolipop List left, make sure to check newest info from Candy Girl’s official discord.
🍡Wanzi Analyzing ALPHA: As a Japanese project led by a fabulous artist, it is still in a very early stage. Candy Girl posted its first tweet on Sep 29, and as of Oct 21 today, it has been operating for less than one month. There were considerable traffic growth both in interaction data and followers, and also has attracted many cooperation from Asian projects. We believe that specialist PM Masa, as founder of Astar Network's first NFT project, can handle this module well. Until now, Candy Girl’s Twitter followers are nearly 10k and Discord online data are 1603/4872, maintaining the online rate at a relatively high level. The revealing pictures won high praise. After reducing the previous opulence and depth of Yoshitaka Amano's artwork, they become more approachable and the market and target group are more likely to figure out the aesthetic, even if they are ignorant of the artist before.
At present, most of the WL activities are still going on. As an Art-Dominated project, if you can participate in fanart, splashing your creativity at sticker activities, derivative work of characters, such as creating angel clothing, cartoons about angels' daily routine , angels' character stories. However, Astar Network is a new chain with a low possibility to be chosen by the project to release on it. After "sold out", it is necessary to focus on its trade volume, witnessing whether Candy Girl can drive popularity of the newborn public chain. Good luck everyone!
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