Quasi Dragon Studies! by Harvey Rayner
An experiment in the co-creation of Generative Art.
Hello and welcome to The Culture Project. This article is arriving a little later than I anticipated, but still wanted to write about this project coming out in a few days. The scale, time, and work put into it is quite impressive. If you have been a part of the generative art scene there is a good chance you’ve heard of Harvey Rayner. You may know him as patterndotco, which was the handle he used to go by. Recently he has rebranded and decided to go with his real name. Which I think is a great idea for an artist like him. He does live talks and events covering his work. Tying his real name to his art is a great step forward in the art world. He’s had some great releases with Fontana on Art Blocks, Velum on Bright Moments, and a few others. His newest project may be the first of its kind.
Lets dive in.
Harvey is about to release a very ambitious project called Quasi Dragon Studies. I’ve been following the progress of this one for some time now. He has created a close discord community that he communicates with daily. He has asked for and taken feedback from the community and has let us help shape the project to what it is now. It’s been a really cool experience to get to have hands on access to something before it releases. He found a great home for this project in verse.works. They have really worked with him closely and helped him build this project to what it has become. Without their willingness to take a chance on a new style of project and minting experience, this wouldn’t have been possible. They accept ETH & credit cards as payments for their projects. Which I find is a really nice way to onboard newer collectors.
This is a very unique project where you will have a final say in how your art turns out. We will mint art tiles that have specific properties that will allow you to connect them to other tiles. There is a composite builder that allows you to connect them together in different ways. You can have blank tiles that allow other adjacent tiles to “grow” or branch out in different ways. The tile that you have selected will make a difference with the final output. So make sure to click on different tiles in the same layouts to see the differences it creates. Just something I want to add and make sure people are aware. The tiles are not the NFT, the final piece you create out of the composite builder will be. When you finally get your piece crafted the way you want it. That’s when you mint it into your final piece of art. You may buy ten tiles and end up with a few final pieces that you create.
A little guide to the compositor and some examples below.
Even the single tiles can produce beautiful outputs.
With all that said, let me add another layer of depth to this project. There will be rare versions that follow strict guidelines to make. They are called Black Dragons & White Dragons. Once a Black or White Dragon is created of a certain tile format. It can not be created again. Below is an example of a perfect White Dragon and how it was created.
This mint will be open for 20 days. This is an art experiment that may end up having a very large supply of tiles. Really curious how many pieces ended up getting minted in the end. The Dragons will be the grails of this project. I’m sure the more simple Dragon configurations will get minted very fast.
The configurations you can use to get a Black Dragon. Only one of each will exist.
The configurations you can use to get a White Dragon. Only one of each will exist.
From the website and something useful to think about.
Treat the Composite Builder as a creative playground with the incentive of making the most visually compelling composites and be led by their own artistic instincts.
Build composites with strict joining rules, invest time, energy and money to collect specific tiles and create hard-to-make limited edition Black and White Dragons. The incentive here being creating quantifiable rarity which has become a significant feature of Web 3 art.
One last thing I wanted to cover that is another amazing aspect of this project. Each composite’s owner will have full IP rights to it. Meaning you can put them on a t-shirt or mug and sell it and the profits are all yours. Just one more layer of cool on top of this project. It’s not something you see a lot in this space.
Full artwork IP will be given away with every composite mint in the Quasi Dragons Collection. Many NFT collectors do not realize the IP for an artwork nearly always remains with the artist. This means token holders can use their composite for any commercial projects or make new art with it, without asking for the artist’s permission.
I just scratched the surface on this project. I’m going to post some links below. If this has interested you, read the full article about it. It is a great in-depth article on the project that you should read if you plan on minting. The composite builder is currently open to the public and some cool giveaways are going on currently. Join the discord and this amazing community that Harvey has built. Going to post a few composites from the discord community. All the important links are down below the art.
Output by gingersven.eth
Output by maskzilla
a few cool Outputs by null_pointer
Output by vladz027
a couple beauts by SoggyGravy
Output by ChoSoi
Output by Snoozed Sneeze
Jamie Gourlay made these two gorgeous Outputs
Here are some of my favorite creations. Sorry I showcased so many, but there are so many good ones. The community experience has been a lot of fun with this project and I wanted to share as many as I could. I’ve been a big fan of Harvey’s art for a long time now. Happy to finally be able to collect some of his work.
Harvey Rayner - Artist behind the project.
Harvey’s Discord - Come join in on the discussions. Great community.
Quasi Dragon Studies Docs - In-depth article on the project. A must read if you plan to mint.
QDS Composite Builder - Try creating your own QDS. Save it and share.
Verse.works QDS Site - Huge thanks to verse.works on their work and contributions to the gen art community.
Thanks for reading! Please like and share the article if you enjoyed it. We are just trying to spread some Tezos and Generative Art love with The Culture Project. Our community is open to anyone that wants to learn about or share generative art. The communities Twitter & Discord. My twitter is @joshripple. If you like the content please give us a follow.