For a $5 NFT Pass, you can watch the TV show debut with new nouns

Nounone open source intellectual property (IP) based on a range Ethereum NFTs, expanding to TV with “The nouns“ an animated series for adults. And the series, which comes from independent creators and was originally funded through a grant from the nouns DAO community, is sticking to its roots by selling the pilot episode through a NFT access pass.

“The Nouners” utilizes the Noun Project’s colorful pixel characters – based on a wide variety of objects and creatures, all with boxy glasses (or “Noggles”) – to deliver a cartoon aimed at a mature audience. The absurdist atmosphere is reminiscent of offbeat hits such as “South Park”, “Robot Chicken” and “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”.

With a lo-fi look to match the pixelated avatars, the 11-minute pilot episode takes a decidedly meta approach, showing the creators pitching various projects to try and spread the Substantival brand. Only here, they’re pitching to an all-powerful being with a “Wizard of Oz” twist in the mix — plus plenty of profanity, sex, drugs and other adult content along the way.

In reality “The Nouners” were set to the Nouns DAO— the collective (or decentralized autonomous organization) of substantive NFT owners who control a treasury of nearly $43 million in ETH as of this writing. The treasury helps to finance projects, i.a toys, cartoons, a parade floatand brand partnershipamong many other initiatives.

“The Nouners” comes from executive producer Mike Rekola and collaborators, who created a one-minute animated and proposed the project to the DAO last August. Noun was created using a Creative Commons 0 (CC0) license, so anyone can use the IP and create a project like this without DAO’s approval. It is completely open source.

But in this case, the DAO approved $15,000 USDC request via its Small grants committee to finance the pilot episode. Co-showrunner Sean Flanagan narrated Decrypt that the experience of navigating the DAO proposal process and interacting with pseudonymous internet people helped inform the story of the pilot episode.

“It was complicated to navigate the waters of an organization of faceless people around the world,” he said, contrasting it with the traditional film world. “This process was very mysterious and new – which is what led to the creation of the Wizard of Nouns in our pilot. We made educated guesses based on the voice of a man behind a curtain. This became the inspiration.”

Rekola said his team asked relatively modestly about funding the pilot episode after seeing other creators ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars for things like noun-based storyboards and animatics — “anything but a finished product,” in his view.

The pilot episode of “The Nouners” is actually finished, but you need another NFT access pass enter the token-gated portal and stream the video. The pass costs 0.003 ETH— less than $5 worth currently — and Rekola said they need to sell 3,200 of the NFTs to fund the completion of the second episode, which is already halfway done.

The pilot, with a noun-based and noun-financed episode About Substantive and the funding process feels primed for an entrenched audience of Web3 enthusiasts. However, Rekola said that future episodes will explore a wider range of topics and not be quite so meta.

Like so many of the projects Nouns DAO has funded to date, “The Nouners” is an experiment – and the creators are eager to see how it lands with viewers and if there’s enough demand for the next episode, let alone a full one season.

There is also another test i growing Film3 world to see how Web3 technology can help finance and bring creative projects to life in various ways. In this case, it is also built around a decentralized property that many people collectively grow through their own creations. For Rekola, Substantiv is a wide-open playground full of creative possibilities.

“Substantive is an ideal partner for the show because the IP address is undefined, CC0 and fully ripe for exploration,” said Rekola Decrypt. “Nouns aren’t limited to kids, nor are crypto bros. Everyone is welcome in the Nouns community. This is why the Web3 space is amazing. No legacy media company would ever let random filmmakers have fun with their brand.”

“Do you think Disney would ever let us have the chance to experiment and make a Mickey Mouse cartoon with a mature audience theme? I don’t think so,” he added. “But nouns would.”