AMA February 19, 2022 - Crypto Talkz / Cheeky Kyser

Crypto-Talkz

Could you start by introducing yourself and perhaps regarding the key team behind Cheeky Kyser to us? Who is the artist, CryptoKyser, and what kind of background does he have?

Cheeky Kyser Team

The Cheeky Kyser team is tight-knit for now: there is the artist, CryptoKyser, who prefers to stay anonymous for now, and we also have a press release manager and a marketing/sales representative.

CryptoKyser is a French artist with two decades of experience. He has studied art, and he’s passionate not only about drawing but architecture and cinema as well, and he’s most fascinated by how the growing possibilities in the IT field enable artists to bring their craft to a new level. He's been studying the cryptocurrency world since 2017 and was an early advocate of NFTs.

This is actually how Cheeky Kyser has come to life: on the intersection of art, cinema and technology.

CryptoKyser has also worked with private institutions and individuals before, for a long time. He’s never wanted to make his works public, though. Art is too personal for each person, he believes, himself included. However, the emergence of NFTs has changed his mind as this is an excellent opportunity to bring more people together, share art more easily, acquire authentic works directly from artists and enable all kinds of collaborations. So he decided to release his first public collection which is the Cheeky Kyser project.

Crypto-Talkz

Can you give an overview of Cheeky Kyser as a whole? How it started and why is it so innovative in the Cryptoverse?

Cheeky Kyser Team

So, Cheeky Kyser is an NFT collection with 468 tokens total. They come in three editions: Original, Silver and Gold, each with its own design theme and scarcity factor, and, of course the prices vary for each due to the increasing rarity of the NFTs in them. The NFTs represent characters and scenes from the 52 most iconic movies of all time.

The Original edition has 5 numbered copies of each card, the Silver edition has 3, and the Gold edition only contains 52 cards with no copies in existence.

Over the years, CryptoKyser’s experience has been refined to the simplest expression of his art: a simple line. He realized that the best bridge between realism and imagination was minimalist art which allowed a creator to hint at an idea, suggest the barest minimum necessary to convey the intended meaning and leave everything else for viewers to appropriate and interpret.

CryptoKyser then had the idea of merging his art with the so-called "7th art," which is cinematography, to obtain a minimalist representation of the films that had had the most impact on his life. These characters, simple, universal, accessible by most, should allow everyone to find themselves, to dream. This is how the Cheeky Kysers were born.

The Cheeky Kyser project is innovative because all the NFTs are hand-drawn and a very minimalistic representation was chosen as the style. CryptoKyser believes that while technology by itself could produce something beautiful, it should mostly remain a tool. So we don’t have any automatically generated images.

All details are peculiar to each character, chosen with thought and heart and, we hope, create a sense of magic that's harder to achieve with automatic generation :)

Crypto-Talkz

The idea really seems to be fresh in the field! Regarding that, may I ask more about your design? These are just lines, after all, seems like it’s easy to draw these NFTs.

Cheeky Kyser Team

It’s a really good question!

Indeed, the NFTs may look simplistic. But they are, in fact, particularly difficult to produce. The characters are portrayed with just lines, basic shapes and minimalistic backgrounds. They are suggestive but almost figurative. CyptoKyser, being a minimalist art professional, wanted to push himself to create characters that won’t be obvious but still recognizable and familiar, to keep and display their essence without any excess. Every line, dot and card name—they’re all products of years’ work and extreme thoughtfulness.

In short: it’s easy to put an “S” on a character’s chest and expect people to realize it’s Superman. CryptoKyser wanted to dig deeper, make this art more sophisticated and subtle.

Tease the audience a bit, you could say, while remaining relatable.

Crypto-Talkz

I can’t help but notice you’re gathering quite a lot of attention. Do you have a big community already? How can we collaborate or help share the developments of the project?

Cheeky Kyser Team

As for every art project, having a community is paramount to us.

And actually, we were stunned and delighted to see how quickly people have caught on! We do already have quite a big community. It’s very heartwarming and inspiring to see people talk about us. We have a 12.3K community on Twitter, a lot of members on Instagram and an active Discord channel. We didn’t expect to get so many supportive comments so soon!

We’ve also noticed people making Youtube videos about us, writing on Reddit, Medium and other platforms. The community is wide and very vibrant: we have people who simply love movies, people who love or produce art, tech people from crypto and blockchain fields—it seems like the Cheeky Kyser has already started bringing awesome people together :)

You can find us everywhere with the @cheekykyser handle or come to talk on Discord here https://discord.gg/XaQhwXjJPU. We also appreciate it immensely if you share our posts, show Cheeky Kysers to your friends, play the Cheeky Kyser Challenge and just support us with kind comments. And, of course, grab the card you like the most when the sales begin.

Crypto-Talkz

The Cheeky Kyser Challenge looks fun. Could you tell us more about it?

Cheeky Kyser Team

For sure!

It's a game we developed to enable the community to engage with the cards in a more meaningful way than just buying and owning them.

You can try to identify all 52 movies and check how well you know these iconic films. Participants with the highest scores will get a chance to win up to 15,000 BUSD! The rewards start at 1,000 and get higher for people who will have bought at least one Cheeky Kyser card. You can find all the details on our website here: Cheeky Kyser Challenge. You can also play a mini challenge with just 15 films to guess, there are three versions:

1. Mini Cheeky Kyser Challenge 1

2. Mini Cheeky Kyser Challenge 2

3. Mini Cheeky Kyser Challenge 3

Crypto-Talkz

Could you please provide some progress on your Roadmap and also tell us a bit about your future plans?

Cheeky Kyser Team

It's been a wild ride so far, with the rapidly growing community, and now we've finally reached a point when sales are bound to start.

Cheeky Kysers are coming to the market on February 28, at 2pm UTC. They will be available on OpenSea at opensea.io/collection/cheekykyser.

As to the future plans, the artist is thinking about creating Cheeky Kyser Second Edition. It would be an original collection made with the same flair and expertise but with completely fresh ideas.

Cheeky Kyser games: in addition to the Cheeky Kyser Challenge, the team is thinking about developing a game on blockchain which would be simple and addictive and would feature Cheeky Kyser cards as the main elements. CryptoKyser is extremely invested in this project.

We would love for this first edition of 468 Cheeky Kyser cards to become the core of our future ecosystem. Other plans for the CK Game are currently under development and hence confidential but we'll be sure to keep you posted :)

The artist is also considering a possibility of integration with Metaverse and promoting stacking opportunities to help people earn with Cheeky Kyser, as the value of the cards is expected to increase after they're sold out.

Overall, the first edition of the Cheeky Kyser collection opens many roads for us, and we're planning on expanding and improving the project for as long as we have worthwhile ideas that we want to share with the world. So be sure to get on board 🙂

You said that Each Cheeky Kyser has its special traits. These are Fun, Killer, Love, Power and Intelligence. Could you please explain these properties? How does it benefit NFT holders? Do all the NFTs have all of these properties, or will each NFT have its own characteristics?

Cheeky Kyser Team

Oh, it's so cool to see people have read about our project so carefully! Thank you, guys :)

Indeed, the characters on the cards have special traits that will come in handy when the artist finishes the development of the Cheeky Kyser game. CryptoKyser does not want a complicated game where only experienced people can play. He wants to make it as accessible as possible. And the traits described above will definitely become a big part of it.

As to other NFTs: it is quite uncommon for tokens to have such "gaming" properties. Mostly because some artists don't plan to stay connected to the collection after it sells out. We, on the other hand, aim to provide entertainment and engagement to people even after the sale, hence the creation of the game and these fun properties :)

Why did you choose to go with an nft collection designed by an artist and the nft's are really simple ones ? Why didn't you go with some ape or pixelated gorilla or something ? What made you choose this specific genre ?

Cheeky Kyser Team

Very good question!

As we've already mentioned, while seemingly simple to create, Cheeky Kyser NFTs are actually quite difficult to get precisely right. CryptoKyser chose this genre firstly because of his eternal love for cinematography and, secondly, because he wanted to challenge himself. It's always both exciting and scary to work with something you love—you worry about messing it up. So it was an aspirational endeavor for the artist.

Also, he has never considered an option of automatic generation. When art is created by a machine, it is basically assembled from various pieces: different objects, hair, clothes, glasses, backgrounds, etc, but they remain inherently similar. CryptoKyser has always wished for his art to avoid having this mass production quality. He's prepared to spend the time and effort to draw all pieces by hand to get them perfect and just a touch magical to the audience's eyes.

Also, presenting a very limited collection directly communicates its value, which is also only possible to properly achieve with hand-drawn works.

I read that the ultimate Cheeky Kyser sale will be on OpenSea at the end of February. Can you tell us will it really be limited to 468 handmade NFTs with 3 variations: Gold, Silver, and Original? Can we reserve a piece? Or is it First Come First Serve basis on the actual sale?

Cheeky Kyser Team

There are truly only 468 pieces available. The Cheeky Kyser collection, as it is now, will not be repeated. So it is the only chance to get these NFTs at their original prices. On February 28, at 2pm UTC, anyone willing would be able to buy the cards on our OpenSea. Please note that it's impossible to buy Cheeky Kysers directly from our website, you must connect to OpenSea to conduct the transaction. All Cheeky Kysers are already minted on OpenSea and you can take a look even though the sales are not open yet.

It will not be possible to reserve any Cheeky Kyser, I'm afraid. The artist and the team believes that everybody should be equal in this regard: one price for all, one starting date of sales. However, it is possible for people to make offers on the Kysers already, and we may consider accepting a few after the start of sales.

One more thing, you can see that all Cheeky Kysers are minted and listed on OpenSea by cryptokyser. It allows buyers to check for validity of the NFTs and avoid counterfeiting.

Since the Cheeky Kyser collection contains a selection of 52 films, I wonder if the content in it is not copyrighted ? Is it really safe to buy these NFTs?

Cheeky Kyser Team

The Cheeky Kyser cards are just caricatures of the films that inspired the artist. Our legal team has made sure that the rights related to the movies used (image rights, copyrights, trademark rights, etc.) were not violated by creating the Cheeky Kyser collection. Regarding the Cheeky Kyser brand, it is a registered trademark.

Can you list 1-3 Killer Features of the Project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is competitive advantage your project has that you feel most confident about?

Cheeky Kyser Team

Oh, a good one! Well, I'll be brief on this one.

1. You can earn with Cheeky Kyser. Depending on how the sales go, we'll be able to analyze staking opportunities but we estimate the NFTs to have a high investing value.

2. We're the first ones to combine art, cinema and gaming. Some NFTs represent movies, some can be used to play games, but in our case, it's all in one and beautifully done. The artist is also considering tailoring the game for the metaverse in the future.

3. Lots of games and challenges are already available. You can play the Cheeky Kyser Challenge, either for fun or for rewards, and you can also come discuss the results with the community on Discord. We only encourage interaction and collaboration :)

Whew! Done for this one, thank you for the great questions, we're very lucky to have such an active audience ❤️

Do you have AUDIT certificates?? Or are you working to AUDIT your project, to make it more secure and reliable ?

Cheeky Kyser Team

Good question, security is really important for any crypto project. Since we are not selling directly from our site, we don't have any certificates. Cheeky Kysers are minted on the OpenSea platform. It's a top choice for selling NFTs with the latest and most reliable security standards and mechanisms in place.

You create an event The Mini Cheeky Kyser 1 Challenge without rewards, just for fun, what was the acceptance of the users? Is mini challenge 2 already active, what are the requirements to participate in the 150 usd to win?

Cheeky Kyser Team

Over 1k people have already played the mini Cheeky Kyser Challenge 1! We have live statistics on the site, you can follow the link and take a look for yourself: https://www.cheekykyser.com/ck-challenge-en. The challenge to win $150 is currently Mini Challenge 3, challenge 2 is not active for rewards but you can still play it.

why do you make various editions in 𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗘𝗞𝗬 𝗞𝗬𝗦𝗘𝗥 such as 𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝘀𝗶𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗴𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗮 𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ???

whether from the various editions the benefits are also different ???

Cheeky Kyser Team

The editions differ mainly by two factors: rarity and design. The Original edition contains 5 copies of each card, meaning, although all NFTs are numbered, if you buy a card from this edition, 4 other people will have a card with the same design. The Silver edition is more expensive but it also features only 3 copies of each card. Finally, the Gold edition doesn't contain any copies. If you buy a card from this edition, you will be the only owner of that particular design.

Also, the same characters in different editions have slight differences in design: Silver and Gold editions have various elements that you can't see in the Original edition, for instance. And they are, well, silver and gold correspondingly 😄

Also, in the future, cards from different editions will have different properties for the Cheeky Kyser Game.

The last point, the rewards for the Cheeky Kyser Challenge increase depending on the edition. If you win and hold an Original Cheeky Kyser card, you get 6,000 BUSD. If you own a Silver card, you get 10,000 BUSD, and if you own a Gold card, you win 15,000 BUSD!

Many countries where English is not the official language have energetic crypto communities, do you have local community groups, what kind of work have you done for local communities so far?

Cheeky Kyser Team

The Cheeky Kyser project currently exists in three languages: English, French, and Russian. The artist, CryptoKyser, is very driven to create educational opportunities for people in France and beyond to spread the word about blockchain and how it's changing the world, and he's planning to dedicate a part of the proceeds from the sale of Cheeky Kysers to this cause.

Also, we'd absolutely love to be able to reach people in more countries! If you'd like to work with us to help translate our contents into your language, shoot us a message, we'd be very grateful.

Everyone will find their own Cheeky Kyser. Since each of their models is drawn by hand, with no auto-generation, everyone will get their unique Cheeky Kyser. How is the hand drawing of each Cheeky Kyser made? Who makes them? What tools do you use to create the Cheeky Kyser?

Cheeky Kyser Team

All cards are drawn by CryptoKyser himself. The process was generally the following: the artist selected the 52 movies to work with, based on their cultural impact and his personal preference. It was extremely important to choose well because these 52 movies were the backbone of the entire project.

After the films were selected, CryptoKyser began drafting the characters on paper. Each character required several drafts before the artist was satisfied with the final idea and look.

After that, it was the time to think of the names for the Cheeky Kysers. The names had to be descriptive and catchy but not excessively revealing.

Finally, CryptoKyser created the digital art you can see now, utilizing the full scope of tools that the digital field offers, including adding various effects, textures, light, JPEG metadata, etc. He used Photoshop to create the Cheeky Kysers.