Chris: Hi there! Please introduce yourself.
Claudio: I'm Claudio Baldrich and I'm an artist. I began working professionally in plastic arts in 2008, and since then I have been presenting my work in art exhibitions around the world in places like Miami, Prague, Sao Paulo and Chicago. In 2014 I also started painting murals, many of which can be seen in the city of Buenos Aires. I was fortunate to be able to paint in subway stations, trains, street tunnels, parks, hospitals and corporate offices. Last year I became interested in the digital medium and began exploring digital paintings in Photoshop and Procreate, which was a lucky coincidence because that was also the year NFTs took off. I eventually learnt about NFTs and decided it was the perfect opportunity to bring my style into the space, and that's how the idea for Unusual Guests came about.
Chris: Unusual Guests are quirky and colorful. What were the first instances that inspired you to create these Unusual Guests?
Claudio: The design of the Unusual Guests is heavily influenced by my own artistic style that I have been developing for the past years. If you look at any of my paintings in the past years you will find a lot of similarities and even some characters that would perfectly fit in the Unusual Guests world. The NFT space is still in its early stages, so the idea was to bring something unique that I can offer, and what best than art that can be recognized as being my signature style!
Chris: It is noteworthy that the team is supported by a well-known artist from Argentina. Who else is on the corporate team and how do they contribute to bringing the Unusual Guests to the Metaverse?
Claudio: On the team we have Dona who is our community manager. He has the most experience in the NFT space and brings in a lot of contacts and knowledge from previous projects where he participated or moderated in. He has been in charge of our public relations, collaborations and running Discord along with Hopo, who is in charge of growing and supporting our Discord community. We finally have St4G and Truffle, who have been heavily involved in the artistic aspects of the collection by collaborating with me. Truffle also takes care of all the technical aspects of the project while St4G is charge of all the marketing and business decisions.
Chris: Unusual artwork supports an Unusual Guests community. How can one participate to become a part of this community? What are the aims of this community?
Claudio: Our community is open to everyone. We encourage people to be themselves, to be unique and unusual, just like the art. We liked the idea of creating an unusual community that went against the norms seen in the majority of projects. As an example, we don't encourage people to be online and chatting all day in our Discord server in order to give them a spot in our whitelist. Our goal is to have a healthy community above everything else, where nobody feels the pressure to be there 8 hours a day sending mind numbing messages. Instead, people in our Discord chat just for fun, and we whitelist members through simple, random and non-time-consuming contests. We do giveaways, art contests, meme contests, guessing games and many other games that are played through Discord bots where the prize is a whitelist spot. That way everyone has a chance to get into our whitelist, we want people to live healthy lives. In our opinion this is the best way to build an authentic and long-lasting community.
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Chris: In fact, the Unusual Guests do not follow a roadmap. How This is not the usual. What is your plan to gain investor confidence with the Unusual Guests NFT?
Claudio: That's very true, another unusual decision we decided to make, but which further reinforces the idea of Unusual Guests. The whole team has been in the NFT space for a while now and we were frankly surprised by how normal it was for projects to underdeliver (or never deliver) on their roadmap. To us roadmaps lost their value, anyone can promise you the world, but whether you can deliver or not is the key, and since the majority of cases we have seen promise the world but deliver little to nothing, we find roadmaps misleading. To be honest, unless someone has some serious financial backing together with a very big team, the amount of time it takes to create a collection means you have 0 time to be focused on other things. Our plan is to focus 100% on delivering an amazing collection that will be successful, that by itself is already a pretty big challenge. After that is done, we will analyze our next step and announce it, but always one solid step at a time.
Also, don't forget to join our Discord and Twitter. It is the best way to stay informed on news and announcements.
Chris: Interesting! So, how have the tokens have been priced? How much of the cost will go towards gas fees?
Claudio: The collection is made up of 4,567 Unusual Guests which are going to be priced at 0.0678 ETH each. We have seen some crazy high numbers in the past few months and believe that mint prices in the NFT space have reached a ceiling and is time for them to start going down again. Our aim was to make the price very appealing giving the current market condition, as well as making it more affordable for more people to be able to participate. The price of 0.0678 ETH doesn't include gas fees, it's hard to estimate how much the gas fees will be on the mint date, but the current prices are quite low compared to the highs we experienced at the beginning of the year, so we are hopeful they will remain low in order to make the mint even more affordable.
Chris: To be sure, please state the release date for the tokens. Do you also plan to have a presale?
Claudio: We are planning to do a presale for whitelist members on April 12th and a public sale on Thursday 14th.
Chris: In the end, please share a rarity chart for the Unusual Guests. How is each token unique?
Claudio: With only 4,567 Unusual Guests and 250+ unique traits we managed to create a collection where every token is very different from the rest. We really managed to add a lot of variation in there and think that whether you get a token in the top 100 or in the 4000s you will be please with your Unusual Guest.
