Many budding NFT creators have been wondering about NFT Art Generators. What are they? Are they legit? Can they really create NFT art for you to mint and sell? In this article, we hope to answer all these burning questions for you.

What NFT Art Generators do

• NFT Art Generators are webapps that help you put together art for minting and sale as NFTs (non fungible tokens). They do a lot of the work for you without you needing to know any code. So, yes, they are legit.

• NFT Art Generators will require you to upload graphic images to begin the process of art generation. You would need, on hand, a few graphic images that can be put together in a randomised way to generate many permutations of your NFT art.

• I am going to use the formula of the famous NFT ape collections (Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, Bored Ape Chemistry Club, Trippin’ Ape Tribe, Prime Ape Planet PAP, Galactic Apes) to demonstrate my examples throughout this article. I’m sure you’ve seen them. They look something like Bored Yacht Club.

• Using that formula, I recommend that you have at least five different backgrounds, five different sets of faces, five different sets of eyes, five different sets of mouths and five different sets of accessories. The backgrounds, faces, eyes, mouths and accessories will be matched with each other in a random way. Considering all possible permutations, you will get 3,125 combinations of images out of this exercise.

• NFT Art Generators are great for generating NFT collections to be minted and sold as collectibles. They’re not useful for generating one-off unique artworks. This is because NFT Art Generators generate by volume, not by quality.

• NFT Art Generators come with a price. The NFT Generator for example, charges about $50 a month as its most popular plan. UniqMyNFT charges USD149 for 1000 combinations generated as its most basic plan.

What NFT Art Generators don’t do?

• NFT Art Generators don’t create your art for you. You still have to do some groundwork. You’re going to have to create the images of faces, backgrounds, mouths, eyes and accessories on your own. NFT Art Generators only help to put together these components in different combinations for you.

• NFT Art Generators don’t generate sales for you. You’re going to have to do that on your own. You’re going to have to register for an account with a marketplace such as OpenSea (on the Ethereum chain) or Solanart (on the Solana chain) and connect with a digital wallet. The most popular wallet for OpenSea is MetaMask, while the most popular wallet for Solanart is Phantom. You’re then going to have to market and sell your NFT on your own.

• NFT Art Generators don’t manage your marketplace account for you. You’re going to have to do that on your own. You’re going to need to keep an eye on your account, manage the pricing and analytics. You’re going to have to visit Etherscan to look at the transactions involving your NFTs.

• NFT Art Generators don’t help you go up trend rankings. You’re going to have to do that on your own. You’re going to have to build a community, build up the hype through engaging with your community, execute airdrops and all that other stuff if you want to go up the ranks.

You may want to use NFT Art Generators if…

You don’t know how to use illustration software such as Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape or Vectr to draw. If you don’t know how to use illustration software, what you will need to do is the following.

Step 1: Look for body parts, backgrounds and accessories online. You should look for them in vector .svg format or at the very least a .png format with a transparent background. You can start by looking on Google. Type, for example, “clipart eyes”, then click on the “images” tab.

Step 2: Then click on the “usage rights” tab and make sure that you’re not violating any copyright laws by selecting “creative commons licences”.

Step 3: Then, you need to click on the “transparent” tab to filter to only the ones which have a transparent background.

Step 4: With all these selected, you now only need to browse and download all the components you want to form the combinations of your NFT collection.

You won’t need to use NFT Art Generators if…

• You know how to use illustration software such as Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape or Vectr to draw. When you draw faces, backgrounds, eyes, mouths and accessories on illustration software, you will be working in layers. All you need to do to generate your own preferred permutations of your NFT collectibles is to hide the layers which contain items you don’t want and export each combination as an illustration in a file format such as .jpg or .png. You will have total control over each combination generated. As an illustrator, you should be mindful of combinations that work and combinations that don’t work. Some eye shapes work better with some mouth shapes than others. Some colours create too little contrast, while others create too much. So this is what you should do:

Step 1: Draw one face shape and colour it in

Step 2: Hide that layer

Step 3: Draw another face shape and color it in.

Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 until you get 5 face shapes

Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4 for eyes, mouths, accessories or anything else you want to input

Step 6: Create 5 more layers and fill them with color. You may choose to have them flat or with a radial gradient

Step 7: Create your first combination my unhiding layers which you want to go into the combination

Step 8: Make minor tweaks to the shape design for better perspective control

Step 9: Export

Step 10: Repeat Steps 7-9 until you have exhausted all options

• You’re more interested in creating high quality artworks rather than collectibles. High quality artworks vary from collectibles in quality and quantity. High quality artworks are of higher quality than collectible “art”. High quality artworks are created using principles of design, principles of composition, colour theory and shape design. High quality artworks pay attention to illumination and shadows, scale and perspective. High quality artworks look like paintings suitable for display in a digital gallery. High quality artworks are produced as one-of-a-kind, Their appeal lies in their uniqueness and creativity. Collectible “art” such as Cryptopunks and the various collections of apes do not pay as much attention to the above. They’re based on a flat design and look more like a cartoon than a painting. Although some collectible art pieces are one-of-a-kind, most of them aren’t. Most of them are available in multiple copies (known as semi-fungible tokens) to be owned by many owners. They are also part of a larger collection of schematically and thematically related art pieces.