What a challenge to deliver the artwork. This was a slower week for NFTs. As such, this week's theme is not connected to any article. It's a simple tribute to the abundance of NFT trading cards. Full credit for the concept goes to Red. He came up with the simple yet symbolic house-of-cards angle, paired with useless machines nobody really needs.

I had to experiment with the dynamics of the crumbling house of cards at length. So cool! A nice reward for spending the time to learn something new. As you'll see in this test animation I am still using classical playing card textures.

Good start. It's a nice video, but it can surely be better. Something more is needed to make these 'NFT cards'. So I went back to my corner, in need of advice before the next round... Redlion: "Ok, listen to me, put the house of cards on the factory belt like it is moving stuff in the production line. As the house of cards moves, it reaches a spot where is a fan and it blows them apart. This whole factory is the NFT space. Maybe a small "Quality" sticker on each house." Cool idea, I am ready for the next round. {ring bells}

I started with the textures of the cards and stickers. Lucky for me I find making 3D stuff to be great fun. Suddenly being experienced in graphic design is super handy! In no time I came up with the typographic layout and a nice modern violet palette for our imaginative card design.

I assembled the high-tech factory scene along with the conveyor belt pretty quickly. Next, I ran some test renders of the animation, which is actually achieved by moving the camera and all the scene parts except the cards and the belt. It creates a reverse motion illusion of the belt moving, but it actually remains static. 

Then came the DRAMA! I show a low-res render to Redlion and he suggested making the motion slower. I said it will add to render time and we discussed the possibility of cloud farm rendering. Worth a shot, right? We both love to roll the dice. I set up the account, connected the plugin to Cinema4D, and to our pleasant surprise, everything seemed to work buttery smooth.

We had a low-quality backup render, but it simply didn't meet publishing standards. Each frame rendered requires around 3-5 minutes in higher quality, so it would take hours on a single machine. The cloud rendering went well, and quite fast until suddenly progress froze at 66%... For more than an hour! Panic! It was already 2 AM* for us, and our fanbase was aching! Demanding their weekly guilty pleasure, as we were already behind schedule.

Time to deploy a backup-backup measure. As always, we will get this issue out. No matter what. It was a difficult decision, but it had to be done. I decided to shorten the animated loop, from 3 unique crumbling houses to just one. Reducing the clip from 280 frames down to 70, which I could render in a reasonable resolution and sample count. At 3:30 AM* we finally got the gif to mint. By 4 AM* we're asleep before our heads hit their pillows. We woke up to another sold-out issue. Satisfaction :) 

Special thanks to all those who stayed awake with us discord to support us during these thrilling moments. You are legends! 🤜🤛

* Redlion is even+1 hour timezone

** The video cover at the beginning of the story has been rendered on Monday in full-res