Generative NFTs taking over OpenSea: Move Over Hashmasks - Generativemasks Are the New Kid on the Block

Another day, another collectible project to take the Twitterspehere by storm. This week it is the Generativemasks collection created by Japanese creative coder Shunsuke Takawo. The lottery sales for the masks started on the 17th of August and sold out in a matter of hours, the project blowing up on Twitter and already forming a thriving secondary market on OpenSea. This excitement comes at no surprise as algorithmic NFT artworks are seeing unprecedented demand with platforms such as Art Blocks selling out in a matter of hours. At nightfall in Japan on the day of its launch, Generativemasks already generated around a thousand ETH in volume traded, becoming top 5 trending collections on OpenSea over 24 hours.

A special element to the collection is that each Generativemask changes its color after one refreshes the token NFT on OpenSea. While everyone received a unique shape, the colors keep updating, offering a level of interactivity with one’s NFT. Reminiscent of a Rorschach psychological imagery test, the collection also made it entertaining for collectors to find meaning in the shapes they received. Moreover, unlike other collections, Generativemasks didn’t include rarity levels - leaving the buyers to make their purchase decisions subject to taste.

Counting 10,000 unique tokens, the masks stand out due to their kaleidoscopic beauty. Takawo pointed out on Twitter that while the masks do obviously exist adjacent to the Hashmasks collectibles, in creating Generativemasks he “did not work directly in reference to this project.” Instead, “the original form of Generativemasks emerged accidentally from a combination of some studies on character and shapes.”

The masks evoke the styles of Native American totem poles and indigenous Japanese Yokai, and their metamorphosing nature has already lead to some creative endeavour amongst its collectors:

In fact, encouraging artistic pursuit is one of the project's goals. Takawo explained that his “motivation for the Generativemasks project is to contribute to the creative community around Processing through donations, and thereby drive the community to be more dynamic.” As such, he will be donating all of his own proceeds from the project to organizations and companies that promote and foster software literacy within the arts, as well as expanding the creative vocabulary amongst tech worlds.

Among the future plans, Takawo and his team plan to acquire land to build a home for the Generativеmask projects to exist in Decentraland - think of galleries and other hubs. In addition, the aim is to make the masks wearable in the metaverse, as well as possibly in real-life with printout and wood-carved physical versions of the masks sent to NFT holders. In this way, the project can lead to an array of new artistic expressions - possibly even a photo book of the works!

Takawo put it perfectly in a Tweet himself - we are excited to see what’s next, and we also wish the project the best of luck!