Akuma OriginsThe DNA of our Yokai
Akuma Origins’ backstory and loreBirth of the YokaiDNA of the YokaiConcept art and sketchesLoreIn a distant universe, we witness a brave species called Yokai - folk known around the universe for their skills in battle, loyalty to the shogun and their brothers and sisters in arms. The vibrant realm attracts plenty of travellers, merchants, and fortune seekers. One of these souls is a legendary travelling merchant crafting weapons and jewellery, wielded by the bravest Yokai. During one of the m...
Akuma OriginsPast, Present and Future of the Realm
Time to reflectThe team’s determination to build the RealmMateo’s vision and drive to create the RealmKeeper of the RealmWho is Ade and what did it take?Double down on buildingTime to reflectAs the market is cooling down, we feel like it’s time to reflect. Reflect on our past; where the team came from, how our vision was born and how we can continue to bring Akuma to life as best we can. During these turbulent times, we acknowledge the need to reflect how the community has reacted to certain ...
Akuma Origins is a generative art project hosted on the Ethereum blockchain. The collection consists of 5555 Yokai
Akuma OriginsThe DNA of our Yokai
Akuma Origins’ backstory and loreBirth of the YokaiDNA of the YokaiConcept art and sketchesLoreIn a distant universe, we witness a brave species called Yokai - folk known around the universe for their skills in battle, loyalty to the shogun and their brothers and sisters in arms. The vibrant realm attracts plenty of travellers, merchants, and fortune seekers. One of these souls is a legendary travelling merchant crafting weapons and jewellery, wielded by the bravest Yokai. During one of the m...
Akuma OriginsPast, Present and Future of the Realm
Time to reflectThe team’s determination to build the RealmMateo’s vision and drive to create the RealmKeeper of the RealmWho is Ade and what did it take?Double down on buildingTime to reflectAs the market is cooling down, we feel like it’s time to reflect. Reflect on our past; where the team came from, how our vision was born and how we can continue to bring Akuma to life as best we can. During these turbulent times, we acknowledge the need to reflect how the community has reacted to certain ...
Akuma Origins is a generative art project hosted on the Ethereum blockchain. The collection consists of 5555 Yokai
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Who is Ade?
Discovering the Yokai
The Yokai’s DNA and colour palette
Contamination Hell
Akuma’s Smart Contract and ERC-721A
Opening the Portal to the Realm
Closing thoughts
Appendix: Failed Yokai Experiments
A lifelong tinkerer and creator. Ade has been a developer for over a decade. His superpower? Versatility. - Gatekeeper
I don’t have any particular languages I code in, I dabble in everything. Building chatbots in python, crafting home automation systems in .NET, developing enterprise applications in JavaScript, and building my own 3d printer with Marlin. Lately I have been experimenting a lot with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain applications for Solana and Ethereum. In my career I have acquired experience in over 10 coding languages.
Blockchain and Web3 are the disruptive technologies of the future. The fundamental principles of giving power back to the people, unlimited transparency and empowerment are truly inspiring. Watching new communities and cultures unfold is incredible to experience. Like many people in this space, I think Web3 and Blockchain in general, is a new frontier that will change the way we live. I’d like to compare it with the Wild West - A lot of things are being set in motion, new technologies arise every day and some cowboys try to take advantage of that - But when the dust settles, the pioneers will drive the future of this powerful technology! The possibilities are limitless, borderless, inclusive and infinite!
During the initial stages of the development cycle, the high-level requirements were discussed as a team in the first design session. The passion and clarity of vision that came across in this design session were a lot to take in at first, but very infectious. The concept was explained and the first sneak peeks were shared. This compelled me to agree to the challenge! Just how challenging it would really be, was yet to be discovered.
One of the most defining features of the Yokai, and a key part of Mateo’s vision is the colour palette. It's important to note that most, if not all, art engines layer attributes randomly and sequentially. With the most recent layer placed on top of the last with no memory of the layers that come before. While simple in concept the implementation was anything but. You can find a deep dive about the colour schemes of our Yokai in this mirror article!
The layers that needed to be ‘forced’ into the algorithm also needed to be remembered throughout. The Yokai’s skin colour would need to be consistent despite the fact that they appear in different orders. For example, a hand may appear before the body and a hat may appear before an ear. Keep in mind; that not every Yokai has a hand, not every Yokai has a visible ear because it is wearing a helmet or hat. Also, for good measure, some Yokai do not have an outfit and are wandering around shirtless.
for (var i = 0; i < layerSelection.length; i++) {
if (
layerSelection[i].name.includes("Base") &&
!layerSelection[i].name.includes(colourPalletteIndex1)
)
dynamicExclusionList.push(layerSelection[i].name);
if (
layerSelection[i].name.includes("Ear") &&
!layerSelection[i].name.includes(colourPalletteIndex1)
)
Mateo really put his heart and soul into this. With over 150 traits that each come in 8 different colours, there were around 1200 different attributes. This leaves the number of combinations extrapolating up to the tens of millions. This also means that the contamination possibilities were seemingly endless. Intercepting the algorithm and surgically removing the contamination at the right time was the hardest part of perfecting the art engine. For example, a total of 57 arrays spanning thousands of lines of code was required to ensure that horns did not poke through a hat or helmet. Some of the hair types worked with a certain set of headwear, ears/mouths worked with a specific set of eye masks but they wouldn’t work with some mouth masks. I’m still having nightmares from perfecting this!
This took many sleepless nights and tens of thousands of Yokai generations to achieve this. We did not give in and remove items for ease of delivery!
You can find some examples of contaminated and failed experiments below this article!
From the offset, it was clear that the team wanted the mint event to be as smooth and affordable as possible. Utilising the ERC-721A token was an absolute must. At first, I was not sure why this ERC-721A token was so important. That was until I did some digging. I’m not going to go into too much detail about this wonderful 721A technology, as it is documented very well by the creators (Azuki) in this article! The token effectively puts the information for multiple mints through as one transaction on the understanding that it’s a multi-mint transaction. This saves a lot of gas costs for the people minting an NFT. Furthermore, the Akuma contract contained only the necessary code to keep it all as lightweight as possible. The results were astonishing and well received by the community. To put into perspective. OG members were able to mint 3 Akuma Origins NFTs with a total gas cost of 16 dollars at a gas indication of 110. I truly hope to see the adoption of the ERC-721A in the wider market. The token is easy to implement and all the necessary documentation is neatly provided by the team over at Azuki - Thank you for showing us the way!
The efficient contract coupled with the decision to lower the mint price really presented an opportunity for new members to the NFT space. These “newcomers” have been guided by the rest of the community and I’m sure they will enjoy exploring what web3 has to offer and do their part to expand the web3 ecosystem.
https://twitter.com/TheMetacash/status/1489270004696731649?s=20&t=JfOB_g9oCtrxgpDpXjRlFQ
Building the army and creating the portal to the realm were challenging. When we thought we were ready to open the gates, there were substantial and unpredicted challenges opening the portal!
Each Yokai has an extremely high level of detail. To make sure this detail is flourished a high resolution is needed. Every single Yokai has the size of 4273x4273 pixels. One of the key points from the initial project discussion was the desire to maintain the quality. While it was suggested multiple times to lower the resolution, the core team always declined. Quality above everything. Each Yokai took 20 seconds to generate. For reference, when working on a previous project, I generated 10,000 images in 4 minutes (an average of 0.024 seconds per generated image). Furthermore, we actually generated two batches of Yokai and randomly stitched them together right before the IPFS upload to prevent sniping and make sure the reveal was as fair as possible for the much-loved community.
Right before the upload, Bernard (Gatekeeper) went over each single Yokai by hand to make sure they were not flawed. This manual process took about 12 hours and was finished right before the cut-off for the final upload. This meant another sleepless night for Bernard and myself.
After nearly melting a 72 CPU server over 16 hours of abuse to generate the Yokai Army, I attempted to upload the 25GB army to IPFS. After several attempts and an inconceivable about of googling, it transpired there is a 10GB upload limit in IPFS. At 12 hours before the reveal, this felt like a major setback and it was endangering the time of reveal. I could not accept reducing the image quality after overcoming all of the previous challenges. Simply changing the config did not work and I subsequently needed to amend the source code of the tool bypassing its limits. Breaking the limits became a theme of Akuma. While our website and minting DApp held strong under pressure, the sheer volume of the community broke our Discord, Pre-Mint page and broke OpenSea.
It is truly humbling to see the fantastic vision of Mateo and Bernard come to life on the wonderful world we call the blockchain. I’m glad that I’m the type of developer that always wants to make it work. I do not like saying no to a challenge despite my better judgement. Forging this epic army in the heat of the crucible, the thoughts of the community really spurred me on. The crafting of this army is an art within itself. The work, dedication of the team and amazing community made the Yokai army what it is today and will be the foundation of the epic journey ahead.
https://twitter.com/WhoIsAdeAdev
https://twitter.com/AkumaOrigins
Who is Ade?
Discovering the Yokai
The Yokai’s DNA and colour palette
Contamination Hell
Akuma’s Smart Contract and ERC-721A
Opening the Portal to the Realm
Closing thoughts
Appendix: Failed Yokai Experiments
A lifelong tinkerer and creator. Ade has been a developer for over a decade. His superpower? Versatility. - Gatekeeper
I don’t have any particular languages I code in, I dabble in everything. Building chatbots in python, crafting home automation systems in .NET, developing enterprise applications in JavaScript, and building my own 3d printer with Marlin. Lately I have been experimenting a lot with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain applications for Solana and Ethereum. In my career I have acquired experience in over 10 coding languages.
Blockchain and Web3 are the disruptive technologies of the future. The fundamental principles of giving power back to the people, unlimited transparency and empowerment are truly inspiring. Watching new communities and cultures unfold is incredible to experience. Like many people in this space, I think Web3 and Blockchain in general, is a new frontier that will change the way we live. I’d like to compare it with the Wild West - A lot of things are being set in motion, new technologies arise every day and some cowboys try to take advantage of that - But when the dust settles, the pioneers will drive the future of this powerful technology! The possibilities are limitless, borderless, inclusive and infinite!
During the initial stages of the development cycle, the high-level requirements were discussed as a team in the first design session. The passion and clarity of vision that came across in this design session were a lot to take in at first, but very infectious. The concept was explained and the first sneak peeks were shared. This compelled me to agree to the challenge! Just how challenging it would really be, was yet to be discovered.
One of the most defining features of the Yokai, and a key part of Mateo’s vision is the colour palette. It's important to note that most, if not all, art engines layer attributes randomly and sequentially. With the most recent layer placed on top of the last with no memory of the layers that come before. While simple in concept the implementation was anything but. You can find a deep dive about the colour schemes of our Yokai in this mirror article!
The layers that needed to be ‘forced’ into the algorithm also needed to be remembered throughout. The Yokai’s skin colour would need to be consistent despite the fact that they appear in different orders. For example, a hand may appear before the body and a hat may appear before an ear. Keep in mind; that not every Yokai has a hand, not every Yokai has a visible ear because it is wearing a helmet or hat. Also, for good measure, some Yokai do not have an outfit and are wandering around shirtless.
for (var i = 0; i < layerSelection.length; i++) {
if (
layerSelection[i].name.includes("Base") &&
!layerSelection[i].name.includes(colourPalletteIndex1)
)
dynamicExclusionList.push(layerSelection[i].name);
if (
layerSelection[i].name.includes("Ear") &&
!layerSelection[i].name.includes(colourPalletteIndex1)
)
Mateo really put his heart and soul into this. With over 150 traits that each come in 8 different colours, there were around 1200 different attributes. This leaves the number of combinations extrapolating up to the tens of millions. This also means that the contamination possibilities were seemingly endless. Intercepting the algorithm and surgically removing the contamination at the right time was the hardest part of perfecting the art engine. For example, a total of 57 arrays spanning thousands of lines of code was required to ensure that horns did not poke through a hat or helmet. Some of the hair types worked with a certain set of headwear, ears/mouths worked with a specific set of eye masks but they wouldn’t work with some mouth masks. I’m still having nightmares from perfecting this!
This took many sleepless nights and tens of thousands of Yokai generations to achieve this. We did not give in and remove items for ease of delivery!
You can find some examples of contaminated and failed experiments below this article!
From the offset, it was clear that the team wanted the mint event to be as smooth and affordable as possible. Utilising the ERC-721A token was an absolute must. At first, I was not sure why this ERC-721A token was so important. That was until I did some digging. I’m not going to go into too much detail about this wonderful 721A technology, as it is documented very well by the creators (Azuki) in this article! The token effectively puts the information for multiple mints through as one transaction on the understanding that it’s a multi-mint transaction. This saves a lot of gas costs for the people minting an NFT. Furthermore, the Akuma contract contained only the necessary code to keep it all as lightweight as possible. The results were astonishing and well received by the community. To put into perspective. OG members were able to mint 3 Akuma Origins NFTs with a total gas cost of 16 dollars at a gas indication of 110. I truly hope to see the adoption of the ERC-721A in the wider market. The token is easy to implement and all the necessary documentation is neatly provided by the team over at Azuki - Thank you for showing us the way!
The efficient contract coupled with the decision to lower the mint price really presented an opportunity for new members to the NFT space. These “newcomers” have been guided by the rest of the community and I’m sure they will enjoy exploring what web3 has to offer and do their part to expand the web3 ecosystem.
https://twitter.com/TheMetacash/status/1489270004696731649?s=20&t=JfOB_g9oCtrxgpDpXjRlFQ
Building the army and creating the portal to the realm were challenging. When we thought we were ready to open the gates, there were substantial and unpredicted challenges opening the portal!
Each Yokai has an extremely high level of detail. To make sure this detail is flourished a high resolution is needed. Every single Yokai has the size of 4273x4273 pixels. One of the key points from the initial project discussion was the desire to maintain the quality. While it was suggested multiple times to lower the resolution, the core team always declined. Quality above everything. Each Yokai took 20 seconds to generate. For reference, when working on a previous project, I generated 10,000 images in 4 minutes (an average of 0.024 seconds per generated image). Furthermore, we actually generated two batches of Yokai and randomly stitched them together right before the IPFS upload to prevent sniping and make sure the reveal was as fair as possible for the much-loved community.
Right before the upload, Bernard (Gatekeeper) went over each single Yokai by hand to make sure they were not flawed. This manual process took about 12 hours and was finished right before the cut-off for the final upload. This meant another sleepless night for Bernard and myself.
After nearly melting a 72 CPU server over 16 hours of abuse to generate the Yokai Army, I attempted to upload the 25GB army to IPFS. After several attempts and an inconceivable about of googling, it transpired there is a 10GB upload limit in IPFS. At 12 hours before the reveal, this felt like a major setback and it was endangering the time of reveal. I could not accept reducing the image quality after overcoming all of the previous challenges. Simply changing the config did not work and I subsequently needed to amend the source code of the tool bypassing its limits. Breaking the limits became a theme of Akuma. While our website and minting DApp held strong under pressure, the sheer volume of the community broke our Discord, Pre-Mint page and broke OpenSea.
It is truly humbling to see the fantastic vision of Mateo and Bernard come to life on the wonderful world we call the blockchain. I’m glad that I’m the type of developer that always wants to make it work. I do not like saying no to a challenge despite my better judgement. Forging this epic army in the heat of the crucible, the thoughts of the community really spurred me on. The crafting of this army is an art within itself. The work, dedication of the team and amazing community made the Yokai army what it is today and will be the foundation of the epic journey ahead.
https://twitter.com/WhoIsAdeAdev
https://twitter.com/AkumaOrigins
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