Lore

Set the scene… A mysterious, off-the-grid compound houses a top secret Laboratory where mad scientists are conducting a series of experiments to enhance human creativity. But one of these experiments has produced some unexpected side-effects : the Test Subjects have turned Possessed!

The lore gives us the creative foundation for the art, the brand and the community. As we grow the lore will be expanded upon and designed in more detail. Who else lives in this universe? What impact will the Possessed Outbreak have on the planet? These questions and more will be explored in a series of ongoing experiments post mint.

Art

The art of this first collection focusses on the 'Test Subjects' that have been experimented on in the lab. Each character has its Blessed (normal human state) and Possessed (wild and creative state). The two states animate seamlessly between each other.

Each NFT will be a fully animated character, with the ability to change the 'default state' on-chain. This means you'll have the ability to use either the Blessed or Possessed state as your static pfp, as well as having access to the fully animated version.

🚨 Alpha alert 🚨

The way we have generated The Possessed characters is quite unique. Whilst the final NFT will be an animated GIF, the characters themselves are first generated through a process called Lottie. This means every trait and every character has a version that is entirely created with code. We'll be giving holders access to this code, plus some fun experiences (such as code that turns your character Possessed on-hover!) so you can host your Possessed character on your own server and begin to use them in entirely new ways.

Values and purpose

We believe that every person on the planet has a creative side - whether they know it or not! We're here to reawaken the worlds creativity and inspire the next creative uprising. Because more creativity leads to more innovation and more fulfilled lives.

We have three central values that feed in to all of the things we do:

Creativity: We believe that every human born possesses creativity. When we're 3 years old our imagination, curiosity and creativity is at an all time high. As we grow older it is educated out of us. We believe that creativity and passion is an essential ingredient for a fulfilled life, and that's why everything we do will be to help you embrace your creative inner-child.

Collaboration: We’re big believers that great things happen when we work together. Challenging each other to experiment in new ways creates unexpected results and innovation comes from the unexpected.

Community: There is such strength in community as we’ve seen with the posse. Discovering people who share your passions and growing with them creates a real sense of meaning. Our community is made up of like-minded people who look after each other and encourage one-another to be the best they can be.

Team

The team is led by Joe and Tom. Here’s a bit of background info for those that don’t know our journey to this point…

Joe is the artist and co-creator with over a decade of experience creating and scaling global brands. Having run a successful design studio for 7 years, he brings expertise in creating brands and running an effective business. He's also writing this in the 3rd person for some reason (hello 👋)

Tom is the lead Dev and co-creator. Until recently Tom ran a tech company in London called Hubble, which he grew to a team of 50 and raised over $10m in funding. The Possessed is the first time I’ve had the chance to work with Tom this closely on something, and it’s been apparent how insanely talented he is. A multi-faceted developer with the ability to produce magic.

The rest of the team comprises of some incredible builders and community leaders: Shout out to everyone who helped us get this far; Chris (Rockstar dev), Gigi (Community/Collabs), Dr Shhh (Head Lab Tech), Dr Lost, Dr Lumi, Dr Mike, Dr Chels, Dr N, (Lab techs), Hunter (Dev) - we love you all.

And a special mention to the Hazmat Dispersal unit who have been star members of the posse. Easymoney, Lossie, WizBubba, Diya, Jarn, Fiesta, Bravo, Lizzy, Zippy, Possessed Lab Report, Matt Periphery, Mitch, Frenchie, Emilee Rose, Arlo, Zuko, Yugheld, Momma Bear, Sandy, Ruggsly, SkyWonderBoy, and Dyno!

Collabs

Collaboration is one of our values, and it has been a pleasure to work with a number of amazing projects since we first launched on Twitter.

Collaborations vary from project to project; sometimes they are a brilliant private conversation that offer an insight from a project that has been through the process before. Others are art collaborations that see our art style fuse with that of another artists. And occasionally we've done experience based collaborations that collide communities; such as our recent discord experience "The Rift" which created a shared experience for the Posse and The Galverse community.

Some of our Lab Partners over the recent months have included: Invisible Friends, Moonbirds, Deekay, Kaiju Kingz, Alien Frens, 3Landers and Godjira to name just a few.

🚨 Alpha Alert 🚨 some of the names above, and potentially some unnamed projects; will be appearing in our next experiment: The Anomalies. More details on this below.

We announced our first anomaly this week…

https://twitter.com/ThePossessedNFT/status/1541891345551425542?s=20&t=BKa5b2sLsvspqvbrWYJzGA

Experiences

As a project we wanted to do things differently, and show the Web3 space what we're capable of building. We’ve created a number of completely custom experiences that have been 'firsts' in web3. I wanted to take this opportunity to relive and celebrate some of those moments and celebrate the team for building such a unique approach.

Test subject cards

An industry first for giving out allowlist spots - we created an entirely custom web experience that allows members of the community to check there AL status by connecting their social accounts. If you're lucky to be a test subject you'll receive a personalised, fully animated Security Pass secures a spot to mint a Possessed NFT and gives access to hidden areas in the P4SD Lab (our discord).

https://twitter.com/MRFLICKGOD/status/1541579502840684545?s=20&t=BKa5b2sLsvspqvbrWYJzGA

Emergency Broadcast

When accessing the discord, most servers require a simple verification process. We decided to turn this verification into another brand experience. We created an audio file that had been leaked by a 'lab insider', sending out an emergency broadcast to the outside world. We wrote the script and worked with a Voice over artist and sound designer to create the final experience. The broadcast gave the public the secret passphrase to gain entry into the Lab Waiting Room.

https://twitter.com/ThePossessedNFT/status/1513606632810467330?s=20&t=BKa5b2sLsvspqvbrWYJzGA

System malfunction

When we launched our discord we had already created a large community via Twitter. We had 100k followers with an incredible amount of completely organic engagement. Giving everyone immediate access to the discord wasn't feasible, so we created another experience to keep the wider community engaged. All Test Subjects (about 150 people at the time) could speak in the Waiting Room, whilst members of the public (about 70k) could view only. That was until we ran our next Experiment; ‘The Systems Upgrade’. During this upgrade, the roles of Test Subjects and Public were switched! Suddenly, there was a 'malfunction' and all 70k members of the public could speak, and all Test Subjects were locked out! Needless to say, we crashed discord! But it was an incredible experience that remains one of my favourite moments throughout the project.

https://twitter.com/thel0stb0y/status/1516703948920471556?s=20&t=yx0S4RhMkhcpuwhkMRffIA

Permit desk

The permit desk was a continuation of the idea above. We wanted to onboard more people into the discord without opening the floodgates. The Permit Desk was yet another custom bot built by the team that granted a 'Visitor Pass' to members in the discord, giving them 15 mins of access to speak!

Alongside the above experiences we ran several puzzles and competitions that were designed to encourage the posse to get creative. From creative writing to a full scale music competition where we received thousands of minutes worth of entries - all of which at an incredible standard of quality. All of the winners were then played during a Possessed FM radio show that was hosted by our amazing mod team and community members Lossie and Zuko - big shout out to all who brought this to life so amazingly.

https://twitter.com/ThePossessedNFT/status/1527319109264113666?s=20&t=BKa5b2sLsvspqvbrWYJzGA

Raffle and Mint experience

Tom and I hope our skillsets can combine to help build the future of Web3 and set a new bar of standard for what is expected from projects. That one of the reasons why we didn’t use an off-the-shelf minting product. We wanted to build a custom experience throughout which resulted in our Public Raffle ‘Polygraph’ website as well as a custom Minting experience.

Raffle audit

We had an a staggering number of people enter the public raffle. This was amazing to see, particularly as the raffle took place during the recent market crash. It's important to us that the project is minted by the right people, which is why we did a number of things to protect the integrity of the raffle: You can read more about this process HERE

The contract

Tom has been working extremely hard to create the best possible contract for the project. It is a mixture of the best industry standards with a number of custom upgrades to reduce gas and improve the experience. We believe we now have a contract that is capable of some of the lowest possible gas fees the space has seen.

Of course when it comes to contracts, it pays to be extra careful. So we enlisted some of the spaces best and brightest to audit the contract and offer any advice. Thank you to Cygaar (Azuki), Mikker (RCC), and Goldmember (Lyke Island) who gave their time to audit the contract with a fresh pair of eyes, and I'm pleased to say the feedback from all of them was extremely positive. We're ready to go!

You can read a review from Cygaar here.

Minting

Our mint will take place on Thursday 30th June and will be split into two phases:

Phase 1: Test subjects: The posse is such a special community and we're so grateful to everyone who has been on this journey with us! We want you to be the first people to get their hands on a Possessed NFT.  Phase 1 will be open for 10 hours, starting at 9am EST, 30th June.

Phase 2: Public Raffle: Once the Test subjects phase has ended (7pm EST), all members who have been granted access to the public raffle will be able to mint 1 NFT each. The window will be open until the collection is sold out. As mentioned above, this phase will be oversubscribed so we recommend you minting early for the best chance of being successful.

Reveal

We'd love to make the reveal time as short as possible, but given the size of the project and it's animated nature, we are looking at a 1 week reveal period. This allows us to to go over every pixel before they’re published for good.

Future plans

Firstly, when it comes to 'roadmaps' we have mixed feelings. Let's be clear: The Possessed has Tom and I's full time attention and we have plans to build a long term brand. But we're not convinced that the typical web3 roadmap is the correct way to map our future. As time passes, new opportunities arise, different ideas are sparked and what you wanted to do 3 months before may pale in comparison with your latest ambitions.

With that said, we have a lot we want to do! You may have seen our 'Leaked dossier' that hinted at our future plans. This is intended to give you a flavour of some of the things we are and will be building following mint. I'll explain each of them in more detail below:

The Anomalies

Building on our central pillar of creativity and collaboration we’ve created a series called ‘The Anomalies’. These 1/1’s fuse our art style with that of some of Lab Partners creating a unique and truly special merge of some of the best art in the space. Each of these 1/1’s will be airdropped at random to our holders in the weeks post mint. As mentioned above, the first of our collaborators has been announced: Deekaymotion! The remaining anomalies will be announced via twitter soon.

P4SDevices

As mentioned earlier, we’ve created a number of custom experiences and technology that raises the bar of what’s expected in the space. From our art generator, custom WL & cards, discord experiences and custom bots, our plan is to make some these experiences available for the web3 community to use. We hope that by helping to build the future of web3 we can secure The Possessed’s place within it.

PSSSSD Apparel

As with everything we do we, we aim to push the needle here. We may do a small run ‘merch’ drop at some point, but PSSSSD Apparel is more than that. We wanted something more than just our logo on a hoody. The collection is designed to have a streetwear influence, and our brand concept creates a really interesting territory to explore within physical apparel. We’re looking forward to bringing The Possessed to life in the real world!

P4SD Incubator

Having watched the posse grow and seen how many incredibly talented people are out in the world of web3, we've been looking to find a way to give back and surface some of the unsung heroes. P4SD incubator will look to onboard creatives and give them the tools, backing, connects and insights we’ve established from the Possessed in order to help them launch their own projects.

Lab Directory

As you know, we’re all about the C, C, C. The Lab Directory gets to the heart of that. The idea is for a curated directory of creatives in the web3 space. Artists, musicians, Dancers, sound designers, rappers - you name it. A place to show your skills, connect, collaborate and build something. It’s about empowering the community and hopefully bringing more opportunities to the community.

Project X

The Possessed is just the beginning. Project X is the codename of our follow up collection, designed to expand on our lore, begin to define the universe of The Possessed and reward holders. There are several ideas for what this can be and we’re excited to see which avenue we’ll explore first.

For continued updates follow us below:

The Possessed Twitter

Whatthefurr Twitter

tmw Twitter

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Rather than regurgitate my LinkedIn bio I wanted to give you the story behind the things that formed who I am as an illustrator, what led me to building a successful design studio and some details on the origins of The Possessed.

Firstly, Inspiration

Without getting too pretentious, I believe there are two kinds of inspiration:

Subconscious inspiration - things you’ve naturally absorbed over your life that have left an impression

Conscious inspiration - things you’ve actively searched out for with the goal of being inspired.

The subconscious

Early influences are the subconscious ones - you have little control over them, they just hit you like a runaway train. 🚂 Fresh Prince of Bel-Air  🚂 Super Mario Bros 🚂 Space Jam 🚂 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These things were seared into my brain as a kid and will always have an imprint on my art.

The Conscious

As you get older you form a clearer understanding of what you like, what feels fun and daring. You’re no longer just hit with content, you start to search it out and actively discover new things. Visual inspirations were always my focus - music had never really done it for me. That was until I found Hiphop, and it was a game changer. I became hooked on the The Black album, College Dropout, Illmatic and Ready to Die.

Music is a different type of inspiration, its energy and attitude can influence everything. Even now, if I need to be ultra productive I’ll engage beast mode by putting on the most intense rap songs I can find. Over time music gave more direct artistic references: Kanye’s Murakami bear, Pharrell’s Billioinaire Boys Club characters and the Gorillaz clan.

At 18 I knew I wanted to pursue something creative with my life and decided to try and get my hands dirty rather than go to university. I managed to nab a junior designer role at a local design studio and after faking-it-to-make for 2 years I got pretty good and was on my way to the big smoke.

The East

If hiphop was a big influence, it was nothing compared to my new home in East London. Working and living in Shoreditch exposed me to a whole new world or people, fashion, art, cuisine and music.

It’s impossible to live in East London and not be influenced by the street art. Beautiful works that spring up over night and disappear by the following morning. A constantly revolving urban gallery. It was food for the creative mind, and it was this time that I really began to focus on my illustrations.

Doodling

Alongside working as a designer I started a side project called ‘a doodle a day’. The idea was to start drawing and not stop until the page was full. The first ones weren’t amazing, but they got better each time. Eventually I began creating larger pieces and was featured in a couple of galleries in London. The next stage of evolution was to merge my digital design skillset and my illustration to introduce animation to the characters, like this dancing 2 Chainz…

My doodles were always detailed and full of many characters. Always more conceptual than realistic. I enjoyed drawing unusual creatures more than a perfectly formed human. I often personified inanimate objects like Axes and Speakers. For me it was about creating something full of personality and full of detail. I cared just as much about the tiny details of a characters eyeball as I did about how the entire piece looked from a distance. I loved the idea that you could see something new every time you looked at one of my illustrations - and that’s something we’ve tried to do with The Possessed too.

Point Studio

Fast forward a few years to where I met Tom. In a dark basement office in London Bridge whilst we started-up our own businesses. We became mates. We shared beers. He beat me at tennis. And squash. And table tennis… come to think of it I’m not sure why I still hang out with him. In my defence it’s hard to beat a 6’6” wing span!

Anyway… whilst he was building Hubble, I founded Point.Studio with my partner Anneka (who deserves much more than this fleeting mention). Point is a brand and digital design studio working with some of the worlds most exciting startups and scale-ups. We work with companies across Europe, North America and Asia who are doing things differently and are striving to have a positive impact on the world.

We’ve worked with businesses who are doing remarkable things: from building the A.I. infrastructure for the world, and giving individuals control of their health, to a sustainable cycle brand and even a new, natural alternative to cremation and burial (the latter being a very fun and unusual design challenge!).

Over the last few years we worked with some amazing people, grew a team, went remote, evolved our design practice and had a ball creating brands and digital experiences that have helped our clients grow to become multi-million dollar businesses.

Web3 me

Working with startups, accelerators and VCs keeps you on your toes. You’re always at the forefront of new technologies and that’s where my interest in crypto began. Bitcoin first hit my radar back when Tom and I were in that basement in London Bridge, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I really took notice. Bitcoin introduced me to crypto, and in 2021 ETH introduced me to NFTs.

Tom and I had always wanted to do a collab, but it wasn’t until we’d fallen for the NFT space that it felt like we had the perfect combination of right time, right skill set, right medium. After a few weeks of sharing concepts we had something we loved. A new kind of pfp collection - animated, generative and driven by a unique concept. I shared my first character prototype with Tom on 01.01.2022… and The Possessed was born.

We’re looking forward to sharing more about our plans for The Possessed as a brand and the long term future vision of the project. Be sure to follow the journey on Twitter with @tmw_builds, @whatthefurr and @ThePossessedNFT to hear about it first.

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