Project Intro
History is A&E Network’s flagship television channel and one of the most popular channels on TV, with broadcasts that reach to nearly 100 million households in the United States and millions more abroad.
In 2022, History sought to make, ahem, history by opening an NFT marketplace to sell original artwork accompaniments to their most popular series, including Alone, Ancient Aliens, The Curse of Oak Island, and The Proof is Out There. Teaming up with History, CMYK designed and developed a microsite landing experience to market the NFTs and educate users on the technology behind them, and to serve as a throughway to the Xooa-hosted marketplace itself where users could see details on each NFT drops and make purchases.
highlights
But our involvement didn’t stop there: we were also responsible for designing, photographing, animating, and, in some cases, physically building the artwork that would become the tokens for sale!
For Ancient Aliens, we enlisted our very talented friend Barry Bruner to create a series of alien portraits in the style of artists as varied as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol, as well as a few in-house creations.
For The Proof is Out There, we re-created some of the most famous cryptid photographs in history, including shots of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and turned the images into 3D graphics that spin and undulate on screen. Our drop for Oak Island consisted of a custom-made and highly detailed illustration map, complete with hidden codes throughout the asset, which can be assembled to solve a cipher and reveal a treasure.
And for Alone, our resident handywoman Alexes McLaughlin (and head of production and senior account manager) constructed two charming forest dwellings out of pretzels, fondant, and found objects, which we then photographed and overlaid special effects onto, such a smoke rising from a chimney and stars twinkling in the background to bring the settings to life.
