Exploring NFT Art On Tezos (Part 12) – Knights Of Tezonia

An Introduction To The Knights Of Tezonia Interview

For the 12th installment in the XTZ News Exploring NFT Art on Tezos series, we caught up with the talented and innovative artist, Discowarlock. If you’ve ever encountered his breathtaking 3D environments, you will likely be familiar with his work since it is truly an impressive experience. If you haven’t seen his work yet, you are definitely in for a treat! 

Discowarlock’s impressively realistic, welcoming, and meditative creations evoke a sense of peace and tranquility that one might experience at the mouth of the forest on a breezy fall day.

To get a sense for his talent, let yourself go as you drift off into one of his imaginary natural dreamscapes such as his Gaia’s 4 Seasons, which follows a serene forest walkway through the changes of the seasons.

With sound effects you might expect from a well-crafted ambient nature recording, you can almost feel the wind, rain, and other natural elements displayed. One could easily escape into these picturesque dreamscapes and dissolve into an almost meditative state.

It is as though you are a part of the scenery, simply observing, as a part of the beautiful and peaceful moments of nature, no doubt an experience we all could use once in a while during our busy days! 

Recently, Discowarlock has expanded the scope of his uniquely engrossing 3D environments to create an engrossing collectible series, aptly called Knights of Tezonia. embarked on a collectible series that is equally well crafted, aptly called Knights of Tezonia (KOT).

Over the last couple of weeks, Discowarlock has expanded his uniquely captivating 3D style into the collectible market with his new series that he aptly named Knights of Tezonia (KOT). KOT is a series of 500 unique 1/1 knight NFTs that is being released on Hicetnunc (Knights of Tezonia). Each Knight has a unique style, weapon, armor, background scenery, and music.

The series is set in a fantasy-like realm called The Kingdom of Tezonia which he describes as “…a world powered by magic and wonder”.

The remaining knights have joined together “to stop the corruption that has been slowly spreading.” The images come alive with motion and light that is reminiscent of a fantasy-based massively multiplayer online video game.

Discowarlock agreed to have a virtual meeting to discuss KOT with us so that we could learn more about the series and his plans for it. We also got to learn more about his background, motivations and his attraction to the Tezos blockchain.

Thanks to Discowarlock for your thoughtful and interesting responses!  

Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss your work!

Please tell me a bit about your background and your art. Where do you live and how has that influenced your work? 

Hey no problem, thanks for taking the time to ask me questions!

So I’m a software engineer by day, NFT artist by night, in terms of art, I’ve always had a knack for storytelling and creating worlds, so it was natural that I wanted to develop NFTs which told stories.

I like to consider myself a “jack of all trades, master of none” as I can do a lot of things but I’m also not super specialized.

I currently live near Seattle, WA, US but I’m originally from Toronto, Canada. Now being on the west coast and being surrounded by so much tech has definitely pushed me more into software, but I’ve always wanted to build and develop video games my whole life, so I started developing games after I graduated university.

I’ve been following and enjoying you for a while now. Many of your pieces give one the sense that they could jump right into them and play them like a video game. Knights of Tezonia has a similar “video game” feeling. What inspired you to create Knights of Tezonia?

Knights of Tezonia was born one year ago, it was originally called Templar’s Verdict, a top down indie game that I had been working on while I took a break from NFTs.

It wasn’t until after my Synthcity Streets that I really started fleshing out what I had wanted to do with my failed indie game venture. I wanted to create something unique, functional, and fun, all at the same time.

So after really studying the market and seeing the endless cycles of 10k collections, I knew I wanted to do something bigger. Too many people outside of NFTs view NFTs as jpegs, but NFTs are more than that. So I dusted off TV and KOT was born as a way to showcase that NFTs carry more weight than a jpeg.

Your format is different from most other NFTs. Can you tell me a bit about the software/platform that you used to create Knights of Tezonia (KOT) without getting too technical.

I do 60% of my work in Unity, that’s where all the magic happens, I code all the scripts and functionality to make the “worlds” come alive and build the scenes here as well.

I also would say 20% of my work comes from my sketch book, I tend to sketch everything out prior to bringing it to the computer, then the rest of the tools I use are Adobe products like after effects and illustrator so I can create the logos and gifs.

You have experimented with a few different methods of releasing KOT. Tell me about your thought process and what you have learned so far.

So trying to drop a collection without being unfair is hard, I figured swapping in groups of 5 at different times of the day would be helpful, but I feel like it still lacked. I like auctions for the legendaries, but I also felt that it only caters to those with deep pockets.

So I settled on raffles after a friend told me that’s how other projects are doing it, and so far I really like it. It’s been fair and has allowed me to begin to interact with the community. 

What initially attracted you to create NFTs on Tezos?

A good friend of mine offered me 1 tez to come to and mint as I had grown tired of minting on ETH to no avail. The first month on HEN was chaos, I was hooked and since then there was no looking back, Tezos or bust! 

What do you like most about creating NFTs on Tezos? 

I enjoy seeing people enjoy my work. Seeing these worlds I draw on paper come to life and getting positive feedback always reminds me that I’m on the right path and I’m building the right thing, and so it inspires me to create more and I also love to push myself to grow and challenge myself to try new things. 

How do you envision the evolution of NFTs? Where do you see KOT within that vision? 

I see NFTs soon becoming apart of everyday life, and I really hope KOT comes out as one of the greats. In 3-5 years people will be talking about the first big boom like how we talk about Cryptopunks now. I hope that this project and any project I work on for that matter, are still kicking. I’d love to grow Tezonia into a game like RuneScape so I’m excited to be here early and lay that foundation.

Thanks again for taking the time to discuss this with me. I’m really enjoying these as they come out and I will continue to follow KOT as it develops!

Hey no problem, thanks for taking the time to ask me questions. 

Stay up to date on the latest Knights of Tezonia developments on Twitter and Discord.

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