The Birth of the Happy Cat Koh Lanta NFT Collection

I took the plunge and created an NFT Collection in cyberspace to celebrate my passion for cats. Yes, even at my age I love to try new things, and so should you. Including Koh Lanta in the collection name is because I’m very happy that I picked Thailand and Koh Lanta for my retirement. Looking at this collection as a celebration of both my love for cats and for my home here seem appropriate as the planet begins to open up post-pandemic.

Designing the Happy Cat Koh Lanta Collection

Designing the collection took longer than anticipated, not due to the processing for it’s creation, but due to the thought that went into it. I first had to pick a main sketch to base the collection on. It was natural that I would pick my happy cat face, the sketch I have been doodling on everything since I was a kid of 3. It was at this age I got my first cat, when I totally and hopelessly fell in love with cats. My passion for cats has continued throughout my life. It provides me with so much happiness and purpose I think I’d be lost without my passion for felines.

Numerology and Symbolism

Once I had my design I had to figure out what my collection would be like. I decided that I wanted to mint 18 images as this is a very lucky number for Jewish people. I remember when I was younger I’d get gifts of $18 on my birthday from family members and friends of my parents. As I got older, I too would gift $18 to others, and pick the 18th of the month for days to do special things.

For each of the 18 images, I had to figure out something that would make it unique from the others. I decided on a mix of colors and to include fish, my cats favorite food. To continue to numerology, I decided that some of the images would have 13 fish, and that some would have a mix of colored fish, and others would have 1 fish a different color as the outlier. I love outliers as they tell us so much about the whole.

Deciding on the Image Name and Description

Figuring out what each image would look like took time and there was a lot of redesign as I thought about it. But that wasn’t all I had to decide. I also had to give each image a name and a description. This was a very creative process as I wanted the name to reflect what the image represented based on my retirement in a foreign country. This made it even more meaningful for me, beyond my passion for cats. The images truly represent my transition from a high tech career in Canada, to a retired expatriate in Thailand. This became a very personal experience and helped me see how I’ve changed and developed, and how I now look at the world and life, in this difficult period on the planet.

Developing the Images

I developed the images from a photo of my happy cat face sketch. Then I used a basic draw software application to draw the fish and change the background and fill colors on the images. It was very easy to do and I ended up with about 25 images. I then had to pick the 18 for the collection. This seems simple, but it took a few days as I kept changing my mind about which image best fit the name and description. I actually enjoyed this whole process and found it creatively satisfying.

Easy to Create/Mint the Images on OpenSea

OpenSea is one of the top sites for NFTs, and it provides a super easy process for creating NFTs and for building a collection. I basically followed the prompts to create my first image and then made selections to add each additional image to the collection. It was time consuming as I had to be careful to ensure each image had the name and description assigned to it.

I made a few mistakes with duplicating images, giving the wrong name to come and got a few descriptions mixed up. However, I was simple to fix even though it took time to go through all the processing steps.

Pricing My Collection

I’m currently stalled at deciding the pricing for my Collection. My 18 NFTs are in cyberspace on OpenSea, but they have no pricing. They can be bid on, but that isn’t the same as providing a price. Since I’m not doing this to make money nor trade in cryptocurrency, I’m not sure how to do this. I can price some and make sure that a few have insane prices to ensure they remain in my possession. It is doubtful any will sell, but I want to make sure at least a handful won’t sell.

Another factor I have to consider is the cost of ‘gas’ that I’ll have to pay when I set the price for each image. The gas or processing fee, for minting an image is based on many factors and could be as much as $50 for each NFT. The cost of gas for pricing all my 18 images will make this fun exercise extremely expensive and unaffordable. I may price one and leave the others for now. So far it hasn’t cost me anything.