Los Angeles, California Jul 4, 2019 (Issuewire.com) - BlockPunk, a Singapore-based entertainment tech startup focused on blockchain technology, is pleased to announce that pre-orders are now open for the world’s first collectible anime blockchain art prints on blockpunk.net.
One print will be given away to a lucky fan at Anime Expo 2019 by the Zombie Land Saga creators themselves at the BlockPunk stage on Saturday, July 6th at 12:30 pm (PST) in the Petree Hall at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The BlockPunk platform turns digital assets into limited edition collectible items by recording all creations and exchanges of artworks on the blockchain. This allows content creators to offer provably scarce and collectible digital content directly to fans.
“Effectively, creators can easily protect their rights by recording on blockchain and monetize their content by selling limited edition digital copies and even earn when fans trade items peer-to-peer”, said Julian Lai-Hung, BlockPunk’s CEO & CoFounder.
BlockPunk collaborated with its investor Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (“DNP”), Japan’s largest printing company, to bring their high-end premium art print product to fans around the world. The prints are already well known to anime fans in Japan as Primo Art. Today, however, through BlockPunk, international fans will be able to appreciate them for the first time.
The DNP Primo Art is printed on demand in Japan, using a high-end printer with an extended colour spectrum and adjusted by DNP’s printing director in consultation with the original artist for the optimal result. A tamper-resistant NFC chip is then attached to the artwork itself linked to BlockPunk’s digital certificate of authenticity secured on the Ethereum blockchain. Each print also comes with a digital crypto collectible of the same title. You can use your phone to scan and bring up the certificate to highlight the creator, title details, provenance and confirm your ownership of the art.
The prints will feature unique character designs from MAPPA’s hit anime series Zombie Land Saga created for BlockPunk by the series character designer - Kasumi Fukagawa. There are a total of three (3) individual character designs for pre-order now, each featuring the characters in wedding dresses.
DNP’s proprietary Primo Art product that until now has only been available in Japan is combined with BlockPunk’s blockchain NFC technology. Each print is printed on-demand in Japan and then shipped worldwide to fans with the NFC tag. Digital certification on the blockchain provides an immutable record that gives owners a higher level of authenticity and copies protection than ever before. That immutable record also gives creators increased control over their digital rights and licenses. It offers proof of ownership for fans that increases the value of the physical product.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with BlockPunk and DNP to offer these beautiful art prints to fans outside Japan for the first time. Fukagawa-sensei’s reimagination of the Zombie Land Saga idols is stunning. We see global partnerships as key and look forward to where new technologies like blockchain will take us.” said Chief Producer Makoto Kimura from MAPPA.
“We are building an ecosystem that connects anime creators and fans worldwide. With the release of on-demand physical prints direct from the source, we hope to provide studios and creators a more efficient channel for merchandise and offer fans an authentic direct connection with the creators”, said Julian Lai-Hung, BlockPunk’s CTO & Co-Founder.
Anime fans around the world usually stream all the new release series as soon as they are available in Japan. Fans fall in love with their favorite characters and want to consume merchandise right away, but not all official goods are available outside of Japan; which has spawned a huge market in pirated goods.
With approximately 40% of the $20 billion-dollar anime industry being merchandise-related, there is a huge opportunity to give back to studios and creators while increasing efficiency in the supply chain, with an assurance that higher margins actually go back to the creator. “More money back to the original creators we hope will allow for more great anime, more direct connections with fans and less piracy,” said Julian Lai-Hung.
Each order includes the DNP Primo Art printed on demand in Japan, BlockPunk NFC-enabled digital certificate of authenticity secured on the Ethereum blockchain, Crypto Art Collectible of the same title to own. Items will ship in order from the end of the pre-order period. All sales are final. Check out blockpunk.net for more details.
About BlockPunk https://blockpunk.net/
BlockPunk is an entertainment startup that uses blockchain to give creators more control over their digital rights. BlockPunk enables any creator to easily sell collectible digital content using the blockchain so fans can claim true digital ownership and sell peer-to-peer. Its investors include SGInnovate (Innovation fund of the Singapore government) Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd, SeedPlus, Hustle Fund, DLE Capital and Entrepreneur First.
Julian Lai-Hung was head of anime and Japan content at Netflix and VP of digital distribution at Warner Bros. A Wharton MBA, he also co-founded Digital Magic Labs an Internet pioneer in Japan. Jatin Shah is an expert in distributed systems with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University and a BTech in Computer Science from IIT. Jatin joined the Linkedin product team in Silicon Valley pre-IPO and has led product and data science teams at Yahoo, InMobi, and Quikr.
About Zombie Land Saga https://zombielandsaga.com/
A typical morning. The usual music. Their normal lives. The peace these seven girls experience will suddenly be destroyed. By the living dead... zombies. A reality that they never wanted a part of, an amazing and terrifying zombie world. They all share one wish: "We want to live." These girls will struggle through this saga, in order to achieve a miracle. MAPPA, Avex Pictures, and Cygames team up to bring you a juicy, 100% original anime. A timeless shocker for all audiences, a brand new style of zombie anime, will soon rise. Zombie Land Saga was one of the most popular anime series of 2018 and was voted Anime of the Year at the 2019 Tokyo Anime Award Festival.
About Kasumi Fukagawa https://twitter.com/4_7t
Fukagawa-sensei is an animator, character designer, game designer and illustrator based in Tokyo. She was recently nominated for Best Character Design at the Crunchyroll ANIME AWARDS 2019 for her work on Zombie Land Saga where she was the lead character designer. Other credits include Idolish7, PERSONA3 THE MOVIE, DanganRonpa The Animation, Is the order a Rabbit? and DEVIL SURVIVOR2 the ANIMATION.
About Studio MAPPA http://mappa.co.jp/mappa_e/works.html
Studio Mappa is one of Japan's leading independent studios that has produced some of the most iconic anime titles of recent years including Zombie Land Saga, Yuri On Ice, Sarazanmai, Bananafish, Kakegurui, Inuyashiki, and In this Corner of the World.
About Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. http://www.dnp.co.jp/eng/
DNP was founded in 1876 and is one of the world’s largest printing technology companies. DNP serves around 30,000 corporate clients in Japan and internationally touching millions of consumers across multiple printing and IT products and services. In recent years, DNP has a renewed focus on promoting the distribution of Japanese anime, manga and game content across digital and physical media and supporting the creator community through the ‘FUN’S PROJECT’ a collaboration project with Japanese creators. In addition, DNP operates the Tokyo Anime Center in the DNP Plaza in Tokyo as a focal point for appreciation and promotion of Anime culture.
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BlockPunk natacha@rousseaulinares.com 3233526417 NA https://blockpunk.net/en
