“We wanted to make the process as creative as possible to attract artists, we wanted to make this about the artwork as opposed to being a business deal, it is why many of the people working on this project are artists or performers themselves. Just because you are an artist it doesn’t mean you don’t need money – Everyone has to pay bills! Nevertheless, we are trying to make this process oriented around the artwork and help detach artists from having to worry about the technical aspects of such a venture.”
Steve Shaw, Sales and Marketing
How does the process work?
There are five phases for producing machine-generated artwork.
- Consultation
- Processing
- Learning & Optimisation
- Generating
- Listing & Sale
The following sections explain this in detail, we don’t charge for consultation as such there are no fees and charges during the first four phases – When your generated artworks sell, we all make our money!
“We don’t charge for consultation or for the preliniary work, our profit comes from the sale of the generated images, the same as the artist. We are in this together – If we succeed, you succed. We felt this was an important premise for this venture.”
Mark Adkins, Managing Director
The Consultation Phase
During the consultation period, we meet with the artist to discuss their expectations from the process. This leads to looking through the artist’s portfolio, understanding the size of their portfolio and whether the artist has existing photographs of good enough quality and resolution to start the process or whether we require a new photoshoot to photograph the portfolio. The consultation phase can take from 1 to 14 days.
The Processing Phase
Once we have digital copies of all the works we must categorise the images into groups that could make suitable models. The images are prepared for input by our graphic designers and they are loaded onto the machine learning servers. The processing phase can take from 1 to 5 days.
Learning & Optimisation
We execute the machine learning code on the servers with the images as inputs and the code cycles through, generating models and samples through each iteration. We will monitor the process until we feel the models are at their optimum. We then liaise with the artist and discuss the current and historical samples. If the artist is not happy with the result we can re-try the model with different parameters or continue learning where the final iteration left off.
This process can take 1 to 30 days.
Image Generation
Once have the final model we can then generate images from it. We would normally generate 100 images to commence so that we can get an understanding of how unique the images are, the quality of the images and how many images this model will produce before there is noticable repetition. This quality assurance process can take 1 to 5 days.
Listing & Sale
Finally the big day is here where we discuss how we are going to market and sell the images we have generated. We will need to discuss price expectations, marketplaces and mediums. We have a wide array of marketplaces to choose from with varying costs associated.
This process can take 1 to 5 days.
How long does all this take?
It is a consultative process and we are working with the artist. We will discuss each phase as we go via either face-to-face meetings, video conferencing, phone calls or just plain old e-mail if you prefer (we can work however you feel most comfortable). We have given rough guidelines in each section which mean that this process could take between 1 week and 2 months, depending upon the vastness of your portfolio or the complexity of the works.
What if I am not satisfied with the results?
We hope that you will be but at the end of the day it is your artwork. We would always present our best work to you, like you would to your clients. If you are not happy with the results it may be that our algorithms are not quite there yet to meet your individual requirements. With permission, we would hold on to your datasets and continue to work the models as we develop our algorithmns with a view to giving you the results once we have perfected the model.
Is there a lot of paperwork involved?
Not from our perspective. We would sign a single contract between two parties and you would become our client which means that we would generate artwork based on your style and portfolio and from your generated images we would sell the works as NFT’s and/or as printed mediums and split the profits.
How much does all this cost?
At the end of the day, the hardware and skills required to generate artwork can take significant time and expense. Our operational costs to run and maintain servers with high-end GPU’s is costly in pure power alone. As such whilst we do not charge on-boarding fees and soak up the initial costs, we must recoup these losses.
What profit will I receive?
We adopt a similar arrangement to producers and artists and apply a 50% per party split. There are intrinsic costs involved with the preparation and generation of the artwork. Once these costs are removed the Phloxx team generally makes 20% net profit from this venture after we have accounted for costs.
As such when an item is sold we will give you 50% of the proceeds.
Royalties will be set at 6% of which you will receive 3%.
How will I receive my money?
We are very flexible on that front, but the traditional method is via bank transfer or cryptocurrency to your designated wallet. We can work in various currencies and we will discuss this during the consultancy phase.
When will I receive my money?
To put it simply, after the sale of an item. This is dependant on whether we are running auctions, which marketplaces they are listed or whether they are sold on e-commerce sites. Nevertheless, you will receive money either at the time of sale (in certain circumstances), or when the money clears with us (i.e. for credit card transactions on e-commerce sites).
Still have questions?
If you still have questions please feel free to contact us, we are more than happy to help and discuss matters with you.