How To Create NFT Artwork – Tools And Resources

So what if you’re not the most artistic person in the room? The entry barriers to creating your own artwork has never been lower with the help of modern technology. This article introduces some of the best tools and resources to create your own NFT artwork for your next collection. Let’s go!

how to create nft artwork

Table of Contents

Free Tools To Create NFT Artwork

If you’re new to graphic design, you can try out these free tools before you jump in with both feet. Most platforms typically charge a premium to access more useful features, but the free packages on these platforms will be sufficient to at least get the job done. However, we do recommend the premium packages if you are serious about creating quality artwork. 

1) One Mint (NFT Art Generator): Gregory Marcilhacy and his team of 5 created this tool as a no code NFT collection generator. To date, thousands of NFT collections have been created on this platform. The company launched back in September 2021 and has since expanded the ecosystem by adding the traits economy and dynamic NFTs. The traits marketplace allows individual NFT traits to be traded, creating many new opportunities for many NFT collections. 

The platform is currently offering its services for free to collections that have up to 100 NFTs. Whereas a 10k NFT collection will set you back $529. Creators can create as much as 20k NFTs which will cost them $999. At the moment, One Mint supports Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Avax, Binance, and Fantom, charging an initial sale commission of 4.9%.

one mint
One Mint’s very own NFT collection: One Mint Genesis. Credit: @OneMintNFT

2) Similarly, Appy Pie is a free, no code NFT creator that can generate up to 10k NFTs. The platform boasts more than 10m customers including Decathlon, Nike, Deloitte, and other large brands. In addition to being ISO certified and EU GDPR compliant, they have also been featured on Forbes, Tech Crunch, and other top media outlets. 

Appy Pie provides a combination of tools to create complete NFT collections, with the help of a strong support team. Its Basic package is free and allows the creation of 4 complete NFT collections. However, it does limit several features such as NFT minting, support and assistance, background remover, and other features that may come in handy. Nevertheless, the Like a Pro package is only $6 per month. This package unlocks all the available features on the platform and supports unlimited NFT creations.

3) If you are planning to build on The Sandbox, you can also use VoxEdit to edit, design, and animate your voxel-based NFTs. You can even sell your NFTs directly on The Sandbox marketplace. 

On a side note, do check out this guide on how to launch your NFT project with no coding experience

4) NFT-Inator is a free tool that let’s you generate a large collection of NFT designs using their ready-to-go templates. You can also upload your own custom designs as well. The tool lets you easily generate all the design variations needed for your collection along with the metadata for the traits.

nft art generator
A glimpse of the NFT-inator app.

Generate Art With Artificial Intelligence

Remember when Jason Allen’s AI-generated “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” won first place at the Colorado State Fair and outraged tons of people? In case you missed it, AI art is becoming a thing and you can take advantage of it to create your NFT art. 

OpenAI’s DALL·E 2 has been making headlines for awhile now with more than a few art pieces going viral online. The AI system is able to generate original and realistic images with only simple text descriptions. What started as a research project by Cornell University is now revolutionising the entire industry. 

There are various functionalities within DALL·E 2 that can supercharge your NFT artwork: 

  • Users can expand images beyond what’s in the original canvas;
  • Users can edit existing images using natural language captions; 
  • Add and remove elements including their shadows, reflections, and textures; and 
  • Create different variations of an existing image

While DALL·E 2 represents a significant upgrade over its predecessor, you need to get on the waitlist to access its beta version. 

DALL·E 2 waitlist: https://labs.openai.com/waitlist

The Midjourney bot on Discord allows users to generate images using the /imagine command. The AI system puts together artwork from real human painters, illustrators, and digital artists, making the images look like real human paintings. New members can refer to the Midjourney Documentation to get started and have 25 free attempts in the Discord server. Users also have the option to subscribe to any of the 5 membership plans if they wish to continue using the service. 

Midjourney Discord Bot: https://discord.gg/midjourney

There are several other upcoming platforms that build on the latent diffusion model such as Imagen by Google Brain and Stable Diffusion by Stability AI. However, one caveat to AI-generated artwork is the rights to the artwork. For instance DALL·E 2 prohibits commercial usage of its images but the beta version is currently allowing full usage rights. Also, there can be possible copyright infringements given that these artworks are generated using existing art.

Stable Diffusion Demo: https://huggingface.co/spaces/stabilityai/stable-diffusion

Thor having coffee with Iron Man on the moon. Credit: Midjourney Discord Bot

How To Hire An Artist To Draw NFT Art?

If you would prefer to outsource the heavy-lifting, there are plenty of amazing NFT artists for hire on freelancing services like Upwork. There are a wide range of designers and artists to suit all budgets who can help you generate your next NFT art collection.

Hire NFT Designers On Upwork

Conclusion

Ultimately, the success and sustainability of an NFT project comes down to its community, utilities, and other essential factors. However, the importance of NFT artwork should not be discounted, especially when projects like Invisible Friends and RTFKT created such amazing graphics for their respective NFT collections. With the increasing number of tools available today, the rest of us are now back in the race.