Ceptor's Scroll of Artistry

A platform and marketplace to streamline the buying and commissioning of art for Tabletop Role-Playing Games.

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Ceptor’s Scroll of Artistry: Empowering Artists in the Tabletop RPG World

About Ceptor Club

Ceptor Club is a dynamic community that integrates art, technology, and gaming, with a significant focus on blockchain innovation. At the Chainlink Fall 2022 hackathon, Ceptor Club began its journey by winning a prize, which was followed by a Filecoin grant. This led to the development of their projects and a growing volunteer base. They continued their success at the Chainlink Spring 2023 hackathon, earning another prize. The club evolved to include structured teams—Ceptor Tech, Ceptor Artour, and Ceptor Games—each contributing to the development of a seamless, multichain RPG experience. Their flagship feature, the Ceptor Club ID (CCID), exemplifies their commitment to cross-chain functionality. Ceptor Club has actively participated in various hackathons, refining their projects and expanding their community, aiming to launch a multi-chain Mainnet Beta and continue innovating in the blockchain gaming space.

Ceptor Club's homepage

Ceptor's Scroll of Artistry

Ceptor Club uses AI image generation to allow tabletop role-playing gamers and game masters to create art as needed for their games. Recognizing the immense potential of this technology, we wanted to expand Ceptor Club's offerings by enabling players to hire human artists and support artists in making a living through creating fantasy art.

Ceptor’s Scroll of Artistry is a marketplace where artists can showcase their Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) art, and fans can easily buy or commission pieces of their characters using smart contracts. This feature not only leverages AI for immediate art needs but also connects gamers with talented human artists for custom, high-quality commissions.

The Team

Leom (based in Nigeria) : Frontend expert who have made a huge effort in providing the needed pages with the expected designs.

James (based in Nigeria) : Smart Contract expert who ensured the robustness of our blockchain interactions.

Wright (based in USA) : User Experience and User Interface designer, who took time to interview artists and to collect their needs. Thanks to his creativity, the team got high-quality mockups and prototypes.

Ilham (based in France) : Project Manager and Smart Contract Developer. She coordinated team efforts, prioritized tasks, and facilitated issue resolution. She contributed to the implementation of Chainlink CCIP, Data Price Feeds, and Chainlink Functions for seamless cross-chain transactions and fair pricing.

Our team, spread across three continents and just as many time zones, came together with a common goal, resulting in a well-coordinated and efficient project.

Design Process

Interviews

We began by interviewing several artists about their experiences commissioning game art and their perspectives on AI's role in the creative process. These conversations informed the design of features aimed at addressing common pain points, ensuring that our platform would be both artist-friendly and technologically innovative.

Quotes and key takaways from artist interviews

Our key takaways were:

  1. Exposure: Artists want to reach new, wider audiences and current social networking sites aren't effective.
  2. AI Worries: Artists are worried that their work will be used to train an AI without their permission and that companies will use AI to avoid paying artists, harming their ability to make a living making art.
  3. AI Utilization: However, the artists interviewed all use AI for inspiration and as reference images.
  4. *Clients: Artists are furstrated with the back-and-forth between clients, especially those who are unsure of what they want a piece to be.

Brainstorming

Wright ran a collaborative brainstorming session where designers, developers, and stakeholders worked together to rapidly generate ideas for creating a marketplace for commissioning, buying, investing in, and selling RPG art.

The session followed a structured format with three timed 15-minute rounds: participants independently sketched or wrote solution ideas for 5 minutes, then reconvened to present and discuss them for 10 minutes.

This process encouraged quick, creative idea generation and discouraged overthinking. Each round aimed to converge on a single idea by selecting the best solution, iterating on it, and refining the implementation through group discussion and consensus.

Sketches from our brainstomring session

Through this process we converged on a couple key features:

  1. A marketplace that would showcase random art and artists to potentially provide lesser-seen artists exposure.
  2. A simple and transparent way for tabletop RPG players to buy and commission art.

Wireframes

Wireframes

Prototype

View on Figma

Commission flow prototype

What Ceptor's Scroll of Artistry Does

Overview: Ceptor's Scroll of Artistry is a specialized on-chain marketplace dedicated to showcasing and promoting talented artists within the Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) niche. Our platform offers unique opportunities for both artists and players to engage and transact seamlessly across different blockchain ecosystems.

Key Features:

- Daily Artist Spotlight:
    Every day, a different artist is chosen at random to be featured, providing consistent exposure and opportunities for artists to connect with a broader audience.

- Cross-Chain Interoperability via CCIP:
    Leveraging Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), players can purchase artworks even if they are operating on different blockchain networks (e.g., Polygon Amoy) and using different tokens (e.g., Game Tokens).
    CCIP facilitates the process by burning the game tokens on the player's chain, minting an equivalent amount of Art Tokens on the artist's chain (e.g., Avalanche Fuji), and completing the transaction seamlessly.

- Transparent and Fair Commission Flow:
    A streamlined commission process ensures artists receive comprehensive details from clients to create personalized character art.
    Smart contracts manage the funds, releasing payment to the artist only when the client is fully satisfied with the artwork, ensuring a transparent and fair transaction process.

- Fair Artwork Pricing:
    To establish fair and realistic pricing for artworks, our marketplace integrates with other renowned art marketplaces like OpenSea.
    Utilizing Chainlink functions, we retrieve data such as "NFT Collection Floor Price" for artists also exhibiting on platforms like OpenSea, ensuring our pricing reflects current market values.

How It Works:

- For Artists:
    + Sign up and showcase your TTRPG-themed artworks on our marketplace.
    + Get a chance to be featured as the daily spotlight artist, increasing your visibility.
    + Engage in commission work with clients, with secure and transparent payment processes managed by smart contracts.

- For Players:     
    + Browse a diverse range of TTRPG artworks and discover new artists daily.
    + Use your Game Tokens from different blockchain networks to purchase artworks seamlessly via CCIP.
    + Commission personalized character art with confidence, knowing the funds are securely held until you are satisfied with the final product.

Benefits:

- Artists:
    + Enhanced exposure and opportunities to connect with a targeted audience.
    + Secure and transparent payment process ensures fair compensation for commissioned work.

- Players:
    + Access to unique, high-quality and personalized TTRPG artworks from various artists.
    + Seamless cross-chain transactions simplify the purchasing process, regardless of the blockchain network.

Chainlink Services Used:

Architecture diagram

In Ceptor's Scroll of Artistry, several Chainlink features are utilized to ensure smooth operations, transparency, and fair pricing in the artist marketplace. Here are the key Chainlink features used:

[x] Chainlink VRF (run daily - automation)

[x] Chainlink Price Feeds 

[x] Chainlink CCIP 

[x] Chainlink Functions 

[x] Chainlink Automation (run daily)

    One Automation to call to automate 2 Chainlink Services

        [x] Chainlink VRF

        [x] Chainlink Functions

Challenges we ran into

  • Integrating the various components—smart contracts, front-end interfaces, and AI-generated content—posed significant challenges. We had to ensure a seamless user experience while balancing the technical complexities of blockchain integration.
  • While our project was a success, we faced challenges, particularly in the interface between design and smart contract integration. Moving forward, we aim to enhance front-end integration and streamline our processes.
  • Working across different time zones also presents challenges in coordinating meetings and ensuring effective communication, however, we overcame it with the help of careful planning and asynchronous communication over discord.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Innovative Design: We designed features that make artists, a group frequently distrustful of AI, more comfortable with its presence by allowing them to be paid for its use.
  • Collaborative Effort: Working well with a team spread across 3 continents. According to Ayodele :"We had a rough start, and when we started, it was like the team was created for years." !
  • Technical Achievements: Successfully implemented interesting key Chainlink features like CCIP, VRF, automation, .. etc The hackathon was the occasion to challenge ourselves and learn new skills.

What we learned

  • This project deepened our understanding of blockchain’s potential in enhancing interactive and immersive gaming experiences. We learned valuable lessons in teamwork, persistence, and the importance of community feedback. Each team member expanded their skills, from front-end development and smart contract implementation to project management and effective communication.

  • Ceptor Club is a unique experience. It was the occasion to collaborate on a real-life problem in a specific niche and with a global scope. We were among 4 different teams (1 Tech Team, 1 Game Team, 2 Art Teams). We had the occasion to collaborate with different teammates and different skills and backgrounds. Special mention to Tippi who was bridging between the 4 teams and making interaction easy and smooth. Special mention too to Jason (GameMaster) for providing a long term vision for the Ceptor Club and meaningful guidelines for the project.

What's next for Ceptor's Scroll of Artistry

To further enhance the functionality and user experience of Ceptor's Scroll of Artistry, several exciting features and improvements are planned for the near future. These enhancements aim to facilitate artist-client interactions, streamline the user experience, and provide robust administrative tools. Here are the next steps for the project:

**Integrate Generative AI Tools:**
    - Facilitating Artist's Work:
        Integrate AI-powered tools to assist artists in creating high-quality, customized artworks. These tools can help in generating initial sketches or concepts based on client descriptions, speeding up the creative process.
    - Improving Client Communication:
        Utilize AI to better understand client needs and preferences. This can involve natural language processing (NLP) to analyze client briefs and generate detailed summaries or mood boards, ensuring that artists have a clear and accurate understanding of the client's vision.

**Enhance the Front-End Experience:**
    - Sign-Up Page:
        Develop a user-friendly sign-up page to streamline the onboarding process for both artists and clients. The sign-up page will include detailed instructions and an intuitive interface to ensure a smooth registration process.
    - Admin Dashboard:
        Create a comprehensive admin dashboard to manage and monitor marketplace activities. This dashboard will provide administrators with tools to oversee transactions, handle disputes, manage featured artists, and analyze platform performance metrics.
    - Account Abstraction:
        Implement account abstraction to simplify the user experience. This will enable users to interact with the platform without needing to manage private keys directly, making it easier for users to sign in, manage their accounts, and perform transactions seamlessly.

Final Thoughts

Ceptor’s Scroll of Artistry is more than just a project; it’s a community-driven initiative that bridges the gap between technology and art. We are proud of our accomplishments and excited for the future. Join us on this journey to explore the endless possibilities that blockchain and gaming have to offer.

Acknowledgments

We extend our gratitude to Ceptor Club and its members, including Tippi, Jason, and Lena, for providing the context and support for this project. Special thanks to Yonathan and Aldo for their valuable contributions. Our journey wouldn't have been possible without the collective effort and dedication of everyone involved.

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