How to Create NFT Art: The Complete Beginner’s Guide

As NFTs continue to explode in popularity, you may have been thinking of creating your own NFT art. With all the tech jargon surrounding NFTs and even artwork itseld, you may be a bit skeptical to take the next step. You may have even wondered—What if it’s too difficult? What if you don’t have the technical know-how? What if you have no creative skills? Or simply, where do you even begin?  

Well, whether you are a skilled artist or someone with no artistic abilities, if you wish to create your own NFT art but don’t know where to begin, this guide is for you. From the benefits of selling NFTs to choosing an NFT marketplace and pricing your NFTs, we have got it all covered!

But, first things first—what’s an NFT?

What is an NFT?

In short, NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are unique digital assets representing digital or real-world objects, whose ownership is stored on a blockchain. Non-fungible, means non-interchangeable. These unique tokens cannot be copied, or destroyed. Furthermore, as ownership and transaction details are stored on the blockchain, anyone can easily verify the authenticity of a piece. If you want to know about the specifics, check out our guide on what an NFT is!

Now you’ve got the idea of what it is, let’s talk about why. Actually, there are lots of reasons why creating NFTs is a great idea for artists.

Why you should create NFT Art

Firstly, you can guarantee royalties every time the NFT art is sold in the future. Smart contracts guarantee with code that each time the artwork is sold, you get paid the percentage you set.

Secondly, unlike the traditional art market, you don’t have to rely on a third party. Often, to sell artwork you have to pay auction houses or art galleries a cut of the profit. With NFT art, you can do it on your own with a few clicks and keep the expenditure minimum. Moreover, through NFT marketplaces, you also get access to buyers from across the globe.

How To Create NFT Art: A Step by Step Guide

Since NFTs are authenticated on the blockchain, digital artwork alone is not sufficient to create your NFT. Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

1. Choose The Right Blockchain

As mentioned before, blockchains are at the heart of NFTs. Thus, before you hop on the NFT bandwagon, it is crucial to understand the pros and cons of different blockchains. The Ethereum blockchain, for instance, is home to the majority of NFT and DeFi projects and has been dominating the industry. However, due to higher network activity, the gas fees on the blockchain are much higher. Additionally, while Ethereum has superior security features and is more reliable, it has greater energy consumption and low scalability.

Polygon, meanwhile, is an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution that offers low gas fees, fast transactions, low energy consumption, and higher scalability. Immutable X is another layer-2 solution that offers scalability and gasless transactions. Similarly, Solana is fast, scalable, and enables cheaper transactions. However, its mainnet is currently in beta and is less decentralized compared to Ethereum. Tezos too offers gasless transactions and is popular for music projects.

An important thing to note here is that each blockchain has its own token standard and only supports certain wallets and NFT marketplaces. For example, if you create your NFT art on a Tezos blockchain, you won’t be able to sell it on marketplaces that do not support Tezos.

2. Set up a crypto wallet

The first thing you need before you set out to create your NFT art is a crypto wallet, where you will store your NFTs and cryptocurrencies. An important factor you have to keep in mind while choosing a wallet is whether it is compatible with your NFTs and the NFT marketplace you will use to trade your NFTs. 

Broadly, crypto/NFT wallets are classified into software or hardware wallets. While the former is a digital wallet and stores your NFTs online, hardware wallets are physical wallets that store NFTs offline, making them more secure. Some of the most common wallets are MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Enjin, and Coinbase wallet. If you want to know more about these wallets, you can check out our detailed guide on crypto wallets.

3. Buy crypto from an exchange

On most NFT marketplaces, you have to pay some “gas fees” to mint your NFTs. These are the fees paid to miners to process and validate transactions on the blockchain (Here’s when these gas fees are the cheapest). Thus, you need to buy some cryptocurrency from an exchange to cover this cost. However, make sure it corresponds with the blockchain and marketplace you will use. 

Additionally, if you’re selling NFTs through Polygon, you may need to use a bridge. A bridge is a connection that enables the transfer of assets from one blockchain to another. It is a common mistake to send your crypto to the wrong address. If you do this, then your crypto is pretty much lost forever.

4. Create NFT art

Now that you have all the essential items to mint your NFT, it’s time to make your NFTs. With all this info, it might seem like creating NFTs is a daunting task. But it’s easier than you think. Let’s look at the different ways in which you can create NFT art.

Tools To Create NFTs with Digital Art

If you are already an artist, then creating NFT art will be much easier for you. But, to create exceptional artworks, you may need to master digital art software. Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Krita, and Autodesk Sketchbook are great software for digital painting. Alternatively, if you are into structured drawing and isometric art, then Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Draw, Affinity Designer, Inkscape, and Gravit Designer are some great options.

Well, why stop at just 2D art? With the right program, you too can make your own 3D art. Now, 3D visual effects software, Maya is considered the industry standard. Other software like Cinema 4D, Blender, and ZBrush is also great for 3D sculpting. If pixel and voxel art is your thing, then you must try PixelArt, Blender, and MagicaVoxel. If you are into PhotoBashing (merging and blending images and 3D assets to create original artworks), Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and the free image processor, Gimp, are more suitable.

5. Mint your NFT

To mint NFTs you need to store something on the blockchain and that involves code. So, it might make you wonder: do you need a developer?

Well, a developer is necessary if you want to make generative art NFTs, like Cool Cats, Doodles, and World of Women.  In this case, your art project may involve complex smart contracts.  Perhaps you might have complex conditions on the purchase. Maybe you want to create games or interactive communities! These will all require a developers help.

However, if you are minting a simple art NFT project, there are many simple ways to mint.

How to make NFT Art With No Code

For simple NFT art, you don’t need any coding skills and can easily mint them on several NFT marketplaces.  OpenSea and Rarible both support this feature. 

Each marketplace will have its own steps to mint NFTs but they tend to follow a similar theme:

• Create a digital file of your NFT art and make sure the file format is supported by your marketplace of choice.
• Create an account on the marketplace, connect your wallet, and click the create option.
• Upload the file with your artwork, give a name and description, and add properties and unlockable content (if applicable)
• Click create and congratulate yourself that you know how to make an NFT!

Marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible also offer the lazy minting feature, which is well-suited for creators. In lazy minting, you don’t mint the NFTs the moment you create them, as is the case normally. Instead, it is minted during purchase. This means that instead of you, the buyer pays the transaction fees. Rarible introduced this feature late last year, saying, “we’re excited to further lower the entry barrier for NFT creators from all over the world.”

NiftyKit is another great no-code way to launch an NFT art collection. This is a SaaS (Software as a service) platform, where you can mint directly on both Ethereum and Polygon.

6. Choose A Marketplace To List your NFT

Now that you have created your NFT art, it’s time to mint it and put it up for sale. For this, you need an NFT marketplace that supports the blockchain of your choice. Here are some of the top NFT marketplaces to create NFT art:

OpenSea

OpenSea, the first peer-to-peer marketplace, has the most mainstream following. So far, it has generated $23.5 billion in sales volume (at the time of writing). As of now, it supports blockchains Ethereum, Polygon, and Klatyn. As mentioned before, it allows code-free minting, and is user-friendly, especially for newcomers. 

Here, you can sell your NFTs either via a fixed-price listing or an auction. For auctions, you can choose either of the two types: sell to the highest bidder or sell with a declining price. In the former, the highest bidder wins the NFT and in the latter, the price falls until someone buys the piece.

LooksRare

Looks Rare is currently the biggest competitor to OpenSea. Just a few months since its launch, LooksRare is already the 2nd largest marketplace in terms of all-time trades volume. Currently, its all-time sales volume has crossed $18 billion. The platform rose to fame after its airdrop for OpenSea users. Basically, depending on the volume of NFTs you have traded, you got a certain amount of LOOKS coins in your wallet. Users could then exchange the coins for ETH and take profits or stake it on the site for rewards that the platform gifts users on a daily basis.

In recent months, LooksRare has introduced some new attractive features. Take for example the trait function it added last month. In essence, with the new feature, you can see the floor price for each individual trait. In addition, the platform has added a transfer function that warns users to delist NFTs.

Rarible

Rarible is another popular NFT marketplace and has amassed around $293 million in sales volume to date. If you don’t use the lazy minting feature, then you will have to front the costs to mint. It allows code-free minting, offers a simple and attractive interface, and has good customer service. Here, you can ‘put it on sale’ to receive bids or set an ‘instant sale price’ where the NFT will be sold at a fixed price. 

Solana marketplaces

Solana NFTs are becoming increasingly popular these days. If your blockchain of choice is Solana, you can try fast-growing Solana NFT marketplaces like Solanart, Magic Eden, and SolSea. As opposed to Ethereum marketplaces, Solana marketplaces allow you to mint and list NFTs at low costs and high transaction speeds. This gives your NFT artwork a chance to succeed without the heavy NFT transaction costs on Ethereum. SolSea also claims to be the first marketplace to allow creators to embed copyright licenses while minting their NFTs. Moreover, Magic Eden recently raised $27 million to challenge OpenSea. 

7, How To Price Your NFT Artwork: How expensive Should it be?

For different blockchains, you have to pay different upfront costs. That means OG collections on expensive blockchains ( like Rare Pepe on Bitcoin and CryptoPunks on Ethereum ) tend to fetch high prices. While proof of stake blockchains are faster and cheaper, the cheap fees mean they are rife with bots. These kinds of blockchains include Polygon, Tezos, Solana, and Cardano. If you create an NFT on one of these cheaper blockchains, you’ll have to price it accordingly. However, don’t expect that selling it cheap will help cut through all of the noise! Often, the safer option to sell anything at all is to drop on Ethereum.

Making Prices For NFT Artwork

The next factor to consider while pricing your NFT is its rarity and scarcity. If your NFT is a 1/1 unique edition or comes in less supply, price it what you think it is worth! If it took you hours, let a collector pay your for it. NFT Artist XCOPY’s 1/1 pieces have fetched millions of dollars!

For 1:1 pieces of unique artwork, we would not recommend listing below 0.1ETH. Collectors are willing to pay much more and even for art from relatively unknown artists too!

Pricing NFT Collectibles

 Then, will you offer extra benefits for holders? Some good examples of such benefits include; membership, metaverse land, exclusive merch, and events. For these type of artworks, people are more than willing to pay incredible sums. 

 A popular price per item for 10k NFT collections is around 0.08ETH—the original minting price of BAYC. However, these days, many are preferring highly-priced dutch auctions instead. Just look at Pixelmon and FriendsWithYou!

If you are new to the NFT industry, it’s safer to start at a lower price. Once you have established yourself, you can increase your prices, just like Cool Cats did with Cool Pets.

In conclusion, we’re quickly realizing that pretty much anything can be an NFT! Whether you want to create art or something different, NFT technology is already a great tool. If you want to know more about that, check out our guide on how to mint Music NFTs.  Big celebrities such as Grimes and Steve Aoki, are already using this medium. Beyond artwork, Video highlights, memes, collectibles, gifs, and even a tweet and full-length feature films have been made into NFTs too.