Japan’s Tezuka Productions is launching a NFT (non-fungible token) auction, entitled ‘From the Fragments of Tezuka Osamu’, which kicks off on December 13 with digital art connected to Tezuka’s iconic Astro Boy character.
Tezuka was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and animator whose pioneering techniques earned him titles such as ‘the Godfather of Manga’.
The Tezuka NFT project comprises two categories: ‘Mosaic Art NFT’ and ‘Generative Art NFT’, both of which are based on Tezuka’s works. Following the Astro Boy auction, the project will offer NFTs connected to his Black Jack and Phoenix manga series.
For the initial Mosaic Art NFT, more than 4,000 sheets of black-and-white manuscript excerpts from the Astro Boy manga were used to form Astro Boy as the motif. The manuscripts were cut into more than 40,000 fragments, and over 6,000 of them were placed as mosaic materials.
The Mosaic Art NFT auction, which involves only one item, will take place on the OpenSea auction site from 3:00am on December 15 to 3:00am on December 18.
The Generative Art NFT is a randomly generated artwork based on the image materials used in the Mosaic Art NFT. The auction for 1,000 items will take place from 3:00 am on December 13 to 3:00 am on December 20, with a scheduled sales price of 0.08 Ethereum (around US$347 at today’s prices).
Tezuka Productions said it would donate 20% of the net revenues from the auction to public interest organisations, including UNICEF.