Historical pioneers brought back to life as NFTs depicting how they could look today

Pionauts, one of the most unique and groundbreaking NFT art collections, is set to launch on 28 April 2022, announced Johan Van Asperen Vervenne, the founder and visionary behind the team that created the series.

Today, Pionauts is the world’s first company to create large-scale photorealistic appearances of historical pioneers, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Nefertiti, Aristotle, Cleopatra, and so many more.

"Pionauts began as an idea for an NFT collection. Most NFT collections have about six different backgrounds," Johan said. "My team used 84 different 17th and 18th-century paintings to create many of the backgrounds used."

The 150 original pioneers selected by Van Asperen Vervenne and his team mostly lived before the invention of the camera. The team behind Pionauts are artificial intelligence, 2D and 3D graphic design specialists from nine countries.

“People of all ages are fascinated by pioneers that lived before the invention of the camera,” Van Asperen Vervenne said. “Before Pionauts came to life, we only saw old paintings and could only imagine what they looked like when they were alive.”

Van Asperen Vervenne felt it was time to bring them back to life today and go beyond the “stories we read about what they accomplished and go beyond imagining what stories they would tell about themselves if they were alive today.”

With that in mind, Van Asperen Vervenne and his team brought to life “the best-known pioneers with the latest 3D and artificial intelligence (AI) technology.” Applying Deep Learning technology and months of manual retouching, a collection of 8,500 unique variations was created with modified characteristics such as age, facial features and expressions.

Voting utility

Each of these NFTs comes with voting powers that grant holders of the breath-taking digital art collectibles the right to voice how they want the Pionauts comic stories told. They also come with copyrights and many of the photorealistic pioneers' portraits are already trademarked, said Van Asperen Vervenne.

“These portrait trademarks safeguard against infringement of copyrights increasing the value of the Pionauts project,” he added. “Pionauts owns the copyrights for commercial and non-commercial use.

 Royalty income

The Pionauts team sees a positive future in collaborating in various entertainment, marketing and educational projects. Johan and his team’s goal is to create more 3D models of pioneer's faces and explore collaborations with Metaverse games, brands, educational- and the movie industry.

“Our goal for Pionauts NFT holders is to share in our future success as the Pionauts brand expands. Pionauts will share 25% of its royalty income with its NFT holders that are KYC (Know Your Customers) compliant,” Johan said.

Pionauts allows all Pionaut NFT holders to exclusively co-create new storylines about breathtaking interplanetary journeys and have a voice in choosing where the story goes next, Johan said.

"The ambition of the Pionauts team is to create a series of pilots, blockbuster movies, similarly as Pixar's Toy Story franchise and the Marvel cinematic universe," Van Asperen Vervenne said. "Pionauts has some very exciting announcements in the pipeline," he said.

The Pionaut’s inception

Van Asperen Vervenne one day became intrigued by musician George Aquilla Hardy's depiction of what the first US President would look like today. But Johan went further. He dove into the topic of facial recognition and researched facial reconstruction techniques for digital illustration.

After he concluded his investigation, he decided to see if he could recreate the faces of a few famous people throughout history. After forming a dedicated team of international designers, he looked at historic pioneers regarded as some of the world's greatest minds.

With the help of some of the world’s best artificial intelligence (AI) experts, including the founding father of the AI Gan source code, Johan added movements to the face of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle from the image of a statue representing his likeness.

Patience paid off, and it enticed Johan and his colleagues to continue with more restorations. They chose several more famous personalities of the past, that also include Socrates, Beethoven and William Shakespeare.

After many hours of meticulous attention to detail, the talented group transformed the faces of several of the most renowned pioneers worldwide into a photorealistic likeness of them thanks to groundbreaking AI. And then the decision to make them Pionauts.

"Earth is explored by the greatest minds in history. Imagine the progress we can make if these brilliant people help us explore space?" Johan asked. "And thus, the pioneers from history became Pionauts."

Utility

Each of the 8,500 NFTs comes with great utility. They come with voting rights on comic stories with the pioneer characters, their stories, the possibility for holders to input their stories, royalties from their sales, and future movie deals from which we like each NFT holder to profit.

“The goal is that holders of any Pionauts NFT will enjoy passive income as the Pionauts brand expands,” and “This 'army' of thousands of Pionauts NFT holders will undoubtedly help signal, prevent and protect Pionauts portrait rights for the benefit of all those invested in the collection.”

The unique Pionauts NFT collection launches on 28 April 2022

www.pionauts.com         Discord: https://lnkd.in/eQktanmD         Twitter: @pionauts 

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