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Mark-Kelly-ProfileAbout Mark Kelly @saucebook

Mark Kelly born in South Shields UK in 1956, he studied Spanish Literature at University an has been an auditor and compliance consultant most of his working life. Side interests has included music (banjo, guitar) and writing poetry and novels. He got interested in crypto trading around 2017 and in 2021 started looking into NFTs. Mark is currently living in Hatfield near London and working from home when he is  not creating and talking about NFTs.

Mark Kelly has 6 grandchildren (so far) and 6 children (so far).

How would you describe your work?

Predominantly AI-assisted, through a variety of programs and scripts, if you discount my early attempts at literary NFTs. If I have a niche, it’s in the creation of ultra-detailed high resolution pictures of underwater scenes, flowers and animals. Tending towards the chaotic, but with a level of detail that has people scrolling and zooming to unearth more surprises.

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How did you get started with NFTs?

Interest generated by Beeple’s landmark NFT sale. First attempts were literary NFTs (poems and short snippets of prose) and musical NFTs (recycling SoundCloud uploads). Neither of these approaches was successful, and I spent a full six months from March 2021 without minting anything and dedicating myself to collecting NFTs on Nifty Gateway. I restarted when I found that text to image AI scripts could open the door to visual arts to someone with little hand/eye co-ordination, but a good ability to string words together and use software.


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How have NFTs helped you as a creator?

There’s a very smooth path from creation to minting and marketing. I might not have explored visual arts at all if the NFT route was not available.

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What advice would you give to creators who are new to the NFT space?

Don’t follow the noise and don’t think of it as a get rich quick scheme. Get involved in collecting as well as marketing your own art, as that gives you an insight into both sides of the market, and also helps build your tribe of supporters and well-wishers, A base of support is essential if you are not to be shouting into the void. Twitter is your friend if you engage there in a sensitive and unselfish way.

Most of all, be wary. At some stage someone plausible will pop up in your DMs and offer you a collaboration or purchase which would be very beneficial to you. Even if they have a website, even if they have thousands of followers, don’t click that link and don’t install that special wallet they insist on, or you’ll be rebuilding from scratch before you know it and seeing the hackers selling your collections at knock-down prices.

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What has been the biggest challenge in your NFT journey so far?

Adjusting mindset to accept that whatever you create will be of interest to only a small proportion of people. Learning to love the process, independent of the specific outcomes and to always return to developing new skills with the aim of one day producing work that cannot be ignored.


Also, being hacked by believing in a collaboration proposal was a wake-up call. I ended up burning the first 4 months of work and starting afresh, so I’m now a very tough sell on any business proposal.


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What features (if any) are you missing on the platforms that you’re currently using, that would benefit you as a creator?

The platforms don’t make it easy to interact with your collectors (or with artists you collect). A simple chat function to allow for thanks to be given or suggestions to be made, or even prices to be negotiated would make a big difference in usability and would streamline engagement on-platform, instead of people having to search each other out on social media.

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