Creative team of Befree came to us with some sketches and an idea for the collection that would help to step into the metaverse.

«This year we turned 20 years old and we felt like we needed to put our feet into the metaverse. NFT-collection felt like the most logical way, because for us it’s a creation of a community in the first place. Also, it’s a way to visualize the values of Befree and keep them in the blockchain forever, because tokens are impossible to remove. We think that it’s a really cool metaphor», –– says Lima Lipa, CEO of Befree Web3

Initially, the collection was supposed to be drawn in a pixel-art style like cryptopunks, but the community voted for 3D graphics. There were supposed to be 1000 unique illustrations drawn in a month to be on time for the release date of the collection. 

The hero of the collection is Befree’s mascot –– befrie! It’s a collective image of a bird that came from a long process of reference searching. It is not an eagle, not a flamingo, and not even a pigeon, it’s something especially unique!

Bang! Bang! Studio producer Lena Kudasheva and illustrator Lena Bragina created a few concepts to find the one. For example, we realized that the bird’s body has to be anthropomorphic, so the clothes would look good. Separately we worked on the eyes, so the character wouldn’t look rustic, but more arrogant, maybe even snobby!

One of the main messages of the collection is diversity, that is why Befreaks (that’s what the collection is called) have different skin and hair colors, different interests and, of course, the style: from metaverse-gothic to athleisure. Some of them are real crypto bros and metaverse explorers, and some are fans of the «Wednesday» series. There are befries that prefer funny shirts with unicorns like the ones that Vitaly Buterin, the creator of Ethereum blockchain has. But all of the characters are connected by their mutual love for freedom and a rebel spirit. «Young fashion for any age!» –– says the creative producer for Befree Web3 Aleksandra Generalova. 

By the way, befries’ clothes are from the latest Befree collections, for example, this jumper fits perfectly! Other attributes are hommages to famous looks from cinema and iconic items from different designers. It was important for us that befrie’s style was a bit more modern and interesting, than regular NFT-collections. 

At the day of the collection’s release befreaks were noticed less than an hour before the start and you didn’t need any money to become a part of the community: «All of 1000 Befreaks tokens were given away at freemint, so, for free. This solved two problems. For the created brand’s community it was a comfortable start point in the world of Web3 technology. You only needed to create a crypto wallet and take your befreak on time. At the same time, we engaged some people from the NFT community, many of whom haven’t heard about us, and now have our NFT-befrie as a profile picture in Telegram of VK. This is extremely cool, because this community gives us a lot of important information about trends in the digital world. We wanted to make a present for the brand's 20th anniversary and then the process will be moving with tokens’ owners help –– some holders have sold their NFT, and some trade it with other members of the community». 

The collection turned out to be extremely popular and entered the secondary market. We look at it with adoration and hope to get our own befrie next time! For now, we are ready to draw an NFT-collection for you, one that will be sold out in record time! Message us, mail us your briefs and, of course, choose the befreak you liked the most!