A group of puppeteers in Yunlin County is using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to help bring their traditional art form into the modern era and keep it relevant to new generations.
NFTs are cryptoassets representing a digital item such as an image, video or virtual object, with prices of some rising so fast last year that speculators around the world sometimes “flipped” them within days for profit.
Pili International Multimedia, whose puppet show produced in Yunlin is Taiwan’s longest-running TV program, says it is starting to use NFTs as a new source of revenue.
Photo: Ann Wang, REUTERS
“The sort of imagination everyone nowadays has for the online world is developing so fast that we are almost unable to grasp it,” Pili brand director Seika Huang (黃政嘉) said.
“Instead of sitting on the sidelines, the best approach is to go ahead and understand fully what’s going on. This is the fastest way to catch up,” she said.
Pili has thousands of glove puppet characters, a traditional part of Taiwanese street entertainment culture that spins colorful and highly stylized stories of heroic courage and romance, often with martial arts.
The puppets are painstakingly created and expertly maneuvered during the filming of the shows, with costumes that are sewn on and strands of hair meticulously put in place.
Pili said that four of its puppet characters were made into digital versions, and 30,000 sets have been sold as NFTs.
The company declined to reveal its NFT profit on the market platform, but said prices for each set started at US$40, translating to generated revenue of at least US$1.2 million since listing in early February.
The stories of the puppet heroes resonate with young audiences and could draw in foreign fans of superhero films, such as those based on characters from the Marvel cinematic universe, said marketing technology company VeVe, which is in charge of selling the NFTs.
“Westerners actually really like our martial arts heroes and kung fu,” VeVe brand manager Raymond Chou (周銘志) said.
Huang, who said that the company’s initial listings sold out seconds after launching on VeVe, is working on transforming up to 50 other puppet characters into NFTs, potentially adding another million-dollar revenue stream for the studio.
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