About.
70s Pop is made up of two "series" and two "bonus packs", to date the first two series and the first bonus pack have been released and sold out for a total of 576 mints. When the next bonus pack is dropped, it'll take the final count up to 640, after which there's no more 70s Pop.
This series introduced multi-scale "tiles", giving a different look, a bunch of new palette colours along with a different sort of "phasing", and in some cases animated tiles, causing the layout to change.
All of which is described below the "Pop-o-Matic". A handy tool that allows you to plug in your token number, hash, or any other random string to make your own. This will allow you to download a much higher resolution than you'll get on the ArtBlocks site.
Behold the Pop-o-matic
Downloading notes: the image you download is for personal use, you can print it out for yourself or lover, see the printing and framing instructions. You can also display it in your own digital space and on social media etc. etc.
You may not sell prints of the image, or sell the image itself as an NFT (or weird loophole you think you can find) because people will spot them and point them out.
The original 256 NFTs were for sale on ArtBlocks where they have now sold out. Some may be available for buying on the secondary market on OpenSea.
When buying 70s Pop NFTs on the secondary market look at the buying guide (not yet written) below to help you be sure you're getting a genuine Art Blocks one and not a fake knock-off.
Series Two.
Below is a random selection of twelve mints, you can reload the page for more, or view the gallery.
Rarity Guide
Below I've listed the features, the expected rarities and the actual number that showed up, including the OpenSea links.
Tiles
The number of tiles is the first thing the code decides. In the last two drops, the tiles skewed towards the 9x9 to 14x14 range. However, because of the new, far more colourful way of shading the tiles, it was better to have fewer tiles, giving more lines this time.
The skew this time was towards the 6x6 to 9x9 range, capping the maximum tiles to 15x15 instead of 18x18, and introducing the 4x4 tile for the first (and last) time, while also making the two 18x18s from Series One even rarer over the whole series.
Some of the new 4x4s are pretty amazing.
| Tiles | Percent chance | Expected | Actual | Difference | OpenSea Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4x4 | 2.76% | 7.07 | 8 | +0.93 | OpenSea |
| 5x5 | 8.54% | 21.86 | 20 | -1.86 | OpenSea |
| 6x6 | 13.64% | 34.92 | 35 | +0.08 | OpenSea |
| 7x7 | 16.54% | 42.34 | 36 | -6.34 | OpenSea |
| 8x8 | 17.24% | 44.13 | 43 | -1.13 | OpenSea |
| 9x9 | 16.64% | 42.6 | 38 | -4.6 | OpenSea |
| 10x10 | 11.86% | 30.36 | 36 | +5.64 | OpenSea |
| 11x11 | 6.09% | 15.59 | 16 | +0.41 | OpenSea |
| 12x12 | 2.91% | 7.45 | 8 | +0.55 | OpenSea |
| 13x13 | 2.03% | 5.2 | 9 | +3.8 | OpenSea |
| 14x14 | 1.13% | 2.89 | 3 | +0.11 | OpenSea |
| 15x15 | 0.53% | 1.36 | 4 | +2.64 | OpenSea |
Lines & Line Boost
Once the tiles are decided, the next step is to pick the number of lines. The more tiles there are, the fewer lines you can fit in, conversely the fewer tiles, the more lines can be crammed into each of them.
This typically means if you have a certain number of tiles, the range of lines you can have is limited to around three. So to give us a chance to break out of that, you sometimes get a line boost.
In this case, the -3 line boost gave us the only single line tile of the set (#160).
| Boosted | Percent chance | Expected | Actual | Difference | OpenSea Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -3 | 0.6% | 1.54 | 2 | +0.46 | OpenSea |
| -2 | 7.16% | 18.33 | 18 | -0.33 | OpenSea |
| -1 | 8.52% | 21.81 | 23 | +1.19 | OpenSea |
| 0 | 67.32% | 172.34 | 171 | -1.34 | OpenSea |
| 1 | 8.21% | 21.02 | 22 | +0.98 | OpenSea |
| 2 | 7.37% | 18.87 | 18 | -0.87 | OpenSea |
| 3 | 0.82% | 2.1 | 2 | -0.1 | OpenSea |
And now the lines
| Lines | Percent chance | Expected | Actual | Difference | OpenSea Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.18% | 0.46 | 1 | +0.54 | OpenSea |
| 2 | 0.78% | 2 | 5 | +3 | OpenSea |
| 3 | 1.73% | 4.43 | 6 | +1.57 | OpenSea |
| 4 | 3.97% | 10.16 | 16 | +5.84 | OpenSea |
| 5 | 6.24% | 15.97 | 18 | +2.03 | OpenSea |
| 6 | 8.32% | 21.3 | 22 | +0.7 | OpenSea |
| 7 | 11.01% | 28.19 | 24 | -4.19 | OpenSea |
| 8 | 12.55% | 32.13 | 35 | +2.87 | OpenSea |
| 9 | 12.98% | 33.23 | 29 | -4.23 | OpenSea |
| 10 | 12.73% | 32.59 | 35 | +2.41 | OpenSea |
| 11 | 10.78% | 27.6 | 18 | -9.6 | OpenSea |
| 12 | 8.47% | 21.68 | 26 | +4.32 | OpenSea |
| 13 | 5.69% | 14.57 | 9 | -5.57 | OpenSea |
| 14 | 3.43% | 8.78 | 9 | +0.22 | OpenSea |
| 15 | 1.14% | 2.92 | 3 | +0.08 | OpenSea |
Format
Random is not enough. The starting point for Truchet Tiles (which these are) or the 10PRINT design is randomly picking if you should use this tile or that tile. But something that raises 70s Pop up a level is having small rules behind that randomness that gives form or a little design nudge to the output.
In previous projects, I used a thing called Perlin noise, this time because there are bigger and smaller tiles, I decided to shape things by layout instead.
Top-down placed larger tiles at the top and smaller "noodles" at the bottom; Bottom-up is the reverse, spiritually channelling bell-bottom jeans. Middle and Outer have the placement bias from the top-bottom edge in or out.
Biggering & Smallanator
Biggering and Smallering were two new traits added to Series Two. They were actually traits I pulled out of Series One when it was decided to make it a smaller run.
This is where things started to get slightly complicated because you can't split a tile into smaller tiles when there's an odd number of lines, and you can't have more oversized tiles when the starting number of tiles is low.
Also, if the code decided the final design will not have one of the special fills (see below), it increases the chances of the whole thing having bigger or smaller tiles.
Then, if we have bigger or smaller tiles, we force it so that the format (see above) must be something other than normal.
This is all part of making sure there are no designs that can repeat a 70s Pop Series One. Of course, I want the overall feel to be similar to Series One, but I didn't want anyone minting a Series Two piece to get something that could have come from Series One while still being compatible with it. I'll mention this again at the end in the TickTock section.
Finally, even though the flag was set for having bigger or smaller tiles, there was always the chance that zero bigger or smaller tiles would be used, which I cover again in the TickTock section.
| Biggering | Percent chance | Expected | Actual | Difference | OpenSea Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| true | 49.05% | 125.57 | 136 | +10.43 | OpenSea |
| false | 50.95% | 130.43 | 120 | -10.43 | OpenSea |
And now the Smallanator
Fill
The fill is the strategy used to add colour to the tiles.
Some of the different fill types only work well with a certain number of lines, meaning there are all sorts of conditions added to the code to control what gets picked. For example, you can only have one of the special fills if there are more than five lines, but a rainbow fill won't work if there are 6 or 10 lines for weird mathematical reasons.
Meanwhile, the "Single Grad" fill can only work on things that have 6 or 7 lines, no more or less.
If, after all the choices have been made, the fill is "Flat", then, as explained elsewhere, we make sure there is something else special about the piece, other bigger or smaller tiles, or failing all that, animation.
It's easier to see on the rainbow, but the "Grad" fills, take a single line and run a gradient either from top to bottom (Single Grad) or from the top to the middle and back for the Zap Grad. Sometimes the effect is subtle, which I quite like, or it's making the whole thing look like it's a gradient.
Metallics are made to look metallic, and then there's one final option...
Ninja: If we ended up with two or fewer lines, of which there's a less than 1% chance, then and we haven't picked a special palette, there's a chance that the whole thing will get turned into a "Ninja". Out of many simulations, more often than not, a Ninja wouldn't appear at all in a run of 256 mints.
Ninja is the only piece in the whole 640 collection that has white lines on black background. The 70s Pop Super Fun Summertime Bonus Pack was based on white lines, but all of those were on fresh summer vibes backgrounds. Likewise, in Series One, there are 16 "Inverted" pieces, but none have a pure white line on a back background.
Of all the pieces in the whole series, some are rare by the nature of combines features, but Ninja is probably the most intentionally unique. The chances of it existing at all were super slim.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Fill | Percent chance | Expected | Actual | Difference | OpenSea Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ninja | 0.36% | 0.92 | 1 | +0.08 | OpenSea |
| Metallic | 6% | 15.36 | 8 | -7.36 | OpenSea |
| Single Grad | 7.65% | 19.58 | 20 | +0.42 | OpenSea |
| Zap Grad | 8.53% | 21.84 | 28 | +6.16 | OpenSea |
| Rainbow | 10.26% | 26.27 | 24 | -2.27 | OpenSea |
| Flat | 26.16% | 66.97 | 81 | +14.03 | OpenSea |
| Stripes | 41.04% | 105.06 | 94 | -11.06 | OpenSea |
Palette
Picking palettes is one of the most fun because they're so visually appealing and tricky in that you have to come up with names for them.
Fortunately, six other artists were kind enough to lend me one of their palettes. These "borrowed" palettes are rarer than the rest we have:
- Playful, from Watercolor Dreams
- Matrix, from The Opera
- Arctica, from Frammenti
- Wisteria, from Bubble Blobby
- Fallen Leaves, from Patchwork Saguaros
- Macha Strawberry, from Void/Messengers
Monochrome wasn't supposed to be rarer than the rest, but we ended up with about half as many as we were supposed to get, putting it on par with the special palettes above.
Flatomatic is used when there isn't a special fill. Flatomatic colours are all of the same saturation and brightness, but the hue varies.
| Palette | Percent chance | Expected | Actual | Difference | OpenSea Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playful | 2.55% | 6.53 | 7 | +0.47 | OpenSea |
| Matrix | 2.96% | 7.58 | 6 | -1.58 | OpenSea |
| Arctica | 3.08% | 7.88 | 5 | -2.88 | OpenSea |
| Wisteria | 3.09% | 7.91 | 5 | -2.91 | OpenSea |
| Fallen Leaves | 3.34% | 8.55 | 6 | -2.55 | OpenSea |
| Macha Strawberry | 3.71% | 9.5 | 8 | -1.5 | OpenSea |
| Monochrome | 4.53% | 11.6 | 6 | -5.6 | OpenSea |
| Frank-N-Furter | 4.94% | 12.65 | 15 | +2.35 | OpenSea |
| Citrus Prom | 5.01% | 12.83 | 17 | +4.17 | OpenSea |
| Signal | 5.1% | 13.06 | 11 | -2.06 | OpenSea |
| Fruit Salad Chews | 5.18% | 13.26 | 17 | +3.74 | OpenSea |
| Indian Summer | 5.22% | 13.36 | 11 | -2.36 | OpenSea |
| Get out of the van | 5.29% | 13.54 | 15 | +1.46 | OpenSea |
| Get in the van | 9.77% | 25.01 | 19 | -6.01 | OpenSea |
| Overlook | 10.07% | 25.78 | 27 | +1.22 | OpenSea |
| Flatomatic | 26.16% | 66.97 | 81 | +14.03 | OpenSea |
TickTock
Right down at the end of everything, we have TickTock. This is something I'd wanted to do for a while. The initial implementation had the tiles rotating when you moved your mouse over them and then back to their original position after a time. It was fun because you could "draw" trails in all the tiles. But I decided to pull that back to something simpler that ran on its own.
If a piece manages to make it all the way through the other options on "normal" settings, no special fill, no oversized tiles, no smaller tiles and the "flat" palette, then you'd end up with a piece that essentially came from Series One. I wanted every piece to be unique and different from S1 in some way.
So if they managed to make it through the probability gauntlet above, which 26 did, around 10% of the total (I expected 8% to arrive here), they ended up with the TickTock feature, which causes the tiles to rotate in different patterns.
This way, what could have been the least "interesting" piece ends up with one of the most dynamic features.
There was also a slim chance that one of the other pieces ended up with a TickTock, but only if they had no bigger or smaller tiles.
Sweep rotates the tiles in a downwards sweep, while Wipe goes sideways. Chasers cause tiles to rotate one at a time down through the whole pattern. While chess alternates the titles that rotate like a chessboard.
| TickTock | Percent chance | Expected | Actual | Difference | OpenSea Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweep | 0.86% | 2.2 | 1 | -1.2 | OpenSea |
| Wipe | 1.09% | 2.79 | 3 | +0.21 | OpenSea |
| Chaser4 | 1.41% | 3.61 | 9 | +5.39 | OpenSea |
| Chess | 2.16% | 5.53 | 7 | +1.47 | OpenSea |
| Chaser1 | 2.22% | 5.68 | 6 | +0.32 | OpenSea |
| None | 92.26% | 236.19 | 230 | -6.19 | OpenSea |