Five popular NFT art styles

At a glance, NFT art can be overwhelming due to the total amount of unique tokens in each collection and the large number of projects hitting marketplaces seemingly everyday. It can be hard to distinguish where to begin. Here is a brief glimpse at some of the most popular art styles that beginners can start with.

Pixels

Pixelated art is one of the most common styles of NFT available because of its association to computer imaging and digital graphics. Their use in video games also contributes to the genre by striking a familiar tone among NFT traders. Pixel art fits well in profile pictures too due to their simplified look which makes them easy to identify. CryptoPunks is the most well-known pixel collection which can cost anywhere between 40 and 80 Eth each. This collection is massive in the NFT world and carries a blue chip status. Another popular collection of pixel art is the recently launched Moonbirds which, in under a week, has already created a trading volume exceeding 80,000 Eth. Upon release, the pixelated owls created an extreme demand and are sitting atop the charts on OpenSea with utilities that include a nesting/staking feature plus full IP rights built into the token itself. The final collection, with a much smaller floor price, is the Unemployables project which reached the trending page of OpenSea at the same time as Moonbirds. The collection features a host of relatable looking avatars with a community project that emphasizes freelance work and project grants to boost new businesses. 

Apes

One of the most popular art styles, if not the most popular style, is the Ape avatar which is highly influenced by the r/wallstreetbets subreddit. Following the GME short stock market craze in early 2021, terms such as “apeing in,” “Degen” and “yolo” became terms for popular strategies of dumping huge amounts of money into stocks and securities without much research and it inspired an entire genre of NFT that played off the concept hoping for similar gains. Fortunately for many, this idea worked and Bored Apes Yacht Club has become the quintessential NFT collection which saw initial mint prices below 1 Eth evolve into a floor price over 100 Eth within a year. Solana Monkey Business and Degenerate Ape Academy are two other ape-themed projects that have also seen incredible success on Magic Eden, performing similar feats at a relative scale to BAYC on the Solana network. 

Anime & Cartoons 

Cartoons, and recently anime, are another obvious genre for NFTs that have become popular  because of their friendly relationship with digital art. The majority of NFT are visually represented by computer drawn images as it is easier to implement multiple layers using digital technology to render a unique image. Doodles have been the long time king of cartoon NFT with a strong community backed by a floor price that hovers above 20 Eth. However, Azuki has done an incredible job building itself up as the next top project by introducing anime to NFT along with a host of utilities built into their tokens which include a marketplace, physical merchandise, and a new project called BEANZ which has been building hype off the success of Azuki. Shinsei Galverse, an NFT with clear inspiration from Sailor Moon, is the most recent anime project to gain attention from NFT collectors. The project aims to deliver frequent airdrops to holders including new music, physical deliverables, and a manga series that are being used to create a universe which is detailed and immersive. 

Animals 

One of the more accessible NFT genres is animals which have been a popular component of internet culture for a long time. Dog and cat videos have flooded the internet and they are equally popular among NFT collectors as well. In fact, one of the earliest NFT collections ever is the popular CryptoKitties which is a game where cats are bred and collected to produce the newest and rarest tokens. It was also the first project available on OpenSea and helped establish the concept of NFTs long before Beeple’s auction in 2021. While CryptoKitties was the first popular cat collection on the market, it is not the only one. Cool Cats is a more recent project which has been in circulation since the middle of 2021 and has exceeded 100,000 Eth in trading volume making it immensely popular. However, no list about animals on blockchain would be complete without Doge the popular meme and mascot of shitcoins everywhere. The Doge Pound is a collection of dogs suited in a variety of accessories that has been popular since Fall 2021. The collection oozes memes referencing dogecoin, Elon Musk, and moonshots.  

Mutants & Zombies

The most aggressive and off-putting NFT collections for many are the mutant and zombie genres. While these collections are hard to stomach for some, their approach to layering creates a wide variety of unique tokens for collectors to buy and trade by leaning into the absurdity that random layers can create. The most obvious of all these collections is the Mutant Ape Yacht Club project which stemmed off the success from BAYC and was created by the same team - Yuga Labs. With a floor price above 30 Eth, they are one of the most valuable collections offering a huge amount of variations with their mutated attributes and offer holders rewards connected to the ApeCoin. TombStoned High Society is another project that runs on the Solana network and presents a similar theme to mutants, using zombies instead. While not exactly the same as a mutant, the project is still able to rely on the zombie attributes to create a large amount of layers that all look exceptionally unique. Two smaller projects that follow the same themes are the Toxic Skulls Club and Deadfellaz which offer much easier entry points for curious collectors. 

No matter which way you look at it, the variety of art available from NFT collections is limitless. There are genres out there that can suit anybody’s taste and for anything that hasn’t been created yet, it means that new ideas are still possible and that nothing has been exhausted yet. While the genres listed here are the most popular, there are tons of other styles also available such as photography, fine art, modern art, and more. So, don’t be turned off by the overwhelming amount of options when looking at NFTs and assume that they are all the same ugly pieces of art either. There’s an NFT out there for everyone.