To celebrate their Centennial Anniversary, Canadian Tire has collaborated with Toronto Digital Visual Artist Vectorvault to create 20 of 100 commemorative NFTs. These one of a kind digital keepsakes are blockchain-verified and crafted in Canada.

I was honoured to be approached by Canadian Tire to collaborate on their very first NFT collection. This is a brand that I grew up with and an opportunity to capture the spirit of it on the blockchain from the perspective of a consumer. Years from now, this series will be recognized as a "first". I'm proud to have my name attached to it.

For 30 years, I've created digital art in Toronto, Canada under my artistic persona Vectorvault. Long before there was ever even a market for it. No blockchain. No crypto. Only a curiosity for technology and a desire to see how far my imagination could take me. This collection is more than an art series. It's proof that I was here. For an artist, that means everything.

You could win one of these exclusive Canadian Tire NFTs by visiting their VR Tree Decorator. Solve 5 challenges for your chance to *win one of 100 NFTs by 5 Canadian NFT creators.

*Rules at treedecorator.canadiantire.ca

For my portion of the collection, I decided to take a closer look at the Canadian Tire brand. Supplied with an assortment of vintage photos, logos and branding examples, I aggregated as much as I could into a series of hand drawn sketches. From there, I moved to the computer, crafting a multi-layered template that would not only display well in a digital art frame, but also look great on a mobile device. Each of these digital certificates are centred around a single word that embodies the brand. A gold plate at the footer carries the unique certificate number for each one of a kind original artwork.

For the first 10 “past 100” versions, I used vintage Canadian Tire photography as the foundation. From the bottom, a magical spire of stardust rises up into the classic CT 100 ornament. These details represent the wishes, wants and dreams of Canadians from across the country. That energy is processed within the ornament and then translated into a series of solutions represented by optimistic, climbing light flares from the top of the ornament. This flow then reverses, representing the energy that Canadian Tire returns to communities from coast to coast. This series is steeped in classic holiday memories.

The second set of 10 focuses on the next 100 years. Modern storefronts change the pace, but still maintain the qualities on which the brand was founded. The rising energy pillar in this version is far more organic. It also culminates within a metaverse inspired ornament that also translates requests into results and then reflects them back to Canadians. Although the future is difficult to illustrate, the intention to live up to the dreams of the past are evident.

Unlike most computer animation today that relies on artists instructing computer software to move objects, this entire collection was manually animated one keystroke at a time. Using traditional techniques akin to early cell animation, vector and raster frames were created and modified one frame at a time to produce the illusion of movement. This painstaking process gives the work a great deal of humanity and artistry.