We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel Ruczko a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

Every time I dipped my toes into the ocean of creativity, my parents always fully supported me, especially my mother. Even when she didn’t fully understand what I was doing, she saw something special in me or my “talents”. That was a big boost for me. There was this one time, I remember, when I tried earning a living off of my creative skills, and back then it didn’t work out at all. So I told my mother that I’d go get a regular job again, but she told me not to do that, that I wasn’t made for a 9-5. So she pushed me to keep following my path, even when it became hard. And that’s something I’ll never forget.

Daniel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was 12 years old when I started producing on my computer in the early 90s. I kept doing it for many years and eventually making music and DJing became my job. I toured around Europe and released records (yes, vinyl) on numerous labels in the drum & bass scene. At some point I got kind of burned out because I’ve been doing it for so many years. And there was an opportunity to present a creative concept to a company that would pay the winner some money to actually make the project happen. I won the contest and was “forced” to make a movie. I had no idea about any of the steps I’d have to take, so my best friend and I learned everything as we went along. That short film eventually brought me to LA when the first festivals played it there. Over the years, I made more shorts, got into bigger festivals, and moved to Los Angeles organically. At that time, I was just making films or trying to get into the industry. But anyone who has ever worked on films knows how much waiting is involved. So I kind of got back into music on the side and started producing album after album because I thought, “why limit myself to just one outlet? Recently I got more into writing, besides screenplays, I just wrote my first novel called “Pieces of a Broken Mind” and maybe it was kind of a rebel move because I didn’t need anybody to do it, I didn’t need to wait for people. The feedback so far has been great and I can already tell that writing books is now just another piece of my creative puzzle. So now I kind of do it all, I write scripts, I produce a lot of music, I DJ a lot again and I also do visual art and 3D art and frankly I don’t want to stop doing any of those things. I’m addicted to creating.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Since I’ve been doing 3D art for many years, I got into the NFT space pretty early on. I actually designed the NFT Collection for the Rapper Young M.A. under my alias AndrewGony. I saw NFTs as a really interesting thing, but I was also a bit skeptical. When the hype kind of died down, I also lost interest.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

No matter what I did creatively, I always wanted to create something that I myself would want to consume. And I never really cared if other people would like it or not, I just followed my own impulses. Luckily people seemed to resonate with it, allowing me to continue what I’m doing. Even though I think I’d create just as much, if no one ever liked what I do. And even though that is how I’ve always seen my art, the two most rewarding things are a) the feeling I have when I created something out of nothing and I am really happy with it and b) when my art touches other people on a deep level.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.danielruczko.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/d.ruczko
• Other: https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-of-a-Broken-Mind/dp/B0CB78F61F/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WQOSDM0CFL7W&keywords=daniel+ruczko&qid=1691014420&sprefix=daniel+ruczk%2Caps%2C216&sr=8-1