We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Scott Christian Sava. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Scott Christian below.
Hi Scott Christian, thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
My mom was a fashion illustrator. Her brother (my uncle) was an illustrator. Their uncle was a painter. I was surrounded by artists.
So, at a very early age… when I showed interest in art… I was encouraged to experiment. To doodle. To sketch.
This is a huge thing for ANY child. Let them try new things. Let them be creative.
I hear from so many teenagers and young adults whose parents DISCOURAGED them from any artistic endeavors. They were told to focus on school. Getting good grades. Working towards a “real job”.
Kids need to be encouraged to dance, write, make music, paint… whatever makes THEM happy.
It doesn’t always pan out into a career… but they need to try. They need to be creative.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Way back in the 1970s, (I was born in 1968) I saw the old Spider-Man TV show, and instantly I just fell in love with Spider-Man and wanted to be the artist on Spider-Man. I did art in high school, and then I went to college, but there was no specific major for comic books in college.
So I had to major in illustration. It was a lot of figure drawing and learning about different paints and different techniques and design and everything else. But nothing to do with comics, sadly.
My junior year of college, I got an internship at Sega of America doing 16-bit games for the Sega Genesis. That opened up a door to a whole other career. My focus was still, I wanted to be the artist on Spider-Man, but I graduated from college and got into video games. I worked for Atari Games for a while designing arcade games, and then went down to Los Angeles and was working for a comic book company called Malibu Comics doing Star Trek and Mortal Kombat covers at night while doing video games during the day.
They got bought out by Marvel Comics, and I went on to go get into animation for TV and film. My first job in the film industry was working on the sequels to the Casper movies. Then that turned into Power Rangers, and now we’re into the ’90s, and I started my own company, which is Blue Dream Studios. The whole time I’m closing in on 30 years old and I still didn’t get a chance to fulfill my dream of being the artist on Spider-Man.
Every year since I was 15, I would go to the comic book convention and I would bring my portfolio and I would get rejected. It was at this point that one of the old masters, the comic gods, Marv Wolfman, who created Blade and Teen Titans and so many other things, he says, “Why don’t you take your day job-” ( because Marvel Comics just wasn’t interested in my illustrated Spider-Man stuff ) “–of animation and apply it to comics?”
I did like a 3-D animated Spider-Man, and Marv handed it over to the editor that year, and I got the call and I got to do Spider-Man. That was the fulfillment of my dream. The comic came out, it was a four-issue run. It came out when the Toby Maguire first Spider-Man movie came out. From that point on, I was just like, “Okay, I fulfilled my childhood dreams. I’m good..”
At that point, my wife and I had kids. Twins, of course. I was getting offers to come do more projects from Marvel, and Marv said, “Don’t.” He says, “You did your thing. You got it out of your system. Don’t give them any of your ideas. Don’t give them any of your time. Create your own stuff. Create your own properties.” So I did. I started to write kid’s books for my boys, anything that’s interesting. Pirate, aliens, robots, secret agents, anything that sounded cool.
Hollywood started optioning them. Disney, Fox, MTV, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network. But none of them got past the pilot stage
About 10 years ago I decided to just try to make a movie myself.
It took a few years, but in 2014, we got the funding to make our first animated film based on one of my books, called Animal Crackers.
My wife and I made a movie. We partnered with my friend Jaime in Valencia, Spain. We made an animated film with John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Danny DeVito, Ian McKellen, Sylvester Stallone.
For the next four years, we were making a movie. The film came out summer of 2020, right as the pandemic hit. It came out on Netflix and it became the number one animated film of the summer, quietly, because it was a pandemic.
That was when I just was like, “Okay, there’s a pandemic. I’m home. No one’s making movies right now, what do I do?” I joined TikTok and started posting my painting.
Three years later and I’m making YouTube videos and I have over 3 million subscribers across my socials and it’s just… weird. But also very very humbling.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I love bringing something NEW to the world every day. There’s just something wonderful about “creation”.
And it’s such a powerful thing.
Creation.
There’s a blank piece of paper and… after some scribbling and some paint and a little patience… there’s… ART.
How cool is that?
And here’s the best part… ANYONE CAN DO IT!
How did you build your audience on social media?
Luck. It’s all luck.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
It’s like winning the lottery.
Could you imagine someone winning the lottery and bragging about how they did it through hard work and “these 5 easy tips”???
No. You DO need to work hard. Be consistent. Interact with your followers.
But you can do all those things and get nowhere.
The algorithm that chooses “who gets views and who doesn’t” is like “The Claw” from Toy Story.
You never know “who will be chosen”.
Contact Info:
- Website: ssavaart.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ssavaart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ssavaart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottchristiansava/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ssavaart/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ssavaart
Image Credits
Art by Scott Christian Sava