Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sean Danconia. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Sean, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I grew up enthralled with the works of Osamu Tezuka—the Godfather of Anime and Manga (Astro Boy, Black Jack, Unico, etc.), even if sometimes I wasn’t aware that the same creative mind had touched all of these works. In fact, The Lion King is actually based on Kimba the White Lion and that goes back to Walt’s relationship and admiration for Tezuka.

After years of working in brand development, animation and fine art, I had created many works inspired by Tezuka but never had the opportunity to do anything official. Then I happened to be at Licensing Expo and noticed that Tezuka had an representative at the show. Funny thing is that I was wearing an Astro Boy shirt and had a matching watch on. Can’t fake that. So I sort of fluttered around and waited for the licensing manager to arrive.

A few years later, I was honored with the opportunity to create official art and design under Tezuka Productions, thanks to this same very kind individual who I happened to meet at the show.

This was definitely one of the most meaningful projects that I’ve ever worked on and hope that I was successful in paying homage to Tezuka’s genius while respecting his original vision and creations.

Sean, 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’ve had to wear many career hats over the years but my main focus has been to develop high-impact creative works for application to a host of products, accessories, media ventures and fine art.

I started my career as a manager of a Diesel Jeans shop in Montreal and was inspired to import Italian-made apparel and accessories while developing my own brands. At the same time, I took several positions in the film industry as I dreamt of a career convergence of these two universes, which eventually happened.

My specialty is in creating visually dynamic art, products and brands. I try to set these endeavors apart from the norm by going in a direction not dictated by the industry standard (POP)cultural playbook. More than anything, I enjoy putting a lens on the past and pushing cool creative of previous eras into the future. Sort of like the Tomorrowland “retro-futurist” philosophy.

These days, I’m more focused on Fine Art but I’m still working on various other projects including an official collaboration with Tezuka Productions and an animation multiverse brand with my creative partner, Jack Hsu (Spider-Man, Lego Batman, etc.), called “SupaPop”.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Regarding Social Media, this was never a massive focus of mine. For whatever reason, I just felt better about interactions in the real world.

So I witnessed friends push follower counts into the hundreds of thousands while I stayed steady at about 1000 on IG, for instance. But then I had all of the West Coast to do shows, shop-in-shops, events, etc. Then I moved out of California so it got more difficult.

Having said that, I still made a decent living even from those social media fans and clients because they were real and wanted to engage with the creative that I was producing. I’ve found that paid and targeted ads with META have been very successful and I would recommend investing a little money into those because you can find your actual client in a way that is less organic and yet produces fantastic results. Combine that with in person interactions, and you have a win.

I should also say that bars, restaurants and hospitality venues are great ways to increase that social media presence organically while making money doing what you love. Galleries are less interesting to me, in part because of the sometimes obvious snob factor and elitist mindset which keeps your type of client out of that space. Exceptions are places like Wonderground (Disney) and Haven Palm Beach where I’ve had the chance to do artist-in-residence installations so I can interact directly with the client (or “guest” as Disney says).

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

NFTs are a first step toward what I think will be immersive virtual interactive art and spaces, converging, and so I’m excited with the potential that they hold for full multi-faceted creative experiences.

Having said that, I think that artists and designers need to push the envelope with NFTs and develop narratives, storyline and their own universes so that fans can buy into more than just a jpeg on a phone. In fact, I love the idea of utilizing NFTs as a gateway drug into a larger macro-multiverse of storytelling via art, design and interactive media, with a place in the real world as well as within a digital space. Sort of like going to the theater and then bringing that home into your life. Arthur Miller meets Pokemon-GO.

I’m working on such a project right now with Tamiami NFTs where we have a full science fiction (UFO x cyberpunk) narrative developed which ties into real world mysteries and juxtaposes them against compelling visuals and characters that we think will resonate with a wide audience. And then, you can also take the art home and hang actual paintings on your wall from these collections.

In regards to the plethora of close to nonsensical, mass-produced NFT art that I saw pop-up (and then drop—no pun) over the past few years, I am not a fan. But some people are using those platforms to produce very cool work and that’s where my focus goes, as both fans of theirs and interested in continuing to grow the possibilities in that space.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.danconiagallery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danconia_art
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seandanconia/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danconia