We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tony Wilson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tony below.

Tony, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

A “regular job” is subjective, at least to me. Any job can be a regular job really, hell, I always thought an artist was a regular job. I’ve never been into “traditional jobs”! No nine to fives, clock in and clock outs, no hour logging or suit and tie wearing stuff. I’ve never thought of having one of those kind of jobs, I’ve always wanted to do something that allowed me to have the freedom to create what I want and to love what I create. Only once has there been an actual moment where I thought about settling for a traditional job, and that was in a moment of frustration and weakness. There’s been times where I’ve played around with the idea of having a traditional job. I’ve pursued a career in architecture, in graphic design and in UX/UI design, but it was never what I really wanted to do. I took a chance on not having one of those traditional, but reliable and secure jobs to chase a dream.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I have been drawing all my life, basically since I was in pampers. I got into my field of expertise naturally through just wanting to create things. I wanted to draw, paint, sculpt, write, just create in general. I didn’t land a job or anything like that in the beginning, I was mostly posting artwork I had done to my Instagram at the time and waited to see what happens. I didn’t fully lean into any of it til after I graduated college, during school I was in between trying to figure out what the plan was and just going with the flow. At the time I was locking down a handful of clients, and was trying to solve an issue they had, which was how to bring their visions to life.I certainly wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t going to be out worked. I stayed on the grind, did my homework, and worked on perfecting my craft. I decided to dive fully in to what I was doing when I got hired to work on a comic series “Meet Duncan”. This was right at the beginning of COVID and all our lockdowns, I saw this as a blessing and jumped at the chance. It didn’t work out in the long run, but the experience was definitely helpful and appreciated, and came in handy when I got sought out by Revolt TV.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

“Non-creative” is funny to me, I think everyone is creative in their own ways. Some just more than others. But, there are those who don’t see creatives in the same light as other creatives do. It’s still a struggle to get people to see the value in what we create, the value only seems to be recognized in the things they like. There’s always that hill people are willing to die on where they just don’t see artists or creatives as having “real jobs”, or that the value we put into our craft isn’t the same value that they are willing to pay, or respect. “I know someone who can do that for la la la”, “I could do that in five minutes”, “why would I pay xyz for something that can be done in blah blah blah minutes”, I hear stuff like that to this day. Or I’ll run into people who think they’re doing me a favor by having me work on their projects. Like I’m just standing there with my hand out. I don’t think people sit and think about the actual value someone can create for you. It’s funny to me how people can say they’re serious about their craft and goals, but aren’t willing to pay the people who definitely have a hand in helping them pursue those goals.

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

NFTs are interesting to say the least. I’m not opposed to them at all, but I can see the lack of appeal with them. I think they’ll be here to stay, they’re like traditional fine art that people like to bid over and to snag up like they’re going out of fashion. As an artist I’m definitely here for it. I’m not sure if the hype and value of them will stay consistent through the years, but I don’t see them just not being a factor in life. People throw life savings at works of art all the time, I don’t see this being any different. Who knows, I might make my own

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