[ TANO ] You Need the Structure to Become Free

We reached out to Tano Bonfanti, a concept artist from Santa Fe, Argentina, because of his art. His personal projects, Made by Human and Sunbeam, build entire worlds through concept art alone, and we wanted to know more about how they came to be.

What we found in the conversation was an awesome human being. Tano has an almost poetic approach to his work and to life, and you'll feel it throughout the interview below.

Your name, Tano, isn't your birth name?

No, it's Mauro. Bonfanti is an Italian surname, and in Argentina, when you have an Italian last name, people call you Tano, it's a cheeky way of pointing out your background. It started in high school and it just stuck.

Tell us a little bit about your background.

I studied architecture first. I went because I wanted to draw, and architecture felt like it had a more profound vibe than graphic design, at least in my eyes, somewhere I could draw more. I enjoyed the first couple of years, then spent a few years making a lot of mistakes, this self-destructive attitude, partying, just trying to find myself. People around me started actually getting jobs in architecture, so I finally saw what the job really was, and all the ideas I had about this amazingly creative career just dissolved. I said, I don't want this. I need to find something more creative, this is the lifeline of my life, I wither away if I don't create.

That's when I found Feng Zhu, an amazing concept artist who runs a school in Singapore. I found one of his first videos on YouTube, 2012 or 2013, and I immediately knew this was my thing. I dropped out within a few months. Everyone told me to finish architecture first, no one knew what concept art even was back then, especially in Santa Fe, a smaller city in Argentina. But I listened to my gut and got totally obsessed, training myself 14 hours a day, drawing, drawing, drawing, until about a year later I started grabbing entry-level jobs, designing tattoos, whatever. I was living with my 89-year-old grandmother at the time, so I had the luxury of not paying rent. She'd been an artist herself when she was young, so we shared some sensibilities there.

Was there art around you growing up, before all this?

Yes, since I have a memory. My mother was an art student and ended up creating the project for the Modern Art Museum of Santa Fe from the ground up, we didn't have one before. My father is a poet and short-story writer. I traveled with them to meet artists from Buenos Aires, so I saw a lot of different styles very young.

Then in the 90s there was a channel called Locomotion. No YouTube yet, and anime was so underground you could tell who was into it by how they dressed and talked. One of the things that inspired me most was Akira. I saw it when nobody saw it, and it felt like something that was mine. Katsuhiro Otomo is still one of my main inspirations today, along with everything Studio Madhouse did, and Evangelion too.

What specifically from Otomo shows up in your own work?

My line work differs from his in some ways, he leans into what animation needs, an efficient balance between detail and line. As a concept artist, I can give more time to each design, that's a luxury. But what I love about Akira is the mechanical and vehicle design, this perfect balance between busy areas and clear areas without losing complexity. There's something organic in his drawings, curves and circles, even when he's using straight lines, they flow in a way that's really pleasing to the eye. I pull a lot from that, and from Akira's color palette too.

When did you realize you could actually make a living from this?

The moment I heard it was possible. Not just a living, a good living, because I didn't want to be the stereotypical starving artist. It's a struggle, of course, but I saw the silver lining when someone I admired told me: if you apply yourself enough, you can.

All my life, I couldn't separate my work from my life, and I was fighting that when I was young, trying to fit into a system that only allows certain things. I never fit into those structures, so I realized I needed to build my own to get free of that one. You need the discipline, the self-honesty, you need to be the harshest critic of your own work. When you're the only one doing what you do in your city, people are blown away even by something that's objectively not there yet, because they've never seen someone spend 14 hours on a single concept. If you hold onto that honesty, you get to free yourself. It's counterintuitive, you need the structure to become free.

You've mentioned you've never applied for a job, everything came to you. Can you say more about that?

It's true, I never applied, for years and years. Every job I got was because someone reached out. By that measure, I could tell I was getting better, because the only thing I was doing was exposing the work, no cover letters, barely any effort on social media, that only really started moving about a year ago.

That's something really useful when you're designing things: confidence. Showing your art is a vulnerable thing to do. I treat the process like something sacred, an altar, almost. I let my mind travel, and these places become filled with meaning for me. I think there's a coherence between your actions and your state of mind that attracts things, and opportunities came without me reaching out. I choose to believe the world is a bit more magical than most people think, and it's worked for me. You get good at following intuition once you've built confidence through the work itself, and you start struggling less with your choices.

Were there specific projects where you thought, I can't believe I'm working on this?

I taught last year at one of the best concept art schools in the world, in Paris, incredibly intensive eight-hour class days, a real exchange of ideas. You're not just sharing information, you're syncing up in a different way. That whole experience, my art career, is really about connecting with something bigger than yourself.

Tell us about Made by Human and Sunbeam, the personal projects you've been sharing.

Made by Human is an aesthetic and a universe. It came from a feeling about AI and all this soulless, heartless commercializing of art, they remove the process entirely, and for me that's the most important part, this relationship you build with something full of infinite ideas. It's a bit of a simple play on words, made by human, math by human, whatever, I don't mind that it's simple.

Sunbeam is a game idea inside that same universe, more positive, more uplifting. I love 60s and 70s car design and film stock, mixed with something more futuristic. The idea is an adventure driving game, something you pick up when you're tired from work, not something demanding like an RPG. If you want to just drive and take pictures and chill, you can. It has a slow, progressive, finding-yourself kind of quality to it, dealing with your own stuff. It might be niche, but it comes from an honest, organic place.

How do you actually feel about AI, given how central technology is to the worlds you draw?

I don't hate artificial intelligence, hate is too big a word. At its current state, I don't enjoy it, I think it's made things worse, environmentally too, with data centers and so on. There's probably a good use for it somewhere, I'm just not seeing it yet, and I'm not fighting the future itself. What I am fighting for is that we hold onto our humanistic nature. That's why the people and faces I draw are always a bit struggling, there's a dark undertone, because the real struggle is finding the right relationship with technology.

For Sunbeam, I've been thinking about flipping the usual game structure around entirely: you start with a full set of gear and abilities, this transhumanist world technology gave you, and as you play, instead of equipping things, you're unequipping them, letting go, until you find your own humanity and nature again underneath it. I don't know if I'll ever build it, but I like it philosophically, it represents me quite a lot. I have a nice symbiosis with my own iPad, my own tools, technology that gives me what I ask for without overreaching. The whole idea is to let go of what isn't working and keep what is, but for that you need to be honest with yourself first.

Any films or shows, recent or otherwise, that have really stuck with you?

Mind Game, from 2004, I saw that pretty early on. I love how freely they use different media, photography, rotoscopy in places, real creativity being explored through real limitations, and I think limitations are the whole key to something being good. eXistenZ, David Cronenberg, a pretty weird movie from 1999 about game design, worth watching in the context of its own timeline, the ideas it was putting out almost thirty years ago. Tokyo Gore Police too, gory, but genuinely creative, very Japanese, over-the-top character design.

More recently, Severance, on Apple, I think it's a masterpiece, so tastefully shot every frame could be a screensaver. I'm a huge photography fan myself, twenty years now, though not professionally, it feeds into my illustration work a lot. And Blade Runner 2049, amazing, a really nice, true iteration of that universe without just copying the first film, you can feel the love that went into it. I also always tell people to watch the original Terminator, it's an overlooked, really good example of techno-noir, a genre I love and lean on in a lot of my own designs. You can find that same flavor in RoboCop too.