This week’s artist’s spotlight focuses on Jazza, whose YouTube channel both teaches and entertains.
The Artist’s Spotlight is a Hypable weekly feature that will focus on someone who has caught our attention for fandom-related art, whether it be drawings, songs, crafts, or more! Every week you can expect a new talented artist we think you should be aware of!
Hypable: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jazza: My name is Josiah. I go by Jos in real life, but on the internet I go by the name ‘Jazza,’ the super cool alias I gave myself when I was 12 years old signing up to my first Hotmail email address, which I totally knew would become my professional persona even though I’d never been called it in my life by anyone I knew. Anyhow, from about that age I began to be very passionate about art and animation and all throughout high school spent all of my time making stuff. When I was 17 I had learned a thing or two along the way and started getting sponsorships from websites for my animations. When I graduated high school, I continued along this route and started producing web games as well. For the next five years I did so until the web game market started to decline, at which point I set up my YouTube channel DrawWithJazza as a kind of ‘backup,’ which is lucky because since then I’ve earned next to no money from web games, but the YouTube thing has fortunately been able to keep the bills paid.
What first interested you in art?
I think it’s innate in my character. I’m a creative person and if it wasn’t animation or drawing, it’d be music or sculpture or building, etc. I feel unproductive and unhappy if I’m not working on something or towards something, or challenging myself to progress in some way. Drawing when I was very young provided me with a very direct outlet to do so and it’s kind of stuck ever since!
Your YouTube channel is so fun and full of variety. What do you love about that medium?
Thank you! I love two things about it that are quite opposite from each other — the consistency, and the freedom. I love the consistency of making 100% sure I upload three videos a week, or monitoring graphs and progress, replying to comments, having regular segments so people know what they expect and enjoy — and the freedom of being allowed to follow my instincts and passions and at times throw a curveball that I and my viewers seem to enjoy a lot, just to keep it fresh — whether it be meetups in person, April Fools prank videos, emotionally directed art projects, or really dumb views and streams.
What got you interested in using YouTube as an instructional platform?
I have always enjoyed teaching and on my old main YouTube channel I did a range of videos from animated shorts, to music videos, and animation tutorials. The tutorials (though very badly made) were quite popular. Later on I opened up a few other YouTube channels to separate the different themes from my original channel into places of their own, so now JazzaStudios is my channel for animated shorts, JosiahBrooksMusic is where I uploaded the music videos I made, and I opened DrawWithJazza as a place for the tutorial videos, which I realized I could get more viewers in, simply because of the lack of quality animation tutorials around at the time.
How would you describe your style?
Approachable. I’m very aware there are a lot of better artists out there than me, but I’ve also got a lot to give, especially to the newer and more intermediate artists who want to break into art or animation as a career, because I don’t drag on the content but try and get right to the point of the lesson. I also give away the resources from my tutorials for free in every lesson so that people can take them and get a hands-on experience, which I believe is the best way to learn.
Which types of characters are your favorite to draw?
It varies! I love doing the cartoony cutesy stuff, but I also love trying to push myself in the ‘comic book’ style because my idols are all amazing at that and it’s something I’d love to be good at.
Which aspect of your art is the most challenging for you?
I struggled through most of my artistic development in drawing women due to a mixture of things, being a shy nerdy guy and not looking them in the eye through most of my teenage years didn’t help, and being ‘bad’ at drawing them kept me away from practicing them just because I was always disappointed. I was also raised to be very religious (which I am no longer) and made to feel ‘wrong’ when looking at the form of a woman, so drawing nude women seemed a big taboo when I was young (which can be, in fact, one of the best aids to learning to draw the human form). A few years ago I finally decided to crunch down and improve, and I’ve made a lot of progress since. It can still be hit-and-miss sometimes but I’m a lot better than I was and it’s something I’m conscious of continuously developing. That, and backgrounds (environments), but mostly because I find them boring to draw! :P
Which artists have inspired you the most?
When I was in my early teens, Christopher Hart was my biggest inspiration. In my late teens, internet animators like Adam Phillips, Bernard Derriman, James Farr, James Lee and Johnny Utah just to name a few. These days, I’m really into comic book artists like J Scott Campbell, and other YouTubers like Will Terrell and Sycra, and I take pleasure in soaking up visual inspiration in any good artwork I see!
What advice would you give to other artists?
Take the journey of being an artist for the ride, not the destination. Too many artists see where they want to be and can get down on themselves for not getting there fast enough. I believe we’ll never get ‘there’ because what ‘there’ is always changing and becomes more difficult to reach! The best part about our medium is the fact that we have the ability to invent the previously uninvented, to make brilliant mistakes, have wild ambitions and grow more through it every day. It’s an adventure, there are ups and downs, client deadlines and viral hits, stressful crunch times, business failures, and touching moments of connecting with other people, and in the end it’s the darks and the lights that culminate in a beautiful artwork (or in this case, life), and I’m pretty happy to take that ride over a mundane easy job ANY day.
What’s your ultimate goal as an artist?
My ultimate goal as an artist is to never lose sight of what matters, and what matters to me and the people who view my content is sincerity. No bullsh*t. If I sell a product, it’s because I put everything I have into it. If I make a tutorial or plug a brand, it’s because at the time of releasing it, I know it’s the best thing I can give my audience. If I make an artwork, or start a project, it’s because I believe in its message or its potential — and most of all, if I see someone with a question or suggestion, whether they be brand new to art, or an experienced veteran, if we strip away ego and whatever walls may be there then we can help each other and learn from each other, and in the end that’s bloody beautiful. If I can stick to that for the rest of my life, I will die a happy happy man, and I know a few other people will be better off for it, too. :)
You can find Jazza on his YouTube channel, where he posts all sorts of videos for your enjoyment and learning benefit. You can also find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Jazza also has a store on Gumroad, where he sells instructional bundles to help you hone your drawing skills!
In fact, if you’re interested, Jazza is giving Hypable readers a 15% discount off of everything in his store! You can get the Body Bundle, the Art Archive, the Tutorial Archive, the Body Reference pack, and the Easy Anatomy pack.