From starstruck fan to 700,000 subscribers: Aussie animator earns YouTube fame
From starstruck fan to 700,000 subscribers: Aussie animator earns YouTube fame. YouTube artist Sultan Sketches with a cardboard cut-out of his avatar, and a wall of fan art inspired by his videos.CREDIT:LUIS ENRIQUE ASCUI
In the past, an artist’s life was seen as a lonely one, eking out a living in a garret.
But being a budding YouTube star has brought modern-day animator Sultan Sketches some powerful interactions.
Thousands of fans from around the world have sent him their own drawings inspired by his anime videos.
He prints them and sticks them on his bedroom wall in a south-eastern Melbourne suburb.
Last year, a US guidance counsellor of troubled teenage boys emailed Sketches to say that a video titled How To Be Happy had struck a chord with them.
The video compared tackling sad feelings and anxiety to a video game, and you could try to conquer them by distractions such as reading a book or meeting friends.
It’s been just 18 months since the self-taught Sketches (his first name really is Sultan but his surname is a pseudonym) quit his part-time job in a stationery shop and decided not to study law in favour of being a full-time YouTube artist.
His channel now has almost 700,000 YouTube subscribers and one of his videos gained almost four million views.
At this year’s VidCon online video conference, at the Victorian Convention and Exhibition Centre from Thursday to Sunday, Sketches will appear in forums and at fan meet-and-greet sessions.
At the same event last year, Sketches was himself a ‘‘starstruck’’ fan, of American animator The Odd1sOut, whose cartoons on topics such as cats and annoying retail customers inspired Sketches to become a YouTuber.
Odd1sOut, who Sketches now calls a friend, has 12.7 million YouTube subscribers.
A VidCon spokesman said being a YouTuber was still an unusual career in Australia and Sketches’ 700,000 subscriber number was substantial.
He said most top YouTubers in Australia were gamers, musicians, vloggers and lifestyle influencers. Animators make up only a small percentage.
Monitoring platform Social Blade’s Top 250 most subscribed YouTuber list for Australia places Sultan at No.215.
His number of subscriptions is not far off ABC News Australia, which has 716,000.
When self-taught artist Sketches, 22, started uploading his eight to 20-minute videos — he has now done 36, and has notched up a total of 28 million views — he would emulate other animators, but soon developed his own blend of animated and still images.
They are true stories such as how he fell in love with his female best friend at high school, and how he was bullied at primary school.
Kookier stories tell why he is afraid of tomatoes and hates Christmas.
Most videos feature the artist turning the pages of a sketch book and drawing each scene, with Sketches as audio narrator.
He makes money from a percentage, per number of views, of revenue from ads.
He has done one endorsement segment, for an online education company, and would consider more.
While he works from home, producing each video himself, he keeps in contact with artist friends and even fans via online chat rooms.
Attending the US version of VidCon in July, some fans told him his videos helped them cope with real issues, or inspired them to draw. Others said he had entertained them.
Sketches says it keeps him grounded. ‘‘Sometimes we stay in our rooms. All we see is numbers and sometimes we forget that each of those numbers is a person, watching.”
