ChuuStar

Hi Everyone!

As the titles states I am actually, for real, going to move to Denmark. Why? I've been accepted to study animation at the Animation Workshop.
I am super excited about learning animation over there but I am also soooo scared about how it will be living there for so long. I have been moving around a lot for the past 3-4 years so I'm very used to that. However this is the first time I will be moving so far by myself without being able to see any for my friends or family for a big amount of time.

So because I am so busy with moving and settling in the new school I won't be able to post any new art for a little while... Yes again... = n = I am sorry about that. I'm trying to draw, post and be on livestream as much as I possibly can.
I hope you all understand and will look forward, as much as I am, to my development in this new school. I hope to one day produce my own short movie for you guys to enjoy, In fact I already have script and concepts in the making.


Now for some other news. Some of you may know about the website Squishable.com. In this website you can submit your own design for a round plushie and the general public are the ones that vote for which designs to be made~
I sent in a design not long ago and I was hoping I could ask you guys to vote on either my design or any other design you find interesting~

This is my design: www.squishable.com/opensquish/…
And these are all the designs: www.squishable.com/c/voting_ca…

Note that I'm not asking for you to vote only on my design. Please choose fairly and vote on the ones you like the best.

I can also recommend you guys to send in your designs for this website. I've had my design chosen once and it's really fun seeing your design be made into a big huggable plushie.
This is my previous design that got chosen and is up for sale: www.squishable.com/pc/opensqui…

This was all the news I had for you guys right now.
I wish you all the best and I will try and be back as soon as possible with more art and animations!

Bye~

As most of you might have realised I'm very busy with school and projects lately so I don't have time for any personal drawings to post here.
I feel really bad for not being as active as I used to so therefore I wanted to share two of my tumblr blogs where I post most of my animations and sketches.

Animations: www.chuustar.tumblr.com/
Sketches: chuusketchbook.tumblr.com/

I try and post there as often as I can but like I previously mentioned I'm very busy with my schoolproject and don't have much time for personal drawings.

Sorry if I'm writing this a bit messy but I'm just about heading to bed..
Thanks for reading and still being interested in my art! It really do mean a lot to me.

-Chuu

I will be online for about 2-3 hours. Just feeling like making a drawing I thought of this morning.

www.livestream.com/chuustar

A while back I made a journal where anyone who wanted could ask me anything and I would try and answer as much questions as possible. Or atleast as many as I feel comfortable answering.

So with no further ado, let's go on with the QnA

Personal questions:

Q. Where did your username come from?
A. My username firstly came from my nickname Chuu. I got my nickname while roleplaying with my ex on msn right before we started dating and it has just stuck since then.
The "star" part in my username was just added because I like stars.

Q. What do you look like? Eyecolor, haircolor, etc.
A. I am about 1,60 cm short. My current haircolor is brown since I'm trying to get back my natural haircolor. My current haircut is short in the back, short on one sideburn and long on the other with short rounded bangs.
My eyecolor is blue/grey but they can look green if I wear green clothes.

Q. What's your favorite color?
A. My favorite color is orange but I do like most colors. I mostly wear grey clothes lately but I'm trying to wear more colorful clothes again.

Q. How's your social life?
A. Right now I don't have much of a social life. I live at my dads place far away from my hometown and my friends.
To get to my school I travel about 1½ hours to get to school and about 2½ hours to get back home everyday. This makes it hard to even hang out with my classmates who lives together in a dorm at the school.
The only friends I can visit more easily are my old roomies in Skövde but I only see them about once a month. I do try and visit my friends in my hometown and Stockholm as much as I can but it still only happens about 4 times a year.

Q. Do you like walking in nature?
A. I prefer staying at home but if I'm feeling too much shut in I really like to take a walk to get some fresh air. I prefer walking together with someone rather than alone.

School/Animation related questions:

Q. What school do you go to?
A. Sörängens folkhögskola majoring animation. The education is 1-2 years long and I'm currently on my first year.

Q. How are you doing as of lately? You aren't stressing yourself out and feeling overwhelmed right?
A. After starting studying animations in such an intense pace I've started to learn were my limitations are. It's hard and frustrating to realise were they are but hopefully I'll be able to overcome them soon.

Q. Do you like your new school?
A. YES! It's really fun to be surrounded by other people who likes to explore animation and our teachers are really soft. The school is really cute, it looks like a small village in the old days. Haha

Q. How many animation classes have u taken/how long have you been practicing animation?
A. Before I started school this fall I hadn't taken any classes at all. I am mostly selftaught since 1 year back.

Q. How long does it take to become an animator?
A. I think it all depends on the individual. Some can study animation but not learn a thing and some can be selftaught and make animations like a pro. I personally won't recognize myself as an animator just yet.

Q. What program do you use to make your animations?
A. At home I'm using photoshop CS5.
At school were making traditional 2D animations by hand. We scan our animations in Toki Linetest and when the animation looks good we transfer it to TVpaint to do all the cleanup.

Q. What is a good program to make animations in?
A. It varies from person to person. I personally prefer photoshop for digital animations but I can't really recommend it to others since photoshop isn't entirely made for animations.
Flash, TVpaint or easytoon are some programs I want to look more into so I suggest other people do that aswell since they are made for animations. TVpaint is apparently used very often in studios so that's my best bet.


Art related questions:

Q. Who or what were your largest influences?
A. There is two people who has been major inspirations for me since a lot of years back. The first one is actually a friend of mine who I met when I was about 16 years old. His name is Mattis (Bomuboi) and he currently work as an animator at Mojang. He was the first person I met that had the same interest in art that I did. Most of my friends and classmates in my hometown never was that interested in art so I quickly got interested in his art. I've learned a lot from him and I still want to learn even more, unfortunately I can't hang out with him as much as I would like to. He is also the one that got me interested in animations so I really want stand on even ground with him and make him proud of me someday.  
My other favorite artist/animator is BahiJD. I've followed his art for a lot of years now and it's really amazing how we are the same age but he has worked his way up so much in the business already.

Q. What/who inspires your art the most?
A. I kinda answered "who" in the last question so I will go ahead with "what".
What inspires my art the most is emotions, feelings, connections and relationships. . Most of my art is closely related to my own thoughts and feelings. However, ever since more and more people have started to follow my DA, family/friends included, I've had a hard time finding the courage to make some of the drawings I would like to draw. I'm scared that if I draw some stuff then some of my friends or family will be offended. I want my art and feelings to be expressed and seen, but at the same time I'm too scared of the consequences that might appear.

Q. What's our favorite hair color/type (curly/straight) to make?
A. I assume you mean favorite type of hair to draw. I have yet to know that. I've had lots of problems drawing hair lately so it's really hard to say. I'm trying to practice hair more often tho. I don't have any special haircolor I like, If I did I wouldn't change my own haircolor so much. Haha

Q. What's your favorite part of the body? What part do you like to draw the most?
A. I like big butts and I cannot lie~ Haha. But to be honest, lately I've practiced drawing faces so much that I draw the the most whenever I start drawing. But I still think I like to draw butts the most.

Q. When do you find you do your best work? (after a long day, after exercise/eating, etc.)
A. It used to be late at night however now with my current schedule at school I just get too tired to draw when I get home. Now I think I can sketch the most when I'm actually in school when I have lots of people around me. I have a hard time focusing when I have too much freetime somehow.

Q. What was the lowest point in your artistic life (or life in general) and what made you stay on track and persevere to overcome it?
A. I think it was in my third year of upper secondaryschool (Gymnasium). We had to make a random project over the year and I first decided to practice drawing building of my hometown. I didn't get much encouragement however. The only thin I was told was "Can you really do that?". This gave me a really bad start on my project and I couldn't feel good about it. After I had a dream after half a year had past I decided I wanted to make that into a animated movie, but since I didn't have the knowledge how to make a movie I just went with a comic. But making a comic (Which I don't like to make) in such a short time was really hard and I was already insecure in my art. I re-did the whole thing a lot of times and got really depressed. My ex was doing military service at the time so I felt really alone during this time. I had artblock but still struggled on and re-did stuff all the time.
After I had turned in my half-finished comic and a written essay about it to my teacher and I was alone in the classroom I just broke down. I started crying and felt terrible.
For over half a year after that I could barely even touch a pen or look at good art. My heart started racing, I got dizzy and just felt really bad. I basically got panic-attacks looking at art, So I didn't draw at all for a long while.
I slowly started drawing again later but it didn't get to normal until a couple of months after me and my ex broke up. That's when I started to use my feelings and experiences as inspiration for my art, but it was mostly just to vent my pent up feelings.
I'm still venting but like I said before, now that more people I know notice my art it gets harder for me to express myself the way I want. I want them to know but at the same time not.

Q. What is the highest point in your artistic life (or life in general) that makes it all worth it?
A. I think the highest point has been these past months actually. I am currently saving up for a new 1 month trip to Japan and just these past months I've been able to earn enough money for half the trip!
First I got secondplace in a competition at my last school and got some prizemoney. I also made a big tree-scuplture with a chainsaw and got some money from that.
During the summer I sent in a design for www.squishable.com and amazingly enough my design got voted high enough to be made.  You can see my design at the squishable.com webpage under "in-process designs" section.
Some of you already know but I've been animating a short part in a musicvideo for a singer on youtube called FreddeGredde and hopefully you will soon see the finished video featuring lots of different artist including some of my new classmates.

So a lot of stuff has really paid off and it feels kinda cool to know that my trip will be financed by my own art. Hopefully I will be able to go to japan before summer next year so I can visit my friend who is studying there.

Aaaaaand here you have it. These were most of the questions I got during these past month and I really hope it helped or was atleast somewhat interesting to read and not too depressing.
If there is any more questions you would like me to answer and add to this QnA then you can just ask them in the commentsection below or send me a note. I'm happy to see that so many are interested in listening to what I have to say and I'm sorry for not answering more often. I really appreciate you all for being here and supporting me.

Lastly I would just like to recommend you check out some of my classmates DA pages. They are really awesome people and deserve to be seen. ' u ' I don't have all their links yet but I will try and get them all!!


Here is also my old roomies DA pages if your interested. They are also really awesome so if you like sci fi, mecha or fantasy you should really check them out! ^ u ^


My friend who I really look up to unfortunately doesn't have a DA pages but you can see some stuff on his twitter, Bomuboi, and you can see BahiJD on either his DA , his tumblr or his twitter. Just google it. ' u '

Thanks for reading and hopefully I will be able to post new art soon! Bai baaaaaaai~

Hi everyone! ^ O ^

Lately I've gotten a lot of questions and some of them are ones I've heard a lot of times before and I don't really have the time to reply to the same question over and over again. I also don't want to ignore any questions or comment. I do read them all and I really appreciate all comments and critique you guys give me. Really, thank you so much! It means a lot to me. ' u '

So! Since I've recieved more questions lately I figured why not make a journal where you guys can ask me about anything~ I will leave this journal open for a couple of days or so to collect all your questions and then I will make a new journal with most of the answers I feel comfortable giving. Haha xD

I don't expect getting all to many questions since I've been so absent from DA lately, but I'll leave this open and see what happens~

Thanks for reading! Over and out~

-Chuu