Jazza, whose real name is Josiah Aan Brooks, is an Australian YouTuber, artist, animator and presenter. In particular, it hosts the YouTube channel called Draw With Jazza where it provides tutorials and art challenges. As of March 2019, ‘Draw With Jazza’ has over 4.3 million subscribers and 630 million total video views. In addition to ‘Draw With Jazza’, he also owns the ‘Daily Jazza’ channel with over 360,000 subscribers.
JAZZA AGE
Jazza was born on April 20, 1989 in Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state. He started practicing art at the age of 12. Back then, he created his stage name, Jazza, and used it for his Hotmail account. While in high school, he used Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Flash for Animate during his breaks.
JAZZA FAMILY
The fifth of 6 children was born into a Latter-day Saint family. Later, when he was 21, he would leave the church as he no longer agreed with its principles. His only known relative is his brother Shad M. Brooks, also a YouTuber. His brother makes videos of medieval fantasy objects on his channel called Shadiversity. They were regularly seen collaborating on a couple of videos.
Wife and children
Josiah is married to Kate Brooks, a teacher. The couple married in 2014 and have been together ever since. As of 2019, the couple have two children, a son born in 2015 and a daughter born in 2018.
JAZZA CAREER
At the age of 17, in 2006, he started getting freelance jobs and sponsorships. This was right after he completed his high school studies and then ventured into creating video game animations. His animations were created using Adobe Flash. In 2011, he realized that the Adobe Flash era was waning just after the iPhone era began. She scoured her channel and found that most of the views she got came from her art tutorials. The following year he created ‘Draw with Jazza’ and started providing art tutorials starting with human anatomy.
His tutorials have been successful in terms of visualizations and have also attracted people to his freelance animation business. It also includes character design, speed painting and art competitions in its channel. In addition, he has also done some occasional reviews of various software and art equipment. It has a secondary channel called ‘Daily Jazza’. There, he talks to his community about major events happening in his life. It also offers a behind-the-scenes look at his projects.
In addition to these two, he also has It’s Tabletop Time channels, where he plays role-playing games with his friends, where he releases great animated shorts, and JosiahBrooksMusic, for his original music videos.
Josiah Brooks AKA Jazza
It has an artistic style similar to that of comics. One of his biggest influences in the art industry is Christopher Hart, an artist who has written several books on how to draw. Later, he helped Hart develop his own YouTube channel. His other artistic influencers are Adam Phillips, Bernard Derriman, James Farr, James Lee and Johnny Utah. In 2014, when his channel got 100,000, he decided to stop viewing it as a secondary hustle and devote himself full time.
He got sponsorship from the CEO of Newgrounds to help him with his business. In 2015, he received AU $ 100,000 from Google and Screen Australia under the Skip Ahead initiative program. Sometime later, he had the chance to join other YouTubers in Los Angeles to work on the YouTube space. Together, they produced a series of short films titled ‘The Tale Teller’. In 2016 he took part in Adobe Systems’ Twitch streaming session on ‘Building Flexible Animation’. Some time later, he published the book Draw With Jazza – Creating Characters: Fun and Easy Guide to Drawing Cartoons and Comics.
He also had a short film series called Cartoon It Up which was televised on ABC Me and made available on his video watching app. In 2018, he designed the April Fool’s Googz logo for Google Australia. In addition to all his other work, he regularly participates in conventions such as PAX, VidCon Australia and Comic-Con.
JAZZA (YOUTUBER) WORKS
Books
- Draw with Jazza – Character Creation: Easy and Fun Guide to Drawing Cartoon and Comic Book (2016)
Other jobs
- Cartoon It Up – The short films of the 2016 television series broadcast on ABC Me and ABC iview.
- Arty Games by Jazza: application for phone and computer
- Get noticed and earn on YouTube! – online course on Skillshare
- How to speak and present to the camera like a pro! – online course on Skillshare
- Jazza coloring eBook! – a digital coloring book (2017)