Interview with Ian Su (Non-Professional)
Editor / Lim Chii
Ian Su is a creative writer, filmmaker, and artist based in New York City. He is also known as The Non-Professional, founder of the blog/YouTube Channel of the same name. At Non-Professional, his passion is bringing out the creativity in others, whatever topic that may be.
The Innovative Times interviewed Ian Su about the non-professional blog/YouTube Channel that he started. Through this interview, we can find out and understand what it's like to post regularly on YouTube while also being homeschooled concurrently.
What made you want to start a YouTube channel about drawing, creativity, film, and writing?
I've always been drawing since I was a kid, but between the ages of 7 and 11, there was a large void where I wasn't doing anything creative. I wanted to get back to drawing, and also wanted to sharpen it up. My drawing wasn't that great to begin with. I began posting random drawing videos up onto YouTube, but it was never serious. But slowly and surely, I started enjoying the process. There was something, a feeling of accomplishment, of drawing something, filming the work, editing it, and uploading it even though no one was watching it. Later on, I gained a following, and my motivation kept on growing. I'm still doing it now!
Since having over 228 episodes on your Drawing Life series, would you say it was a worthwhile experience?
It wasn't the number 228, it wasn't the number of days I spent working on the series, it was the feeling, my inner conscience, telling me that I was done. It was time to move on. Everything comes to an end. But I realised that this project was something that I had actually succeeded in. Something I was proud of and something that made me happy. Nothing had brought me more joy than sitting down every day and drawing, then posting it to share with the world. But I decided that with the incoming of more schoolwork, the incoming of larger responsibilities, I needed to move on, working on something less time-consuming.
Are there any past or present challenges you wished you knew of before you started?
Any challenges?! I totally underestimated the hard work, blood, sweat and tears that was to come. I went in without checking it out. But hey, I'm glad I decided to do this. I'm also glad that I didn't have too many self-doubts starting out. But in terms of challenges, I wish I had been warned about the time-consuming aspect of editing, how it takes 3 hours to encode a single video, and also the hard work of trying to get content out there consistently. I feel like a lot of the challenges I didn't see coming was in post production, because I felt pretty confident with the drawing part. But even doing that was hard. Being a YouTuber is hard, lonely work. You work by yourself 95% of the time. That's another thing I wish I had prepared for- sitting alone for hours at a time editing away or filming. But that just comes with the package. And part of the package is also fun. It's fun to beat down the challenges and setbacks and technical issues and just create something.
Any advice you would like to give to those starting their very own YouTube channels?
I say this to a lot of beginners: Being a YouTuber is like growing a garden.
You have to water it consistently. You put effort into it. You pull the weeds out. In this case, the water is the content being uploaded, the weeds are all the challenges and annoying little things you have to deal with. But in time, you'll end up with something beautiful. At the same time, you can't water too much, or the garden will die. Don't bomb your subscribers. Once a week is good enough, three times a week is overly insane and will kill you as well.
Another piece of advice would be to interact. INTERACT with your viewers and thank them for coming by. It'll get harder as your channel grows but don't forget to show gratitude. And don't push them to like, subscribe, or anything. Show yourself as a good and nice person and people will return the favor. And thirdly/finally, don't give up when you receive harsh criticism. You gotta have a thick skin to deal with the toxic part of the YouTube community. Don't listen to them. You also gotta learn to differentiate when people are trying to help you or when they are just being just annoying and hurtful, not thinking before they type.
How has your perception towards YouTubers and YouTube in general changed over the years?
I grew up thinking YouTubers had it easy. Make videos for a living. They had an easy life, I thought. But being a YouTuber has totally changed my perspective. They are HARD WORKERS, whether they do it for a living or not. I've met so many great people over YouTube and they all work super hard, editing and filming. Especially the art youtubers. They often draw through the week, upload it on Saturday, and start again the next week. We work hard to produce content, and many people underestimate it.
After reading this interview, I hope that you would be able to have a clearer picture towards YouTube, and the hard work YouTubers constantly have to put into their videos.
The constant struggle, and lonely work it takes to just post videos regularly.
Reach Non-Professional at the following links:
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