Artist Profile: Astrid Ztar Doesn’t Play by Your Rules

Many people dislike their postgrad jobs, but only few have the courage to quit them in pursuit of “creative freedom.” Astrid Ztar is one such person. The Computer Science major turned self-proclaimed “artist, entertainer, & freak” boasts success across multiple platforms, with 70,800 followers on Twitch and 509,500 subscribers across YouTube channels astrid ztar and Aztrosist. Since becoming a full-time content creator, Ztar has branched out into visual art, comics, and music. Each medium has found a dedicated audience due to the two traits that have defined her career so far: fearless experimentation and a love for the peculiar.

The alchemy of Astrid’s online persona began to form around 2005 when she first discovered YouTube. She particularly enjoyed watching comedy videos from creators like Smosh and BalloonShop. From there, it was only a small jump to making content herself.

“I was pretty young, but I’ve pretty much always been making some sort of YouTube video too,” she said in an interview with The Crimson. “I would upload skits when I was a kid just in my living room using the iMac G5 webcam.”

Her channel’s development paralleled the refinement of her increasingly distinct visual identity. Fans now associate her with her skeletal astronaut logo, though that wasn’t always the case; at the beginning of her career, her profile picture was just a drawing of the letter A that she made with Microsoft Paint. She ultimately felt compelled to change it in response to her growing community.

“For a while, people, when they would draw fan art, they wouldn’t really know what to draw because all I had was the letter A, and so at some point I was like, I need a character,” Ztar said. “And I figured I’d go [with] something kind of spacey. That’s why I settled on the astronaut thing. And I just added the skull inside and the spirals. It’s just kind of a cute character design.”

In recent years, however, she’s chosen to be on camera more often, which has changed her relationship with her iconic symbol yet again.

“I don’t want to hide too much behind a character as much these days, and things maybe feel a little more authentic to me,” she said. “I’ve moved a little beyond that sort of character, I suppose.”

Besides her solo YouTube channels, Ztar’s comedic side is most evident in her videos with other content creators. She is also part of two collaborative YouTube accounts: Sleep Deprived, which has three other members, and banana channel, where Ztar works alongside fellow Internet comedians apandah and Mikasacus. These accounts combined have 812,600 subscribers. Viewers flock to them for their humor, which Ztar frames as more of a natural result of the creators’ dynamic than an explicit and planned attempt at comedy.

“We have always had this unspoken mantra, which is just, we hit record and just see what happens,” Ztar said.

That kind of spontaneity is also key to her artistic process with drawing and music. She taught herself both skills, a feat that she partially attributes to her “artistic family.”

“I try to do automatic drawing, which is sort of a concept under the umbrella of Surrealism. It’s essentially where I draw, and I try not to think consciously about what I’m drawing. I just go with the flow,” Ztar said.

One project she has put a lot of thought into is her comic, “psycho*star.”

“‘Psycho*star’ is essentially a psychological representation of repression under techno-fascism. That’s how I would describe it,” Ztar said. “It’s essentially about a brain, and it’s about characters in a brain and what they feel like to be repressed under a society that doesn’t necessarily treat them the greatest.”

In terms of music, her influences include The Beatles, Björk, and Kylie Minogue. This eclectic mix speaks to her unwillingness to limit herself to any one genre.

“I’ve given myself a lot of leeway over the past few years to explore things more on my own terms,” she said. “I’m in a position of privilege to be able to do so, because some of that video stuff is more successful monetarily. So, I’m able to pursue a lot of this stuff that I really want to pursue, which is what I wish everyone had access to all the time.”

Some people may seek that access through a YouTube career like Ztar’s. For them, she offers a few words of warning — namely that the job is “very, very isolating” and produces pressure to “stay constantly relevant” — but also a ray of hope.

“I think success is much more about just being proud of what you’ve done and being fulfilled with what you’re creating,” she said. “I definitely feel like I’m more fulfilled and proud of the stuff that I’ve been making over the past year or two. Whether it’s in the music world or as art or with the comic, I feel much more personally fulfilled by a lot of what I’ve been doing recently.”

Here’s to hoping all the other Astrid Ztars out there get to experience similar fulfillment.

—Staff writer Giselle P. Acosta can be reached at [email protected].