By Tessa Osborne
YouTuber James Rallison, 22, of Arizona, started his career with a simple stick figure.
Rallison is most commonly known for his animations on his YouTube channel “theodd1sout,” but he also has a big fan following for the comics he posts on Tumblr. Rallison has always liked comics and even started making his own stick figure comics when he was very young. Through making these comics, Rallison learned a lot about how to structure his jokes.
When Rallison was 16, he received a drawing tablet for his birthday and soon after he decided to put his comics on the internet. He first put his comics up on Tumblr because he had seen several other artists on Tumblr as well.
“Tumblr always has a special place in my heart because that is like my hometown and then I moved to the big city of YouTube,” Rallison said.
As for YouTube, Rallison has always watched other people’s channels, but in 2014, Rallison decided that he could make videos like the other animators he was watching. That same year Rallison made his own YouTube channel and posted his first video.
Two years later, Rallison had about 600,000 subscribers on YouTube and was making enough money where he could live off of YouTube. He was still in college at the time, but he decided at this point he wanted to pursue YouTube as his career. So when he was still in college he decided to call his parents and tell them what he actually wanted to do.
“Hey, I’m only spending about 20% of my time at school, I’m not doing the homework at all,” Rallison told his parents over a phone call.
After this discussion, his parents let him move back from college to make YouTube videos.
Rallison is currently at 8.9 million subscribers and the numbers continue to rise.
The Collegiate caught up with Rallison during the 2018 Grand Rapids Comic Con to chat with him about how he started drawing as a hobby and turned it into his career. Check out our interview with him over on our YouTube Channel and below.
