Juan Pablo Machado

Juan Pablo Machado is a Colombian-French artist. He is best known for his animation work on the channel Lofi Girl.

Early life

Juan Pablo Machado is originally from Cali, Colombia. After a stint at an art school in Bogotá, he moved to Lyon in 2013 to study at the École Émile-Cohl. He left the École Émile-Cohl in 2018.

Career

Lofi Girl

In 2017, during his final year of study, he decided to respond to a call for artists received by his school. The call came from the YouTube channel ChilledCow, which broadcasts lofi hip-hop music live. The channel originally used an image of the character Shizuku Tsukishima, from the Studio Ghibli movie Whisper of the Heart showing the character of Shizuku studying. However, ChilledCow's stream had been taken down due to copyright infringement, so it called for an artist.
The founder of the channel wanted "a student busy reviewing her courses, with a visual in the style of Miyazaki". According to Machado, "I didn’t know anything about hip-hop lofi hip-hop, nor did I draw my style from Japanese animation. I took it as a challenge". Several positions for the character were tested, including a lying position, at the end of which the character would return to her initial position; the lying position was unused because it was too long to animate. The background was originally left black to save time, However, the idea to show the passage of time emerged, and Machado decided to make Lyon's La Croix-Rousse hill appear by the window, with the sky changing to match the time of day.