Long-time animator and YouTuber Shar joins us on Game8 Connect for the behind-the-scenes of her BoTW animations, her top picks for anime, movies, and indie games, and her life as an animator on YouTube.
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Welcome to Game8 Connect, where we dive into the world of your favorite content creators and explore the person behind the screen! In this article, we spoke with the animator who made all the cozy Breath of The Wild videos flooding your timeline, shar! We asked about her journey as an animator, her inspirations, and even what are some of her recommendations for indie games.
Who is shar?
Sharlene Yap, better known by her YouTube handle shar (and yes, it has to be lowercase), is a Filipino animator and illustrator best known for her cutesy and cozy fan animations. Her works often feature Link and Zelda from the Legend of Zelda franchise, as well as many other characters from the Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact games by Hoyoverse.
Shar’s influence has spread far and wide across the internet, but many know her from her YouTube channel, aptly named 'shar,' which hosts most of her animations. She also used to post her works on Twitter (X) and Instagram, but has since moved on to post exclusively on YouTube.
With over 700,000 subscribers and 31 videos, many of which clear the 1 million views milestone, one can’t help but be awed to know that all this is done by a single person.
shar's Beginnings as a Youtuber
shar’s first step onto YouTube was a complete accident.
"I didn’t mean to start anything on YouTube," shar tells us. "I was actually just your average Twitter user. Me putting my work on YouTube was mostly just for archiving [so the] people who follow me on Twitter who want to see this animation again, they don’t have to ask me ‘Hey, shar, how do I find this again?’, [then] they’d have to dig through my timeline ‘cause I post a lot of trash," she laughs on a self-deprecating note.
Despite it being for archival purposes, people outside of Twitter took note of her work, and the views on her Youtube channel began to climb. Her explosive success on the platform came as a surprise to even shar herself, who couldn’t fathom the reason why so many views came flooding into her channel so quickly.
"People just started watching my stuff. I don’t know how they found me," shar says as she laughs in utter disbelief. "I was just hiding in this little corner and a bunch of people suddenly found me. It felt scary at first, but I feel incredibly grateful about it. It’s a great blessing."
A Path With Uncertainty and Excitement
Being a full-time YouTuber isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, however, as shar would share regarding the woes of YouTube life.
"I don't think it's obvious, but I'm a crazy introvert," shar said when we inquired about her reservations about posting content as a YouTuber. "My biggest fear back then was what if I stop enjoying the things I do. What if people don’t like this one? What if they get disappointed? I think it’s something that all artists face."
"I remember there were times when my YouTube channel was picking up subscribers and there were times I didn’t really wanna post anything. I would abandon a project midway because I feel like people wouldn’t like it. I know that not everyone's going to enjoy my work, and that's okay because different content has different audiences. I enjoy what I have with my audience a lot."
"I’m an average person with an average amount of self-confidence," shar says. "I think any sudden influx of viewers would intimidate anyone." The oldest video on her channel posted three years ago, "koroks: a Breath of the Wild fan animation" currently sits at 4.5 million views. "I’m a big people pleaser and I used to be the biggest pushover," she continues. "I guess it took me a while to overcome these feelings."
Her success on YouTube would encourage her to transition from her full-time web development job to doing animation full-time, though it wasn't an easy decision.
"I’d never felt so [insecure] in my life. But I’m really excited. It’s all unexpected, I entered university, and art was 100% not in the picture a few years ago."
"One thing I guess I’ve always kept in my head is that I’m still young," shar says. "I should figure it out - how to balance financial stability and how do I also get some semblance of enjoyment.
shar’s Comfy and Cozy Creative Process
Being a content creator requires discipline and adherence to a schedule, a fact that shar understood all too well.
"I have a lot of worries. When it comes to managing how to do it all, I do Pomodoro," shar revealed, laughing at her previous failed attempts at the Pomodoro Method.
"I do have a Google Assistant installed in my clock," she explained further. "I also do calendaring. I am really forgetful when it comes to working on animation, especially now that I’m more on the self-employed business. I set time blocks, which lets me know how long [it takes] to make an animation of this style, and it keeps me on track while the Pomodoro keeps me focused."
"Usually, ideas come to me in the unholy hours of the night," shar said, detailing her creative process. "Maybe it’s 3 AM and I don’t know what divine intervention happens, but an idea pops up, and suddenly I’m like ‘Oh no, I have to type it down.'"
"It comes out kind of like a burst of passion," she continued. "I have to do this now or else I’ll forget it. When I’m lucid again, I’ll start working on it and it’ll just be a matter of staying motivated enough to finish it."
Apart from her games, shar also said that her work was inspired by a lot of her real life experiences growing up.
"I had a pretty dramatic high school life," shar awkwardly laughs as she reminisces. "A lot of things I place in my animations are actually translated from what I felt growing up. Stuff like having crushes, being an awkward teenager, and going through the mundane parts of adulthood; stuff that a lot of people my age probably feel."
"I think placing these real life feelings and translating them into my animations make it feel more human."
Games That Deeply Impact Shar
As gamers, there are always those games that stick with you, and affect your life even years after you’ve played it. For a creator who focuses on video game content, it is especially interesting to hear exactly which games affected them, so we asked shar for the games that most impacted her.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
"I guess it’s a no-brainer, my first one’s going to be Breath of The Wild," shar starts off with the obvious, "it was my very first foray into the Zelda franchise."
While she had known about the Zelda franchise much earlier in life, she had never played any of the games before Breath of the Wild. It wouldn’t be until the amazing reveal trailer of the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that her attention would turn to the series as a whole. The trailer seized her curiosity and attention, and she knew that she just had to play the first game before TotK came out.
"I don’t know why, there was just something about the teaser that made me feel like ‘Oh, I need to know what the previous game is like because the next game looks really really cool.'"
The trailer held an eerie and mysterious feeling, showing fragmented cutscenes while a reversed chanting played in the background. The trailer gripped the internet when it first dropped in 2019, and many ran off to wildly speculate about what exactly could be happening after what seemed like a happy ending to Breath of the Wild.
"I loved the teaser [for Tears of the Kingdom] so much that I opened commissions in mid-2019 just so I could be able to afford a Switch and buy Breath of the Wild," she continues. "That was the first time I ever did that. I was really encouraged, I don’t know why. I don’t regret it. I got the flu, actually, when I got the game, so I was a week off school and I played the game the entire time I was off school."
Dragon Nest
The second game that shar lists as being big influences on her is Dragon Nest, a free-to-play action MMORPG that first came out back in 2010, and still enjoys an active community to this day.
"I used to play it with a lot of my close friends back in high school," she recounted. "The art is really cute, which I think is something you’ll find similar across all the games I play. I really like the cute art."
"I used to gush about it all the time when I was a teenager. I wouldn’t stop talking about it. I wouldn’t stop posting about it.” “It also changed my art style a lot. I remember really liking the concept artists. Until now I still follow them. I really liked the concept artists for those games so I kept trying to be like them."
"The combat mechanics were really good. The storyline is also really interesting," she continues to gush. Despite its cute exterior, Dragon Nest has a surprising amount of deep fantasy lore, detailing ancient battles between gods and dragons, and the eventual establishment of mankind’s kingdom.
"It was a time where MMOs were more of a grindfest. So it was nice to see another cute MMO come out, and then they have this entire lore out here, and there are cutscenes and you can experience the cutscenes with your friends. I really enjoyed that."
Guild Wars 2
The third game she lists, Guild Wars 2, reveals how much of an MMO gamer shar really is. Similar to Dragon Quest, the game came out back in the golden era of MMORPGs, around 10 years ago, and continues to have an active player base to this day. This fantasy MMO brought several unique features to the MMO genre, such as a storyline that follows the choices of the individual player and a dynamic event system that allows players to join in quests that appear rather spontaneously.
"I’ve spent a couple hundred hours playing that game. It was the first game that I liked so much that I spent money on it," she tells us. "It’s a free game, but you can spend money on the expansions. And all of my friends, they were like ‘Oh shar, you’re playing this game right? We can all play together, and we’re also getting the expansions. And so I was like, ‘Oh no! I have to get the expansions too, because you guys are getting the expansion!’"
The base game for Guild Wars 2 is free, while a one time payment is required to open several features that make the game a lot more convenient. It also features expansions that add onto the types of characters you can play and continues the story beyond the base game, adding new content, regions, mounts, and end-game encounters.
"So I bought it, I played it, and I enjoyed it for a really really long time. I bought it with my own money, that was crazy. I was in the 11th grade. I wasn’t making any significant money apart from little part time jobs. So it’s really special to me."
"The community’s also really good," she continues. "If you ask for help for an event, someone will come. And maybe, if you ask, they will also explain the entire concept of that event to you. ‘Oh this is this event, and this is the lore behind it, and this is what you have to do. You can stick by me and we can do the event together,’" shar says, seemingly recalling a specific event in her past.
"The community is so nice and that’s one of the biggest reasons why I played it for so long."
shar’s Must-Try Indie Games
"Technically, Baldur’s Gate 3 is an indie game," is a hot-take from shar that we didn’t expect, but she has a point. If Dave the Diver can be nominated for Best Indie of the Year by the Game Awards, why not Baldur’s Gate 3 as well? Her other picks for must-try indie games are far more classical, however, as we’ve listed them down below with her own opinions on why they’re so good and how they’ve affected her.
Spiritfarer
Spiritfarer is an indie game by Thunder Lotus Studios, known for its distinctive art style and indie management/sandbox action gameplay elements. "When it comes to single-player games, I’m more of a fan of cozier games, so I recommend something like Spiritfarer," she says. "I remember right after the tutorial section, I cried immediately."
"It’s so cute and it’s so sad sometimes," she explained further. "The 2D animation is really great. I haven’t seen many games that utilize 2D animation. Usually in these platformer-type games, it’s an instant 3D or 2D but it’s rigged."
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is a 2020 adventure game by Ustwo Games that focuses on exploration and taking pictures of nature.
"I love the atmosphere and setting, as someone who’s also from an island. The environment can feel pretty familiar."
"I’m just a forestry indie title kind of person," she continued. "I have been in a forest but I don’t live close to a forest. I don’t know why I enjoy it so much, maybe it’s the green, maybe it’s the nature. Anything that’s a cozy simulation or a cozy RPG is definitely up my alley."
What Does the Future Hold for shar?
A Foray into Interactive Storytelling
An artist’s ultimate goal is to express, to create, to show the world what they can do; shar is no different in her aspirations, specifically with her future goals.
"I want to be able to make interactive stories, maybe lean into the game industry more," shar reveals. "It’s a dream I’m trying to segue into a reality. I have been working on small game projects. A pet project that I’ve been working on is this heavily animated visual novel that focuses on my country, the Philippines. It’s a chill, cozy type of visual novel."
The visual novel, she explains, is about a girl who just graduated from college and is back in their hometown in the Philippines. The girl is invited to a library fair and from there, meets several friends who are at different phases in their lives.
“Some of them have also just graduated. One of them is a childhood friend you’ve met in that municipality when you were in elementary school. Some others are… struggling to finish their degrees. Some other people are taking their doctorate. Some other people are already working.”
The game is based off of her own recent experiences, having recently graduated and perhaps has had similar thoughts and concerns that many fresh graduates are wont to have.
“The character is trying to find herself. What does she want to do now that she’s graduated? Does she want to pursue her studies, or does she just want to work? Maybe she wants to pursue other dreams?” shar notes that she doesn’t want the game to be very high stakes, and to have a more cozy approach. She wants the player to just experience the life of the main character, and feel both the problems and the supportive people around them.
“I just want to give the experience of the mundanity of post-college life.”
"There’s also a game I made with friends last year and we’re planning to revamp it," shar revealed. "Hopefully we can release a demo for it in the first quarter of 2024. It’s gonna be a deck-builder. It’s gonna be silly."
"It’s a lot of work, but being able to see things fall into place after drawing and developing them is really fulfilling. And being able to share it with friends is making it an even better experience for me."
Regarding her budding music career - preceded by some of her animations that featured her own singing - shar confesses "that it is something [she's] wanted to do for some time."
"I used to do a lot of singing competitions and I used to be in a high school band," she reminisced. "I also do Sunday choir, and stuff like that, so music is a really big thing for me. My partner and I do try covering and creating original music every once and a while."
"We don’t have all of the materials for it, I’d say, but it’s something we want to do in the future. Maybe under some unknown channel that I’m never going to share," shar laughed.
More About shar
She is a Fan of Studio Ghibli Movies and Anime
shar has her picks for video games, but what about movies and TV shows? As she revealed to us during the interview, shar is actually an avid fan of anime and Studio Ghibli movies.
"Off the top of my head, I guess there’s Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You); that’s my all-time favorite shoujo series."
"I’m [also] a big fan of fantasy settings, so I guess older anime like Card Captor Sakura, Inuyasha, and Yona of the Dawn are all favorites I really like." shar elaborated. "Series that lean more into shounen also inspire me animation-wise, because there’s a lot more action. Recent anime like Jujutsu Kaisen, Mob Psycho 100, Beaststars, and Chainsaw Man are a few of my favorites.
She also expressed appreciation for Studio Ghibli films, with one in particular, 1995’s Whisper of the Heart, being her absolute favorite.
"The story itself is what makes it so personal to me," she said. "It’s about two people who enjoy what they do so much, that they inspire each other to keep doing what they do."
"I’m kind of in a similar situation where I’m trying to pursue animation and my partner is pursuing music. It has a homey, personal feeling for me."
Parting Words from shar
"These videos are pretty personal to me. I've put a lot into these videos because I want to show how I feel and express my most genuine self. So I'm hoping that my channel can be some sort of help to aspiring creatives, and kind of like a cozy refuge for people who just want a bit of a break from the constant unrest that's always happening in this world. If my work makes someone smile, then that's great. At the end of the day, that's what I really want."
For those who are afraid of taking leaps, transitions, or big changes in their lives, perhaps these words that shar often tells herself will inspire you to pursue your own dreams:
"If I don't do it now, I don't know when the next opportunity will be that I will be able to pursue these little pipe dreams of mine."
shar is always looking to move forward and make her dreams come true, one little step at a time. We're looking forward to see her continued accomplishments in the future.
Those interested in learning more about shar and seeing her animations for themselves can do so via the links below:
shar's Official Website
shar's YouTube Channel
shar's Twitter
shar's Tumblr
