Juan Pablo Machado

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

Juan Pablo Machado is originally from Cali, Colombia.^[1][2] After a stint at an art school in Bogotá, he moved to Lyon in 2013 to study at the École Émile-Cohl.^[2] He left the École Émile-Cohl in 2018.^[3]

In 2017, during his final year of study, he decided to respond to a call for artists received by his school.^[4][5][6] The call came from the YouTube channel ChilledCow (now Lofi Girl), which broadcasts lofi hip-hop music live.^[7] 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.^[8] However, ChilledCow's stream had been taken down due to copyright infringement, so it called for an artist.^[4]

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".^[7] 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.^[9] The background was originally left black to save time,^[2] 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.^{[2][10][11][12]}