Draw My Life I The Completionist

hey everyone my name is Gerard dragonrider Khalil and this is my youtube channel recently I hit 1 million subscribers here on YouTube and I've always felt this weird disconnect between what people see and think of me and my content and who I actually am as a person the whole draw my life trend kind of came and went two years ago and honestly I never really fixed myself ever doing it but I kind of thought hey if I'm gonna do it now's the time so welcome to my draw my life the completionist story thing so from the second I was born I was a problem child I was born in Los Angeles California January 3rd 1988 and unfortunately I was into the most healthy baby turns out that I had this big blue spot on my back that turned out to be something called a hemangioma and more specifically I had spinal hemangioma instead of having lower back muscles I basically had a tumor embedded into my spinal cord where my hip meets my tailbone in the 80s and early 90s the tech wasn't as good as it is today and so that meant that I had to get dozens of operations lots and lots of corrective surgeries in fact it's the quick little note I have a massive scar on the right side of my jaw and that's actually the main reason why I grow a beard is to hide that scar doctors believes that by the time I would be five my immune system would be strong enough to just kind of get rid of this thing and unfortunately when I was three years old I fell off a swing and landed right on my back this caused the mass inside of me to triple in size and since then I have lived my life very close to the chest in terms of physical activity so aside from being a parent hog I'm the youngest of five my dad's from Lebanon and migrated to the United States when he was super young with 50 bucks in his pocket no knowledge of American culture and the world being his oyster he worked tirelessly at several jobs he went to school he wanted to become the ideal American improved that he could make it in the US and he met my mom while he was on the job he used to work in a gas station and my mom ran of gas one day and that's how they met love at first sight kind of I guess I don't know it's a weird term to use now I grew up in a pretty fortunate town called Palos Verdes which is one of the most wealthy parts in California however Palos Verdes is the kind of place where just being well-off meant that you were dirt poor and being rich meant that you were basically the 1% my mom and dad worked tirelessly to make sure that all of us kids were well taken care of soccer practices cheerleading cotillion girls and Boy Scouts piano lessons wonderful education with tutors my parents poured their lives into us kids but for me I couldn't do any of those things so I played video games non-stop I wanted to be the best gamer at school the best step Mario the best at Sonic I wanted to capture all the Pokemon I made sure that I was the first kid in my class to have 101 percent to dk64 before anyone else a lot of that passion came from my parents who refused to buy me games every time I wanted one they would tell me if you want to get a new game you have to show us that you completely finished the one that you currently had blockbuster was a godsend for my parents and it saved them a ton of money unfortunately this is where things kind of go weird my dad was traveling a lot for his new business the heat started at the time and it was up to my mom to watch us kids I was 10 years old when my mom started acting very bizarre she stopped making me lunches stopped picking me up from school and I'd end up having to walk home several miles stops really being there for me for a brief moment she stopped caring mind you this is my perspective and my siblings have their own this rabbit hole was just the beginning of so much more but that's for another time after years of family drama and massive insane events that ultimately feel like a super bizarre film we found out that my mom was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia or FTD for short this dimension went from the front of the brain to the back so my mom lost a lot of her vocabulary and motor skills really early on she went from being very aggressive and fearful of her life that everyone was trying to hurt her or control her to that of being a young child who loved to color read and kiss and hug my dad every night before bed my life changed drastically that day my family grew close but we had to bind together to create a routine who fed her who bathed her getting caretakers to help when we were too busy we did our best to be there for her every step of the way from diagnosis the doctor said that she had about 18 months to five years to live but because my family and I fought so hard my mom lived 15 years after diagnosis and she passed away just a few years ago so for most of my young adult life I didn't have a mom I couldn't do physical activities and I was just kind of in my own little bubble in high school my love of video games disappeared I became obsessed with theater and film and I wanted to become an actor or director or both I had two wonderful teachers named Carrie Heder and Sasha Duncan who changed and saved my life they inspired me each and every day to create and share with the world and because of them I knew I wanted to entertain so I went to college thinking that I was going to develop a pure passion for film and theatre and change the world and all I learned was that my passion needed to be beaten down into reality so that it was nothing because hot damn I felt like trash College was a rough time for me I didn't have that many close friends except for my buddy Fraser presiden and Greg Beaumont who both had their own lives going on and my high school pals were long gone doing their own thing but I wasn't alone I had friends in high school that went to a rival high school of mine and for years we were kind of taught to be just that rivals little did I know that I would be close friends with Michael bear DS Ann Alda Alan Barstow and Alex Kramer without these guys I wouldn't have learned to be as funny and as fearless as I was throughout my college years and all we wanted to do was create so create we did we created and created and created short sketches plays films one acts whatever we could do we did it and my passion for gaming also reignited because of these guys we created so many different web shows and films that honestly no one watched but it didn't matter because we loved making them eventually our old pal from high school named John jafari was hanging out with us and he told us he made this thing online called jontron and it was blowing up he started hanging out with him more helping him film stuff we were all just kind of hanging out and shooting the together when I finally graduated with my degrees in theater in film in 2011 I moved back home with my parents and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do I was working a part-time job at Best Buy and I found myself going nowhere fast but I was obsessed with video games again and I wanted to share my skill with the world so I started live streaming now this was something that no one really had figured out to do full-time online really I kind of sat there and figured out how to do it all for myself and I was streaming with my pals eventually one day John calls me and asks if we can have a live stream at my house with some of his friends and I said sure why not little did I know that this instance would change my entire life I met Aaron Hanson also known as eager Raptor on Newgrounds in YouTube and Brooke Lawson also known as Dodger from the YouTube channel pressed hard to continue in meeting them at my house I worked as a silent tech producer to ensure that John and his friends could have as much fun possible playing all my games thousands of people watch this event while I sat silently in the back of the room and I would change the consoles and games accordingly whenever they asked whenever I did this I was looking at the chat and I saw him blowing up people screaming in all caps beard men beard dude dude epic beard bro yo dude at the tight beard our beard God has come upon us I was blown away and how all this frickin works I didn't know what was going on but I was definitely impressed I spent a couple of hours hanging out with the two of them and I picked their brain asking dumb and naive questions and suddenly I knew this is it I have to do something one last video project something that would make me either say hey this is my passion combined this is me this is all of me or I would go back and rethink my entire life so I asked myself what do I love to do I obviously love video games and I do love film and TV but how can I combine all of these things and I took one aspect of my life I kind of kept a secret and made it my biggest strength my identity I am a completionist I went to YouTube and I searched for the completionist and at the time the only thing I found was a gentleman who had a YouTube channel called the completionist but it wasn't really a career for him he was just doing it on his own I asked him if I could make a show called the completionist and if that would interfere with what he was doing and to my surprise he encouraged me to just go ahead and do it so I quit my job at Best Buy I spent all the money I had on my name on capture equipment microphones cameras computers the works and I spent two months making a video about one of my favorite games of all time Mega Man X I took a long time because I was a stickler for structure it was always something I took seriously when it came to long-form media but I wasn't happy with what was going on as an actor writer performer for the first time in my life I felt awful I felt unfunny I wasn't confident I didn't have that boom that I used to have so I invited my friend Greg over to look in my video he thought it was funny and he started doing voices and jokes and I wrote and he made them better originally I wanted to make a website called that one video calm it was a place that would almost be a competitor to YouTube where it was a website that features awesome videos that were viral so I made the YouTube channel that one video website the idea behind it was that I could push my audience from YouTube one day if I ever got one to the site to create something cool and unique I eventually ditched that idea altogether and made that one video gamer in its identity in two fronts one I would be synonymous with the idea of being that one video gamer as in hey have you seen that one video gamer or yo dude that one video gamer tho and to from a branding front I can make side channels like that one musician that one artist that one filmmaker so on and so forth the idea being that anyone could be these things but at the same time these were things that would stick out to make them no generic yet specific I released that first episode on mega man acts on the completionist and the internet loved it but they also hated it I learned quickly that the jokes I was writing were not appropriate for kids I made very edgy jokes in that very first episode that were so shy to say the least by the second video almost all the filth human was gone in a lot of my analysis wheel started kicking into high gear I used to print out YouTube comments and highlight them with red orange and green highlighters to try and determine what was a good comment what was a bad comment and what was true constructive criticism and I used that data to shape how I made the show more of this less of that so on and so forth and from here my new career had taken off for years and years I did the same thing each and every week I took a game completed it 100% wrote the script did the voiceovers edited the video and published it every week and all of you guys showed up I learned that bringing in more people to help was what I wanted I wanted to be a career starter so I brought in Alex Fosse ani and Kelly Whistler with producer Michael Burnie to start a Pokemon channel called the national dex for their show the Dex and at the same time Alex and I would go on to make super beard brothers this was our LED to play initiative this led us to eventually getting our own office space and starting an awesome community with the help of you guys at home via patreon and initially we filled a lot in those early moments created a website other side channels other projects some of them still exist to this day most don't but at the end of the day but completionist still has to complete games but not all things last forever and when the channel reached around 250,000 subscribers Greg and I were not doing great our friendship was falling apart things were becoming very toxic between us personally and the writing was on the wall for many of us in house and must started the big public controversy of Greg leaving the channel I know there's a lot of theories out there but believe it or not I didn't plan for things to go the way that they did this was one of the scariest things I ever had to deal with because I went from being a dude who was making videos in his room for you guys at home to a guy who owned a business and was painted as a evil business corporate overlord and as someone who used to read every single comment in every video I went down a deep dark path of self-deprecation and grief I tried to be the good guy in every corner I turned I saw videos posts and received real-life packages that threatened my own life and I tried my best to downplay all of it and focused on the big picture which was making videos for you guys and honestly it worked because I realized the more videos I was making the better I was getting at making them my confidence my strength my identity was coming back I was feeling happier with what I was making I felt like for the first time I had started my youtube career I was simply me and this led to insane projects like traveling the world for conventions from Seattle to New York from London to Norway I eventually would end up working with Nintendo a lot getting to meet Miyamoto several times meeting AGA Numa in the CEO of Nintendo of America Reggie I became friends with fantastic creators on the platform of twitch and YouTube I've become friends with celebrities that I now call my family I would go on to create big bad bosses which is a stupid dumb boyband based on villains from video games essentially I expanded this little company that could into an actual place for people to come and create things and so here I am today the completionist and that one video gamer outputs for new episodes of the regular completionist show a month with four other videos dedicated to the completionist new game+ which are brand new videos that don't feature greg anymore due to legal battles between him and i the completionist DLC which is update videos for new games that have DLC my top 10 opinions on different topics and really anything else I feel like making from their super beard brothers out puts a new video every day and we get to produce so many cool emotional videos for companies like Nintendo and Sega we laugh we cry we struggle but more importantly we create and none of this would be possible if it weren't for you guys watching this video right now I create for you guys and you keep coming back above all the odds I am still making videos for you each and every week I am honoured I'm humbled and privileged to be able to sit down today and continue to keep my namesake up for your guys's expectations thank you for watching me and what I do the team that I created and I hope you stick around for the near future because trust me it's only gonna get bigger and better from here [Music] [Applause]

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 318,123

Rating: 4.9571748 out of 5

Keywords: draw my life, draw my life jirard, draw my life completionist, draw, how to draw, interview, my life, animation, draw my life the completionist, game reviews, youtuber, video games, jirard khalil, my story

Id: I0vvL419vPw

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/TheDemonBunny]

loved this

[u/Bedsidecargo]

Just proved more how much of a good boi he is

[u/StoopKid241]

Very nice video. And Jetpack's art was a great companion to it!

[u/Crazy_Mac_Guy]

Love you, Beardman! Always will!