Jonathan Charles Cozart (born: April 26, 1992), better known online as Paint, is an American YouTube personality, musician, and comedian known for his "After Ever After" dark comedy Disney parody series on YouTube. On February 13, 2010, he uploaded a video named "Share the Love (Original Ukelele)," which was his first video on the channel.
On October 5, 2014, he officially announced the launch of his second channel, paintchips.
Early life[]
Jonathan was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised in Houston, Texas, from the age of six. After graduating from Cypress Creek High School in 2011, he moved to Austin, Texas and studied film at University of Texas. Cozart took piano lessons as a child. His favourite teacher is his high school pricinple and he regularly visits him and on a high school reunion he perfromed a song filled with inside jokes from his hight school, Vlogged it and posted it as an video. The video would then go viral.
Rise to fame[]
Jonathan became a bit more famous when he auditioned to be on Glee in 2012. He got very far in the process, but sadly did not succeed and never got to be on the show. He continued to make YouTube videos of him singing or vlogging. On July 17, 2011, Cozart uploaded "Harry Potter in 99 Seconds", which quickly became a viral video, with 42 million views as of June 2018. This, along with "After Ever After" was the beginning of his YouTube fame. On the 8th July 2014, Jon hit 2 million subscribers, holding 3 million as of December 2015 on his first channel.
YouTube career and college[]
His YouTube channel "Paint", a domain name gifted to him by his brother, (after noticing his passion for video making) was created on December 27, 2005. Cozart's career in video started in middle school as a way to avoid writing papers, offering to make videos instead, and he continued this through high school. Jon continued to post more and more videos until he started college and was forced to balance his work as a film major at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, along with producing videos for his YouTube channel. Cozart grew his audience on YouTube with his Disney parody videos, placing Disney Princesses into modern circumstances through a cappella layering of his own voice to supply the music. This project was titled under the name "After Ever After" and published on March 12, 2013, becoming even more popular than "Harry Potter in 99 seconds", currently holding over 82 million views on YouTube. Soon after with all the recent attention, he uploaded a video introducing himself, "ME ME ME," before reaching 1 million subscribers.
Though he is forced to juggle classwork and YouTube, Jon continues to upload videos every few months. He uploaded a video in 2014 called "After Ever After 2" which helped him reach 2 million subscribers. He then proceeded to 3 and 4 million subscribers and became the host of YouTube's Streamy Awards in the 2017 where he was well recepted for his work featuring dark offensive humour from fellow members of the platform, yet described as "vicious" by Newsweek, an American weekly magazine. The show included a musical number in which Cozart compared nominee Jake Paul to U.S. President Donald Trump. Cozart described his approach as satirizing the perceived "hypocrisy of the new media industry."
On Jun 14, 2018 he uploaded the third rendition of his After Ever After series (titled, "After Ever After 3"), this time featuring male Disney characters rather than female, which have had his main focus in both of the first two parts.
Paintchips[]
On August 22, 2013, Jon created another channel called Paintchips to upload vlogs and uploaded the first video on October 5, 2014. The channel currently has over 498,000 subscribers.
On the channel are general vlogs including Paint interacting with his subscribers such as reading and reacting to his fan-mail, apologizing to fans, and going through items fans have sent him.
Laughter Ever After[]
During August 2015, Jon put on a one-man, one hour show at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. He also had one show in London, England.
The show (aptly named Laughter Ever After) consisted of Jon singing his classics and talking about his experience with YouTube. His live performance of musical comedy was well-reviewed by attendees, stating "Jon Cozart delights with his witty, heartfelt music."
Subscriber milestones[]
- 1 million subscribers: July 10, 2013
- 2 million subscribers: July 7, 2014
- 3 million subscribers: August 18, 2015
- 4 million subscribers: May 3, 2017