Jennifer Chuu

Jennifer is the 17th guest I’ve spoken to here at Chateau Co-Living and I’m really excited to share her story. Her story about stories. Jennifer Chuu writes and illustrates comic books. She’s been working on the same series for six years whilst travelling across the Mediterranean, visiting everywhere the sea touches. Her previous comic inspired her to travel. Her travels have now inspired everything she creates. And somewhere in the middle of all this, she became the characters she draws.

The whole thing started because she didn’t want to go to university. Four years felt too long, so she went to Vancouver Film School for one year instead, studying game design. Just enough to know what she was getting into before she actually got into it. And just enough to take that first big step out of Taiwan. Just enough to get a taste of what existed beyond her fish tank.

Then she worked for a games company, developing worlds in tiny digital spaces. Sometimes she designed pet habitats for a game called Dream Pet House. Sometimes she did animation, which she hated. Sometimes she created characters and assets she loved. The work was solid. It paid well. But it was also strategic. Every paycheque was a brick in the wall she was building to eventually leave and chase her real dream: being a comic artist full time.

When she got laid off at 23, she didn’t panic. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. She had savings. She had time. She had hunger.

“I have a dream. I want to be a comic artist full time, so I should chase after it. Now I have savings.”

She told her parents: give me one year. One year to debut herself in Taiwan as a full-time comic artist. One year to prove it could work.

She did it in exactly that.

The Character Who Inspired Her Life #

Her first published comic was about a boy named Leo who got on a circus train to chase after a mermaid. The mermaid, Yvette, lived in a fish tank. She was content there. She didn’t know what was outside. Leo knew there was a world beyond her tank. He wanted her to see it. So he invited her on an adventure.

Jennifer was writing about freedom and discovery through these two characters. She was writing about the gap between knowing nothing and knowing everything. And somewhere in the middle of drawing Leo’s journey, she realised something: she wanted Leo’s life. She

wanted to travel and work like he did. She wanted to see what was beyond her own fish tank.

“You were inspired by your own character?!”

Yes. Completely.

Because Jennifer had been like Yvette. Before she left Taiwan, her entire future was mapped out: finish high school, maybe go to college, find a job in Taiwan, buy a house in Taiwan. Everything in her mind was Taiwan. She was content. She didn’t know how much she didn’t know.

“When you don’t know a lot, when you don’t know how much you don’t know, a lot of times you grow really content. And then you kind of okay with, like, settling whatever you have.”

But Leo kept saying: you should check it out. There’s a whole world out there.

So she listened to her own character. She travelled. And the more she travelled, the more she realised how little she actually knew and how much was possible beyond her previous understanding.

The funny thing is: she’s still creating that same story. Six years into her current comic, “The Witch and the Bull,” she’s still drawing characters who travel, who meet each other, who question their beliefs, who discover themselves through the journey. Because now she’s living that story. And the story is living through her.

A Universe In Motion #

Jennifer pitched “The Witch and the Bull” to Webtoon whilst she was in Croatia. The story is set in a Mediterranean-inspired world where humans and witches live in tension, with history and manipulation between kingdoms. But instead of just imagining this world, Jennifer made a decision: she would travel to every place the Mediterranean Sea touches to inspire her storytelling.

“I’m gonna travel to more places for this title because the whole world is kind of built on this world that was inspired by the Mediterranean area. So I’m going to go wherever the Mediterranean Sea touches.”

This is the brilliance of her digital nomadism. She’s not travelling to escape work. She’s travelling to deepen it. Every new country, every new coastline, every conversation with locals becomes material for her characters. The world she’s building on the page is built from the world she’s living in.

This is Jennifer’s life on the page. She meets people with completely different beliefs, different histories, different fears. And instead of seeing them as opposition, she’s learned to ask questions and understand.

“I’m like a little universe.”

She said this when explaining how she can hold opposing perspectives simultaneously. How she can understand completely different worldviews without needing anyone to be wrong.

“Everything can be true and false at the same time in the same body. Like my favorite colour is green and my favorite colour is not green. These two statements can both be true in the same person.”

Every character in her comics has a piece of her scattered across multiple consciousnesses and perspectives. The more experiences she collects through travel, the more characters she can create. Her main character, Tan, started angry and hateful toward witches because his father was eaten by one. But as Jennifer’s perspective shifted through travel and experience, Tan’s did too. He began asking questions instead of throwing accusations, beginning to understand that everyone’s the villain in someone else’s story.

This is what six years of travel alongside six years of storytelling does. The artist and the art become indistinguishable.

Discomfort As Fuel #

Jennifer doesn’t seek comfort. She seeks discomfort because that’s where growth happens.

“I used to be a person who I’m like really stubborn. But now I’m like starting to get into this feeling, which is like, I kind of like my mind being changed.”

Travel forced this shift. Every new place, every new person, every conversation with someone who sees the world differently. She started doing things she thought she’d hate and discovered she loved them. And all of this uncertainty became her new baseline.

“The discomfort has become the new comfort zone.”

Which means she’s always growing. Which means her characters are always growing.

The Three-Year Resistance #

Then came burnout. She was in Greece, working on season two, chasing weekly deadlines with no buffer episodes left.

“I feel like every time I go to my computer, I want to puke.”

She took a nine-month break. But for three years after, she carried lingering resistance to work she loved. She tried discipline, routines, rereading old comics. Nothing lasted.

Then she went to Los Angeles for a creator residency with nine other comic artists.

“Being in that environment actually somehow helped me. It has to do with being around people who are passionate about storytelling like I do, people who are constantly excited about new ideas. It’s like it’s contagious.”

Passion is contagious. Community is medicine. Suddenly the resistance lifted.

“I became so happy with my work.”

The Thing She Cherishes Most #

Travel comes second. Work comes first.

“This is something that I love the most to do in my life, other than travel, is to tell a story and draw. The fact that I was feeling like I might start to hate this, it’s very, very scary to me. Because I cherish it so much.”

She fought hard to get here. She skipped the traditional education path. She worked a job she didn’t love to fund the one she did. She left stability for uncertainty. She travelled across continents. She lived out of suitcases. She pushed through burnout and resistance and three years of not understanding why her own dream had become such a burden.

And now, having come through all of that, she knows what she has. She knows what matters. She knows that the work she does changes how people see the world. She knows that the characters she draws reflect the complexity of human experience. She knows that her life and her art are so intertwined that separating them is impossible.

She’s not just a comic artist. She’s a universe of experience. A collector of moments. A mapper of the human condition. A woman who listened to her own character and became the story she was telling.

And she’s still travelling. Still meeting people. Still asking questions. Still creating. Still growing uncomfortable so she can keep growing.

The fish tank shattered a long time ago.