Love, Dad: Becoming a first-time dad at 39 prompted artist to work from home, allow employees to do so

SINGAPORE — For artist Peter Zhuo, pursuing his artistic dreams and clinching four Guinness World Records has long been about fulfilling a promise to his late grandfather.

That promise was to be a great artist one day, to make others smile with his drawings.

Now, as a relative latecomer to fatherhood, he is also inspired by his seven-month-old son Oliver — and has even decided to work from home full-time to get maximum time with his boy.

He has also offered his six full time employees in the animation studio that produced characters Ai and Aiko the option of working from home.

"I encourage my team to spend their time however they want, on the condition that they continue to meet the key results we all agreed on," he said.

Mr Zhuo, 39, who also goes by the name Peter Draw, is the creator of digital characters Ai and Aiko, a red-shirt clad boy and his friend, a brown dog.

The characters can be seen via various media such as 3D animation, digital comics, Japanese-style stop motion, exhibitions and toys.

They have generated more than 64 billion views on Giphy, a platform that allows users to search and share animated Gif files.

Becoming a first-time father has put a new perspective on his work, which he was first encouraged to pursue by his grandfather, who died when Mr Zhuo was 16.

“After my grandfather passed away, I always somehow felt he was somewhere where he could see I was still trying to keep my promise," he told TODAY.

"I had a crazy urgency to draw as big and as much as I can, so hopefully somewhere, he could see.”

Working with and for children has also been a constant in Mr Zhuo’s work. He noted that his four Guinness records incidentally were all achieved in the month of October and have coincided with Children’s Day.

The records were for:

• The largest caricature in the world in 2007
• Conducting the largest art lesson in the world in 2010 with close to 1,900 participants across 12 countries
• The longest drawing in the world by an individual in 2014
• The longest drawing in the world in 2014

CHANGING WORK DYNAMICS AS A DAD

Towards the third trimester of his wife’s pregnancy with Oliver, Mr Zhuo made the “difficult decision” to switch to fully working from home in preparation for his son’s arrival.

This may have changed work dynamics with his colleagues, but fatherhood has brought a greater attention to detail, and given him a fresh artistic perspective, too.

Mr Zhuo said that it was almost akin to “reliving (his) life as a child” and adopting the wonder and curiosity of a baby’s “beginner’s spirit”.

“It’s re-living, an opportunity for me to go to the library again, hopefully go to the zoo, animal parks, go to places that we haven’t experienced for 20 years.” 

Working at home has also meant that he has been on hand to celebrate his toddler’s small achievements such as balancing and rolling.

He tracks Oliver’s milestones in a WhatsApp chat he “insisted” on starting with his wife and Oliver’s grandmothers, where the couple sends daily updates of their toddler.

The young family’s living room has been converted into a padded gated playpen for Oliver to roll around and explore, with photos of his life so far lining a kitchen shelf.

“You realise for babies, their world is very limited to the environment they are in, so it makes me realise the meaning and purpose behind Ai and Aiko, and how we can expand their world and imagination a little more with our storytelling.”

Beyond thinking of the world from Oliver’s point of view and being motivated to inspire more "wow" moments for young audiences, working from home has shaped his mindset as well.

“Now I have this image of Oliver looking at me everywhere I go in the house, (so I think), is this the right decision you’re making? Is this a good decision that I will be proud of?”

A DAD'S DREAM

For Mr Zhuo, being a father is a dream he once doubted that he would ever realise, despite growing up saying he wanted to be the first among his friends to be a father.

He had imagined that he would be “single forever” before marrying in November 2022 at the age of 38.

“Some of (my peers), their kids are already in secondary school, and here is Oliver, seven months.”

Mr Zhuo's strong relationship with his father and grandfather, one that he wants to replicate, has helped him navigate his creative career and this new journey of fatherhood.

Looking back to his own childhood, one early turning point was when he got kicked out of a free trial art lesson at six years old, being told that he could not draw or hold a pencil properly.

His family was too poor to afford future lessons.

To comfort him, his grandfather told him a story of a boy “just like (him)”, who had thick eyebrows, loved to wear red T-shirts and held pencils with four fingers around the pencils, and who also got rejected.

“I said, 'Ah gong (grandfather), you’re just repeating what I told you'. But he said, ‘No, but that boy never gave up and eventually created Disneyland and became very successful’.”

His grandfather hesitated on the name of this boy, who would become an aspirational figure for Mr Zhuo for many years, before confidently mistaking Disneyland's creator Walt Disney for the famous Spanish artist Picasso.

Driven by a desire to become this “Picasso”, the design of Mr Zhuo's characters Ai and Aiko are a nod to his grandfather’s mash of Picasso and Walt Disney.

Ai's hair is shaped after Picasso's illustration of a dove and the character's round face was inspired by Disney character Mickey Mouse.

While his grandfather was not an artist, Mr Zhuo recalled the pencil sketches of sparrows that the old man would give him, which he thought were very life-like at the time and “the best drawings in the world”.

Another “happiest moment” from his childhood was hearing the jangle of keys at the gate of his father, who was a taxi driver on the night shift, returning with supper or an early breakfast from a coffee shop.

Cherishing these memories of the two generations of fathers before him, who have inspired his creative work, it has left him excited to make new ones with Oliver as a first-time father.

These could be simply eating together as a family or collecting all the toddler's first drawings.

“And if one day he becomes an artist, and (will) do even better than me, then I’ll be his biggest fan, again shouting and cheering,” Mr Zhuo said.