How Tongal Creator Chad Sugg Followed His Heart to an Artistic Life

Chad Sugg has packed a lot into his 37 years on this planet, including a decade-long professional music career, four children, and a heart attack. So it’s no surprise that his three years on Tongal have been particularly prolific — delivering dozens of wildly imaginative projects for iconic brands including Nickelodeon, LEGO, NBCUniversal, and many more. Here, Chad describes how his life-changing health scare made him determined to follow his childhood dream of becoming an animator, and how Tongal helped him to build the creative, healthy, and fulfilling life he sought.

Chad Sugg in his home office in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

My Tongal story begins in 2021, but to get the full picture here, we’re gonna need to go back a bit further. I grew up wanting to animate for Disney — that was my quite literal dream. I was always drawing, but didn’t really know there were any careers outside of animation. By the time college came around, I discovered graphic design and was pretty enamored. I ended up studying Mass Communication at Middle Tennessee State University, but then another turn in the road popped up when I dropped out of college to follow a music career that sort of came out of nowhere.

I played in pop punk bands in high school with friends, then in college I started this solo gig and put songs up on MySpace, which was big back then. I didn’t take it seriously for the first couple years, but then I wrote a song that did well, and got featured on iTunes, and it just kind of snowballed from there. Suddenly, I was making more money than I had ever seen at that age, so I dropped out to go make music, and did that for about 10 years, touring and releasing music solely as my career. Then I ended up having my first kid at 27, and I couldn't tour anymore, so that just kind of fizzled out.

Chad's Tongal story

I did graphic design on the side for a decade in between doing the music thing, and ended up settling into a more solid career as an account executive at a screen printing/merchandise company (which I did for the better part of six years). Then, my friends, the pandemic hits (cue foreboding music). I ended up getting furloughed for a little bit, and didn't love that. It was a scary moment to know that I was replaceable and a smaller cog in a bigger company. So I started kicking ideas around in my head to go back out on my own. Before that job, in my music career, I was my own boss for 10 years. So 2021 comes around, and one of my resolutions was that I was going to design more on the side.

We’ve landed comfortably in 2021, and I’ve got that stirred, excited feeling on the cusp of my new resolution to dive back into creative endeavors! Then, nine days into the year, on January 9, I had a major heart attack. I was 34 years old. I had no signs, woke up at 2am one morning, and I thought I was having a panic attack. My wife convinced me to go to the emergency room, so I drove myself there, and they were like, 'Dude, you're having a heart attack.' Reader, I was as surprised as you.

Chad's logo animation for The Syfy Channel

I had a 90% blockage in one of my arteries. It's a hereditary thing (yay, genetics!). My grandfather and my father both had heart attacks in their 40s — so I'm the winner! The not so grim part — I'm fine now, I have a nice $90k stint in my artery, but it was out of nowhere and totally life changing. Once that happened, I realized I didn't have time to not be doing things that I love.

Lest we forget, this story was destined to begin in 2021… And here we are. So after the heart attack, I had a new lease on life, and my resolution to create was louder than ever in my head, and I thought, ‘Why not just go for it?’ I dove head-first into clawing my way back into the creative/design world, working it as a side-gig each day after I finished work at my account exec job. So, literally from about 5pm to midnight I would work on reigniting the design flame. 

I started looking for new avenues to create, and found Tongal through Instagram. I went to the site and the first thing I ever pitched for was for the TNT show Snowpiercer. I wasn't sure if I had the chops for it, but I pitched, and ended up getting greenlit for my first project. I was like, 'Wow, this is an interesting way to get connected to these bigger clients, that I wouldn't be able to knock on the door of myself.' And the rest is history. As my business grew, I kept with Tongal and it became a bigger and bigger piece of my career. And in June of 2021, I put in my notice at my account exec job as I was making enough to start full-time with my graphic design business. I was terrified to leave a steady paycheck, but launching my own design business was hands down one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. That went hand-in-hand with pitching for more projects, and now the biggest chunk of what I do is going straight to Tongal, pitching, and seeing what I can get.

Getting a spot on the Nickelodeon Creator Collective has always been a highlight. I've got both feet planted in nostalgia, and everything that I loved growing up. That really drives a lot of my passion. It's amazing how many of the things that I am truly a fan of are looking for content through Tongal.

Chad's stop-motion holiday animation for Nickelodeon x Walmart

One of the interesting things about Tongal is having a finger on the pulse of what the industry wants right now. Two years ago, I’d never tried stop-motion. I was always interested in it, but I didn't understand how people did it. I'd moved from graphic design to trying out 2D animation, and getting a knack for that. Then I started noticing that there were projects on Tongal that were for stop-motion, and really wished I could do it. So I started to dive into that too. If I hadn't seen the opportunities on Tongal that sparked the interest inside of me, I might have just stuck solely with graphic design.

So I’m sitting here now, about three years after launching my own creative studio, and there are some pretty important changes. Not every moment has been happy or perfect or even close. I’ve questioned if I’m crazy for taking this route an endless number of times — but I’ve finally found my stride. I’m living comfortably, providing for my family (a wonderful wife and * gulp * FOUR kids). I’m healthier physically, and have created a much healthier professional lifestyle where I actually give myself time for a life outside of work. And lastly, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. It’s not lost on me how funny it is that the magnetic draw I had to creating as a child is where I’ve ended up being the happiest. Here’s to just going for it.