At 2003, when he was 4 years old, Shtapura’s family immigrated to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In 2005, he began to take oil painting courses and fine art, cartooning, and acting classes at the 92nd Street Y, the Art Students League of New York, the H&B Studio, and the School of Visual Arts.

Between 2008 and 2010, he created his first cartoon channel and published over 60 cartoons, comprising original voice acting, music videos, and various parodies. In May 2010, he produced ten episodes of the cartoon-short series, The Gag. In 2010, he migrated to his present YouTube channel and published 7 cartoons and music videos. The most popular of his 2010 cartoons were an animation set to Aqua’s “I’m a Barbie Girl”, which garnered over 200,000 views, and an animated version of Parry Gripp’s “Justin Bieber and Spaghetti Cat” which garnered over 80,000 views.

In May 2011, he performed as Ricky in Dance Designs’s production of the musical Grease.

Between June 2011 and February 2012, while in 6th grade, he published 130 original comic strips for his comedy webcomic series, So Funny I Forgot To Laugh. It featured a recurring cast of characters including Suds Lebberman, Perry Swinglester, and himself. The comic series had over 100 subscribers at its peak on ComicFury. That year, he also produced two absurdist cartoons for his YouTube channel. He left the comic in 2012 citing an “undying urge” to play popular video game, Team Fortress 2.

In 2012, he published 13 comedy stories based on the characters of the aforementioned video game, TF2. His most popular stories were multi-chapter comedies “Sherlock Scout the Defective Detective” and “A Story About Bookstores”, both of which received over 50 reviews. The same year, he began creating 3D animation videos in Source Filmmaker, publishing 5 videos before his 2013 breakthrough, “Spyper and Sny”, which gained a million views.

In 2013, his 3D-animated TF2 short “The Advantages of Sandviches” won Honorable Mention for “Most Gmod-Like Animation” at the international Saxxy Animation Awards.

In 2017, the Scholastic Art Awards honored Shtapura with a Portfolio Silver Medal with Distinction. Between 2017 to 2019, Avital attended the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan.

In 2018, Shtapura released his first album, “Big Fat Ear Snax,” featuring rap and singer-songwriter music. The same year, he directed Comedy Saxxy entry “HAIRCUT!” which comprised a cast of 6 voice actors and 8 crew members, which has over 3 million views as of 2026. The same year, he created his first 2D-animated cartoon, “THE DOUGHBOY!!!”, featuring original voice acting and 9 fanart drawings from friends and fans. The video that followed was a short Family Guy parody titled “IT SEEMS TODAY…”, which garnered over 7 million views on his YouTube channel.

In 2019, Shtapura left SVA to work on Gary Vaynerchuk’s animation team for his “Lil Vee” cartoon pilot. After its completion, he created TikToks and animations for Gary Vaynerchuk’s TeamGaryVee. Starting in 2020, he worked in advertising agency Vaynermedia creating illustrations for such companies as Pepsi, Cheetos, Funyuns, Tempur-Pedic, and Lays. His most prominent work was Pepsi Staycation postcards (2020), which featured his digital paintings.

In 2019, he wrote “The Faculty Orders Domino’s”, a comedy story based on the 2019 animated series Carmen Sandiego, which received 95 kudoses on ArchiveOfOurOwn.

In 2020, he released his second album, the synth-pop “One Slap Salad,” as well as his first original music video, “H8 LUV”. He also posted a variety of voice acting, cosplay, and fanart content on TikTok, where he gained notoriety for popularizing the Gaston and Kronk ship, “Gastonk”. His May 2020 video, “I pitch you a Netflix series by singing you its theme song”, spawned an original music single. In November of that year, his “Saturdays are Reanimated for Dads” collaboration united 13 animators and gained 300,000 views on Twitter and received mention on KnowYourMeme.

The following year, he voiced on award-winning cartoons “Dude, Where’s My Dad?” and “SLAM POET”, as well as producing 2 short animations of his own. His 2021 watercolor painting of Garfield and Jon Arbuckle, titled “Hey Garfield, why do they call it oven…”, received over 19,000 likes on Twitter that year.

In January 2022, he became a Fred Astaire Bronze-Level Ballroom Dancer.

In 2022, Shtapura released his third album, “SAFE”. He performed one of his new songs at the inaugural Trans Visibility Pageant in Chicago, Illinois. He also published a music video for his song “Religion”, filmed at The Floral Escape, as well as a video for his song “Deep End” featuring footage from Buster Keaton’s film The Railrodder (1965). Other pop song mashups/remixes followed.

In 2023, Shtapura created a comic series about Gustavo, an “evil greedy idiot” and “himbo”, which comprised comic strips, 1 dialogue short, and 3 animated musical shorts to europop music. He also coded an interactive website which detailed the character’s fictional worldwide concert tour and present whereabouts, as well as a hidden website detailing Gustavo’s involvement in a dolphin cult. That year, he published two of his own music videos: a choreographed music video for his song, “Safe,” directed by Kenzie Allulis; and a video for “96 Tears”, featuring animation from Rocket Robin Hood (1966).

Also in 2023, the Wikipedia community awarded Shtapura a Precious trophy for American Biographies. The year before, he received the Did You Know? medal and a Barnstar award for colorization. As of 2026, he has made over 3,000 edits to the English Wikipedia.

Between 2023 and 2025, he published 15 rom-com stories featuring characters from The Simpsons (1989). The most popular of these was “Call Me Irresponsible”, based on The Road to Cincinnati (2020), which received over 100 acknowledgements and 40 comments on ArchiveOfOurOwn. During this time, he cosplayed onstage as Principal Seymour Skinner at CastleCon, as well as posting his cosplay process on Imgur, for which he was awarded the accolades “Originality” and “What a Gem”. He also created multiple paintings of Simpsons characters including a recreation of Bart and Skinner in the scene, “They just can’t get the spices right!”, which gained over 10,000 likes on Twitter. He handcrafted a Disco Stu cosplay the following year, which he exhibited at Newark’s Branch Brook Park Roller Rink; a Manhattan Gimme Gimme Disco event; a KC & the Sunshine Band concert; and at New York’s Studio 54. In 2024, the Quaker New York Yearly Meeting newspaper published his painting and description of extraterrestrial religious figure Ashtar Sheran.

In March 2025, he performed “Disco Inferno” in Washington DC during FCNL’s Spring Lobby Weekend. In June, he performed three original songs at Quaker New York Yearly Meeting’s Summer Sessions 2025 in Poughkeepsie, New York. His disco album, “How To Love a Man”, came out in August of 2025.

In January 2026, he performed a medley of disco music during an OUTMontclair event at the Montclair Friends Meeting House.

In April 2026, he published a 35-song album, Into the Pit, which contained music inspired by King Julien, carnivals, disco, Nokia ringtones, Dora the Explorer, ice cream truck music, 1970s Moog music, John Phillipp Sousa’s marches, 1910s pop music, The Village People, 1950s romance, and 1920s poetry. He also directed, costumed, starred in, and published 2 original music videos (“Into the Pit” and “I. M. Meen in Real Life”, both reenactments of 1990s video game characters). In April, he performed music with friends in New York City.

In May 2026, his spontaneous ragtime/disco/Moogsploitation cover of Girl by the Beatles gained 89,000 views on Instagram, and he released a video of conducting music as well as illustrating and publishing a 3-chapter beatnik/jillionaire rom-com political story featuring Dobie Gillis characters, titled “The Greatest”.

In May 2026, he worked with Alana Astrelle to pitch, design, and compose a religious tragicomedy musical based on the life of Alan Turing titled Bletchley After Dark, which was submitted to the Baltimore Center Stage’s Trans History project. Vitaliy also sang, starred in, and edited a music video of his “Yugoslavia” song from the Bletchley musical; he also released a visualization for the choral/electric overture.

Beginning in June 2026, Vitaliy began performing piano live at venues including the Dolce By Wyndham Parsippany Castle Hotel. In July 2026, he performed a fantasia on piano in New Orleans, Louisiana, at Mr. Ed’s Creole Southern Kitchen; at the University of New Orleans; and at local venue One More Pie. Also in July, Vitaliy released “Beware of the Blob!”, filmed on location in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, which presents a humanist music video based on The Blob (1958).

On August 13, 2026, he performed various fantasias for piano at the American Dream Mall in 18th century dress, which he had tailored himself and premiered at the Automatacon in Morristown earlier that year. On August 17 2026, he released a 98-song compendium of his lost juvenile works made betwen 2010 and 2019, titled Into the Vaulty: Lost Works of the 2010s. His album was featured on local news TapIntoMontville. The same day, he formatted, edited, and published colleague Alana Astrelle’s first book, A Short Collection of Essays and Poems, for which he wrote the foreword. Later that week, on August 20, he hosted and DJ’d a Jeopardy Bar League event at the Dismal Harmony Distillery in Morristown.

During the last weekend of August 2026, Shtapura and Alana Astrelle travelled to Asbury Park to create, produce, co-direct, costume, star in, and compose a soundtrack for an original film, as part of a 72-hour film challenge. He co-directed the film, titled “100 Years”, with writer and philosopher Alana Astrelle, which is set for premiere on November 1st at the Asbury Park Short Film Festival.