World History Episode 15: The Crusades

Jump to this episode’s Thought Bubble on The Crusades.

We’re the graphics team for an ongoing YouTube-funded series, part of YouTube’s Original Content Channels for the year of 2012. We create a 1-2 minute Thought Bubble each week for John Green’s World History episodes, delving into everything from the Agricultural Revolution, to China, to The Dark Ages, Rome, The Crusades, and beyond. We also create the illustrated/typographic elements on-screen throughout each 10-13 minute episode, and we branded the show; including the logo design, overall look and feel, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages.

Read more about our involvement with Crash Course here.

To learn more about the Crash Course World History series, or soak up some history for yourself, check out the playlist on YouTube and subscribe!

Another cool thing is a new program we’ve rolled out called our Bubbleship Program. As cute as it sounds, it’s a serious, dedicated partnership to non-profit organizations that sign on to a series of Thought Bubbles rather than just one. In this kind of arrangement, not only can we create several Thought Bubbles committed to the ongoing message of one organization (for a lower cost might I add), but we’ll also inherently give exposure to a lot more issues on our youtube channel, which is great news to our supportive bubbly audience. We love our youtube audience, and they always ask us to make more Thought Bubbles. Well this is one way we’re going to try to do that. If you’re interested in the Bubbleship Program for yourself or your organization, shoot us an email and we’ll tell you all about it. We have a neat little PDF package that explains it too.

As you may already know, we’re also partaking in the production of a feature documentary film called Sapience, and that’s been keeping us busy both on and off work hours, for almost 18 months. We’re so excited to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the film this coming week, which I promise you’ll hear about very soon.

And finally, there’s Crash Course. If you’re a long time Thought Bubble fan, you might recall one of our first Thought Bubbles for John Green, on the topic of healthcare reform. That was, and continues to be our most successful Thought Bubble in terms of view counts and reception. Well now we’ve teamed up with the Green brothers (Hank and John), on a new YouTube series they’ll be hosting called Crash Course. Smart Bubble’s the graphics team for John Green’s episodes on World History; contributing graphics to his weekly show with a 1 minute Thought Bubble, as well as supporting graphics outside of it. His brother Hank’s series is on Biology, and he’s got his very own graphic team who we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with. Both shows are representative of Crash Course as a YouTube series that will educate audiences in a fun, engaging way. It’s no wonder we’re thrilled to be involved!

You can read a great article in the LA Times about John Green and Crash Course here, and be sure to check out the first episode of John Green’s World History on Crash Course which launched today! Hank’s first Biology episode will air on Monday. We won’t be posting these episodes on our channel, but you can subscribe to Crash Course’s channel and see our featured Thought Bubble in John’s show every Thursday.

So needless to say, we have big things in the works, and we couldn’t be more grateful and appreciative of the continued love and support from our audiences!

Until next time,

Bubble Out.

Ecojustice Talks About Source Water

Sound Design and Music Composition by Allan Levy

Illustration and Animation by JinKyung Myung

http://theaquaticview.com/

More info on this Thought Bubble.

When I first met Jonathon and Suzanna (founders of Thought Bubble), there were a handful of things we had in common; the books we’d read, documentaries we both liked and our love of Democracy Now! Soon the conversation turned to authors and activists we admired and I quickly told them how much I respect Naomi Klein. Seeing Naomi in The Corporation and reading No Logo opened up my eyes quite a bit as a teenager and led me onto the path where I am today. I was very pleased to find out Jon and Suz were fans too. After that, we often talked about creating a Thought Bubble for Naomi as soon as we could. Two months ago, the opportunity arose when a video was published of Naomi giving a speech where she spoke of how absurd it was that Canada’s Tar Sands oil had begun to brand itself as ‘ethical oil’.

You might have heard it before (and if you haven’t, it’s worth looking into), but Alberta’s Tar Sands are a true embarrassment for us Canadians: a human rights crisis for the Indigenous communities living in Alberta and British Columbia and an environmental disaster of epic proportions. Many pipelines transport this dirty oil all around North America, and our exports make us the United States’ biggest provider of oil. In the last few years, a new extension to a current pipeline has been proposed to carry Tar Sands oil all the way to Texas, putting some of North America’s most fragile ecosystems and waterways in serious peril. Recently, Bill McKibben and his team at 350.org helped spearhead a movement called Tar Sands Action and enlisted the help of people all over the US and Canada willing to express their dismay and anger about a possible new pipeline. As of November 6th, thousands of people have risked arrest, standing in front of the White House, as well as Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa, to protest.

When we heard this impassioned speech that Naomi Klein delivered at the Washington, DC Tar Sands Action Rally back in September, we knew it should be our next Thought Bubble. We hope this video will help spread this message and pay homage to all of the people fighting this cause. And for those who know little about it, we hope you will do as much research as you can and decide if the Tar Sands represent a healthy future for us and the Earth.

The truth is our time is running out. We should seize the moment and demand that we come off of dirty oil and push our politicians to hear our voices: No to the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Please take a look at Naomi Klein’s Thought Bubble and feel free to spread the video around, we’d sure appreciate it!

Naomi Klein’s Thought Bubble: Ethical Oil?

Speech by Naomi Klein

Original Speech Edited by: Julia Nadeau

Sound Design and Music Composition by Allan Levy

Illustrated by: Nick Counter

Animated by: Alexey Terehoff

More info on this Thought Bubble.

Unicef Canada Gifts of Magic (Part 1: Girl)

Unicef Canada Gifts of Magic (Part 2: Boy)

What do spacemen, mythical creatures and a jungle have in common?

What we hope is a fun, awesome demo reel.

It’s to show the work of our studio in combination with our sister company (who we literally share a studio space with), called Trouble and Maker New Media. You might remember this company through some of our past collaborations: TEDx Vancouver, our Thought Bubble promo 2010, and City of Vancouver’s Greenest City project.. We’re separate entities, but when we fuse our talents together, we’re like a happy marriage. This reel represents our combined creative introduction to the masses. Since we assume you already know a lot about us, here’s a link to Trouble and Maker’s website if you’d like to learn more about our friend: http://troubleandmaker.com.

We’ll be putting a reel out a couple times a year to highlight our work, but until then, enjoy our Smart Bubble + Trouble&Maker 2010 edition!

Illustration by Laura Callaghan.

Our mandate this year is to create a Thought Bubble that will speak to Canadians. Sure, maybe it was the result of an all time, patriotic high from witnessing people flooding to the streets to celebrate our olympic wins in Vancouver last winter (go Canada!), or maybe it was the fact that when the whole Thought Bubble crew sat up late at night watching live feeds from Copenhagen day in day out for the duration of Cop15, we felt like the worst country in the world. We were actually quoted to be “to the environment what Japan is to whaling”. We were ranked 56th, out of 57 countries in the Climate Change Performance Index. We broke our own law by signing the Kyoto Protocol, and then breaching it. Canada couldn’t even stand on it’s own two feet and pledge more than the US’s measly 17% reduction from 2005 levels. When you consider the fact that all other countries pledged reductions of a similar amount from 1990 levels, that brings Canada’s reduction to a mere 4%. According to Treehugger, our emissions will actually be 2.5% HIGHER. As Treehugger states in the article:

“…reductions by 2020 from 1990 levels need to be in the 40% range in industrialized nations to put us on a track to keep global average temperature rise below the critical threshold of +2°C and give us a shot at returning CO2 concentrations to 350ppm.”

350 ppm refers to the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere that we need to retain (or achieve, rather) in order to avoid severe climate consequences. In 2009, it was at 387.35 ppm (parts per million) according to the Mauna Loa Observatory and 350.org.

Canada has spun an upsetting, million-knotted string of disappointments, to be sure. Not to mention the elephant, juggernaut of an issue called the tar sands. The “second largest source of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia”, according to the government of Alberta. In addition to that their website says that, “production is expected to increase from 1.31 million barrels per day in 2008 to 3 million barrels per day in 2018″. There’s no signs of it stopping anytime soon. It’s widely held that the tar sands is the largest, most destructive project in all of human history. According to oilsandstruth.org, “the tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.” It has cleared an absurd amount of ancient Boreal forest, and endangered downstream communities who are reporting increasing rates of rare cancers. If you’ve wondered why Canada is so absurdly pathetic at committing to environmental law, or even setting respectable emissions reduction targets, the tar sands is why. Interestingly, it spells rat backwards, that ought to say enough!

Driving across Canada, we spoke to many strangers and friends along the way. We talked about taxes, indigenous issues, but most of all, we heard about the tar sands, and not just as a problem Alberta’s responsible for, but a problem that Saskatchewan may soon get pulled in to too. Canadians we talked to actually trembled at the thought. There are claims that tar sand production is already slowly spreading into Saskatchewan. That’s why we want to team up with the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest citizens organization. Started in 1985, they “work to protect Canadian independence by promoting progressive policies on fair trade, clean water, energy security, public health care, and other issues of social and economic concern to Canadians.” Who could be better to team up with to create a Thought Bubble on Canada’s biggest and baddest issue? One of their campaigns is already about the tar sands, and actually ties into another issue they’re passionate about: water. A massive amount of water is needed for the oil extraction process (2 to 4.5 barrels of water for every barrel of synthetic crude oil produced, to be specific), threatening the Athabasca River in Alberta. We’re going to combine these issues (as they’re all related), and inform the Canadian public about a topic we should most definitely have a spare bedroom made up for in our Thought Bubbles.

In closing, this is the result of our cross-country, what’s in Canada’s Thought Bubble tour that we so earnestly had hoodies created for (which I now wear everyday to lounge in and remind myself of my passion): a tar sand Thought Bubble. A tar bubble about tarnada’s tarnishing trap.

To learn more about some of the issues we also heard about from our trip, keep an eye on our Twitter feed. We’ll be posting quotes throughout the next few days.

If you want to be in the know when it comes to special edition Thought Bubbles like this one, or others we create in the future, be sure to sign up for our mailing list at the top left corner of your screen.

I think we would have put it all off another several months if it wasn’t for the book that slapped me in the face like a good friend, Rework. If you don’t know it, get to! It was an awesome read that made us realize we didn’t need to plan out every last detail before unleashing this important new step onto the virtual world. Pacwebco further instilled that philosophy when they thoroughly embraced what we did have, and wonderfully guided what we were still missing (and scared of). We wouldn’t have even figured out those last few pages if it wasn’t for their helpful expertise.

So, I present to you the first iteration of Thought Bubble (or shall I say Smart Bubble Society) 2.0. Think of Smart Bubble Society as our corporate (but non-profit) umbrella, and Thought Bubble as our service. One day we hope to see a community grow, in which infographics that educate or inspire an audience are casually referred to as Thought Bubbles. And yes, you can start that wave for us now! Step 2.0 – way back when our blog was born – referred to the step in our world-domination plan where we would begin to foster a community around our work. It’s not about it being a social network in today’s terms of Facebook (which I personally just deleted, eep! Our Facebook Page still lives, however) but in terms of a community of people that embrace what we do, because they believe in our message. We’re already seeing that starting to happen, and it makes us even more determined.

Now stop reading, explore! We’ve got this blog, which shall continue to live on the homepage, some pretty pictures and new members to boast on the about us page, all of our existing Thought Bubbles organized by topic within our our work page, all about Thought Bubbles, including our different service models on the Thought Bubble page, ways to show us your love and support on the donate page, our evolving shop page (which will soon kick start with Thought Bubble mugs!), and last but not least, different ways to get in touch with us in our new location in Toronto.

We hope you love it as much as we do.

John Green, an award-winning author and popular vlogger on Youtube, posted a video last week entitled, “Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via Massive Pig.” In under two weeks his post made it to over 700,000 views, which goes to show that people surfing YouTube or hitting Google with searches were looking for some information on the healthcare debate. It also helps that John and co-vlogger Hank have over 100,000 subscribers to their channel, ‘vlogbrothers’, ranking it as #46 most subscribed directors channel of all time. (For those of you that don’t know, YouTube channels follow a few different formats including Director, Reporter, and Musician. You choose yours based on the nature of your channel and video posts).

So we came across John’s health care post, and were intrigued by his clear, concise, yet entertaining narration. We also loved his comparison of America’s current state of healthcare to ‘Walkin’ Tall’, the ‘world’s largest boar who can’t walk.’ We also felt it would be a great experiment to take an existing video and supplement it with motion graphics to see the kind of response it would generate among its audience. Being a prominent vlogger, we hoped that some of John’s viewers would watch our video after his and see if it confused or clarified their understanding of his original discussion.

What was also exciting about this task was that it exemplified how we could supplement any existing, informative discussion on a relevant matter like the healthcare debate with a layer of supporting visuals. So far, it appears to be helping people understand and retain the information presented. We were lucky to come across John and Hank’s channel, and look forward to offering other online voices, authors, and educators an added dimension of communication.

A week and a half after his post, we present you with our adaption of John Green’s Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via Massive Pig.

Other links:
John’s original post: Health Care Overhaul Summarized Via Massive Pig
John Green’s website and blog
vlogbrothers YouTube channel