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.

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