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Tinyverse is an educational YouTube channel that was produced with the help of Ontario Creates (formerly OMDC). It’s an animated series that tries to help make sense of the world around us, with videos on a wide range of general interest topics related to science, tech and history. It was an opportunity to develop our own IP and create content that was both well-researched and entertaining. I was responsible for writing scripts, directing the art and style, managing the production pipeline, editing, compositing animations, voiceover recording and audio design. We had an illustrator on staff as well as a researcher, but also subcontracted a number of others. It was a pretty ambitious project overall, but in the end our audience really seemed to connect with it. Without any marketing, we had one of our videos surpass 1.5 million views and our subscribers are at 24k and rising. Learn more about the Tinyverse in the case study or check out some of our videos.
COMING SOON
Since making the transition into narrative design, I’ve been working on bringing the Tinyverse IP to an interactive medium. We’ve begun work on a Twine game that takes you across the solar system as you chase down the Cat Lords, looking for a secret location of a supercomputer their building to fill the internet with memes. You travel between planets and their moons in a space van, learning interesting facts along the way.
The unnamed Hero is the relatable host of the show. He’s a member of the Galactic Consortium, although a bit of a black sheep in the organization. He’s a slacker-genius that groks some of the more advanced concepts about the universe, yet he’s lazy and likes to cut corners. This laid-back attitude can get the crew into trouble sometimes, but luckily his away team is made up of a versatile pair of problem solvers: Cephy & Alan.
VOICE BY: Matthew Campagna
Cephy is an advanced cephalopod from the depths of outer space. She’s a biological marvel, capable of feats that seem incomprehensible to our 3D ape-brains. She may seem cute and cuttley (pun intended), but little does she know she is a biological weapon of untold power from the far reaches of the solar system. She is estranged from her species of space-faring cephaloids, so her origins remain a mystery. For now…
Alan is a robit, named in honor of Alan Turing. He was the first robot Hero ever built and still one of his greatest creations. Using advanced transmorphographic technology, Alan is able transformer himself into any number of useful things, from a megaphone to a spaceship. He treats Hero like a father, trying his best to please him, although he lacks emotional intelligence. He can get on Cephy’s nerves sometimes, since at the end of the day, he’s a bumbling machine whose serial processing can lead him to miss the point.