Hello Webbys!

This is a quick case study of why I’m entering my educational, science Youtube channel and videos into The Webby Awards.

Summary

Despite being a lone creator, starting only 3 years ago and only having a handful of videos, my science videos are now being watched at similar and sometimes greater levels than the largest science channels in the world.

Background

I’m a one person creator for the Youtube channel Epic Spaceman, started in 2021.

I currently have 495,000 subscribers (as of Feb 2025) and the channel has more than quadrupled in size in the last 12 months.

I believe I have the fastest growing ‘long-form’ science channel on Youtube currently. This is all the more unusual by the fact I do this on my own and have only made 8 videos so far. Listed to the right.

To put this in perspective The National Geographic Youtube channel has been running for 17 years and has 24 million subscribers, but has achieved this from 10,000 videos.

I want to show that an independent creator can make science content that’s not only as good as a science show on a major TV network but perhaps even better.

My focus is on using visual metaphors, outstanding VFX, cinematography and engaging stories to make complex topics not only accessible to the average person but enjoyable too. With each video I try to leave the viewer with a new and positive perspective on the world and most importantly, a sense of genuine awe, perhaps the hardest emotion a video can achieve.

A short video on my background:

Research

When trying to find good science videos on Youtube with incredible visuals I only found a handful of options. The channel Kurzgesagt, the 3rd largest science channel on Youtube, was the clearest leader, it uses the highest level of motion graphics to present thoroughly researched videos on interesting science topics, in relatable ways. Their videos are also edited with the tempo of online ‘long-form’ viewers in mind which I’d generally describe as being slightly slower than vertical TikTok videos and a lot faster than TV. With 23 million subscribers, a team of 70 people and only producing a video every month they gave me confidence that there was a market for quality over quantity in science education on Youtube. I was just one person vs their 70 but I wanted to build on some of what worked for them:

• Quality over quantity

• World class visuals

• Thorough research

• Engaging topics

• Use of fast paced storytelling and narration to keep the viewer engaged

But also wanted to add a different spin:

• Human narrator, myself, often visible on screen to add a more emotional connection with the viewer

• Focus on topics that were complex but use things like visual metaphors to make them much more accessible to the average person

• Cinematic over pragmatic. The motion graphics of Kurzgesagt are perhaps the best way to explain a topic in the shortest amount of time but I feel that cinematic VFX and more story will create a stronger emotional connection with the viewer and hold them for longer

• Focus more on space

The lack of depth of good science and space education on Youtube could have felt like this project wouldn’t succeed but I concluded that it was actually greatly in demand, it just required a huge amount of effort for it to compete against simpler, non-educational content.

When trying to work out whether space is something that others still feel passionate about, whether something scientific could compete in a world of superheroes, I found a remarkable statistic. The largest online forums in the world are on Reddit, where you’ll find the most vocal fanbases and the Space page on Reddit has more members than the Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel and Lord Of The Rings pages …put together. People love space and that statistic alone made me realise there were a lot of people like me out there, if I could make something useful, beautiful, awe inspiring and space related, they might enjoy it as much as I would.

Conclusion (with numbers)

My first video took me almost a year to make as I was teaching myself the VFX I needed to make it, but I was over the moon with the reaction in the comments, especially for a lone video on a completely new channel.

By the time I got to my third video, I was building a community of fans and this video, The scale of The Milky Way, got 1.5 million views on Youtube and 8,000 incredibly supportive comments. It also hit the ‘front page’ of Reddit and went viral there with 5.4 million views in one day, this was again incredibly unusual for long-form, science content.

My channel only has 8 videos so far but they’ve each taken many months to make and I’m incredibly proud of them and their success. I’m also very proud of how far they’ve come in the last three years in terms of production quality and how supportive the thousands of comments I get on them are. On a daily basis someone will write that one of my videos is the best video they’ve ever seen, that this is the first time they’ve written a comment on Youtube or that it made them cry (in a good way!). To get this kind of feedback on science videos is over and beyond what I hoped to achieve when I started. Youtube comments aren’t always the place you might look for wholesome support but that’s all I’ve ever received there.

Some numbers:

My last three videos are about the scale of the Universe, the world of the microscopic and the scale of black holes and they have (as of November 11th 2024):

• 2.6M, 3.7M and 2.7M views respectively on Youtube (videos are available to the right on a computer, below on mobile).

For successive videos to go over a million is very unusual for science content, to use the National Geographic Youtube channel again as an example, their last three videos got:

• 5K, 19K and 15K views respectively, in fact none of their last 100 videos have over 1 million views. This is 0.5% the performance of my last three.

After making just a handful of videos my channel can now be favourably compared with one of the largest science channels on Youtube: Kurzgesagt. They also create their videos with a similar focus on quality vs quantity but have a team of 70 people, their last three videos have:

• 4.5M, 4.1M and 0.7M views. That’s a total of 9.3M views from their last three videos compared with my 9.0M.

Despite me being so new, with so few videos, a much smaller subscriber base and vastly more limited resources, my science videos are now receiving comparable views to the largest science channels/shows in the world.

My aim with my videos has always been to try and make a new and different kind of ‘Carl Sagan’s Cosmos’ that might reach new people in an online age. So I was incredibly proud that The Planetary Society reached out to me to sponsor my most recent video on the scale of the Universe, they’re a non-profit founded by Carl Sagan himself. I’m the first Youtuber they’ve every sponsored and I was told Bill Nye the CEO was ‘beyond impressed’ with the video.

I want to show the levels that a lone creator can achieve in science communication, with no AI, no team, just hard work. I want to share my passion for science and help people find moments of awe learning about our Universe, particularly those who don’t normally watch science videos. I hope you feel I’ve made a good case for achieving those things here.

I also very much hope you’ve enjoyed watching the video I’ve submitted or the channel in its entirety, as well as the story of how they came about. I’d invite you to read some of the comments below the videos on Youtube to see how they’re being received and how special people are finding them, I hope you found that too.

Thanks, Toby