Pipsqueak Animation

Fun time with Pipsqueak Animation's Michael Blum and star composer Mike Barnett at our CTNx "Greenlighting Yourselves: Creating An Animated YouTube Channel With Minimal Resources" panel. We had an enthusiastic crowd who kept us yapping for almost 90 minutes.

HUGE milestone -- 1 Million Views!! Our YouTube Channel, Barkster Kid Songs, soared past 1,000,000 total views this weekend. We did it in less than a year with ZERO outside backing. We did it with ZERO paid marketing. We did it by GREENLIGHTING ourselves. This milestone is both a testament to the team's vision and determination but it is also just one of many more milestones we'll need to pass on our way to making Barkster a sustainable BUSINESS. That said, without recognizing accomplishments as they occur, it is hard to take stock and appreciate how far we've come in a short amount of time. Bark! Bark! https://lnkd.in/g8a_ndUd

Five of our most recent videos for StoryCorps and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation were just released. These diverse stories show how communities are building new paths forward by rethinking how transportation can reconnect them decades after transportation policy disrupted lives and divided neighborhoods. Check them out! https://lnkd.in/gwB_nfVY

No ads, all organic views of our original IP, Barkster Kid Songs. We're stoked.

Start celebrating Halloween early with Barkster Kid Songs! If your little one is going trick-or-treating for the first time, this song gives 'em the basics of what to do! https://lnkd.in/gK_ss5sD

A new Barkster Kid Songs video is up! If you have preschoolers, have them check out our Boo Boo Song to learn how to wash up and use a Band-Aid after they get an owie! https://lnkd.in/gqx_2kAF

Actually closer to 600k at this point but it took us a few days to post! Find us now on the YouTube Kids app! Just search for "Barkster" https://lnkd.in/gFAfuEwQ

Barkster Kid Songs is now on the YouTube Kids App! We've been waiting MONTHS to be approved and while we never actually got notified, we saw this morning that our channel is now live on their app. For those who don't know, YouTube Kids is a curated app you can't officially ask to be on. Your channel may miraculously show up one day through some combination of unpublished heuristics (the number of uploaded videos is definitely a big component) and then a human-led approval process. Sometime recently we made it through their process, and we hope that our inclusion will help us build the channel to the next level. While we still consider ourselves in a slump, we did add 125 subscribers in the past 24 hours while racking up 50,000 views on our most recent short. Check back soon to see if our inclusion marks a new chapter in our growth or just another small marker.

Floor Is Lava... We're trying something new this week for our latest Barkster Kid Songs episode. 1) We leaned into a kid's YouTube trend by creating a video based on the "Floor Is Lava" game. Many smart people have counseled creating content around popular trends and we thought we'd start here. 2) While each of our videos has a social/emotional theme, we decided to lighten the lesson in this video and focus more on movement and dance. 3) We added more camera moves to keep the frame constantly alive. Again, more successful channels than ours have strongly recommended this practice. 4) Typically our only audio components are the songs and voices of our amazing composer, Mike Barnett, but we thought this one needed a few sfx to sell lava gurgling and the transitions between our normal environment and our volcano. Will any of these changes lead to success? Who knows!! But if you like catchy kid's songs, have a watch! https://lnkd.in/g27ugTad

It took us exactly 6 months to reach 1000 subscribers for our Barkster Kid Songs YouTube channel from when we released our first song. That's a full 6 months sooner than our initial projections. And we're just getting started! #YouTube #indieanimation #brandbuilding https://lnkd.in/gZh5VRYV