Hi, friends! As the semester winds down, we hope your classes are going well.
If you’re getting ready for final exams or midterms,
we’ve got you covered. We not only have our biology review video – Stroll Through
the Playlist – but we also have a recently released genetics review video to check out !
We thought we would do a Q&A to finish up the semester, but we had a few quick announcements
first! First announcement: we have a channel now that has our videos dubbed in Spanish
using an artificial voice! We’re releasing a new one every few weeks. Check them out and
leave us some feedback ! As for subtitles, we still gladly accept subtitle translations in
ALL languages for our videos. Please see the video description for how to do that.
Second announcement: you may have noticed we’ve been creating some Amoeba Sisters YouTube Shorts.
They’re under 60 seconds! Most will cover a specific biology topic . We’re not going
to stop making our regular content videos but y’all these are really useful and they’re short!
Third announcement: we’re working on a big project. We’re on a two-year timeline for it,
but we’re hard at work: it’s a book! A glorious book! And it’s where we spend our free time.
So on to the Q&A! We asked for your questions last month on our community tab.
Petunia is going to be working on some speed drawings here while we answer a few of those.
First question, many people asked, why amoebas?
We get this question a lot and I totally understand the curiosity. I mean there’s so many
microbes to choose from. So, when we started about 8 years ago, I didn’t know how to draw at all
and all I had was MS Paint. Um, you know that free program that comes on Windows computers. And since
you can’t really mess up an amoeba because they’re amorphous, I chose them. And I added the stars on
their heads because I thought they needed some kind of an accessory to stand out so…voila!
How do you know when to stop focusing on too many details in your videos ?
Details and exceptions in biology are fascinating and we want to try to encourage the exploration
of them, but our videos are really short and including or addressing all of them in
the video time itself isn’t possible. I try to focus on the main concept I’m teaching.
I think we’ve gotten better about avoiding the words “never” or “always” – because of
all those exceptions – and we’ve gotten better about including further reading
suggestions in our video descriptions so people can learn more about the details.
Next question, how much time does it take to make an average video?
So each video typically has between 150-200 illustrations, and that’s on top of all the
script writing, storyboarding, audio recording, and editing. And since it’s just the two of us,
I mean we don’t outsource any of our work, there’s a reason it takes us about a month to release.
We usually use 3 weeks for planning, drawing, and syncing the video and then one for editing.
Where are you headed to? Any future plans?
We anticipate 2022 is going to be a very busy year. We want to try releasing a lot of YouTube
Shorts on biology topics and working on our book and making a few more regular content videos.
But 2023…sometimes I see ourselves teaching another science subject besides biology.
Maybe chemistry! We get a lot of requests for chemistry. But we’ll see.
Next question,
what’s your favorite cell organelle? Petunia: Well, if we’re including plant cells,
hands down the chloroplast. In my head, they’re like these little light-harvesting sugar bakers
and I love it. I think they’re so cute. Pinky: Lysosomes. Full of enzymes, they
can break down so many things. And you know I’ve been loving reading about the exceptions – that
while we often learn about lysosomes with animal cells - some plant cells may contain
lysosomes depending on how you are defining a lysosome – more in the video description.
Next question, what is your
favorite Star Wars or Marvel characters? Petunia: Well, if it’s Marvel, it’s probably
Dr. Strange for me. But, hey, is there no love for DC Comics? Because I think Rorschach from
Watchman is really awesome, and I even have a commissioned drawing of him in my studio.
Pinky: Well you did say Star Wars; I love Star Wars, and it’d be Vader.
I also love Star Trek – TNG was great but the one I keep re-watching is Star Trek Voyager.
I’ve watched the entire 7 seasons multiple times throughout my life! Captain Janeway is amazing.
Ok, that’s all the time we have for this video! We have new videos to make, a book to work on, and
more science to explore! We wish you a wonderful break. And if you have a
holiday that you celebrate this winter , we hope it’s a great one. Well that’s
it for the Amoeba Sisters, and we remind you to stay curious.