Whether it’s for entertainment or educational purposes, Youtube is populated with a range of animated YouTube channels to suit your every need. Here are 60 of the best animation Youtube channels, all rounded up in one handy guide.
From satirical movies to educational animated videos – and even nostalgic cartoons, YouTube provides a wide range of animated content. Explainer video production company Breadnbeyond has created a comprehensive list of the best animated YouTube channels, which we’ve categorised into comedy, entertainment, educational, news, for children, and for teens. Read on to discover what might be your new favourite YouTube channels.
Comedy, Parodies & Humour
TheOdd1sOut
With a unique storytelling style, TheOdd1sOut delights viewers with its sense of humour. Some of this channel’s most popular videos talk mostly about the creator’s relatable experiences in school or college and the use of iconic characters have a knack of hooking in viewers for a new episode every week.
ExplosmEntertainment
ExplosmEntertainment produces short animated comic videos, each up to 3 minutes long. It is best known for its viral darkly comedic series “Cyanide & Happiness,” which is overwhelmingly popular among fans of the webcomic. Utilising stick-figure animation, primarily made with Adobe Animate, this series uses visual comedy combined with dark (and sometimes random) jokes to entertain the cynical side of life.
How It Should Have Ended
How It Should Have Ended rewrites parts of the plots and endings for popular feature films, creating humorous alternate versions. They also have a popular, uber hilarious mini-series called “Super Cafe,” which stars popular superheroes, particularly Batman and Superman. Well-known among superhero- or sci-fi movie addicts, the series usually features characters who discuss blockbuster trailers and upcoming movies.
Alex Meyers
Alex Meyers’ channel is mostly about movies and TV shows. It reviews series and movies that might have had a little too much hype, mixed with dry humour. This channel also has an animated cartoon character that appears in every video to support the narrator. Watching his videos will not offer you insights into Alex’s thoughts on popular shows, but you’ll also get to learn more about Meyers himself from the animated anecdotes that he’s added in his videos.
Egoraptor
Arin Hanson, better known online as Egoraptor, creates an animated channel for music, parody, and comedy. This channel is well-known among animation lovers on YouTube because of its trademark sense of humour and animation style. It also has a number of popular series, including Awesome Series, Lemon ‘n Bill, Girlchan in Paradise!!, and Sequilitis. Arin also creates cartoon music videos that are paired with hilarious lyrics.
OneyNG
OneyNG shares short clips of animated cartoon parody. It parodies characters from popular TV shows or movies like Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, Final Fantasy, etc, and animates its main character to represent the channel’s creator. Oney NG also posts video tutorials on creating animation. Sometimes, viewers will even be treated to a thorough behind-the-scenes video on the production process.
TomSka
TomSka is undeniably best known for his animated series asdfmovie. Each movie that he uploads on his channel is composed of various, uncoloured, and straightforward 2-minute animations.
The animations are all in black and white (sometimes with a little bit colour) with relatively simple movements, with just a plain background, so those animations hinge almost entirely on humour to deliver the story.
hotdiggedydemon
Max Gilardi, under the name hotdiggedydemon, created this animation channel to post-game parodies, movie parodies, and sometimes animations that were his own ideas. He uses simple 3D techniques and sometimes a cartoon style for his animation.
Featuring an animated version of himself as the main character who narrates the videos, the dramatic, over-the-top voiceovers and funny scripts are probably some of the biggest reasons behind why this channel is so entertaining.
In 2016, he launched a new series called “Brain Dump” in which he reviews movies, often satirically.
Frame Order
Frame Order is an animation studio that produced a funny comedy cartoon show named Cartoon Box. Its YouTube channel consists of almost all the short episodes with a hilarious twist and a dark sense of cartoony humour.
Cartoon-Box is your weekly dose of funny, snappy, in-your-face animated comedy cartoons on the Internet. With no narrations, this channel relies on visual storytelling to deliver the message and jokes.
Films, Stories & Series
pencilmation
Pencilmation is an animated series created by Ross Bollinger where pencil-drawn stick figures and doodles come to life. The series mainly focuses on a character named Hank, who has been featured in many of Ross’s works. With a lighthearted undertone, this channel transforms 2-dimensional images into simple, yet engaging characters for adults.
Simon’s Cat
Simon’s Cat is an animated series featuring the mischievous, hilarious and adorable antics of a fat fluffy white cat and his owner Simon. With a bunch of exciting and interesting stories about a long-suffering cat owner, this channel is a popular cat-related channel on YouTube.
Since the videos that are uploaded to this channel are not narrated, the animations rely heavily on visual and sound effects to give the viewers the sight of animated gags and physical comedy.
Domics
Domics is a self-titled channel run by a young Canadian man who has created a “draw my life” channel. Many of his animations are used to illustrate certain aspects of his life, both past and present. The animation and voice work are both pretty simple, but they mesh together really nicely to give the jokes a decent amount of punch. It’s a technique that you’ll see a lot as we go through this list, and Domics is definitely one of the top examples in this category.
sWooZie
sWooZie focuses on storytelling more than the quality of the animation and is usually portrayed with simple drawings or stick figures, making oddball content you won’t find anywhere else online. Occasionally, it features a mash-up of animation, confessional videos, and gameplay. The channel also uploads videos quite frequently, which makes his channel great for subscribing.
Jaiden Information
Jaiden Information is a YouTube channel that produces animation videos that literally talks about itself. Amidst a sea of personality-based vlogging and gaming-driven “Let’s Play” channels, Jaiden brings out original story animation content that builds strong engagement with its subscribers.
Cartoon Hangover
Cartoon Hangover is a part of the Frederator Studios online animation channel. It has spun off series, including The Fairly OddParents, Adventure Time, Bee and PuppyCat, Bravest Warriors, and more.
This channel is filled with unique, creative, fun, and sometimes quirky cartoon videos. With gorgeous animated characters and exciting storylines, it provides television-quality cartoons on the Internet.
Both the SuperF*ckers and Too Cool! mini-series are one of the main reasons viewers stay tuned in and come back for more.
CypherDen
CypherDen is known for its eponymous videos– mostly about the creator’s life. The interesting story backed by cartoon-style animation makes this channel worth being on your radar.
This channel posts videos in several categories, including storytime videos, sketches, tutorials, and gaming animations. With semi-autobiographical cartoons, the stories range from fun to serious, real, and relatable. In this channel, you’ll find short and engaging animations about being an artist, an animator, and an adult in general.
CGMeetup
CGMeetup channel is primarily focused on CGI, VFX, and 3D animations in HD resolution. Each video is a short animated film, 3-10 minutes long, and their Pixar-like style of animation entertains their viewers for a short time.
As a third-party Youtube channel, CGMeetup showcases independent animated shorts and curates their channels to present a unified brand. Featured artists or studios are given the opportunity to reach a wider audience. CGMeetup serves as a kind of a personal cinema to the general public and a distributor and publicist to creators.
TheCGBros
While we talk about the CGI animation channel on Youtube, it’s impossible not to mention CGBros, a channel that features different types of CGI and VFX short animation films made mostly by students. This channel sometimes uploads behind-the-scenes breakdowns, 3D software tutorials, and much more.
TheCGBros is always looking to showcase the latest exceptional work in student and independent animation communities, covering everything from films to visual effects.
ESMA
ESMA is a school of applied arts, focused on 3D, CGI, and visual effects training. Its channel showcases its students’ works, which are mostly short films in the C.G. animation and F.X. cycle. In this channel, you can find a lot of 3D videos with motivational stories. Since most of them are created without voiceovers, background music helps create a sense of atmosphere.
Harry Partridge
Harry Partridge creates animated videos that mainly focus on cartoon series, notably “Starbarians.” Using an ’80s-cartoons-inspired style, Partridge creates the videos on Flash with detailed smooth hand-drawn animation and a dark sense of humour. Exploring deeper themes bubbling beneath a candy-coloured veneer, this channel is sure to bring up a sense of childhood nostalgia.
CircleToonsHD
With more than a million subscribers, this channel focused on animated sketches about video games, memes, and online pop culture. Although each character is simply a chubby, rounded, black and white outline, his artwork is inherently hilarious, despite its simplicity.
Unlike other animation channels that use screen recorders to animate their artwork, CircleToonsHD points a camera at a tablet screen, most likely a Wacom Cintiq, with a handheld camera. The artist moves each drawing around by hand while providing an improvisational voice over, making the videos look effortless and straightforward.
Eddsworld
If you’ve been around YouTube for a long time or have a strong interest in animation and comics, you’ll know this channel has been around for a while. A comedic web cartoon series created by Edd Gould, this channel is all about various stories of a group of friends that consist of Edd, Tom, Matt as characters.
However, Edd ha since passed away from leukaemia and the channel was left in the care of Gould’s family and close friends. Although it’s no longer posting new videos as frequently, Eddsworld is still one of the most popular animated YouTube channels.
SomeThingElseYT
SomeThingElseYT, formerly known as trolldawgz, is a channel that posts storytime animation based on real-life personal stories with cartoon characters. The soft rounded style of the characters with cute horns and red hoodie is the main character representing the author. This channel also uploads some music videos that also tells the audience about some uncomfortable experiences that the author has, such as “I’m Something Else” that’s all about overpowering the bullies he got. Being an animated real-life stories channel, it is highly relatable – and has over 3 million subscribers.
It’s Alex Clark
Among YouTube animation stars, Alex Clark is one of the elites. With simple yet colourful animation, he uses the channel as his “diary,” depicting memorable moments from his life. His channel engages viewers by telling wacky or glorious stories, mostly from his childhood.
This channel uploads a new video weekly. Each episode tells a different story, bringing fresh content to its subscribers. Relying on a fine-tuned script with a slice of dry humour, his channel was nominated for a Streamy Award as the best animated YouTube channel in 2017.
Cool 3D World
This channel is popular because of its bizarre 3D style of animation. The nightmarish glitchy of characters makes some people even think that the videos are somewhat downright disturbing, scary, and confusing.
However, this channel offers a 3D style that you can’t find anywhere else. Brian Tessler and Jon Baken (who owns the channel) rely heavily on intense distortions and grotesque imagery.
They were primarily active on Vine and went viral before the platform shut down – and have since moved to YouTube exclusively.
Vivziepop
A bit different from other animated channels that mostly create comedy series, Vivianne (the creator) runs an adult animated musical series titled Hazbin Hotel. The videos she created are strongly influenced by musicals, villains, and animals.
On this channel, Vivianne also live-streams to demonstrate how a character of the Hazbin Hotel series is drawn. The characters have their own style of animation with a strong emphasis on expressions and over-exaggerated, cartoony movements.
This kind of animation style is complemented by the impressive sound design, which is filled with astounding sound effects that emphasise every character’s movement.
Educational
CrashCourse
CrashCourse is an educational youtube channel. Raking in more than 10 million viewers on YouTube and counting, CrashCourse has a worldwide audience in and out of classrooms.
From courses like Astronomy to US History, CrashCourse transforms the traditional textbook model by presenting information in a fast-paced format. While the show is an immensely helpful tool for students and teachers, it also has a large viewership of casual learners who independently seek out online educational content.
TED Ed
The educational arm of the annual TED conference is held each spring in Vancouver. On their YouTube education channel, you’ll find a growing library of carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between educators and talented animators.
TED-Ed’s goal is to pair educators with animators and create a series of lesson-based animated shorts aimed at teachers and high school students.
It’s Aumsum Time
If you’re looking for a highly creative and refreshing educational channel that explains everything from science to philosophy, It’s Aumsum Time is well worth considering. This channel deals with everyday phenomena that we often take for granted, then breaks each of them down scientifically.
Each video includes some questions that are going to be answered with fun, interesting explanations. The simple 2D animation combined with clear narration makes the videos easy to digest, perfect for viewers of all ages.
Bright Side
Bright Side provides its viewers with how-to trivia as well as history and general knowledge. The channel focuses on animated videos with general content about facts and riddles. Using cartoon animation, Bright Side delivers its information with an easygoing, entertaining voiceover.
What’s interesting is that this channel uploads at least three new videos every single day, so their subscribers always have new content to enjoy.
Kurzgesagt
Kurzgesagt is one of the most popular animated educational channels on YouTube. It’s known for its unique, distinctive style of vector-based animation that uses lots of gradients and attractive flat neon colour illustrations. One of the best captivating features is how it simplifies science and also examines modern pop culture from an unbiased perspective.
Life Noggin
Life Noggin educates its viewers with animated documentaries about a variety of topics such as medical science, astronomy, and even big questions. For the animation, it chooses an 8-bit-style approach to make the videos easy to understand for viewers and keep them wanting to go back.
Using the protagonist character called “Blocko,” all the videos are straight to the point and often answer a few side questions with a little bit of humour. Each episode is 3-5 minutes long and focuses on one educational topic.
PolyMatter
PolyMatter is a well-known tech-based channel that puts together videos that dive into a variety of thoughtful ideas and trends in the tech and financial world, from how cruise ship works to Apple’s money problem.
This channel combines motion graphic animations, real-footage video clips, and pictures to give a comprehensive explanation about the topic that is being discussed.
The RSA
You might know The R.S.A. as a channel with lots of self-improvement, talks, debates and interviews content. But, it also has an animation series as an innovative, accessible, and unique way of illustrating and sharing world-changing ideas.
Most other animated channels often rely heavily on basic 2D or cartoon animation to tell the story, but this channel chooses whiteboard animation instead.
The R.S.A. animation series cover topics from the economics, social, and even psychology fields, and its whiteboard animation comes in handy to break down a wealth of complex information.
minutephysics
One of the best known D.I.Y. whiteboard-style physics video lectures, minutephysics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics using only markers, papers, and stop motion animation.
This channel breaks down physics-related topics in approximately one to three minutes. The D.I.Y. whiteboard animation helps turn complex physics-related topics into bite-sized, informative videos.
It’s Okay To Be Smart
This channel is a part of PBS Digital Studios, a YouTube channel and network that distributes original educational web video content. It’s an educational channel that explores science, the universe, and the excitement of learning new things.
What makes it more interesting is that it often performs a real experiment before coming up with a conclusion.
The host Joe Hanson uses graphic illustrations, props, and a lot of humour to bring you fresh and insightful science-based content in an easy-to-understand manner.
MinuteEarth
MinuteEarth is another animated educational channel that focuses on the Earth. It teaches viewers about the educational functions of Earth in just a couple of minutes, using animated stick figures and (mostly) animal characters.
Another interesting thing about this channel is that it has casual and straightforward titles that spark an audience’s curiosity. For example, a video titled “You are a fish” talks about evolutionary history and the strategy of cladistic naming.
CGP Grey
The YouTube channel CGP Grey features animated educational videos on quite a wide range of subjects, including history, geography, politics, economics, and British culture. Most of the videos use effortlessly-drawn stick figures narrated with the sweet and dulcet tones of a mid-30’s school teacher.
Through its videos, this channel offers you an answer to questions that you might not even have thought about before. However, rather than being pointless and unhelpful, this channel has some of the most useful advice for daily living and can help to improve your happiness.
AsapSCIENCE
AsapSCIENCE is a wildly popular animated educational video that answers the world’s unique questions, most persistent rumours, and unexplained phenomena – scientifically. Most of its episodes consist of topics you might deal with on a daily basis, such as how to fall asleep in 2 minutes, how to cram for exams or reduce stress.
Combining a talking head style with whiteboard animation, its videos often include science-themed jokes and puns to keep viewers entertained.
PBS Eons
PBS Eons is a YouTube series created by PBS Digital Studios and published on the PBS Eons YouTube channel. The series will take you on a journey through the history of life on Earth, from the dawn of life in the Mesozoic Era right up to the end of the most recent Ice Age.
With exquisite 3D animation videos, this channel offers you some profoundly engaging and wildly entertaining tours of the Earth in the last four billion years, one fascinating vignette at a time. Sometimes, this channel also discusses climate change and adaptations to habitats and ecosystems.
The Infographics Show
This channel focuses on making animated motion infographic videos, explaining complex facts in a fun, entertaining way. It covers various intriguing topics, such as health, political, economic and historical facts, and draws comparisons between celebrities, video games, and even the military.
The most popular video on this channel, titled “What Happens When You Dead,” has more than 20 million views after it was uploaded in February 2018.
After Skool
With colourful whiteboard animation videos, After Skool gives you a weekly dose of fun and exciting science, ideas, stories, education, and more. Each video is hand-drawn with just white background papers and colourful markers. The combination of compelling drawing and an easy-to-listen-to voiceover helps viewers enhance their learning.
What makes this channel unique is that it also features inspirational monologues from notable people, such as Alan Wilson Watts, Jim Carrey, John F. Kennedy, and more. And yes, all of it is illustrated via a whiteboard style with real voice recordings of the people featured.
News
Andrei Terbea
This channel is named after the owner, Andrei Terbea, and uses spot-on 2D animation to create small mini-series or commentaries about recent news.
His content covers commentary on various YouTube and YouTuber related topics, making it easier for the viewers to understand what is going on within the platform. It also tackles trending topics from a different perspective, often playing the devil’s advocate and seeing the brighter side of negative events.
Spill
Spill’s videos are thorough and most of them are nearly an hour-long. Their main features are thorough rundowns of the latest celebrity feuds with a commentary explaining the details. It has an animated 2D avatar that casually pops in the videos as the narrator.
Celebrities, commonly-asked questions, reactions to mean tweets, or any other tea spillage topics are wildly popular trends. Spill creates finely-tuned video content with a little use of animation as their main branding.
FootofaFerret
FootofaFerret a.k.a Ryder Burgin is best known online for his YouTube series called “A Brief History!”
In this series, he talks about the history of featured YouTubers, movies, and celebrities. Occasionally, this channel also uploads videos about cartoons or video games.
What makes this channel more interesting is that it often features another YouTuber like TheOdd1sOut, JaidenAnimations, Domics, and SomeThingElseYT – and even experiments with animated reaction episodes to FootofaFerret’s old YouTube videos.
YouTube Channels for Children & Kids
Little Baby Bum
Little Baby Bum is one of the most popular channels for children on YouTube with colourful 3D animations in beautiful HD resolution. The channel’s lineup includes baby songs, nursery rhymes, and interactive videos.
What separates it from other kids’ channels is its unusually long videos – this channel’s videos are mostly 30 minutes long, even though most other channels are only 5 minutes or less, to make it easier for parents to keep their children entertained while they get something done.
Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes
As you might already know, Cocomelon is the most subscribed nursery rhymes channel. It consists of traditional nursery rhymes, and their own original children’s songs played over high-resolution 3D animations.
This channel uses the same character for each video, creating a sense of coherence across songs. With friendly characters and colourful animated videos, it helps kids learn all about letters, numbers, shapes, colours, animals, and more.
Disney Junior
You can’t create a list of animated video channels without including Disney Junior. As a part of a media and entertainment giant, this channel is one of the famous kid-friendly channels on the platform.
Most of the videos star popular Disney characters, including Mickey & Minnie Mouse, T.O.T.S., Bluey, and more. Plus, there are still a myriad of characters you’ve never seen in any Disney animated movie before, like Fancy Nancy, Pet Rescue, Puppy Dog Pals and Vampirina.
Pinkfong! Kids’ Songs & Stories
Pinkfong! has become a rising YouTube star after its Baby Shark song became an Internet phenomenon. This channel has its original characters, including Pinkfong itself (a pink fox with magenta eyes) that features on almost every song.
The colour palette of the animation is bright and engaging, perfect for children, and their catchy songs help keep their audience engaged. In addition to animation, some videos include real-life child actors who dance while singing the songs.
Super Simple Song
Super Simple Songs feature kids’ songs and nursery rhymes made for young learners. Their videos are mostly animated via 2D cartoons, though some use puppetry and actors. You can also find lots of classic kids’ songs on this channel.
Their combination of charming animations and catchy, easy-to-learn tunes makes it easy for preschoolers to learn the alphabet, colours and animals names through songs.
KidsTV123
KidsTV123 makes it easier for parents or teachers to give children, toddlers and babies an educational yet entertaining video. It creates its own original songs, which mostly are about phonics, numbers, and shapes for the children to learn. Although its animations are simple, this channel offers engaging cartoon characters that kids will genuinely love.
Sesame Street
Who isn’t familiar with Sesame Street? After all, the Muppets are a longtime favourite of both children and adults. On its channel, Sesame Street has all kinds of fun educational videos, some of them starring your favourite actors and musicians.
The videos are mostly about the episodes of the show, and sometimes they also create animated videos with cartoon characters to deliver an educational message.
coilbook | Learning For Children
This channel uses personified transportation to help children learn numbers, letters, colours, and even traffic signs. The channel’s cast of characters includes Max the Train, Bill the Monster Truck, Sergeant Cooper the Police Car, George the Garbage Truck, and many more. It also provides a 3D-animated series featuring bright coloured vehicles, such as fire trucks, cars, aeroplanes, etc., for the older viewers.
Every episode has its own standalone storyline so you can jump in at any point. It’s such an interesting channel as it allows the children to join the team on various adventures as they learn.
Teeter Taught Animation
Teeter Taught Animation is another excellent channel for preschoolers to learn in a fun, exciting way. For example, one video teaches counting down from 10 to 1 by showing a giant set of teeth crunching down on lollipops. It also uses items that preschool kids are familiar with, such as crayons, icecreams, candies, and dolls, as characters.
LooLoo Kids
Another kids channel parents should pay attention to is LooLoo Kids. It offers singing, dancing, and storytelling videos aimed at toddlers and preschoolers. The iconic Johny & Friends characters make this channel popular among children and parents alike.
The fun, colourful, and lovely 3D characters are perfectly adapted to aiding children’s intellectual development, helping them enjoy learning about numbers, shapes, colours, animals, and the alphabet. The channel is mostly focused on children’s songs and nursery rhymes, sometimes grouping them into hour-long song collections and short episodes of a show.
YouTube Channels for Teenagers
My Story Animated
My Story Animated provides young adults with interesting and life-changing stories with the world through animated videos.
The idea of the channel is to tell outlandish stories that happen to teenage characters, involving everything from school, family secrets and relationships to other real-life problems that usually have an unexpected twist to them.
With super eye-catching 2D animation, each episode tells a different story. Since the videos are based on stories from the viewers, almost all of the voice-overs in their videos are done by the actual person that experienced the story itself.
MondoMedia
MondoMedia targets teens and young adults, delivering high-quality animation and an original comedy series. With the combination of cartoon-style and motion-graphic animation, the channel relies primarily on deadpan and visual humour.
MondoMedia also has an ever-popular series that has been adapted to TV shows called Happy Tree Friends with lovely characters and almost no dialogue that has a very very dark streak of cruel humour, including chopping down limbs and smashing heads with a sledgehammer just to pluck out a brain.
FilmCow
If you know Charlie the Unicorn or llamas with Hats, then FilmCow, the creator, probably sounds familiar to you. This offhand cartoon with irreverence spurs and a quirky sense of humour is perfect for young adults. It mostly does weekly shorts, both cartoon animated and infrequently live-action videos. For those of us who grew up watching saccharine cartoons on TV, the refreshingly dark and odd satire make this channel a huge favourite.
illymation
Illymation focuses on relatable animated storytime videos. This channel features an animated character which tells coming-of-age stories from the author’s life, including traditionally uncomfortable topics such as puberty, abuse, and mental illness.
All the videos are created with cartoon animation and often come with dialogue. This channel uses easy-going, casual, and sometimes sarcastic scripts to turn an uncomfortable topic into an entertaining, share-worthy video.
Gonzossm
If you’re a fan of “Super Toss The Turtle” web game, Gonzossm should be familiar to you. This YouTube channel uploads mostly parodies of your favourite games, using bold colour, vivid animation, and an extremely dark sense of humour. Gonzossm has an animation style that you don’t see anywhere else, relying on thick and round contours and bright highlights.
Despite its odd sense of humour, this channel is also well-known for its use of fairly graphic imagery, which may account for a primary audience base of young adult gamers.
This article was adapted with permission from the original article on breadnbeyond.com.
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