What do you use to animate your videos?
I create most of the animations programmatically, using a python library named "manim" that I've been building up. I’ve also used Grapher for a number of 3d animations.
Everything is open-source on github, and a small community has emerged of people who use it, but before you dive in I feel like a warning is in order. This is something I’ve put together with my own use case in mind, never really meant to be a professional product that’s consistently maintained for others. It's not that I want to discourage others from doing similar things, quite the contrary I love when that happens, but often my workflow and development with manim can make it more difficult for an outsider to learn than other better-documented animation libraries, like Matplotlib or Mathematica.
I also get worried when I hear people ask things like “how do I sync up narration into manim”. This is just a tool for spitting out the individual mathematical animations, not the whole video. For goodness sake, use traditional video editing software for as much as you can!
There are aspects of producing videos with a self-made tool like this that I find quite pleasing, but which are pleasing precisely because it's my own. It enforces a uniqueness of style, for example, which is by its very nature a benefit that can't be shared. There's also a certain freedom in being able to tear up the guts of the tool every now and then when I feel a change is in order, since backward compatibility needs are very limited when you only care about videos moving forward. Not exactly the best practice from a collaborative standpoint.
The channels I know who took inspiration from 3b1b and did it best, like Primer or Jazon Jiao, found or created the tooling that worked best for their particular content.
Will you please make a video on ________?
Note, requests I get through email are just about guaranteed to be ignored, since that reddit thread is where I look when considering what people are asking for and how others respond to each request with upvotes and comments.
In choosing a video topic, the aim is to find a story that has the best chance of deepening people’s relationship with math, and which I am personally most excited to describe. Sometimes that means explaining a topic many people find confusing in what I hope to be a halfway novel way, other times it means finding topics people wouldn’t even know to ask for. Many times, there's a worthy topic with clear demand, but I simply don’t feel I have an original or captivating enough way to approach.
Also, if your request is one from multivariable calculus (e.g. Lagrange multipliers, the Jacobian, Stokes’ theorem, etc.), there’s a good chance I covered it in some of my work at Khan Academy, either in video or article form.
What does the name "3blue1brown" mean?
Okay, I’m not going to pretend this isn’t a little weird. The logo to be a loose depiction of my right eye color: It has sectoral heterochromia, 3/4 blue 1/4 part brown. Back when I uploaded the first video, needed some kind of channel logo, I thought it was a nice way of putting a genetic signature on my work. Plus, the channel is all about seeing math in certain ways, so it felt appropriate. The name, of course, is just derived from the logo. In hindsight, this feels a bit more self-centered than I’d like, but hey, what can you do?
What's the music playing in your videos?
Most music has been by written by Vince Rubinetti, which you can download on Bandcamp and stream on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play. The piano song throughout the Linear Algebra and Calculus series, which Vince listed as “Grant’s etude” and “Grant’s Opus” on the album, are little snippets that I wrote myself.
Can I translate your videos?
That’d be lovely, thanks! YouTube has some built-in tools to let people contribute subtitles, which is hugely helpful. Really, I can’t tell you what great affection I feel for those who take the time to do those translations. Once you submit a translated transcript, it needs to be approved, which also happens through the community. So reviewing submitted subtitles is also a great way to help.
Since YouTube is not available in China, there is a small team of volunteers that make them available on Bilibili with Chinese translations. You can find the means of contacting the team on that page if you want to help out.
Perhaps you’re wondering about dubbing content. This, unfortunately, takes significantly more time, which most people dramatically underestimate. Also, in some initial experiments with a Spanish channel, they don’t reach meaningfully more people than the subtitled versions on the original videos. Nevertheless, if you do want to put in all that time, and feel like you can commit to more than just one video, I’ll set up an alternate 3b1b channel where we can upload them. Just let me know once you have created one.
Current channels with some dubbed content:
Chinese (as mentioned above, on Bilibili)
You are not allowed to re-upload the content on your own channel, and such re-uploaded content will be taken down as a copyright violation. I know that might seem harsh, and that many re-uploaded dubbed videos are done in good faith trying to spread math around the world. However, I do need to be able to have some level of agency on how the lessons put out under this name are presented. To take one potential problem, there is otherwise no mechanism for preventing the insertion of unwanted promotional or sponsored additions, or other sorts of edits I wouldn’t approve of.
Do you have any recommended resources for learning math?
Can you answer a math question for me?
I’d prefer that you post it to the 3b1b subreddit. That way, even if I’m too busy to answer (or if I don’t know!), there’s a good chance someone else will help you. You should also post it to the the math stack exchange, or to Quora, where you’ll be exposed to many, many great minds who are eager to help you out.
I’ve solved a famous unsolved math problem/I’ve developed a novel idea. Will you check it for me?
Unfortunately, no.
There are two important things to note here: 1) I’m not a research mathematician, so I wouldn’t be the one to ask. 2) There’s too little time as it is to read and learn all the things I’d like to read, so I have to draw certain boundaries on where that time goes.
Will you speak at my event?
Maybe! I do give the occasional talk, so feel free to share the details through the contact form below. Just know my main focus will always be the videos, so talks are typically kept to a minimum.
My organization would like to sponsor one of your videos.
Can I use/license these videos?
Under the standard YouTube license, you are free to embed the videos in your own site or blog as much as you’d like, as long as it is not behind a paywall. If you want to use some of the visuals in a classroom, or for a talk/presentation, by all means, feel free to do so. In both cases, attribution is of course appreciated.
If you have a commercial product and wish to license the videos to include in your product, feel free to send an inquiry with the contact link below.
Questions not addressed above?
(Pssst, gentle reminder that topic suggestions and questions about math are addressed above, so this is not the place to send those)
I do read all the messages I get, but I hope you understand that I can’t respond to all of them.