This past Saturday we were proud to attend and be featured at the Expanding Horizons 2013 gala to benefit Earthen Vessels. Earthen Vessels is a wonderful local organization that “recruits, trains, and mobilizes a motivated volunteer corps of university students to empower inner-city children from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of Boston to succeed in school and beyond.”

We donated 30 seconds of animation and a tour of our studio to be bid on by the gala attendees during the gala auction. Congratulations to Lou LaRocca, President & CEO of J2 Interactive, for winning the auction! We look forward to working with him and his team, and for their support of Earthen Vessels!

Learn more about Earthen Vessels at evkids.org.

We’ve very excited to announce that we’ve been working on a series of educational math videos with our friends at Utah Education Network. The videos were made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and can be found on the PBS Learning Media Library, along with some great supplementary learning materials.

A big thanks to UEN for asking us to produce this awesome educational content, and for giving us a chance to brush up on our math skills in the process.

Check out episodes 1-4, and stay tuned for more MATH SHORTS!

Here at Planet Nutshell, we’ve been making explainer videos since 2007, and we’ve changed a lot since then. In the early days, our founder, Josh Gunn was doing all the scriptwriting, storyboarding, and animation himself. But as the popularity of Nutshells grew, he knew he needed help (and more artistic talent). And so the era we so fondly refer to as the “Era of Trevor” began. With Trevor Piecham onboard, Planet Nutshell truly started to fire on all cylinders. In 2012, as we continued to grow, animator John McGowen joined our team. As we take a stroll down memory lane below, see if you can spot the first video in the series below that Trevor worked on, and be sure to check out our new Q Factor video, which really displays John’s talent, and the mark he’s made on our work.

2013

We recently completed our second video for Dadanco, a green air conditioning company. It was a real challenge to balance fun with explaining some pretty sophisticated products. Albert seems to be happy with the results, though.

We also recently completed this video for Q Factor, a John McGowen masterpiece!

2012

Last year, we came out with this video for Microsoft SkyDrive and Office. This was a big project for us, as it was for a big brand and the video was localized and distributed globally as part of a back-to-school marketing push.

2011

Ah yes, our Google Wallet Nutshell. Viewed by millions and included on every Android phone. Our reputation was founded on it. I got a call from a very high-level Google exec thanking us for making it. That was a good day.

2010

I’m including this one for the ninja. Hot tip: It never hurts to have a ninja in an explainer video.

2009

We made a big series of videos for Sitecom, a Dutch consumer networking hardware manufacturer.  I love the zombie in this one.

2007

And here’s our very first project. We made this video for Brooks Sports, to explain their BioMoGo sustainable shoe technology.