Hitting it big on YouTube | News | gmtoday.com – Greater Milwaukee Today

SLINGER A 19-year-old Slinger man turned a moment of disappointment into a career among the elite in his field.

The pivotal moment occurred more than five years ago when Ethan Schulteis was watching his favorite childhood show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the animated Nickelodeon production about a young boys quest to master the four elements.

I discovered that it was someones job to make these cartoons, Schulteis said. I did some research and found out everything I could about being an animator.

Schulteis parents, Tim and Shelly, enrolled their then-14-year-old son in an online animation course. He set out to make his mark in the cartoon and animation world. And then came that momentary setback.

I discovered I wouldnt be able to work in the animation industry until I was an adult, he said.

Schulteis pursued a related Plan B instead.

I decided Id make my own cartoon, he said. The result? The first and last episode of Schulteis animated web series, The Amagi.

Creating the episode was a long, tiring process that did not generate as many views as Schulteis would have wanted so he pivoted, turning his YouTube channel, The Amagi, into a more traditional YouTube model. He created and published videos of top 10 lists, interviews, news and other topics that piqued his interest, namely cartoons.

On May 28, 2019, Schulteis randomly decided to post a video talking about one of his favorite cartoons, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and specifically the ability to bend lava.

Lets pause this article for a quick tutorial. YouTube is a website for uploading, sharing and viewing videos on a mind-blowing wide variety of topics. Basically, if you have an interest in or question about anything, someone has probably created a video or launched a channel about it. Subjects include entertainment, fashion, sports, technology and travel to just scratch the surface. Programs include commentaries, product reviews, tutorials and advertisements. Anyone who uploads, produces or appears in a video on the video-sharing website is called a YouTuber. If someone clicks a button to get notified when the YouTuber posts a new video, they are called a subscriber. If you successfully attract a large number of subscribers, it can turn into a career. If you attract more than 1 million subscribers, you are among the most elite YouTubers in the world.

Now back to Schulteis, a 2021 Slinger High School graduate, and the global audience he attracts. That post from nearly 3 years ago quickly drew 1 million viewers. Subsequent daily posts drew an average of 100,000 views up to well more than a million. Soon The Amagi was generating a substantial amount of income, which Schulteis reinvested to hire a fulltime editor and part-time writers and voice actors. Eventually the focus of The Amagi switched from America cartoons to Japanese animation. The audience followed and grew. Today, The Amagi has more than 1.3 million subscribers and about 20 million views per month.

At the same time, Schulteis has drawn the attention of the animation industry. Channel Frederator, a popular animation studio, recently asked Schulteis and his team to run its company- owned YouTube channel with more than 2 million subscribers. A decision to translate The Amagi English-language content into Hindi and post it on The Amagi Hindi channel has already amassed more than 75,000 subscribers and 1 million views per month.

Schulteis goals extend well beyond animation.

Going into YouTube, I never intended to only make content on animated properties, he said. I ended up going down that road because thats where the trends were leading and thats the route that was necessary to grow my channel to where it is today.

I created The Amagi 2 to be a place where I could post videos about non-animated properties like Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc., he said. So far the channel has a tad over 55,000 subscribers with 27 videos.

The future is bright and opportunities arrive frequently.

Im actually very content doing what Im doing now for the long term, so in the future I would love to just continue running YouTube channels, he said. A dream project would be managing more channels for companies. Who knows, maybe I could run Nickelodeons channel one day. I could fulfill my dream of working for the company in the end after all.

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Hitting it big on YouTube | News | gmtoday.com - Greater Milwaukee Today