When Ewan Cunningham opens a new animation file, it is usually the start of a month-long ritual. At 27, the Scottish creator behind “Primal Space” has quietly built one of YouTube’s most compelling educational channels: a faceless, meticulously engineered archive of animated history, engineering, and science stories watched by millions. His videos often begin as stray curiosities, fragments pulled from old books or obscure engineering journals. 

“I always write things down immediately. Never say you’ll write it later because you will forget,” he says.

Ewan didn’t set out to become the kind of creator who works entirely behind the scenes, but pairing the faceless format with a deep commitment to evergreen storytelling has become the foundation of a lean, global business he built almost entirely on his own.

A Childhood of Cameras, Curiosity, and Trial-and-Error

Ewan uploaded his first YouTube video at age ten. “I always had an interest in making videos and creative things,” he says. “I was always into art. I would paint, draw, and then at some point I got a camera, my dad’s camera, so I just started filming random things.”

He cycled through a series of early channels: drum covers, parody songs, gaming commentary, and a music channel he still maintains today. According to him, it was an era when there were only “a handful of YouTubers that had a million subscribers,” and every experiment felt like a small rebellion. Ewan’s primary school teacher once warned students not to post their faces online. “Everyone knew I had a YouTube channel and my face was all over it,” he laughs.

University, however, never felt like the right path. He enrolled in film and TV studies, but left after three months. “For creative things, school stifled my creativity because they go so much into theory before letting you create,” he says. “I learn by doing.”

That instinct would eventually shape every part of “Primal Space.”

A Space Channel That Launched Something Bigger

In early 2018, fascinated by SpaceX and NASA, Ewan launched “Primal Space” as a purely space-focused channel. The first video was posted on Reddit and exploded. “It got like a million views within a week. I thought, ‘Well, I should probably make another one,’” he says.

At the time, the bet was simple: if a video reached 50,000 views, he would make another. The next one received 10,000. But the spark was there.

From 2018 until late 2023, he produced monthly videos using stock footage, NASA archives, and SpaceX clips, a stark contrast to the fully animated style he uses today. “Those videos were all just made from stock footage or old NASA footage. It’s not as good,” he says.

The audience grew quickly. By 2019, Ewan was earning enough from AdSense to treat YouTube as a full-time job, despite never having held another. A sponsorship deal arrived that same year. “I remember when I saw the sponsorship amount, I was shocked. I had no idea how much you could make,” the young creator says.

But the real turning point came when he stepped outside the space bubble.

The Pivot That Redefined ‘Primal Space’

After a few years of producing space content, Ewan felt boxed in. He had always been equally drawn to engineering and history, but the channel’s identity limited him. Worse, the comment sections within the space community had grown combative. 

“It was kind of a toxic community. The comments would be arguing all the time about pointless things,” he says.

So he tested a theory. He posted a video about an early 1900s monorail invention – “a kind of steampunk invention” – and it took off. “It was the best-performing video ever. It’s still my most viewed video with like 11 million views.”

The experiment validated everything he suspected about YouTube: audiences didn’t need strict categorization. They wanted good stories. “It confirmed what I thought would happen,” he says. “Even people really into space are also interested in engineering and science.”

The pivot was meant to be slow. Ewan planned to alternate between space and non-space topics for a year. But after two or three non-space videos, he made the switch permanent. “The views went up a lot. Before, they were inconsistent, but these videos bumped up to over a million every time,” he says.

The expansion into history and engineering transformed “Primal Space” into an animated documentary studio with global appeal.

Building a Visual Identity

While the early “Primal Space” videos relied heavily on archival footage, today every frame is animated in Blender, the open-source 3D software that has reshaped educational YouTube. “It’s amazing that it’s free,” Ewan notes. “There’s a lot to it, but once you get used to it, the basics are easy.”

He taught himself to use Blender through tutorials and experimentation. His background in video editing (starting with Cyberlink as a child) gave him a foundation. “All these programs follow the same ideas,” he says. “Learning those when I was younger helped me now.”

But Blender also created a problem: it made high-quality animated content accessible to anyone. Entire channels now mimic one another with identical thumbnail styles and simplified cartoonish animations. Ewan avoids them intentionally. “I purposely do not watch them because I don’t want to subconsciously start copying their videos and their styles,” he says.

Instead, he pushes for realism. Detailed textures, accurate physics, and precise engineering models distinguish his work. “I tried to make my animations more on the realistic side to stay away from those channels,” he says.

The result is a signature visual world; immersive, atmospheric, and instantly recognizable to his 1.76 million subscribers.

An Obsessively Structured Workflow

Ewan’s production cycle runs like a one-man studio.

Idea selection. At the start of each month, he selects a topic from an ever-expanding list. “There’s a lot that goes into picking a topic,” he says. “It has to be a topic that I’m personally interested in, unique enough to get lots of views, and simple enough to animate in just one month.”

Research. He dives into books, archives, and online materials. “As soon as something pops up that’s interesting, I immediately write it down,” he says. He pastes snippets, tracks sources, and shapes the story before writing.

Scriptwriting. Writing takes around ten days. His goal is clarity above all else. “I always try to explain things in as few words as possible and in the most basic words,” he says. “I want the everyday person to understand everything.”

Narration. From the very first video, he hired an American narrator named Beau. “I wanted an American voice to be more accessible to a bigger audience,” he says. “Also, I didn’t want any part of me in the video.”

Animation. The animation phase takes three to four weeks and can include up to 100 unique scenes. “I block out every single scene. It’s all very organized,” he says.

Final edits. He reviews the video as a first-time viewer, removing anything boring or slow. “I switch off and pretend to be a viewer,” he says. “That really helps the final touch.”

The Business Behind a Faceless Brand

Primal Space is intentionally lean. Ewan manages scripts, research, animation, editing, community posts, analytics tracking, and creative direction. Until recently, he did all the animation as well.

His partnership with talent management and creative agency Ziggurat XYZ has streamlined revenue through consistent monthly sponsorships. “They make it very easy,” he says. “I would never like to reach out to sponsors myself.”

But he is clear about the limitations: faceless creators should expect a different performance profile. “A face channel will almost always drive more clicks because they have a stronger connection,” he says. “Sponsors sometimes overestimate how much a faceless channel can do.”

Still, the financial engine is strong. Ewan monitors view counts, watch hours, and click-through rate obsessively. One video about Venice became his top earner for reasons he still can’t fully explain. “I like to dig into the analytics and find out those bits of information,” he says.

Ewan knows a faceless format limits intimacy, but he’s made community maintenance part of his rhythm. “With a faceless YouTube channel, it’s almost impossible to really build it to the extent of a normal channel,” he says. “So, I lower my expectations.”

He remains active through YouTube community posts, such as quizzes, previews, and reflections, to keep the channel visibly alive between monthly uploads. “I always keep in mind that I want to make the channel look active,” he says.

Scaling ‘Primal Space’ for the Future

For the first time since Beau, Ewan is hiring new help. This month, he’s collaborating with an animator, learning how to delegate while maintaining the precision the channel is known for. “I would like to get better at that so I don’t need to do every single thing myself,” he says.

His long-term vision is flexible, shaped by a desire for a creative life that isn’t tied to a studio, location, or on-camera identity. “My YouTube channel is the most lean business possible,” he says. “It means I moved to another country twice and [can] just be very free.”

Three to five years from now, he hopes “Primal Space” continues, perhaps even without him working full-time. “I would like to keep it going so that even if I wasn’t doing it anymore, it would still be going,” he says.

And as for YouTube itself? Ewan is bullish. “It always seems like it gets bigger and bigger,” he notes. “As the generations get older, I think it’s only going to get bigger from here on.”

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