HARPERCOLLINS

Film, fiction and fans

With a 200-year heritage, HarperCollins is one of the world's foremost English-language publishers. Ruckus jumped at the opportunity to work with the publisher and combine film, fiction and fans for Epic Reads, its young adult fantasy brand, handling research and strategy, scriptwriting, illustration and animation, custom voice-over and music, and social creative and campaign management as one team across every discipline.

An audience of 1.3 million readers

The assignment was to create and release young adult fantasy episodes for HarperCollins' nearly 1.3 million Epic Reads Facebook followers, the audience the series was built to reach. These are readers who know the genre's every reference, so every frame had to hold up to a fluent, demanding fandom.

The Evolution of Fantasy

The Evolution of Fantasy is eight storybook-style illustrated episodes tracing the lineage of the genre, from its fireside origins through schools of magic and the age of dragons to the worlds readers love today. Every realm was illustrated by hand, original environments and characters built frame by frame for each episode, then brought to motion and scored as an original series for Epic Reads.

Original casts, showdowns and kingdoms were staged scene by scene, from the ensemble to the main event to the grand staircase. Ruckus wrote original scripts for all eight episodes, hand illustrated the worlds, characters and title art, animated each storybook scene, composed an original score and narration, and ran creative and campaign management across the Epic Reads channels.

8,000,000+ views, entirely organic

Released on Epic Reads' own channels, the series earned more than 8,000,000 views entirely through organic reach, 100% organic with no paid media boost, reaching the full 1.3 million-follower audience and beyond. Fantasy, made real for a new generation of readers, and a publishing house that has shaped the genre for two centuries.