Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Tejas Hullur

Instagram: 42.6K Followers

Tik Tok: 556.9K Followers

Youtube: 197K Subscribers

Who Is Tejas Hullur?

Tejas Hullur is making the kind of documentaries that are supposed to show up on a streaming platform, then releasing them on YouTube.

His work does not feel like creator content reaching for prestige. It feels like documentary filmmaking that happens to understand the internet.

His breakout project, How to Become More Attractive, Scientifically, could have easily been disposable. The title sounds like algorithm bait. The actual series is much more ambitious than that. Across four episodes, Hullur submits himself to scientific testing, consults researchers, and builds the whole thing toward a finale where he stages a real dating show on camera. It has narrative shape, visual control, and enough patience to let the idea become an actual story.

What makes the series work is Hullur’s position inside it. He is not standing off to the side explaining the material to the viewer. He is the filmmaker, the host, and the test subject at the same time. That gives the project a level of vulnerability most nonfiction creators never reach, because the premise is not just being covered. It is being lived through.

The formal side is strong too. The series is cinematic without feeling self-conscious about it. The edit has rhythm. The score does real work. The episodes feel built as episodes, not just elongated YouTube uploads. You can see the difference immediately. He is thinking in arcs, reveals, escalation, and payoff.

That matters because Hullur is not using YouTube like a dumping ground for ideas that might one day become something bigger. He is already making the bigger thing there. The platform is not the compromise. It is the release strategy.

That is also why his growth feels earned rather than engineered. The clips travel, the numbers move, and the audience expands, but none of it feels reverse-designed from shortform performance. The work is carrying the growth. Not the other way around.

His collaboration with cinematographer Ken Chwatek is part of that. The visual language holds across projects, which gives the work continuity and makes the whole thing feel less like a one-man content operation and more like an actual production model. Not a creator trying to look cinematic. A team with a point of view.

There are already signs the broader industry sees it too. Hullur appeared at Advertising Week New York and Sundance Creator Day in 2025, and Tubefilter has positioned him as someone bridging the creator economy and traditional film. He is operating in a lane that more platforms are going to want: personality-driven nonfiction with the shape and finish of premium documentary storytelling.

That is what makes him worth watching. He is not just making polished YouTube videos. He is building a body of work in public, and doing it in a format Hollywood keeps pretending it has already figured out.

Three Things We Love About Tejas Hullur

He makes proof of concept feel like finished work: A lot of creators make something that suggests what they could do with more money. Hullur’s work already feels like the version after the money.

He understands that YouTube can hold real nonfiction: Not every idea has to be flattened into a fast, disposable creator format. Hullur is betting that longform documentary storytelling can live natively online if the work is good enough. He looks right.

He can move between modes Projects like My Ajja matter because it shows the sensibility is not dependent on a flashy premise. The tone changes, the subject changes, and the work still holds. That is usually the difference between someone with a format and someone with a voice.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Walker Ward

Instagram: 556K Followers

Tik Tok: 235.6K Followers

Who Is Walker Ward?

Walker Ward worked on the sell side of Wall Street for six years. Then he got fired and started making videos about the people he used to work with.

The first character was the Wall Street Intern. A clueless kid in the Hamptons with a little bit of disposable income and no idea how to use it. The video went up in late July 2023, filmed on the LIRR with an empty train car behind him. Within two months he had 20,000 followers. By June 2024 he had a quarter million.

The characters multiplied from there. Palm Beach Dad drives a restored Defender, walks his golden retriever while his wife shops, and drops the GDP of a small country on his dad’s house account at the club. The Get Ready With Me Girl was a parody of beauty influencers that Ward performed with sticky notes as mock acrylic nails. David Goggins shows up when staying hard is the only option. Each one is a compressed character study of a specific American archetype, performed with the commitment of someone who grew up around these people and paid attention.

Ward is from Princeton, New Jersey. He played hockey at Hobart College, studied acting for a summer at NYU, and spent his Wall Street years making internal comedy videos during COVID. The content career really started during the pandemic with a show called Nature Walks with Walker, where he dressed in a captain’s suit and sailed an Amazon raft down a river in his parents’ backyard. The audience at the time was roughly 3,000 friends he had cornered into following him around Manhattan.

The Tribeca UpNext Creators program selected him for the 2025 class. He’s worked with brands like Rhone and Vineyard Vines and has begun partnering on larger campaigns, including a recent Office anniversary activation. He is now represented and moving into more traditional entertainment conversations.

In June 2025, Sharp Entertainment called. Ward had interned there in 2015 and remembered watching the hosts thinking he wanted that job someday. The call was about a dating show where he drives a hot-pink pedicab through New York and tries to match strangers in the backseat. The format works because Ward treats every rider like a character he already understands.

The interesting part is where the ambition actually points. He has said in interviews that movies and television are the goal, and that he is using social media to get there instead of bartending and going on auditions. The character work is not an end in itself. Each sketch feels like a micro-audition for the kind of ensemble comedy where a supporting character shows up for two minutes and steals the episode.

@walksauce42_

Walker Ward on Instagram: "Bad week to be a non-contact touch f…

Three Things We Love About Walker Ward

The characters come from the inside: Ward spent six years on Wall Street and grew up around the country club world he satirizes, which is why the details land. Nothing feels guessed.

The Sharp Entertainment loop actually means something: Interning for those producers in 2015 and returning a decade later to host one of their shows shows that the work is translating beyond the feed.

He treats the internet like training, not the destination: The goal is film and television. The daily posting, the characters, the brand work, and the Tribeca selection all feed that.

@walksauce42_

Walker Ward on Instagram: "No matter how you’re expected to hel…

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Public Opinion

Instagram: 77K Followers

Tik Tok: 149.3K Followers

Youtube: 234K Followers

What Is Public Opinion?

Public Opinion is a New York City themed social-native series that started by quizzing strangers about the city and has slowly turned into something closer to a documentary operation with a game show attached.

Jack Coyne, his brother Kieran, and Henry Kornaros founded the company in April 2022. The first format was man-on-the-street trivia about New York history, infrastructure, laws, and politics. Coyne would pay people anywhere from five to a hundred dollars for correct answers. The first video pulled seven million views on TikTok. Before that, Coyne had worked with Casey Neistat, and you can see it in how the project treats the city itself as the subject rather than just the backdrop.

Track Star launched in January 2023 as a second project underneath their umbrella. Participants listen to a song through headphones and try to name the artist, going double or nothing with each round. Kamala Harris, Charli XCX, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kings of Leon have all played. The format works as a fast 90-second clip, but it also stretches into hour-long YouTube compilations. A large portion of the audience watches those on connected TV, which says a lot about how the content is being consumed.

The original Public Opinion show didn’t disappear. It changed. The team has moved away from the pure quiz structure and into longer documentary-style investigations on YouTube. One video following the city’s water system took months to produce and ended up connecting with infrastructure workers across the state. Coyne’s mother worked for the MTA for decades, and that perspective runs through the work. The channel treats public infrastructure as something worth understanding, not just something that exists in the background.

What’s interesting is how the two formats now sit next to each other. Track Star moves fast and pulls people in. The documentary work slows everything down and asks for more attention. One is built for immediate recognition. The other only works if you stay with it. Together they start to feel like two sides of the same idea, using the street as the entry point but not stopping there.

You can see the direction it’s heading. The questions are getting heavier. The answers are getting longer. The street is still the starting point, but it’s no longer the whole frame. It feels like a show that’s stretching itself, trying to figure out how much depth it can carry without losing what made it work in the first place.

Three Things We Love About Public Opinion

They turned a street format into a doorway, not a destination: Most man-on-the-street shows stay surface level because the format rewards speed. Public Opinion uses that same setup to pull people in, then asks questions that actually require thought.

They treat the city like something to understand, not react to: The newer episodes don’t chase hot takes or quick opinions. They focus on systems like water, infrastructure, and how the city actually works, using people as the entry point.

You can watch the questions get better over time: The early videos are about recognition. The newer ones are about reasoning. That shift changes the tone of the whole show without changing how it’s made.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Malini Angelica

Instagram: 54K Followers

Tik Tok: 5.9K Followers

Youtube: 379K Followers

Who Is Malini Angelica?

Malini Angelica makes travel documentaries that don’t behave like travel content.

Most of her videos run well past the half-hour mark, and they spend most of that time with the people who live in a place rather than the place itself. A butcher in Naples explaining why his family has sold the same cut of meat for generations. A woman in Beirut talking about what her neighborhood felt like before the explosion. A fisherman in Oman describing how the rhythm of the catch still shapes daily life.

The camera stays longer than most travel channels would allow. Conversations develop instead of getting chopped into quick soundbites, and the pace feels closer to a real visit than a highlight reel.

Angelica appears on screen while her partner handles the cinematography and editing, and that two-person setup shapes the entire channel. The interviews feel natural because there isn’t a large crew surrounding the moment. The footage stays steady and deliberate, and the visual style remains consistent from one episode to the next.

The channel launched in early 2022 with a film about Menorca and has gradually grown into a catalog of long-form travel documentaries. Some episodes attract large audiences soon after release, but many continue picking up viewers months or even years later. That pattern makes the channel behave more like a reference library than a social feed. People researching a destination often discover the videos long after they were uploaded and end up watching the entire episode.

Most of the films run about thirty to thirty-five minutes, which leaves space for interviews, background, and the small details that usually disappear in faster travel formats. Instead of racing through highlights, the structure gives each place time to explain itself.

Her destinations range widely. Italy, Spain, Lebanon, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico, and the Basque Country all appear in the catalog. What connects them is not geography but approach. Angelica consistently builds each episode around conversations with people who know the place intimately, allowing the culture to emerge through food, work, and daily life.

The work often reminds viewers of the structure made famous by Anthony Bourdain. The tone is different. Angelica is warmer and less confrontational, but the idea is similar: go somewhere, sit down with the people who live there, and let the place explain itself through conversation.

Seen that way, the channel feels less like a travel vlog and more like a small documentary series that happens to live on YouTube.

Three Things We Love About Malini Angelica

The videos reward patience: Most travel creators move quickly from one highlight to the next. Angelica lets conversations unfold and trusts that viewers will stay for the details.

The stories come from the people who live there: Local voices carry the narrative, which keeps the episodes grounded in everyday life rather than tourism spectacle.

A two-person production keeps the work focused: With Angelica interviewing and her partner filming and editing, the channel maintains a consistent voice and visual style across every episode.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: The Ick

Instagram: 582K Followers

Tik Tok: 5.8K Followers

What Is The Ick?

The Ick takes a piece of internet slang and treats it like the premise for a show.

Most people already know the idea. An “ick” is the moment attraction disappears because of something small. A strange habit, a comment that lands wrong, a behavior that suddenly reframes the person sitting across the table.

The internet has been cataloging those moments for years, usually in the form of confession posts or quick videos. What the creators behind The Ick did was turn that behavior into a repeatable series.

The project was created by Alex Berry and produced by American Picture Company, the production company run by filmmaker John Connor Hammond and Ari Cagan. Instead of leaning on commentary or personality, the team approaches the idea like a short scripted comedy.

The engine behind the series is the submission box.

People send in their own stories about the moment a date or partner suddenly became impossible to look at the same way. Thousands of these arrive describing the exact point when attraction collapses. The team reads through them and looks for the ones that have a clear pivot.

Once they find one, the anecdote becomes a starting point rather than the final product. The story is rewritten into a short scene, actors step in, and the situation is staged so the moment of realization lands clearly on camera. If you watch a few episodes in a row you begin to notice the rhythm. The setup feels normal, a detail slips in, and then something happens that flips the entire interaction.

That discipline is what keeps the series from feeling like recycled internet jokes.

The audience supplies the raw experiences, but the production team treats those experiences like material that needs shaping. Performances are directed, the framing stays consistent, and the editing lands the turn rather than letting the moment drift. The result feels closer to a miniature anthology series than a typical social account.

At the same time the show never loses its connection to the community that feeds it. New stories keep arriving, which means the premise refreshes itself constantly. As long as people keep dating and embarrassing themselves in small, memorable ways, the writers’ room never really closes.

The most interesting part is that the format works because of that balance. The internet supplies the chaos. The creators provide the structure. Somewhere between those two things a show emerges.

@reformation

Reformation on Instagram: "If the ick is a family affair we rec…

Three Things We Love About The Ick

The audience is part of the writing process: Viewer submissions are not decoration. They are the raw material that the series is built from.

Every episode hinges on a clean emotional turn: The moment when attraction flips into discomfort gives the format its structure and keeps the stories focused.

The format can keep going without exhausting itself: Because the stories come from real experiences, the premise keeps renewing itself while the visual language of the show stays consistent.

@submityourick

The Ick on Instagram: "Loves karaoke.

Cindy portrayed by @mis…

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Tony Dabas

Instagram: 454K Followers

Youtube: 13.4K Subscribers

Tik Tok: 185.1K Followers

Who Is Tony Dabas?

Tony Dabas, known as Tony D, is a New York stand-up from Staten Island who has been working rooms for over a decade and quietly built a serious online following along the way.

The social presence did not come first. The stage did. He started grinding New York clubs and open mics in the early 2010s, and that live-room muscle still shows. The characters he plays online do not feel like digital inventions. They feel like people who existed long before the camera was turned on.

One week he is the guy in Arkansas who just won the Powerball. Another week he is every Florida HOA manager who treats grill usage like a criminal offense. He plays a Florida pool cleaner who thinks his rap career is inevitable, a construction guy who negotiates everything including tone, and a wise guy who owns a comedy club and runs it like a personal kingdom. The through line is not ethnicity or gimmick. It is behavior. Each character believes in themselves a little too much, and that certainty drives the comedy.

Tony draws from multiple cultural lanes. Arab-American family dynamics show up often, but so does Italian-American bravado and outer-borough New York energy. He moves between them naturally, not as costume changes but as variations on voices he understands. The dialogue has the rhythm of real argument. People interrupt, people double down and no one concedes.

The stand-up career matters because the internet is not the finish line. The clips create recognition, and that recognition fills clubs in across the country.

He has collaborated with the Scarlotta brothers and other comics operating in the same New York ecosystem, and those crossovers feel like shared territory rather than audience swapping. The tone aligns. The worlds overlap.

Over time what stands out is steadiness. The framing is tight. The production is stripped down. The voice stays intact. He is not reinventing himself for every trend cycle. He is refining a sensibility and letting the audience grow around it.

The internet may introduce you to the character.

The stage is where you see if it lasts..

@tonydcomedy

Tony Dabas on Instagram: "Somewhere deep in New York City 🗽😂
…

Three Things We Love About Tony Dabas

The characters feel observed, not manufactured: There’s a difference between writing something for the algorithm and writing something because you’ve actually seen it play out in real life. His work falls in the second category. The arguments stretch in ways that feel familiar. The confidence feels earned. The laughs come from recognition, not from a twist designed to spike engagement.

He’s building a universe, not chasing a bit: Even when the characters change, the world stays consistent. Same sensibility. Same social logic. Same kind of power dynamics in the room. It starts to feel like you’re watching different people from the same neighborhood, not a creator trying on a new costume every week. That consistency is why the audience sticks around, because they’re following the voice as much as any one character.

Commits to the bit: There’s no smirk. No wink to camera. When he’s in a character, he stays there. He doesn’t step outside it to remind you it’s a joke. That commitment is what makes the escalation work. A lot of online comedy collapses because the creator can’t resist undercutting their own bit. Tony doesn’t rush to break it. He lets the character hang themselves with their own logic.

@tonydcomedyWhat it’s like renting in New York🗽🗽 #Renting #Comedy #Apartments #NYC #NewYork

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: NFL Fan Therapy

Instagram: 68.9K Followers

Youtube: 33.4K Subscribers

Tik Tok: 63.6K Followers

What Is NFL Fan Therapy?

NFL Fan Therapy is a sketch series built on a premise that feels almost too simple to work: put NFL fans in therapy and let them explain themselves.

Each episode stages a session between a therapist and a fan of a specific team. The therapist asks measured, reasonable questions. The fan responds with rationalizations, long-held grievances, selective memory, and bursts of misplaced confidence. The format doesn’t change much from episode to episode, which is exactly why it holds up. The room stays the same. The emotional weather shifts with the season.

What becomes clear after a few episodes is that it isn’t really about football strategy or game breakdowns. It’s about identity. It’s about what people attach themselves to and how they justify staying attached when the return on that investment is mostly disappointment. A Patriots fan trying to reconcile the end of a dynasty. A Bills fan framing suffering as meaning. A Cowboys fan whose reference point is permanently anchored in the 1990s. A Browns fan who sounds less angry than resigned. The teams rotate, but the psychological patterns feel stable.

The NFL supplies the inciting incident every week. A blown lead, a draft decision, a quarterback collapse, a miracle comeback. The show doesn’t rush to be first. It takes whatever just happened and treats it as emotional evidence. Instead of reacting to the game, it asks what the game did to the person.

The series was created by Nick “Fitzy” Stevens, a Boston sports radio personality who has spent years inside that ecosystem. Anyone who has listened to Boston sports radio knows the cadence of overreaction and the way fandom blurs into personal narrative. Fitzy didn’t invent that energy; he redirected it into character work. Early episodes were made with his brother and a group of local comedians and actors, shot in batches and built around improvisation. The characters feel less like punchline machines and more like people who have been arguing the same points for years.

What gives the series durability is the restraint. The production is simple. The camera stays on faces. The escalation comes from dialogue, not edits. Because the structure is stable, it can absorb new storylines without reinventing itself. Each season becomes another layer added to the same emotional blueprint.

Seen over time, NFL Fan Therapy reads less like a collection of viral sketches and more like a running archive of fandom under pressure. The league changes constantly. Coaches are fired. Quarterbacks are traded. Windows close. The emotional logic underneath all of it barely moves.

@nflfantherapy

NFL Fan Therapy | #eagles #gobirds #flyeaglesfly #philadelphiae…

Three Things We Love About NFL Fan Therapy

It turned sports reaction into character work: Most football content online is built on speed. React fast, be loud, move on. NFL Fan Therapy does the opposite. It slows the moment down and asks what the game did to the person. The therapist setting forces self-exposure. The humor comes from watching someone justify their loyalty in real time. That shift from analysis to identity is what gives the series weight beyond the headline.

The format is durable: The room doesn’t change. The structure doesn’t change. The league does and that alignment matters. Every Sunday produces a new inciting incident, and the series absorbs it without reinventing itself. Because the container is stable, the characters can evolve season after season. It feels less like a viral sketch and more like a recurring chamber for confession.

It understands fandom from the inside: Stevens comes out of Boston sports media, which means he knows the cadence of overreaction and the logic of delusion. The characters don’t feel like outside satire. They feel like heightened versions of real conversations. That recognition is what keeps the performances grounded instead of gimmicky.

@nflfantherapy

NFL Fan Therapy | #giants #nygiants #newyorkgiants #gmen #johnh…

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Rampage (Ethan Yau)

Instagram: 147K Followers

Youtube: 353K Subscribers

Who Is Rampage (Ethan Yau)?

Ethan Yau, known as Rampage, started like most serious poker players, grinding low-stakes cash games in Boston while working a regular job and trying to grow a bankroll the slow way. He just happened to turn the camera on before anything big happened.

When he launched his YouTube channel in 2019, he wasn’t positioning himself as a seasoned pro. He was explaining hands, talking through decisions, and showing sessions as they unfolded. Wins were exciting but contained. Losses were uncomfortable and visible. Viewers weren’t watching a highlight reel. They were watching someone try to move up in real time.

The difference is that he moved up faster than most players would advise.

Rather than staying in small games and protecting his roll at all costs, Rampage kept taking shots. He jumped into bigger tournaments earlier than conservative bankroll management would recommend. That choice created tension naturally. Every vlog carried weight because the buy-ins meant something relative to his bankroll.

In 2022, he won a Wynn Millions event for over six figures, a result that shifted both his career and the channel. The score felt consequential because the audience had seen the build-up. It wasn’t a sudden breakout moment pulled out of nowhere. It was the payoff of a documented climb.

From there, the buy-ins escalated. Five-figure tournaments became normal. High-stakes cash games entered the mix. He appeared in streamed lineups alongside established pros. What didn’t change was the tone. He kept narrating the swings, explaining the risk, and showing both sides of variance.

The real shift, though, was how he brought the audience into the action.

Rampage regularly sells pieces of his tournament entries, allowing viewers to buy a percentage of his action and share in the result. When he runs deep, they profit alongside him. When he busts, they lose alongside him. That dynamic changes the relationship between creator and viewer. The sweat becomes shared rather than symbolic.

He also runs meet-up games and open events where followers can sit in the same field and play. The distance between personality and participant shrinks. Poker, which once felt like a spectator sport during the televised boom of the early 2000s, becomes something communal again.

Poker’s original surge came through television. The Moneymaker era was broadcast-driven and hero-based. Rampage belongs to a different generation, one that grew up understanding distribution as something you build yourself. Instead of waiting for poker media to elevate him, he built audience first. By the time he entered bigger rooms, he brought thousands of viewers with him.

His channel now functions like a season-long arc. There are bankroll targets, tournament series sweats, brutal downswings, and resets after big scores. The volatility is not hidden. It is the narrative engine.

Rampage did not revive poker alone, but he is part of the contingent bringing new energy into the game by making the climb visible again. Not through network cameras, but through uploads. Not through myth, but through math, risk, and repetition.

You don’t just watch to see if he wins. You watch to see how far he’s willing to push it.

Three Things We Love About Rampage

He made the climb the story: The audience didn’t meet him at the top. They watched him grind 1/2 and 2/5, take uncomfortable shots, brick events, and then finally break through. That context makes every big score feel earned.

The high stakes feel personal: A six-figure buy-in on television can feel abstract. On his channel, you understand exactly what that number means relative to the bankroll. The swings land differently because you’ve seen the build-up.

Modernizing poker’s entry point: Instead of television creating heroes from a distance, he built audience through YouTube and social. Meet-up games, streamed appearances, and open tournaments pull fans into the ecosystem rather than keeping them outside of it.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Ryan Izquierdo

Instagram: 220K Followers

Tik Tok: 2.9 Million Followers

Youtube: 1.07 Million Followers

Who Is Ryan Izquierdo?

He’s a Florida man.

Ryan Izquierdo has built a career by turning a personal obsession into a repeatable body of work, and then letting the internet do what it does best: find the people who care.

At the center of everything is fishing, but not as a gimmick or a lifestyle flex. His videos document real days on the water, in Florida and surrounding areas, and they carry the full rhythm of those days. Travel, setup, long stretches where nothing happens, and the sudden moment when everything changes. The camera stays close enough that you feel the waiting, not just the payoff.

What’s easy to miss if you only see a clip or two is that Ryan is running a multi-lane operation. Long-form videos give shape to full outings and adventures. Short clips pull out moments of intensity, surprise, or failure and work as entry points for new viewers. Neither exists on its own. The short work points back to the longer pieces, and the longer pieces give the short clips their weight.

Ryan’s social channels are not built around narration or performance. He doesn’t talk you through every move or frame the day as a show. Much of the storytelling comes from sound, movement, and proximity. Wind hitting the mic. Water slapping the hull. A line tightening unexpectedly. When he speaks, it feels situational rather than presentational, which keeps the work accessible even if you don’t know much about fishing.

That approach has made the content work beyond a niche audience. People who don’t fish still watch because the structure is familiar. You understand pursuit, patience, and payoff even if you’ve never held a rod. Over time, that has helped his audience grow steadily rather than spiking and disappearing.

What ties all of this together is repetition. Ryan does the same thing again and again, in different conditions, and refines the execution over time. He doesn’t chase formats or trends. He shows up, films the day honestly, edits with restraint, and publishes consistently. The growth feels like a byproduct of commitment rather than a strategy.

Seen as a whole, his work isn’t just a collection of fishing clips. It’s a living archive of time spent doing one thing seriously, using social platforms as distribution rather than identity. The audience doesn’t feel like fans of a persona. They feel like people along for the experience.

Three Things We Love About Ryan Izquierdo

He built a whole operation around one obsession: This isn’t a guy dabbling in fishing content. Everything ladders back to being on the water. Long videos, short clips, brand work, travel. It all comes from the same place. That focus is why it holds together and why people stick around.

The short clips don’t cheapen the longer work: A lot of creators flatten their world into highlights. Ryan does the opposite. The quick moments feel like pieces pulled out of real days, not moments engineered just to pop. They make you curious about what came before and what happened after.

Florida isn’t a backdrop, it’s the point: The canals, the heat, the wildlife, the unpredictability. The work feels rooted in a specific place and way of living. You’re not just watching fishing videos, you’re watching someone move through Florida like it’s home.

@ryan_izquierdo

Ryan Iz Fishing on Instagram: "Massive Frozen Iguana Haul! ❄️🦎…

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Carter Amelia Davis

Instagram: 15K Followers

Tik Tok: 47.6K Followers

Youtube: 28.2K Followers

Who Is Carter Amelia Davis?

Carter Amelia Davis is an independent animator based in Minneapolis. She has been making surreal, unnerving shorts for nearly a decade, developing a visual style that is entirely self-taught and shaped through trial, error, and a long run of happy accidents. The work is funny, but it rarely lets you relax. You laugh, then realize you feel a little off, and you’re not sure why.

She did not come to animation through a traditional pipeline. Writing was her first creative focus, and she self-published a novel, Until You Continue To Behave, in 2019. During that process she burned out on words and began moving toward visual art instead. That shift led to rough animated GIFs, which slowly turned into pieces with dialogue and music. Before long she was telling small stories, usually around a minute long, and pushing each one a little further than the last.

Those early works lived online. She posted them to YouTube and social platforms without a release strategy or a festival plan. The work found an audience because it stayed consistent in tone and unmistakably personal. The characters were awkward, the bodies moved in uncomfortable ways, and the jokes lingered instead of resolving cleanly. People came back for the feeling, not the format.

As her confidence grew, the work expanded. The shorts became longer and the stories heavier. That path led to Homemade Gatorade, a nine-minute animated short that plays like a late-night road trip slowly drifting into disillusionment. The film draws from her experience as a trans woman living through the early months of Trump’s second term, but it avoids direct commentary. Instead it follows a character who would rather chase a deeply flawed idea across state lines than admit failure, letting the anxiety sit underneath the comedy.

The way the film was made says a lot. Carter wrote it in January and animated from February through May, completing nearly all of it alone in her room. She works primarily in Photoshop and After Effects, using a collage-based style that leans into limitations instead of fighting them. Voices were recorded remotely over Discord by friends, with her wife voicing the lead character, and the music came from collaborators she already trusted. She works straight through the story, moment by moment, because each beat needs to build on the last.

Homemade Gatorade was the first film she ever submitted to festivals. That decision was driven less by strategy than by response. People reacted strongly to the film online, and she wanted it to have a wider life. It was later selected for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Alongside the films, she has built a direct support system around the work. Patreon funds ongoing projects across different “lump” tiers, and a merch shop sells prints and published material tied to the same visual language. These are practical tools that keep the work moving and independent.

What’s striking is how little the voice changes as the scale shifts. The short social pieces, the longer films, and the experiments shared with supporters all feel cut from the same cloth. Nothing feels bent to fit a platform or smoothed out for reach.

Her path has never really been about choosing between the internet and the festival world. The work lived online first. Festivals amplified it later. The center has stayed the same: making the work she wants to make and putting it where people can find it.

Three Things We Love About Carter Amelia Davis

She learned by making, not waiting: Her progression from rough GIFs to one-minute scenes and eventually to longer films came from consistent practice rather than permission or planning. Each step pushed the work forward without abandoning its core voice.

Constraints are part of the aesthetic: Working alone, using collage, and finding creative shortcuts shaped both the look and rhythm of the animation. The limitations are visible, intentional, and inseparable from the style.

Independence without isolation: Direct audience support through Patreon and merch allows the work to continue on its own terms. That structure keeps the films personal without turning them precious or inaccessible.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: 15 Second Film

Instagram: 195K Followers

Tik Tok: 87.2K Followers

Youtube: 60.6K Followers

What Is 15 Second Film?

15 Second Film is what happens when a cinematographer gets bored of talking about “content” and decides to run an experiment in public.

It was created by Jeb, the guy behind worldofjeb. He works as a camera operator and producer with Fallen Media, and you can feel that background immediately. The shots are steady, sound is clean and the edits do not flail. Even when the subject is a random stranger on a bench, it still looks like someone is actually paying attention.

The setup is simple and very New York. A small crew posts up around the city, often near Washington Square Park, and stop people with a question that is half invitation, half dare: ‘Do you want to direct a short film?’. Most people laugh and then they say yes. Suddenly you are watching someone make real creative choices with zero runway.

That is the whole hook. Fifteen seconds is brutal. You do not have time to explain. You cannot warm up. You either make a clean decision or the moment dies. So people go straight to instinct with a look, gesture, twist or a button. The best ones feel like tiny scenes, not skits, because there is no time for anything else.

Jeb stays off camera and that matters. The series is not built around a host doing bits. The camera is the voice. The people rotate, the tone stays. It is consistent enough that you can watch ten in a row and still feel like you are in the same world.

The reason it works on social is not because it is short. It is because it is tight. The clip starts immediately, ends cleanly, and makes you watch it again to catch the beat you missed. Then you send it to someone. That is how this thing spreads.

It is easy to write it off as a gimmick until you watch a few. Then you realize it is doing something rare. It is showing what taste looks like under pressure, in public, with a camera rolling.

Three Things We Love About 15 Second Film

It turns people into directors, instantly: No prep, no script, no safety net. A stranger is handed the rule and has to decide what the movie is. You are watching taste surface in real time.

The clock replaces explanation: Fifteen seconds does the writing. There is no room to justify choices or overbuild the joke. A clean decision either lands or it does not, and that tension is the whole engine.

The format stays bigger than anyone in it: Faces rotate, voices change, but the series feels consistent. The rule carries the identity, not a host or persona. That is why it stays watchable.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Jon Ryan Sugimoto

Instagram: 96K Followers

Tik Tok: 59.8K Followers

Youtube: 7K Followers

Who Is Jon Ryan Sugimoto?

Jon Ryan Sugimoto makes short films, then cuts them apart on purpose.

During the week, he runs video production at Loop. Nights and weekends, he writes and directs. The result is a body of work that moves back and forth between festival shorts, branded campaigns, and social sketches without losing its voice.

On social, Jon’s work shows up as tight, deadpan scenes that feel like moments pulled from a longer film. Office spirals. Therapy group dynamics. The quiet panic of modern adulthood. They are written to stop a scroll, but they do not feel disposable. Each one has a rule, a turn, and a button. You could lift the scene and drop it into a short film without changing a thing.

That is not an accident. Before the feed, Jon was already making narrative shorts and taking them through festivals. He learned how scenes breathe, where edits land, and how much space a joke needs. When he started posting regularly, he did not switch gears. He adapted the same instincts to vertical.

Social is not a side project for him. It is the front door. Clips test ideas fast. The ones that hit get follow ups. The ones that do not disappear. Scenes that work on phones point people toward the longer films. It is development in public, but disciplined.

That same sensibility is why the crossover works. Jon is already directing branded and studio work, not as a novelty creator, but as a director whose timing and framing translate cleanly. Campaigns for Duolingo, Ridge Wallet, and Character AI. Studio marketing work tied to Paramount and Lionsgate releases. The humor does not change. The delivery just has a bigger brief.

What makes this feel intentional is how the pieces feed each other. Festival films establish taste. Social sketches build audience and pressure-test ideas. Branded work pays the bills and sharpens execution. None of it replaces the other. It compounds.

Three Things We Love About Jon Ryan Sugimoto

He treats the feed like a writers room: Most people post and move on. Jon posts to find out what actually works. If a premise clicks, he worries it like a bone. Follow-up angle, cleaner button, new version. You can watch the material tighten in real time.

The short stuff still feels like film: Even when it is thirty seconds, it has shape. A setup you understand fast, a turn you did not expect, and an ending that lands. It is not “content.” It is a scene.

Jon is using social to move the bigger work: The shorts are not museum pieces. Social is the on-ramp. People discover him through a sketch, then go looking for the longer films, then stay for the next drop. That is the whole system working.

@jonryanisdead

Jon Ryan Sugimoto on Instagram: "Gm #mondaymotivation #adhd #ro…

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Cheyenne Ewulu

Instagram: 38.5K Followers

Tik Tok: 22.1K Followers

Youtube: 17.2K Followers (The Comic Shop)

Who Is Cheyenne Ewulu?

Cheyenne Ewulu turned a comic shop into a sitcom and brought a crowd with her. She writes it, stars in it, and runs it like an indie showrunner. The Comic Shop follows a new owner and her crew trying to keep an independent LA store alive. It feels like the people who live this culture finally got to make the show.

Before that, Ewulu was a geek host and filmmaker inside the world she now writes about. College projects became short documentaries, which led to on-camera work. She learned to shoot, cut, and talk to fans in a way that feels like a conversation, not a broadcast.

First, a small test. Then Cheyenne invited the audience in and let them help pay for a real season. Production updates felt like quick notes from set. She followed with a companion comic to give fans something to hold onto between drops.

The jokes land because the details are lived in: pull lists that go missing, variant debates that get too loud, creator signings that wobble and then fly, the regular pitching their original character. Confessionals actually button. You can tell the beats were written to land on screen, not fixed in the edit.

Production is confident and warm. Clean sound and coverage that knows when to hold on a face and when to cut to the room. The shop looks like a place you could walk into, not a set pretending to be one. Long episodes feel like TV. Short clips carry the hooks that bring new people in.

Cheyenne’s point of view is clear. The camera centers the people who built this culture. Distribution stays simple and personal: full episodes where you can binge, quick scenes and behind-the-scenes clips that show how it gets made. She lets people into the process without breaking the spell.

Three Things We Love About Cheyenne Ewulu

She ships, then levels up: Proof of concept, real audience, season funded, season delivered. Cheyenne kept backers close with plainspoken updates and small wins from set. When the episodes wrapped, she launched a companion comic so the world stayed alive between releases.

Fluency without gatekeeping: Her shop facts are muscle memory: pull-list etiquette, 1:25 variants, Free Comic Book Day chaos, slab versus raw. Ewulu uses those specifics as joke engines, not as walls. Die-hard fans feel seen, casual viewers are never lost.

TV craft with internet timing: Crisp dialogue coverage, confessionals that end on a button, room tone that keeps it real. Clips are framed, captioned, and cropped to travel, then send you back to the full episode. The feed recruits; the season satisfies.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

When we started OG: Approved, the idea was simple. Build a weekly habit of spotting creators who feel like signals, not just “good channels.”

People building a world, a format, a business, and a point of view that could actually teach legacy media something.

By the end of 2025, it turned into a lot more than a list of favorites. It became a pattern library.

We covered AI-native filmmakers (Jason Zada, Particle Panic, Dave Clark, VK), craft-first storytellers (Munish Raghuwanshi, Hallie Tut, Gawx Art), community engines disguised as channels (Swissbeatbox), culture-access operators (Moses The Jeweler, Kareem Rahma), and flywheel builders across food, sports, education, and making (Robegrill, Reagan Rust, Melissa Maribel, Nerdforge, LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER, Shina Novalinga, JaDropping Science).

Different verticals. Same recurring patterns.

So instead of a best of list, this is the year-end wrap that actually matters: what kept showing up across the creators we could not stop talking about, and what that tells us about where this is all heading.

The Patterns That Kept Repeating

They Were Not Posting. They Were Running Formats.

Swissbeatbox is the cleanest example. It is not a beatbox channel. It is a league. Stakes, structure, seasons, rankings. Careers get made there. That is infrastructure.

But you see the same instinct in totally different forms. Kareem Rahma’s formats feel like recurring shows you can drop into anytime. Julien Cohen turned public performance into an episode machine. Eavesdropping looked at the romcom and asked a smarter question than most studios do: what if we built this like a social series from day one instead of trying to retrofit it later?

The thing these creators share is not consistency. It is architecture. They built containers that can hold infinite episodes without going stale, which is a fundamentally different skill than “being good on camera.”

And if you are an industry person reading this, here’s the uncomfortable truth: formats are what make creator businesses easier to bet on. A person is hard to underwrite. A format is a machine.

Craft Came Back As The Moat, But Not In The Way People Expected.

A lot of people assumed 2025 would be pure volume. More AI slop, shorter attention spans, just post more.

Not quite.

A bunch of our picks were craft-first in a very specific way. Not “high production value” as in expensive gear. Cinematic control. The stuff you cannot buy.

Gawx Art makes art videos that feel like short films because the pacing is intentional and the reveals land. Nerdforge structures builds like narrative episodes, with tension and payoffs. Hallie Tut and Kelly Boesch built visual languages you can recognize in half a second. Munish built an audience by teaching people how scenes work, which is really teaching taste, which is really saying: I’m going to make you better at noticing things.

Here’s the real tension: as tools get cheaper and more people can make “good-looking”, the middle of the market is going to get brutally crowded. The edge moves to what tools still cannot give you. Pacing. Structure. Rhythm. Sound. Emotional control. Knowing exactly when to cut.

Craft is back. But craft in 2025 is not about access to equipment. It is about taste and execution when everyone has access to everything.

“Build In Public” Stopped Being A Strategy And Became The Product.

Yes, “build in public” sounds like 2019 Twitter advice. Stick with me.

What we saw this year was different. A lot of creators stopped drawing a line between the work and showing the work. The process became the thing people showed up for.

With LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER, it is maker chaos. You are watching someone attempt ridiculous things and half the joy is not knowing if it will work. With Nerdforge, it is structured reveal after structured reveal. You know something cool is coming, and the craft is in the journey there. With education creators like Melissa Maribel, the magic is that she remembers what it feels like to be confused. She is not talking down. She is bringing you with her.

Even the AI creators we featured felt strongest when they made the process legible. Not “look what I generated,” but “here’s how I was thinking, here’s what I tried, here’s what failed, here’s what I learned”.

The process is the proof there is a person in there.

And business-wise, this is how trust gets built now. The audience is not just consuming results. They are joining the journey. That shifts the relationship from customer to participant.

The Real Growth Move Was Off-Platform.

If you only take one thing from this piece, make it this.

The creators who felt most durable had an off-platform layer that made the whole thing real. The channel was the top of the funnel, not the business.

Robegrill is not just content. It is products, culture, and a real-world food identity that exists whether or not you have ever seen a video. Moses The Jeweler turns access into a business engine, not just views. Reagan Rust turns content into pathways: camps, community, pipeline. JaDropping Science takes a recurring bit and turns it into something you can own and play in your living room.

These creators understand that views are exposure, not durability. The durability comes from what you build underneath: products, services, access, experiences, community layers that do not disappear when the algorithm changes.

Creators who are only chasing views in 2026 are going to feel like they are running in place. The ones building ecosystems are going to feel like they are compounding.

Specificity Won. Relatability Lost.

A lot of internet advice still screams “be relatable”. The creators we kept approving went the opposite direction.

They were specific enough to feel like you were stepping into a real world. Not a vibe. A place.

The Diamond District with Moses. Inuit tradition and family with Shina. A very particular backyard grill culture with Robegrill. A very particular comedy character universe with Jenny Lorenzo, Johnny Hilbrant, Julia DiCesare, Aimee LaJoie.

@mosesthejewelerWhen dealing with such expensive pieces , sometimes side comments can mess up a big deal. Most of the time less speaking is stronger in business #mosesthejeweler #mazal #rolex

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And here’s the counterintuitive part that kept proving itself: the more specific the world, the more universal the obsession. People do not share “relatable”. Relatable is comfortable. People share portals. They share things that make them say: you have to see this.

Trying to appeal to everyone usually means you end up being nobody’s favorite. The creators who committed to a world built audiences who actually cared.

AI Stopped Being The Headline And Started Becoming Plumbing

The best AI-adjacent picks this year did not feel like “AI content”. They felt like creators using new tools to expand what a small team could do.

Jason Zada is a clear example of that mindset. Same with Dave Clark. Same with Particle Panic when the work leans toward cinema and taste instead of novelty.

Then you get someone like Kelly Boesch, where AI is part of the workflow, but the point is the aesthetic and the application. Visuals for phones, venue screens, loops that feel designed, not randomly generated.

This is the shift that matters: AI is moving from spectacle to pipeline. “Look what AI can do” is going to age fast. Quietly using it to punch above your weight class is the move.

What 2026 is going to look like

If 2025 was the year creators proved they could build worlds, 2026 is the year those worlds start behaving like real media companies.

Here’s where we’re placing our bets.

More Seasons, Fewer Endless Feeds

People want shape. Chapters, finales, event drops, scheduled moments that feel like appointments.

Trap to avoid: Do not slap “Season 2” on something that is just more of the same.

More Live And Experiential Layers

More creators will treat the real world as the multiplier, not the afterthought. Live shows, tours, pop-ups, community events, physical installations.

Trap to avoid: Live is expensive and operationally hard, so partner early or learn an expensive lesson.

More Products That Feel Like Extensions Of The World

Not random merch. Products that make sense inside the universe. Robegrill is the model. JaDropping Science is the model. Nerdforge is sitting on a kit-and-blueprints goldmine if they ever want it.

Trap to avoid: Audiences can smell a cash grab.

More Craft-Led Channels Winning Over Pure Volume

As the middle tier floods with AI-assisted sameness, taste and execution will stand out harder, not less.

Trap to avoid: “Craft” does not mean disappearing for six months. You still have to ship.

More AI In The Workflow, Less AI In The Pitch

AI will be everywhere backstage: pre-pro, iteration, assets, editing, research. But fewer creators will sell AI as the reason to watch.

Trap to avoid: Using AI to make more mediocre stuff faster.

And so…

OG: Approved was never meant to be a scoreboard. It was meant to be a radar.

In 2025, the radar kept pointing to the same signals: format over one-offs, craft as a moat, process as trust, off-platform economics, and worlds specific enough to feel like portals.

That’s what we’ll keep tracking in 2026. More systems. More storytelling. More creators building things that last.

Thanks for being part of the hunt this year. See you next year.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Munish Raghuwanshi

Instagram: 56.6K Followers

Tik Tok: 98K Followers

Who Is Munish Raghuwanshi?

There is a certain kind of creator who quietly becomes every filmmaker’s favorite follow. Not the lifestyle vlogger. Not the red carpet personality. The person who helps you see why a scene works when you have only ever felt it.

That is where Munish Raghuwanshi lives.

Munish is a chemical engineer who escaped into filmmaking and you can feel that mix in his work. His videos are short and simple on the surface. Underneath, they are doing real surgical work on popular films and shows. He pulls apart how a scene teaches you its rules, how a director nudges your eye without you noticing, how a ridiculous premise keeps feeling grounded because the film keeps its own promises.

He did not take the familiar route through film school or assistant jobs. He learned how to break down complex systems in engineering, then turned that same brain on movies. He worked in operations, realized the thing he could not stop doing was reverse engineering what he watched, and started sharing that process in public.

He did not wait for someone to give him a class, a column, or a credit. He started doing the job in front of whoever would listen.

People did. His clips picked up momentum on Instagram and TikTok, enough that Canada’s Digital Creators Pilot Program tapped him as one of the voices worth backing. That support did not come because he is chasing hot takes. It came because his videos feel like sitting next to someone who loves movies as much as you do, but has language for what you are seeing.

He is not lecturing from a distance. He is translating the craft into something you can actually use.

@munyrags

Munish Raghuwanshi on Instagram: "What movies have you noticed …

Three Things We Love About Munish Raghuwanshi

He talks like a fan but thinks like an engineer: Munish’s videos feel like a movie night with a friend who genuinely loves what you are watching but cannot resist pulling apart how it works. That mix of enthusiasm and systems thinking makes his breakdowns clear without ever feeling dry.

Munish offers filmmakers language they did not know they were missing: He takes things you feel in a scene and turns them into patterns you can name. That helps emerging filmmakers talk about their own choices with more precision, whether they are working with collaborators or just trying to understand their instincts.

He is building a base, not chasing a moment: His work is steady, focused and intentional, which is why it makes sense that a program would back him as a long term bet. Munish is not trying to go viral once. He is building a community and a body of work he can grow from.

@munyrags

Munish Raghuwanshi on Instagram: "I think finding objectivity i…

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Kelly Boesch AI

Instagram: 718K Followers

Tik Tok: 413.4K Followers

Youtube: 101K Followers

Who Is Kelly Boesch AI?

If you have ever stared at a festival screen or club LED wall and thought, Who actually makes these? there is a good chance you would love what Kelly Boesch does.

Kelly is an AI artist who treats visuals like full experiences, not just background noise. Her work lives in that sweet spot where cutting edge tech meets very human imagination. It feels big enough for Ibiza and still personal enough to stop you mid scroll on your phone.

Kelly’s pieces are built to move. She makes looping AI videos and image sequences that look like moving paintings. Metallic structures that twist and breathe. Light that feels liquid. Forms that sit somewhere between machine and organism.

Her work has already stepped into the real world in a serious way, showing inside Hï Ibiza as part of a curated in-club art program and powering the ANTS METALWORKS visual identity for The Night League across Ushuaïa and ANTS. This is not “here is a cool filter.” It is a full visual world with its own rules.

Behind the scenes, Kelly is very intentional about how that world gets made. She starts with AI image generation to lock in a style, often using reference systems so a whole series feels like it belongs together. From there she moves into AI video, compositing, motion work, and finishing, treating each loop like a tiny film. The result is a language you can recognize instantly. You do not need a label to know you are looking at something she made.

What makes her interesting is that she never treats AI as the whole story. The tools are there to extend her design background, not replace it. She comes from a mix of graphic design, motion, and more traditional visual work, and you can feel that in the structure of everything she releases. The pieces are not just “cool outputs”. They are composed, paced, and edited with the eye of someone who has built visuals for real spaces and real audiences.

Kelly also shares enough of her process that the work feels approachable, even if the end result looks massive. She posts finished loops alongside process-driven clips that hint at how they were built, which pulls fans and other artists a little closer to the craft. It demystifies the tech without killing the magic, and it reinforces a bigger point in her practice: AI is a collaborator, not the star.

Three Things We Love About Kelly Boesch

She makes AI feel human: Kelly’s work is built with algorithms, but it never feels cold. The loops breathe, shift, and evolve in ways that feel emotional and alive, not just technically impressive.

Her visuals actually belong in real spaces: This is not AI art for a moodboard. Her pieces hold up on a giant club LED wall, then shrink down and still hit on a phone screen. The ANTS and Ibiza work prove she is designing for real audiences, not just the timeline.

There is a clear brain behind the machine: You can tell there is design training and taste shaping everything she puts out. The tools might be new, but the choices feel intentional: color, pacing, composition. It is not just what the AI spits out. It is what Kelly does with it.

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: That Savage Kitchen

Instagram: 977K Followers

Tik Tok: 452.8K Followers

Youtube: 198K Followers

Who Is That Savage Kitchen?

In honor of Thanksgiving, we decided to offer our readers a creator from the realm of making the perfect home cooked meals!

If you’ve ever stood in front of your fridge feeling overwhelmed by complicated recipes or spent way too long staring at a cookbook that seems more like a puzzle than a helpful guide, Cole Roberson of That Savage Kitchen is your new best friend.

Cole isn’t about complicated techniques or ingredients you can’t pronounce. He’s a self-taught cook who understands what it’s like to just want good food without the hassle. That Savage Kitchen was built for people who love to eat great meals but don’t have time or patience for the chef-y stuff. He proves cooking should be fun, accessible, and, most importantly, delicious.

His videos feel less like traditional cooking shows and more like hanging out with your favorite laid-back friend in the kitchen. Cole keeps it casual, humorous, and relatable, bringing energy and a straightforward approach to each meal. From quick weeknight dinners to freezer-friendly meals and crowd-pleasing dishes, his content meets you exactly where you are.

But That Savage Kitchen is more than just recipes. Cole has turned his passion into a growing community and brand, complete with an online shop offering kitchen essentials and merchandise. It’s about building a space where cooking isn’t intimidating, it’s empowering.

What sets Cole apart is how openly and authentically he shares his kitchen wins and mishaps, reminding us that real cooking is rarely perfect but always rewarding. With That Savage Kitchen, Cole has created an environment where mistakes are part of the process, and creativity is encouraged.

And it’s working. The Savage Kitchen community is growing, built by people who love food, value simplicity, and appreciate a creator who keeps it real. Cole’s approach is resonating, proving that good food isn’t about perfection, it’s about confidence and enjoying the process.

@thatsavagekitchen

Cole Roberson “ThatSavageKitchen” on Instagram: "The Best Baked…

Three Things We Love About That Savage Kitchen

Food that feels doable, not daunting: The recipes don’t require fancy gear or chef‑level skills. If you can boil water and follow simple steps, you’re in. That makes cooking welcoming, not aspirational.

Honest, human kitchen energy: There’s no pretense. Watching a video feels like cooking with a buddy. Messy pans, imperfect plating, jokes, and all. That authenticity hits differently than polished cooking shows.

Creator‑built brand from ground up: From posting cooking videos to launching a merchandise line and treating the kitchen as lifestyle, That Savage Kitchen, shows what’s possible when creators treat content like a basecamp for bigger ideas. Real food, real community, real hustle.

@thatsavagekitchen

Cole Roberson “ThatSavageKitchen” on Instagram: "Best Thanksgiv…

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Melissa Maribel

Instagram: 31K Followers

Tik Tok: 121.4K Followers

Youtube: 428K Followers

Who Is Melissa Maribel?

If you’ve ever felt lost in a lecture, stared at a chemistry textbook wondering if it was written in another language, or searched “what even is a mole (not the animal),” Melissa Maribel is your savior.

She’s not trying to be the smartest person in the room. In fact, she’s been on the other side of it. Melissa failed chemistry the first time she took it. She knows what it feels like to fall behind and not know how to catch up. That’s what makes her content different. She’s built an entire learning space for people who feel like they aren’t “science people” and proves that understanding chemistry isn’t about being a genius. It’s about how it’s explained.

Her YouTube channel is where most people find her. It’s full of straightforward, clearly organized videos on general chemistry and organic chemistry. She walks through tough topics like hybridization, titrations, and naming chemical compounds in a way that actually lands. The videos aren’t flashy. They’re focused. She uses clear visuals, real practice problems, and a teaching style that feels like a smart friend walking you through it at your own pace.

But Melissa doesn’t stop at YouTube. She’s active on Instagram where she posts reminders during exam season, study tips, and bite-sized refreshers that help concepts stick. She’s got digital study guides, worksheets, and an email list that gives students extra support when things ramp up mid-semester. She even started a blog to break topics down in written form for people who learn better by reading.

Melissa has built this herself. She’s a solo creator, a Latina woman in STEM, and someone who turned what once felt impossible into something not just understandable, but empowering. And it’s working. Her channel is growing. Her impact is real. And thousands of students are finding their way through chem class with a little more clarity and a lot less stress.

Three Things We Love About Melissa Maribel

She meets students where they’re at: Melissa’s content is built for the learners who feel left behind. Her approach is patient, encouraging, and focused on making things click without judgment.

Clarity over complexity: Every video is clean, structured, and easy to follow. Whether it’s balancing equations or naming compounds, she breaks it down step by step so it actually sticks.

She’s building it herself: From YouTube to study guides to Instagram tips, Melissa runs her own ecosystem of support. It’s smart, resourceful, and built around real student needs, not just textbook standards.

@thechemistryqueenIdentifying the acid and base in an acid-base reaction #acidsandbases #chemistry #orgo #ochem

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Hallie Tut

Instagram: 259K Followers

Tik Tok: 938.7K Followers

Youtube: 7.5K Followers

Who Is Hallie Tut?

Hallie Tut makes TikTok videos that feel like neon-drenched fever dreams, but her path started shooting concert photos at 15 to impress her friends in high school. Born in Vancouver and now based in Toronto, she photographed Danny Brown, Lil Yachty, and Post Malone before she could legally get into the venues. She got a fake ID, landed a club photography gig, and built a signature style around vibrant, color-saturated concert lighting.

She moved to Toronto at 16, lost her entire network, and rebuilt by cold-messaging Nike Canada with photos of her own sneakers until they hired her for Air Max Day 2018. On that shoot, someone from Director X’s production company Popp Rok noticed her work and put her on their director roster within a week. By 18, she was directing music videos.

Then COVID shut down music video production. She watched Hype House kids blow up and realized TikTok could give Hallie something music video direction couldn’t: complete creative control. No crew diluting the vision. No compromises. Just raw work that looks exactly like what’s in her head.

The work sits somewhere between magic tricks and personal documentaries. Characters step through mirrors into alternate dimensions. Someone literally loses their head on Halloween. She’s trying to visualize what it feels like to exist between real life and the internet, especially when you’re home alone and the persona you build online feels more real than the person making it.

Tut uses Blender to create 3D worlds from her stories, then places herself inside those environments. She shoots on iPhone, often editing on the phone too, deliberately proving you don’t need expensive equipment to make cinematic work. Tut is an Adobe partner and works with brands like Artlist. She directed a music video for KILLY using a 360 VR camera that put performers in five different spots in the same shot.

Hallie runs a Patreon and shares detailed VFX breakdowns. The work draws comparisons to Zach King, but Hallie layers in heavier themes about identity, digital personas, and the strange space where your online self becomes more known than your physical one. She thinks about how millions of people interact with the version of her that only exists online, filling in the blanks about what that world is like, while the real person making it sits alone at home. That tension drives everything she makes.

@hallietutThis would change my life. Comment what you’d want to see me shoot! Luv you all! #photography #vfx #foryou

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Three Things We Love About Hallie Tut

Cinematic Visual Storytelling: Hallie’s short videos offer movie-like experiences packed into social media clips, combining creativity and advanced VFX to stunning effect.

Emotional and Conceptual Depth: Her content explores meaningful themes beneath its visually stunning surface, engaging viewers on both emotional and intellectual levels.

Open Creative Process: Hallie regularly shares behind-the-scenes insights, building genuine connections with fans who appreciate the craft behind her captivating visuals.

@hallietutActual footage of a dream I had... #bellapoarch #vfx #buildabish

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Welcome to OG: Approved—where rule-breaking creators shape the future. Hand-picked by Open Gardens, they’re not following the playbook—they’re writing the next one.

Name: Gawx Art

Instagram: 807K Followers

Tik Tok: 283K Followers

Youtube: 2.51 Million Followers

Who Is Gawx Art?

Gawx Art makes videos about making art, and the videos themselves are art. The Mexico-based filmmaker and artist turns illustration content into cinematic experiences with Netflix-level production quality. He’s known for vibrant character illustrations featuring diverse people in funky streetwear, but his real innovation is treating every upload like a short film with narrative structure and world-class craft.

His approach? The art is the story, the video is the medium, every frame matters. Gawx’s cinematic style uses constantly moving cameras, whip-pans, fast cuts, film grain, and color grading that removes pure blacks and whites. Every movement gets its own sound effect.

His recent work shows serious filmmaker ambition. His short ‘All Artists Are Thieves’ explored how inspiration works while ‘Anatomy Of The Artist Brain’ was the Creator Odyssey finale, bringing together seven global artists. ‘Your Space Reflects Who You Are’ documented designing his studio. His work has a narrative similarity. Invite viewers into the process of an artist. As viewers we may never know what it is like to be an artist. But, through his pieces we are offered a way through the inner workings of an artist’s process.

He runs a second channel, Gawx2, for experimental film work and travel content. For example, his piece Trains compiled train footage from his travels. The second channel is pure filmmaking without art tutorials.

Beyond YouTube, he’s built a cross-industry career. He’s collaborated with brands like New Balance and Sony. He’s launched two sold-out SHEIN X collections with ‘The Artist Lifestyle’ tagline. He’s produced murals and customized sneakers, skateboards, cameras, and more.

Lenovo and Intel featured him in Creator Odyssey, where seven artists passed a single laptop around the world. Gawx created the opening sketch and final film. The campaign generated millions of views.

Gawx working toward feature films, though he admits finding it hard to reach out to actors and crew since he’s used to working alone with his brother or dad. But his recent films show he’s already there. They’re personal documentaries about creativity, space, learning, and what it means to be an artist.

Three Things We Love About Gawx Art

Visual and narrative depth: Gawx combines vibrant visual artwork with thoughtful short films, providing viewers a deeper and more immersive creative experience.

Authentic behind-the-scenes engagement: Through detailed process videos, illustration challenges, and transparent creative explorations, Gawx inspires and educates his community.

Bold and Distinctive Visual Style: His vibrant characters, vivid color palettes, and street-inspired designs instantly stand out. Whether it’s custom sneakers or detailed illustrations, his artistic identity is unmistakably unique and instantly recognizable.

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