Data, rebuilt as somethingyou can actually watch.
Grade Compare is a small channel making 3D comparison videos. Each one starts as a spreadsheet and ends as a render — the research, the modelling, the animation and the type are all done here, by us.
Videos by subject
Hover a row
Nothing here is a template.
There's no chart plugin that makes these. Each video is built from scratch, and most of the work happens long before anything is animated.
Finding the question
A race is only worth watching if the order actually changes. Plenty of ideas get dropped here because the ranking turns out flat — the leader never moves, and there's nothing to watch.
Research and sources
Figures come from the primary source wherever one exists, then get cross-checked against a second before anything is modelled. Where records disagree, we take the more conservative number rather than the more dramatic one.
Cleaning the data
Raw tables rarely line up. Names change, countries split, currencies need adjusting for inflation. The least glamorous part of the job, and usually the longest.
Building the scene in 3D
Bars, flags, portraits and the environment are built as real geometry — lit, shaded, and shot on a camera that moves, rather than flat graphics sliding across a frame.
Animation and typography
Every value is keyed to the data, so bars move at the speed the numbers actually moved. Labels are set and tracked by hand so the type stays readable while it travels — the detail most of these videos get wrong.
Render and cut
The sequence renders out in full, then gets graded and cut to music so the overtakes land where you feel them.
Know your flags?
Ten flags, four names each. No timer, no score to beat — just pick the one you think is right.
Which country is this?
Eight subjects so far.
Each playlist takes one question and follows it as far back as the record goes.
Start with Countries.
Eleven videos deep and still the one people come back to — military strength, population and economies, ranked against each other.
New comparison every few weeks.
Twenty-six so far. If there's a ranking you've always wondered about, the comments are the best place to leave it.