Ross O'Donovan (RubberRoss)

Ross O'Donovan — RubberRoss, forever RubberNinja to the old heads — is one of the internet's great multi-hyphenates: animator, comedian, streamer, and now showrunner, with a career that's reinvented itself more times than most creators get chances.

The origin story starts in Perth. Ross Kenry O'Donovan was born June 17, 1987 in Perth, Western Australia, to Irish Catholic parents — his father Donough is a GP and a traditional Irish music guitarist born in Dublin, and his sister Rebecca is a journalist married to Australian cricketer Shaun Marsh. After school at Corpus Christi College, Ross studied animation at the Film and Television Institute of Western Australia in Fremantle — and then stayed to teach it. The classroom-to-Newgrounds pipeline is the whole thesis of his career: a trained animator who chose the internet over the industry.

The animation era was the foundation. As RubberNinja, Ross was part of YouTube's storytime animation wave — fast, funny, beautifully drawn videos that turned everyday absurdity into cartoons. The craft was obvious; the comedy was sharper. The RubberNinja channel, joined in early 2006, became a Newgrounds-era institution, and Ross's accent — which he describes as "International," having consciously toned down the Australian after moving to the US — became part of the brand.

Then came Game Grumps. On June 25, 2013 — the same day Jon Jafari departed the channel — Ross launched Steam Train, the Game Grumps spinoff, co-hosted with Danny Avidan. He became the show's permanent host and the group's resident butt monkey, the guy the others roasted in jest every episode ("Goddammit Ross" became a catchphrase). It was a fascinating casting: a professional animator dropped into a Let's Play empire, bringing cartoonist timing to gaming comedy. He rode out the entire run of Steam Train, appeared on 10 Minute Power Hour, and in November 2021 set the record for the most Guest Grumps appearances with a five-episode run. In 2020 he left Game Grumps on good terms to make his own content — and kept coming back as a guest, including a cameo in the series' 10th anniversary video.

The streaming era was the second act. Ross's solo Twitch channel became a fixture of the platform's creative-gaming corner: Mario Maker, Hollow Knight, Pokémon playthroughs, and a community built on the specific chaos of an animator playing games live. His thumbnails — hand-drawn, genuinely beautiful — were a running flex that reminded everyone what he actually did for a living. In August 2020 he became the face of a controversy when Burger King and Ogilvy used Twitch's donation feature to broadcast unsolicited ads on his and other streamers' channels; Ross called the practice "scummy as hell" in tweets that got picked up by the BBC, Kotaku, and PC Gamer. It was a defining internet-culture moment, and Ross was on the right side of it.

The RubberRoss channel — launched in April 2020 with a video literally titled "New Channel??" — became the main stage. And then Gartic Phone happened. Starting in September 2021, Ross's videos of the online drawing game — him and a rotating cast of artist friends and guests turning party-game doodles into collaborative masterpieces — went stratospheric. The series sent the RubberRoss channel's subscriber count soaring past the legacy RubberNinja account in a matter of months, and the channel crossed one million subscribers in July 2022. Combined, the two channels sit at 2.3 million subscribers and over 267 million views. An animator playing Pictionary with friends had built a bigger audience than most TV networks' digital arms.

But the whole time, there was a bigger project humming underneath everything. Gameoverse — Ross's original animated series, based on a 2009 web series of his own creation — had been in independent development for over a decade and a half. He'd been pitching it since the pandemic era (he jokes he may have delivered the first animation pitch of the COVID lockdown), iterating through themes, tone, and visuals for 11-plus years. In January 2026, Australian indie powerhouse Glitch Productions announced it was partnering with Ross and co-writer Arin Hanson (Egoraptor himself, his old Game Grumps collaborator) for a full-series release. The pilot dropped May 15, 2026 — a 33-minute 2D animated epic about video game worlds horrifically exploding, where heroes Kit and Kaboodle must help the villains stop the good guys or face total annihilation.

The Gameoverse launch was the validation of a 17-year bet. The voice cast reads like a victory lap: Erica Lindbeck (Helluva Boss, Smiling Friends) as Kit, JSchlatt as Kaboodle, Chris Sabat (Dragon Ball Z) as Warrick, Elsie Lovelock (Hazbin Hotel, Murder Drones), and Michael Cusack (Smiling Friends). The score comes from Grant Kirkhope (Banjo-Kazooie, GoldenEye 007) and Jake Kaufman (Shovel Knight, Shantae). Reviews called it another hit for Glitch. And for Ross — who insisted the series stay 2D, who carried the project through every dead end the industry could offer — it was proof that the Newgrounds kid from Perth could run a real show.

What makes Ross matter is the arc: two decades in online animation, from Newgrounds to a Glitch-backed series, without ever leaving the audience that made him. He taught animation, made cartoons, hosted a Let's Play empire's spinoff, became a Twitch staple, went viral drawing with friends, and then delivered the passion project. Most creators get one reinvention. Ross O'Donovan is on his fourth, and the best one just premiered.

Previously covers RubberRoss because Gameoverse is the payoff to one of the longest creative grinds in internet history — and because the Gartic Phone videos remain the purest joy on YouTube. The ninja became the showrunner. It only took 17 years.