It’s out into the online world for animated twins Goodwin and Badwin, who are probably happy to have the home after being evicted prematurely from their mother’s uterus.

The stars of the eponymous animated online series are now appearing on California-based distributor Mondo Media’s Mondo Mini Shows YouTube channel in a new six-part miniseries.

The series, co-created by Joshua Bowen of Toronto-based boutique animation studio Style 5 and former 20th Century Fox animation exec Peter Burton, follows the relationship between twin brothers Goodwin (the good twin) and Badwin (get it?). The first episode debuted on Jan. 18.

The shorts series was born out of an idea for a long-form show Bowen and Burton pitched to Fox three years ago. The two met at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2008 where Burton says they discovered a mutual appreciation for animation, “the absurdity of life and human behaviour,” and a shared desire to produce original content for a broad audience.

The pitch didn’t get any traction with Fox, and Bowen says he and Burton thought it would be fun to spin the characters off into a short series and see what happens.

“I really see the online platform acting [in a similar way to] infomercials, for entertainment,” he tells Playback Daily. “It’s a good way to find your audience and then sell it to broadcasters.”

“But also, where we make our money is through licensing, so whether it be through merchandising or [something else], with the extent of social networks now, there actually is a viable business model, as long as you’re getting the numbers.”

And Mondo’s Mini Shows has the numbers – the channel has more than 930,000 subscribers and a billion video views.

In less than 24 hours after the first episode premiered, Goodwin vs. Badwin accumulated more than 40,000 views on the channel and 1533 “likes” on Facebook (and 76 “dislikes”).

“We’re actually quite pleased with the numbers, and we also know that in large part that’s because the distributor has such a strong subscriber base,” says Bowen. “It really demonstrates that there is a broadcast model that can live online, and that distributors are just as important online as they are in the conventional television medium.”

He says that while they will promote the series through general social networking like Facebook and Twitter, they are letting the primary subscriber base and word-of-mouth from friends lead the way.

“The process of doing stuff on the internet is so organic, because there’s less risk, so things are a little less calculated than with conventional broadcasts,” he says. “That will give us some time to assess what our audience likes and what they don’t like, and also enable us to make merchandise that caters to them.”

Bowen says that viewer comments will largely drive how they build their merch. He says one line is currently resonating with people that could easily go on a T-shirt (“Why is there a tiny liquor bottle in your vagina?”).

The episodes, each between two and three minutes long, will be released biweekly on the Mini Shows Youtube channel.

Goodwin vs. Badwin was created in association with Atlanta’s Flinch Studios and Mirimachi, NB’s Loogaroo, and will be distributed by Mondo Media.