The Amazing Digital Circus is an Australian adult independent-animated web series created, written, and directed by Gooseworx and produced by Glitch Productions. The series follows a group of humans trapped inside a circus-themed virtual reality game, where they are overseen by an erratic artificial intelligence while coping with personal traumas and psychological tendencies. Gooseworx pitched the series to Glitch, inspired by 1990s computer-generated imagery and the short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" by American writer Harlan Ellison.
| The Amazing Digital Circus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Adult animation[1][2][3] Dark comedy[4][5] Psychological drama[6] |
| Created by | Gooseworx |
| Showrunner | Gooseworx |
| Written by | Gooseworx |
| Directed by | Gooseworx |
| Voices of |
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| Theme music composer | Gooseworx |
| Opening theme | "The Amazing Digital Circus Main Theme" (vocals by Lizz Robinett, pilot only) |
| Ending theme | "Digital Days" |
| Composers |
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| Country of origin | Australia |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 4 |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
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| Producers |
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| Editors |
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| Running time | 23–25 minutes |
| Production company | Glitch Productions |
| Original release | |
| Network | YouTube Netflix (2024 – present) |
| Release | 13 October 2023 – present |
The series began production in 2022, with its pilot episode premiering on Glitch Productions' YouTube channel on 13 October 2023. The pilot went viral, becoming one of the most-viewed animation pilots on the platform; it was praised by critics for its animation and dark themes, and was nominated for an Annie Award. The full series entered production following the pilot's popularity. On 4 October 2024, following the release of the third episode, the series became available on Netflix, with new episodes being simulcasted alongside their premiere on YouTube.
Synopsis
The Amazing Digital Circus follows a cast of humans—Pomni, Jax, Ragatha, Gangle, Kinger, and Zooble—who have become trapped in the titular circus, a virtual reality game. Under the direction of the circus's ringmaster, an artificial intelligence named Caine, they engage in nonsensical adventures to distract themselves from their situation, all while at risk of losing their sanity and "abstracting" into digital monstrosities.[5][7]
Characters
Main
- Pomni (Lizzie Freeman), the most recent human to be trapped in the circus. Her in-game avatar is a jester.[5][7][8]
- Caine (Alex Rochon), the circus' wacky yet unstable AI ringmaster with a set of teeth for a head.[5][7][8] The character is based on AM from Harlan Ellison's short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", with the difference—according to Gooseworx—that "instead of AM being a living embodiment of hate, he's a fun-loving wacky little guy".[9]
- Jax (Michael Kovach), a mischievous man who enjoys pranking and bullying the other cast members. His avatar is a tall purple humanoid rabbit.[5][7][8]
- Ragatha (Amanda Hufford), a kindly woman who attempts to maintain an optimistic attitude towards her situation. Her avatar is a rag doll, resembling Raggedy Ann.[5][7][8]
- Gangle (Marissa Lenti), a woman who suffers from depression and low self-esteem. Her avatar is composed of ribbons and interchangeable comedy and tragedy masks that represent her current mood.[5][7][8]
- Kinger (Sean Chiplock), a man who has been trapped in the circus longer than the other humans. As a result, he is paranoid and forgetful, but becomes lucid when in dark spaces. His avatar is a king chess piece wearing a royal robe.[5][7][8]
- Zooble (Ashley Nichols), an irritable person who lacks interest in Caine's adventures. Their avatar is made of mix-and-match blocks, which Zooble replaces with different ones between episodes due to feeling dissatisfied with their appearance.[5][8] The design of Zooble's body was inspired by ZoLo playscuplture toys, while the character's name is based on the toy brand Zoob.[10][11]
- Bubble (Gooseworx), Caine's AI soap bubble assistant.[8]
Guest
- The Gloink Queen (Elsie Lovelock), ruler of the pest-like Gloinks.[8]
- Princess Loolilalu (Vera Tan), princess of the Candy Canyon Kingdom.
- Gummigoo (Jack Hawkins), a gummy alligator NPC.
- Chad (Jack Hawkins) and Max (Hamish Plaggemars), Gummigoo's gummy alligator partners.
- The Fudge Monster (Lyle Rath), a candy-made creature banished from the Candy Canyon Kingdom for cannibalising its inhabitants.
- Martha Mildenhall (Marissa Lenti), a ghost NPC who is the wife of Theodore Mildenhall.
- Baron Theodore Mildenhall (Tim Alexander), the deceased baron of Mildenhall Manor.
- Ghostly (WizardzWiz), a ghost in Mildenhall Manor.
- The Creature (Payton Goodwin), the still-living corpse of an angel that was hunted by Baron Mildenhall.
- Orbsman (Benjamin Davis), a humanoid collection of spheres that speaks in an incomprehensible voice.
Episodes
| No. | Title | Original release date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Pilot" | 13 October 2023 | |
|
After donning a virtual reality headset, a woman becomes trapped in a circus-themed computer game inhabited by the artificial intelligence Caine, his assistant Bubble, and six other trapped humans: Jax, Ragatha, Gangle, Kinger, Zooble, and Kaufmo. The woman—renamed "Pomni" after forgetting her original name—repeatedly notices an exit door that Caine dismisses as a hallucination. While Caine sends the group on an adventure to gather creatures called Gloinks, Kaufmo is found by Pomni, Ragatha, and Jax to have "abstracted" into a mindless beast. Initially seeking Caine's help after Kaufmo causes Ragatha to glitch, Pomni finds the exit door and tries escaping through it, which instead sends her through a labyrinth of office spaces to the digital void beyond the circus. Caine rescues Pomni as the others return from the adventure following an encounter with Kaufmo, whom Caine imprisons in a cellar with other abstracted humans before repairing Ragatha. He then admits he created the "exit" to fulfil the group's desire for one, but never decided what to put behind the door, leaving it unfinished. Deeming the adventure complete, Caine rewards the group with a feast of non-sustaining digital food, which a traumatised Pomni attends in silence. | |||
| 2 | "Candy Carrier Chaos!" | 3 May 2024 | |
|
Caine sends the group to a new map, the Candy Canyon Kingdom, on an adventure to recover a tanker of stolen maple syrup from bandit NPCs. During a chase, Pomni and the bandit Gummigoo are ejected by a collision detection glitch into the map's out-of-bounds asset storage. Gummigoo sees his own T-posing model among the assets and learns from Pomni about the fabricated nature of his reality, causing him to have an existential crisis. Relating to Gummigoo over her own experiences, Pomni invites him to live at the circus to find new meaning in his life. The two return to the map by performing another collision glitch with a replica syrup tanker, which they give to the other bandits before leaving. Upon Gummigoo's arrival at the circus, Caine abruptly deletes him to prevent himself from confusing the humans and NPCs. Pomni is distraught, but finds comfort and acceptance within the group when they bring her to a funeral for the abstracted Kaufmo. | |||
| 3 | "The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor" | 4 October 2024 | |
|
The group is sent to the haunted Mildenhall Manor to uncover the mystery of its ghostly inhabitants. Kinger unwittingly drags Pomni into the game's mature-rated section, where they follow a series of recorded messages instructing them to escape from a monstrous creature; the usually-insane Kinger gradually becomes lucid as they progress. When Kinger injures the creature with a shotgun, the final message reveals the creature to be an angel, resulting in the pair being taken to Hell. Kinger consoles the terrified Pomni, reminiscing about the abstraction of his wife and inspiring Pomni to cherish her fondest memories of everyone at the circus. He loses his sanity and memories again after they escape and reunite with the others, who had taken the game's family-friendly "pacifist" route. Meanwhile, Caine puts Zooble through a therapy session to understand their refusal to partake in his adventures, forgetting Zooble's reminder that it stems from self-loathing over their own digital body. After Caine has a nervous breakdown over Zooble arguing that nobody enjoys his adventures, the session ends with the two swapping roles. | |||
| 4 | "Fast Food Masquerade" | 13 December 2024 | |
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Zooble gives Gangle a plastic comedy mask to replace her usual, fragile one, which improves Gangle's depressive mood. At Gangle's suggestion, Caine organises a more mundane adventure at the fast-food restaurant Spudsy's, assigning Gangle as shift manager and the rest as employees. Gangle's depression worsens when she irritates the group with her manic and assertive masking while criticising their performance: Pomni for shirking her duties to interact with Gummigoo, who appears as a customer with no memory of her; Jax for his apathy, for which he is given re-evaluation counseling; and Ragatha for intoxicating herself with "stupid sauce" that causes her to confess her negative opinions of everyone. Pomni eventually notices that Gangle is struggling and takes her place watching the restaurant until closing time. Gangle joyfully discards her new mask, only to then stumble into nearby traffic. Before she can be run over, Caine teleports Gangle into a performance review and penalises her for her last-minute lack of professionalism. Gangle falls back into depression and isolates herself, but is persuaded by Zooble to rejoin the group. | |||
Background and production
The Amazing Digital Circus is directed, written, composed, and showrun by Gooseworx. Kevin Temmer is the series' lead animator, while Glitch Productions's founders, Luke and Kevin Lerdwichagul, are executive producers.[12] Pre-production on the pilot episode began in mid-2022, and production started in full later that year.[13] Gooseworx conceived the characters and designs;[13] she reported designing the characters in under a week.[14] Inspirations for the show include the short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream".[4][7]
Conception
Glitch initially noticed Gooseworx's 2019 YouTube animated short Little Runmo, which Jasmine Yang—development producer and general manager of Glitch—felt was exactly what they wanted to do: "It was funny, a little dark, and definitely very weird, like nothing we had seen before".[15] Glitch contacted Gooseworx and asked her to create a pilot, which she then accepted.[15] Gooseworx presented three pitches to Glitch, with the one that would become The Amazing Digital Circus being chosen.[13][15] Knowing that the pilot would be in 3D, she tried to create an idea that would best fit that style, mentioning in particular her inspiration from 1990s and early 2000s 3D works, "where it looked kinda bad and creepy but was also completely unrestricted creatively".[15] Yang said that the pitch's 1990s-inspired computer-generated imagery (CGI) style and nostalgic references to toys and computer games caught their attention, feeling that their audience would enjoy these characteristics.[15] The Glitch team felt that this particular pitch had the greatest potential, especially due to the nostalgic appeal of the 1990s-inspired CGI renders, and recognised it as something uniquely distinctive that no one else could replicate.[13]
Gooseworx stated that, while her original pitch was "more chaotic and silly", the story unexpectedly became "a lot deeper and more nuanced", with a "stronger emotional backbone", during the show's development,[14] describing it as having been "inspired by "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" [but] instead of AM being a living embodiment of hate, he's a fun-loving wacky little guy."[9]
Animation
The 3D animation process of The Amazing Digital Circus's pilot was structured similarly to most other studios, with dedicated departments for various tasks.[13] They primarily used Autodesk Maya for the 3D work and then rendered everything in Unreal Engine.[13][16] The series is animated at 30 frames per second.[16] Kevin Temmer, the series' lead animator, who was previously a junior animator at Blue Sky Studios, initially received a message from one of Glitch's founders, Kevin Lerdwichugal, asking him to animate a teaser trailer for The Amazing Digital Circus. During the process, Temmer was asked to join Glitch's team full-time.[16] According to him, he "couldn't say no to an opportunity to work on something so wacky and cartoony".[14] The animators, including Temmer, were given a few scenes to complete every two weeks. They would regularly submit their progress for review by Gooseworx and Temmer, and this process would continue until both approved the scenes.[16] Some of the movements, shaking, and glitching of characters and props in the pilot were inspired by Source Filmmaker and Garry's Mod machinimas, something that Glitch had already done with their SMG4 videos.[16]
Gooseworx had little experience with 3D works prior to working on The Amazing Digital Circus,[13] hand-drawn 2D animation being her area of expertise.[15] As such, according to Yang, Glitch had to work "very closely" with Gooseworx to translate her 2D style to 3D; Gooseworx became The Amazing Digital Circus's showrunner and they "worked hard to maintain her vision as much as possible".[15] In developing the show's visuals, they wanted it to resemble early CGI animated films and series without seeming outdated. Gooseworx and Glitch worked to create a balance between retro 3D and toys; Gooseworx initially wanted the show to be "pure and faithful to the retro rendering style of early 3D animation".[15] Ultimately, they went with a "rose-tinted version" of that style.[15] As Gooseworx likes "juxtapositions like happy music playing to something horrifying or cute little characters being miserable", she wanted the visuals to not necessarily reflect its darker story.[15] She wanted the show to "feel kind of lonely".[15]
Release
During The Amazing Digital Circus' pre-production phase in the middle of 2022, Glitch released character trailers that were actually proofs of concept testing the series' animation style and visuals.[13] A teaser was released on 27 January 2023.[‡ 1] The pilot's official trailer was released on 22 September,[‡ 2] and the episode was released on 13 October.[‡ 3] Following the pilot's popularity, Glitch confirmed in November that there would be "more Digital Circus".[17] In February 2024, a full nine-episode season was announced to be in production, with the pilot being "upgraded" to episode 1.[‡ 4][12][18] As of 13 December 2024[update], four episodes have been released.[‡ 5]
Initially, Glitch stated that there were no plans for The Amazing Digital Circus to be put on streaming platforms besides YouTube, as they want full creative control of their productions.[14][15] Later, it was announced that, following the release of the third episode on 4 October the series would become available to stream on Netflix; episodes will continue to premiere on YouTube first, and Netflix will have no creative control over the series.[19][20][21] The show has been promoted with merchandise.[7][15][22] On the long wait between the release of each episode, Yang said: "If we had to wait until the entire season was ready before dropping any episodes, [the Digital Circus pilot] would not have premiered for years ... dropping all the episodes at the same time is not only impractical but also counterintuitive ... For us, not only is [the wait] practical but it works a little bit in our favor because every time we make a new episode of anything, we can make a big event about it."[22]
Reception
Viewership
Glitch did not foresee the popularity of The Amazing Digital Circus.[12][14][15] The pilot became a viral video on YouTube.[4][15] By late November 2023 it had surpassed 150 million views,[17] it reached over 270 million views by February 2024, and reached over 350 million by November 2024, making it among the most-watched animation pilots in the history of YouTube.[12][23] As of December 2024[update], the pilot stands at 363 million views.[‡ 3] "Candy Carrier Chaos!" surpassed 30 million views the day after its release,[24] and by September 2024 it had accumulated over 121 million views.[21] Within a week of premiering on Netflix, The Amazing Digital Circus reached number four on the Netflix Top Ten.[25] According to a survey conducted in 2024, 22% of people in the United States aged 14 to 24 stated that they have heard of the show.[23]
Critical reception
Critics praised The Amazing Digital Circus's pilot animation.[5][15][26] Justin Guerrero of Comics Beat called it "wonderful and expressive",[5] while Jamie Lang of Cartoon Brew and Jade King of TheGamer felt it was bright, colourful, and fun.[7][15] Lang further complimented that its aesthetic elements feel familiar without being cliché, giving a modern vibe to early CGI.[15] Common Sense Media reviewer Stephanie Morgan praised the innovative animation and distinctive setting.[26] Some critics noted the episode's dark humour and story;[7][26][27] King praised the contrast it gave with the visuals,[7] while Morgan described the show as "quirky ... with a touch of darkness".[26] Zachary Moser of ScreenRant said that the series "deals with existential questions about reality and nihilism".[27] Critics highlighted the episode's jokes,[15][26] with Lang describing them as "timed with frame-to-frame perfection", with a "mature" sense of humour,[15] and Morgan praising the clever fourth-wall-breaking jokes.[26] Morgan criticised the "repetitive nature of the character traits".[26]
Gail Sherman of Boing Boing described the second episode as "a candy-coated existential crisis" and called both the first and second episodes "brutal".[28]
Cultural impact
The Amazing Digital Circus received a notable amount of fan creations and memes,[4][7][14] getting popular on TikTok.[4] The popularity experienced by the series in Japan lead to themed pop-up stores in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya,[29][30] alongside a manga adaptation distributed by CoroCoro Comics starting 21 October 2024.[31][32][33] The series also saw a notable wave of unauthorised content, including both content farm media,[34][35] and stage shows performed in various locations across Mexico,[36] in addition to counterfeit merchandise.[34]
Awards and nominations
In 2024, Kevin Temmer was nominated at the 51st Annie Awards in the "Best Character Animation – TV/Media" category for his work in The Amazing Digital Circus' pilot.
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Annie Awards | Best Character Animation – TV/Media | The Amazing Digital Circus: "Pilot" – Kevin Temmer | Nominated | [37] |
References
External links
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