Why The Amazing Digital Circus remains a YouTube-first series

Hazbin Hotel. Basics in Behavior. Louie Zong’s viral ghosts. These are just a few of the indie animation projects finding success on YouTube in recent years that have people more curious than ever about the massive shift happening in animation. By allowing creators to maintain creative control and experiment with styles and genres that may have struggled to find a place on more traditional streamers, YouTube has become a home for these unique stories and the storytellers who are creating them.

22% of US 14-24 year olds said they had heard of The Amazing Digital Circus in a survey conducted earlier this year.

Chief among these success stories is The Amazing Digital Circus — a surreal 3D animated series that follows a woman trapped in a virtual world, becoming subject to the whims of a wacky AI. The show has become so well known, that 22% of US 14-24 year olds said they had heard of The Amazing Digital Circus* in a survey conducted earlier this year. Since its fall debut, the pilot episode of GLITCH and Gooseworx's animated dark comedy has skyrocketed to over 350 million views. To put it in perspective, that number is more than the entire US population!

At this year’s VidSummit, I sat down with brothers and GLITCH co-founders, Luke and Kevin Lerdwichagul, to learn more about their unconventional hit, what their creative process looks like and YouTube’s role in building the Digital Circus fandom.

Glitch has released 5 animated series, all with distinctive styles and concepts. What elements do you look for when choosing a story to adapt into a series?

Kevin: We go off of…vibes. We can’t really pinpoint one specific thing.

Luke: Yeah. If it has a unique voice and feels like the right show. That’s it.

How would you describe the vibe of Amazing Digital Circus?

Kevin: Very different. Very Gooseworx.

Luke: Very weird, in a good way! Me, Kevin and the creator of the show, Gooseworx, did not expect it to be as big as it’s become. It features these colorful classic characters stuck in a digital world. It gets dark pretty quickly, but that’s not really the point of the animation. There are lessons to be learned about accepting where you are. I don’t know, we just loved the initial pitch because it was something Kevin and I never really saw before.

Tell me more about that.

Luke: Of course, we are constantly looking out for the next really cool idea and just so happened to come across Gooseworx. They created this pilot called Little Runmo with a video game mockup animation of this little character that was very similar to Digital Circus with more mature themes. Me and Kevin looked at each other and just knew that this was a Glitch story. It turned out Gooseworx wanted to make a show as well. They hadn't done 3D before, but they were willing to give it a go, which was really cool. It’s very rare to see 2D animators willing to do that. From there, they pitched us three shows including Digital Circus and as soon as we saw the character designs for Pomni and Caine, we knew that this was the most “Gooseworxy” story idea.

We gave the greenlight, they came on board, met our team and we started writing.

It seems like 3D animation is less common on YouTube. Why did you decide to go with that format?

Luke: Kevin and I both actually had no animation experience when we started. I did Machinima when I was really young using the games Super Mario 64 and Garry's Mod, all in 3D. My background is pretty much just using 3D characters and game engines., so we just said, you know what, let’s do a 3D show!

What does your team structure look like?

Luke: Right now our entire animation team is based in Sydney, Australia. Gooseworx writes, directs and makes music for the show, then it goes down to our general manager and writer Jasmine who helps Goose. Kevin and I are also there to check on the story and once we’re all happy with it, we send it to our whole studio animation team.

From there, we have the whole general pipeline for animation — storyboarding, modeling, rigging, animation, 3d and post production. It actually takes quite a while for the animation to be put together, which is why it's not a more common medium. That first pilot took about two years.

Animation is often viewed as a risk by traditional media networks due to the time and financial investment needed. Knowing the amount of work it requires, why did you decide to take that risk with Glitch?

Luke: When we first started, we actually didn't know the amount of work it took, so that's one of the mistakes we made. Before Digital Circus, we made a team that was really small. We thought we only needed to hire one animator, but that was completely wrong. We needed to hire a lot more than that. But now we generally know what we have the capacity and manpower to do.

Kevin: But the reason we wanted to do it was 'cause we just really enjoy the medium and wanted to see more cool stories. We want to take the high quality animation that you’d normally only see in anime in Japan and bring it to the West. There’s tons of amazing creators out there and we just wanna give them a chance. We’re fully committed to finding these people and making cool stories with them.

What role has fandom played in the show’s success?

Luke: The fandom is the whole reason I do this. That community — they share, they make fan art and talk about the shows. They appreciate the hard work that goes into animation. It’s an important center point of why our channel exists.

Everybody's on YouTube. Everybody can watch YouTube. I see YouTube and it’s gotten to the level where it's not really a platform anymore, it's just like the TV homepage for a lot of people.

Luke Lerdwichagul GLITCH Productions

Why are you choosing to release the episodes on YouTube instead of pursuing more traditional streaming routes?

Luke: Everybody's on YouTube. Everybody can watch YouTube. I see YouTube and it’s gotten to the level where it's not really a platform anymore, it's just like the TV homepage for a lot of people. We care more about people watching the shows and falling in love with the characters. YouTube was just the biggest reach. The most important thing to us was community building, so it’s been a great accessible place for people to come together.

I imagine creative control would play a part as well. Are there elements of the show that you think wouldn’t have made it to air?

Kevin: Digital Circus could not be made the traditional way. Definitely not. I don’t think the humor would be understood by a lot of networks and it’s too violent. When networks see animation, they either think it needs to be made for kids or be extremely adult. Digital Circus sits in the middle of those demographics for an audience that networks don’t usually understand or invest much in. I think the views we’re getting really shows the world what this audience wants and what animation is capable of.

_{Source: Google/SmithGeiger, YouTube Trends Survey, US May 2024, N=350 online Gen Z respondents age 14-24.}