The Untold Truth Of The Amazing Digital Circus
"The Amazing Digital Circus" is a new viral horror comedy animated web series from Gooseworx and indie animation studio Glitch Productions. It's bizarre, brightly colored, and its pilot racked up more than 35 million views and 750 thousand YouTube subscribers in its first two weeks of release. So, what's the deal with this seemingly overnight super-success show and its mysterious creator?
"The Amazing Digital Circus" is about a group of humans who get trapped in — you guessed it — an amazing digital circus. There, they forget their human names and lives and must take on new forms, new names, and a whole bunch of existential dread. Protagonist Pomni (Lizzie Freeman) is the newest former-human trapped in the circus, which is overseen by the aggressively cheerful Caine (Alex Rochon) — a ringleader with giant teeth for a head, and giant eyes for, well ... eyes. In fact, everything and everyone in the circus looks like it came from a nightmare digital sticker sheet — but, like, in a kind of cute way.
If it's all sounding a bit like Zany Brainy from the '90s, meets Twin Peaks, it should. "The Amazing Digital Circus" looks like Microsoft's Clippy and a Happy Meal toy had kids, then sent them to live in a computer game you played instead of paying attention to class in the early 2000s. It's also thick with a Gen Z humor and aesthetic that is catnip to those who love it, and an absolute mind puzzle to those who don't quite get the shattered satire and reflexive humor that permeates the show. Let's try to figure it out. Join us and mind The Void as we explore the untold truth of "The Amazing Digital Circus."
The Gooseworx name has stop-motion animation roots
Gooseworx, also known as Cooper Goodwin Smith, is a 29-year-old writer, director, animator, and composer. Her artistic pursuits — and her strange stage name — started young. Gooseworx also had an early start with stop-motion animation. In fact, according to a rare deep-dive profile and interview with fellow YouTuber DaftPina, even the handle "Gooseworx" comes from an early experiment with claymation.
According to the DaftPina interview, as a kid, Gooseworx made a stop-motion video of the Loch Ness Monster. Her family mistook the mythical beast for a goose, and through the laws of arcane in-jokes and several name iterations including "Goose Networks" and "Goose Networx," the YouTube handle "Gooseworx" was born in 2010.
Where can you watch the animator's childhood stop-motion creations, you ask? Nowhere, at least for now. According to DaftPina, the early Gooseworx tapes exist only in memories no longer available to those who have entered the Amazing Digital Circus of reality. And, of course, by that we mean they're only on privately owned VHS cassettes.
Gooseworx has an extensive indie animation background
"The Amazing Digital Circus" is an indie animation pilot, but Gooseworx has plenty of experience working on other indie animation projects, as writer, animator, and composer. Scrolling through her recent video output on YouTube might give someone allergic to artistic overachievement the hives. If her video and music body of work isn't enough for fans to consume, she also has her own webcomic, "Horde of Heroes."
While teasers and trailers for "The Amazing Digital Circus" got plenty of views on her channel, many of Gooseworx's other videos have views over 500,000 or somewhere in the low millions. That's all to say "The Amazing Digital Circus" is not the first Gooseworx project to go viral. The most popular of these shorts, aside from various animated cover songs with music and animation by Gooseworx, are a series of short animated films.
"Elain the Bounty Hunter" (2020) is described as "Elain, a young optimistic bounty hunter, faces her biggest challenge yet." A follow-up, "Elain Gets Adopted" (2021) is pitched as "The young bounty hunter, Elain, gets adopted by an unusual fellow with an unusual hobby." A great standalone short, "Ghost of the Year" (2021), also features a character design similar to Moon's from "The Amazing Digital Circus."
A short film led to big attention
By far and away, the most popular Gooseworx title aside from "The Amazing Digital Circus" is a short animated film called "Little Runmo" from 2019. "Little Runmo" has 29 million views on YouTube, where viewers are encouraged to "Follow Runmo, as he discovers the meaning of life."
The short is designed like a side-scroller video game along the lines of "Super Mario Bros." "Little Runmo" features the Little Runmo character running for his literal life and losing it quite a lot. Every time spikes or other enemies get the little guy, he has to start over from the beginning of the game. By the end, he goes through harrowing experiences, a gross lair, and ultimately jumps into a void — but at least it's a colorful void.
"Little Runmo" seems to have a lot of similarities to the world and subject matter of "The Amazing Digital Circus." It also has just as dedicated a fanbase. One fan, known by the handle JuhoSprite, has even been developing a real 2D platformer game inspired by the short. While a full version of the game hasn't been released yet, there is an Itch page dedicated to its eventual release.
The show is trying to raise money for a full first season
Glitch Productions is an indie animation studio with a few titles to its name, including the horror comedy series "Murder Drones," cyber battle thriller series "Meta Runner," sketch comedy series "SMG4," and an adventure comedy series called "Sunset Paradise," which has a description that brings joy to our hearts: "All Meggy Spletzer wanted was a relaxing break. Instead, she found an island filled with potato bandits, cat burglars, dancing supervillains, and one very angry ice cream man, who all want to turn her peaceful vacation into a crime-fighting adventure."
Glitch has spent the last four years growing from a small indie outfit to the largest independent web animation house in Australia. The house was founded by former YouTube sketch comedy sensations Kevin and Luke Lerdwichagul. While the brothers have no discernible connection to that other Australian animation wunderkind, "Bluey," Glitch has received funding support from Screen Australia, as well as 2023 Webby nominations for "Murder Drones."
The independent outfit is attempting to use the runaway success of "The Amazing Digital Circus" pilot to raise the funding to complete a full season, partially through the sale of adorable and unhinged merch. According to the Glitch site, right now the show is self-funded by the company. But with the viral success of the pilot, we might be seeing additional episodes in no time.
'Digital Circus' may appeal to a very specific kind of Disney fan
The creator of animated masterpiece series "The Owl House," Dana Terrace follows Gooseworx on X, formerly known as Twitter, which doesn't mean much by itself. However, while we don't have much hard evidence to support this theory, our suspicion is that Terrace is a Gooseworx fan. After all, there is considerable connective tissue between Terrace's "Owl House" and Gooseworx's "Amazing Digital Circus." One fan has already done a voice swap animation, and we expect the fandoms to continue overlapping.
Like "Amazing Digital Circus," "The Owl House" is an animated series from an animator-writer-director-voice actor. The show also deals with themes of mental health, the existential grind, and feeling trapped in places, but fostered by unlikely friendships. Only time will tell if "The Amazing Digital Circus" has relationships that will bear the brunt of daily horrors as well as the cast of characters in "The Owl House."
Most notably, both "The Owl House" and "The Amazing Digital Circus" straddle the line between cozy comedy and bizarre, bone-chilling horror. While "The Owl House" tends to go more cosmic and psychedelic with its portrayals of evil and horrific rot, "The Amazing Digital Circus" is a blend of cosmically colorful and glitchy. The pilot features abstracted characters who would be right at home on the Boiling Isles ... post-Belos takeover.
The show has interesting influences
Clearly, "The Amazing Digital Circus" shares visual influences with '90s Playstation cutscenes, 2000s edutainment computer games, and aggressively colorful and enthusiastic pediatricians' office decor. But what other nuggets of inspiration are buried deep within the show's digital code? There are strong notes of surreal '90s kids' cartoon "Rocko's Modern Life" and the dense world-building of another slightly-less-surreal '90s kids' cartoon, "Doug."
To finish the absurdist '90s influence hat trick, we present three other possible influences on the show's style and tone: The wild and iconic cartoon "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters," the bizarre sci-fi comedy of "Space Ghost: Coast to Coast," and the uncanny valley of "ReBoot" The exit doors sequence of the pilot is also straight out of a '90s-drenched, viral liminal space creepypasta YouTube trend spinning off of "The Backrooms."
"The Amazing Digital Circus" also feels like a more twisted take on the operating concept behind "Wreck-It Ralph," and a more computer-centric approach to the throwback horrors of "Five Nights at Freddy's," but creator Gooseworx cites far more literary inspirations. She says a Harlan Ellison short story inspired the show. She posted on X, "Digital Circus is very 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." To clarify, the Ellison story is a post-apocalyptic horror sci-fi story about endless war and an all-powerful supercomputer AI destroying humans' will to live. In the Ellison story, AM is that supercomputer. In "The Amazing Digital Circus," AM is Caine — the aforementioned fun-loving wacky little guy with a mouth for a head.
Glitch ran a strange promotion that drove fans wild
Gooseworx and Glitch Productions have been promoting "The Amazing Digital Circus" via teasers, trailers, tweets, merch, interviews, and social media posts. They also used one marketing method that chills the blood and boggles the mind.
Glitch made a celebratory animation taking all of the main characters of "The Amazing Digital Circus" and squishing them in an animated hydraulic press. The company posted this on X and the fans went wild. More than 1 million people have viewed the clip. The circus doesn't stop there.
The hydraulic press smash video has 294,000 likes on TikTok. A fan, @ntohing, reposted the clip to YouTube where it has 221,000 views. What does it mean to promote a cast of characters by smashing them in an animated hydraulic press? What does it mean that so many people are moved to "heart" and comment on this? Can this kind of promotion succeed in selling merch and funding a show? The answer, we think, is both "I don't know" and "yes." Why? Because our times are strange, and our people are not well.
Where you've heard the voice cast before
"The Amazing Digital Circus" cast is stacked with talented voices you just might have heard elsewhere, and we don't just mean in the endless recesses of The Void.
Lizzie Freeman is also known for her work as Trish Una in "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" and Chisato in the English-language version of "Lycoris Recoil," as well as a handful of other anime dubs. Amanda Hufford, who plays Ragatha, has a massive backlist of video game roles to her name, as well as the roles of Sugar Boy and Sugar Wife in "Bread Barbershop." Sean Chiplock, who plays Kinger, also lends his voice to "Lycoris Recoil," "Bread Barbershop," recent "Spider-Man" games, and numerous other endeavors. Also, he played Scooter Carrot in "Veggie Tales: Very Veggie Silly Stories."
Several members of the cast have also appeared on other Glitch shows, especially "Murder Drones," including Michael Kovach (Jax). Marissa Lenti, who plays Gangle, has an extensive voice acting track record, and one role that truly links "The Amazing Digital Circus" with "Five Nights at Freddy's" — she plays Purple Girl in the "Fazbear & Friends" TV series, while Alex Rochon plays Funtime Foxy. Elsie Lovelock, who plays the fabulous Gloink Queen, also has a considerable background in video game and animation voice acting; most amusingly, she plays the Well-Preserved Corpse in "Baldur's Gate 3." Gooseworx voices two characters herself — Bubble and Moon.
Kevin Temmer is the lead animator
It clearly took a demented and creative village to cook up "The Amazing Digital Circus" pilot, but the nightmare-haunting animation deserves some special attention. While Gooseworx did character designs and directed and composed for the series, Kevin Temmer served as lead animator.
Temmer also served as lead animator on Glitch's other horror comedy show, "Murder Drones." He has a pretty impressive track record. Temmer has worked in the animation departments on "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Rehydrated," the "Marvel's Avengers" video game, the movie "Ferdinand," "Ice Age: Collision Course," and quite a few others.
Glitch is a big fan of Temmer's work and tweeted out some serious appreciation. They company posted on X, "Gooseworx wanted a very cartoony style for the characters in Digital Circus. Something different to any Glitch show made so far & we were up for the challenge!" Glitch added, "Kevin Temmer, our animation lead alongside the animation team breathed so much personality & soul into the characters!" These are characters that the company would then smush in a hydraulic press — but still, that's some pretty high praise for Temmer.
The show already has tons of fanart
"The Amazing Digital Circus" already has tons of fanart made to celebrate the show. The wildly passionate fandom has been expressing their love for the viral smash hit and all of its existentially dreadful glory with very impressive artwork and fan edits. Gooseworx and Glitch have been sharing some of the best pieces on their X pages and other social media.
The fandom itself has been filling up Tumblr, X, Reddit, TikTok, and every other social media tent available in the real-life digital circus with their art of Pomni, Jax, Ragatha, Caine, and the gang. Of course, for every piece of fanart, there is an image or article generated by a content farm — which isn't exactly Gooseworx's favorite aspect of sudden, viral creative fame.
"Oh no...The content farm channels..." she says on X, adding in another post, "The urge to turn this show into even more of a miserable arthouse film is as an all-time high. Not that that wasn't the plan in the first place, but I'm even more driven now." Of course, the show itself tells us that in the Digital Circus, there is everything except exit or escape. Any miserable arthouse film worth its existential malaise knows that fanart and content mill articles are but roses by any other name — only one may smell as sweet. But there is sure to be a lot more of both in the future if the Digital Circus stays in town.