I’ll try not to spoil too much about GLITCH and Gooseworx’s second episode of The Amazing Digital Circus, especially since you can watch it right here:
I would like to mention, though, that while the pilot episode was already fantastic and just what I’ve been looking for in more-adult (but not “vulgar-for-the-sake-of-being-vulgar”) animation for a long time, Episode two is a substantial improvement that only makes me more excited for future episodes in this series, whether it’s the more-polished animation (the Animation Director, Kevin Temmer, did work on the later Ice Age and Rio sequels at Blue Sky, after all), a more-than-meets-the-eye story, and most importantly, I was surprised how much I CARED and FELT for the characters by the end of the episode, even nihilist chaotic-neutral rabbit-thing, Jax!
Again, I don’t want to spoil too much when you can watch the video RIGHT NOW on YouTube for free, but this episode (and possibly even future episodes) might be of particular interest for anyone that has ever made 3D mesh assets for a production or game, and thought a bit too deeply about them, or at least it will be very cathartic for us. This kind of amusing stuff happens around the Second Act of the story, in the middle of the video.
If you still need convincing even though the episode is FREE, easily accessible on YouTube without having to set up your own account, and I can safely assume a lot of people here know their way around an ad-blocker and YouTube’s continued fight against them (the promotions for merchandise at the end of these indie animation videos is all the proof you need that YouTube Premium subs don’t financially benefit anyone except Google for the most part), then I suppose I could be neutral for a second and say what you might not like about this episode. The humor definitely skews towards Millennials and Generation Z and most, if not all the references will be lost on anybody that has long given up video gaming as a hobby. I personally noticed references to (one of) 2023’s biggest indie games, Pizza Tower, as well as some jabs at the original Resident Evil’s notorious B-Movie dialogue. That’s about it for cons, really. Also, if you care that much, GLITCH’s stuff in general is not made in Blender as far as I know, just the current industry standards like Maya for animation and Unreal Engine for rendering. Like I mentioned previously, the Animation Director used to work at Blue Sky before Disney shut it all down, so I imagine he’s more comfortable in Maya than trying to re-learn everything in Blender just to save a few bucks a month.
Indie animation in general seems to have a bright future, these days. If you like this, you might also want to check out other indie series like Monkey Wrench, Lackadaisy or Satina, as well as GLITCH’s other series, Murder Drones (though I personally find Murder Drones too “teen angst/high school drama” for my tastes, depends on whether that stuff interests you). While everybody is griping about mainstream Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, hugely-popular Japanese anime essentially being businesses at the end of the day that sell escapism and nostalgia, I’m just here enjoying what quality storytelling (and even inventive animation) people tend to make when they are not pressured to make back a $400 million+ budget and avoid offending anybody in the entire world with their stories and character designs.