If you are at all familiar with YouTube and are an artistic person, there’s a likely chance you’ve come across original animated media on the website. Animated content is not at all new on YouTube: many things like clips or even full length films from major companies can be found there and date back to as far as a decade ago, possibly as early as the site’s launch in 2005. However, original and independent animation has been making its rounds on the website since its creation as well. In the past five or so years, indie animation has become more and more popular and gained more credibility than mainstream studios such as Walt Disney Animation Studios, likely due to more creative freedom and practically no executive meddling that would otherwise impact the quality indie animation has. With the rise of indie animation, there has also been a rise in several studios that have been gaining a staggering number of popularity. There is one studio that I believe has been the most successful out of them all, and that studio is Glitch Productions.
Glitch Productions was founded in 2017 by brothers Kevin and Luke Lerdwichagul and is based in Sydney, Australia. Since the beginning, they have had one goal, “change the way the west creates teen and young adult animation”. Initially starting with a Youtube channel by the name of SMG4, they launched their first 3-D animated series, titled Meta Runner. The show followed a future in a cyberpunk style, where technology basically runs the world, and underneath the citizens are criminal organizations with a desire for control. The show has three seasons, has amassed over 25 million views on YouTube, and was eventually moved to Glitch’s own dedicated channel for their shows.
One year before Meta Runner concluded with its third season, Glitch released the pilot for their next big show: Murder Drones, in 2021. Created by Liam Vickers, the show follows a similar but darker premise where the majority of humans are dead and the only sources of life remaining are the worker drones they left behind. Uzi, the angsty and rebellious main character, befriends the one thing she was taught she shouldn’t: a disassembly drone named N that was sent to destroy her and her kind. Together, they become a dynamic duo and uncover the secrets of the planet, repressed memories, and the mysterious virus that has infected other worker drones. This was when Glitch started to gain more traction and success. Over eight episodes, the show gained over 270 million views, and also where they were able to start releasing more merchandise. All of Glitch’s shows are self-funded through merch sales, and they’ve been using that tactic since the start of the company. However, it was during the run of Murder Drones and the start of another show that sales and views skyrocketed.
On October 13, 2023, Glitch released the pilot for The Amazing Digital Circus, created by Gooseworx. It follows a young woman named Pomni and five other humans who have become trapped in a virtual reality and are reduced to colorful, cartoony personas. As far as they know, there’s no way out, so they spend their days enduring adventures made by the AI, which provide them with just the right amount of wacky hijinks and trauma. The Amazing Digital Circus has single handedly made indie animation history. As of October 2025, the pilot episode has gained nearly 400 million views, gained licenses from Hot Topic and Good Smile Company, has a strong Japanese presence from a manga and pop up shops, and a distributing deal with Netflix (it should be mentioned that this particular deal has possibly run into some setbacks, as only episodes 1-4 are on the streaming service while the current 6 are on Youtube. The cause isn’t entirely known as of right now). And although this show would appear childish to most people because it is so colorful, it is actually intended for young adult/older audiences because of its psychological horror elements that develop over the course of the episodes.
Nevertheless, The Amazing Digital Circus really put Glitch into mainstream media, to the point where the studio has a great reputation for both its shows and its effort to give full creative control to its showrunners. Glitch also portrays an immense amount of care for its artists, and given the current rise of AI around the globe, they’ve made it clear that AI has no place in their company. Posted to Twitter/X in March 2025, Glitch stated, “We employ over 80 artists to carefully work on every single part of the animation and creative process. You will never get the nuance, complexity and beauty of a Ghibli film without the human hand and their love. We will never use AI to replace art in our works.”
If you are at all interested in animation and are looking to get into something new, I highly recommend checking out the selection of shows from Glitch Productions, all found on their YouTube channel. Views and merch sales help their shows immensely, especially when in the process of getting greenlit and improving the quality of animation over time. With the help of dedicated viewers and artists, indie animation has already become great, but it can become even greater with minds like these.
Sources:
https://www.glitchprod.com
