By Kayla Nwaki
Indie animation. Indie games. Indie movies. What do they all have in common? Well, they’re independent, of course, and they are projects driven by a small number of people or an individual person. Since the late 20th century, indie media has been making it big, which shows a promising future for aspiring independent artists.
Indie media is made without corporate backing, and often begins with people who may not have the funds to create stories or games that they have a strong passion for. Independent films can be traced back to the 1950s, to animators like John and Faith Hubley who created the groundbreaking ‘Moonbird’, which became the first independent movie to win an Academy Award.
Decades after that, various indie companies and people began to create their own stories that did exceptionally well – a few examples are ‘Battle for Dream Island’ by Cary and Michael Hueng and ‘Undertale’ by Toby Fox. These stories were shared via the newly-made internet and broke so many barriers for Indie creators.
‘Battle for Dream Island’, which is often shortened to ‘BFDI’ or ‘The object show’, is an animated web show made by Cary and Michael Huang who co-own the channel ‘jacknjellify’ on YouTube. Airing on New Years 2010, the show’s first episode, ‘Take the Plunge’ was uploaded in two separate parts due to YouTube’s 10-minute video limit at the time.
The episode featured a reality show-like theme which created drama between different inanimate objects, such as a teapot and a jar of jam. While Cary and Michael – who were only 12 years old when they uploaded the video – didn’t reach overnight fame, their growing dedication towards the show ended up opening various doors for ‘Battle For Dream Island’ and themselves, as today they have reached 70 million views on that very video through nothing but independence, and have now reached the stage of being able to show their newly animated episodes in cinemas.
Undertale by Toby Fox is a different piece of media, a video game, which was released by composer and creator Toby Fox in 2015. It stands out among various indie pieces – this is because Fox largely created Undertale on his own, it is a game that would take you 20 hours to play the main three routes, and that excludes the remaining 80 slightly different, detailed endings of the game.
Undertale is a game where rather than fighting and killing found enemies, you spare them, and befriend them. Sparing is a main mechanic in the game which made it so different and popular compared to other games, even amongst corporate games. Today, you can play Undertale not just through online softwares like Steam, but also on the PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch.
Lately, however, a new indie animation show from the studio Glitch Productions has arisen, and it has been record breaking, garnering over 1 billion views across all nine of the TV show’s episodes. ‘The Amazing Digital Circus’, which was written by ‘Gooseworx’, is an indie show which first aired in 2023 with its simply titled episode name, ‘Pilot’.
It features a girl named who is newly named ‘Pomni’. She puts on a headset and is taken into this abstract digital world only to find 5 other similarly confused humans living there, and from there the plot develops.
While the show has a colourful, almost childlike aesthetic, it attracted multiple teenage and adult demographics due to its witty humour and psychologically deep themes. While there is newfound debate of the series’ finale, it still remains the most popular indie series in the world, with its finale recently selling out in multiple cinemas, as they were able to have screenings in 90 different countries and 5000 different theatres, which is an amazing achievement.
Indie animation is a beautiful thing because you can really see the passion that shines through all these writers’ stories: ‘Undertale’ could make anyone cry, ‘Battle For Dream Island’ feels like it was made from the creators’ hearts, because it really was, and ‘The Amazing Digital Circus’ is something that Gooseworx has expressed a deep care for.
These success stories of this varied and passionate form of media proves that independent creators can look forward to a bright and promising future.