Character from The Amazing Digital Circus by Gooseworx / Glitch Productions
A clown who was once a friend to the circus cast before his mind broke and he abstracted — becoming a glitched horror locked in The Cellar, his absence haunting everyone he left behind.
Kaufmo is defined by his absence. The cast talks around him the way families talk around a death that's too recent to process. His room is still there. His stuff is still there. He isn't. Before he abstracted, he was a clown in spirit as well as avatar — he made people laugh, tried to keep things light. He was especially close to Jax. When Pomni discovers what happened to him — the glitching, writhing thing in the shadows that used to be a person — the show stops being a comedy and starts being a horror. Every character in the circus is one bad day away from becoming what Kaufmo became. He's not special — he's just the most recent, the one whose absence is still warm.
Before abstraction: a colorful clown with traditional circus clown makeup, a red nose, bright patterned clothing, and an expressive animated face. After abstraction: a distorted, glitching nightmare — his form corrupted into jagged, flickering geometry, colors bleeding and shifting, features stretched and warped into something that used to be a clown and is now a digital error in the shape of screaming. The abstracted form is deliberately body-horror, designed to show what happens when a human mind rejects the simulation entirely.
Also known as: Kaufmo, The Clown