Llamas with Hats

"Llamas with Hats" is a dark comedy, animated video series produced by FilmCow, an independent company created by Jason Steele. The first episode was released in 2009, with twelve episodes total.[1] The first video introduces Carl and Paul, two llamas that share an apartment, and focuses on Paul's reaction to Carl's murder of a human. It became progressively darker as time went on, with the final episode culminating in Carl's suicide some time after Paul has died.[2]

Llamas with Hats
Directed byJason Steele
Produced byJason Steele
Written byJason Steele
StarringChris Alex and Jason Steele
Music byJason Steele
Production
company
FilmCow
Release date
February 19, 2009 (episode 1) - February 12, 2015 (episode 12)

Characters

Carl, voiced by Chris Alex,[3] is a gray llama who wears a green hat. He describes himself as "a dangerous sociopath with a long history of violence".[4]

Paul, voiced by Jason Steele,[3] is a brown llama who wears a pink hat. His name and gender are unknown until the third episode.[5]

Plot

The first video opens with Paul confronting Carl over the dead body he has discovered in their living room.[6] After questioning Carl, Paul discovers that Carl has eaten the dead man's hands in addition to murdering him. Carl's actions escalate with each episode. In the second, Carl murders several people on a cruise ship before eventually causing its destruction with no survivors, as Carl disables all the other lifeboats.[7] The third has Carl destroy an unnamed South American country's government and gather the bodies of orphans for the purpose of constructing a "meat dragon".[5] In the fourth, Carl destroys the city in which he and Paul live with a nuclear weapon and ties the citizen's faces to balloons, which rain down from the sky, allegedly as a surprise for Paul's birthday.[4] The fifth opens with Carl detailing a seemingly-harmless day, only to reveal he has created a rift in the fabric of the universe from which he may harvest the severed hands from countless babies.[8] In the sixth, Paul makes the decision to move out and Carl has completed the dragon first mentioned in episode three.[9] Subsequent episodes show Carl trying and failing to replace Paul,[10] an attempt to reconcile,[11] and Carl's further mental decay until he throws himself from a bridge in the finale upon discovering Paul's remains (and after Carl had destroyed all other life on Earth).[2]

Production

According to Steele, his vision for the series evolved after fans successfully predicted that Carl would blow up the earth in the fifth episode.[12]

Steele recorded the audio for the series using Amadeus Pro and edited it all together in Final Cut Pro.[13] Adobe Flash was used to draw individual characters, while Adobe Photoshop was used to draw the backgrounds for the series.[13] The program Magpie Pro 2 was used for lip syncing, and the series itself was animated in Adobe After Effects.[13]

Reception

The American television series The Good Wife made reference to the series in the episode "Killer Song," which aired on March 29, 2011.[14]

Steele, when interviewed with E.O. Wilson for Good Alice's Handbook of Midwifery, stated that The Residents tonal-poem cover of the Robert Johnson song, "Dirty Gumbo", was used as his artistic muse during the early creative process.

Storybook

A storybook called, "Llamas with Hats: Babies" was released in August 2019, nearly three years after the finale was released on YouTube.

Games

Two games were created by Steele following the success of the series, the Llamas with Hats: Hungry for Hands Card Game in 2017[15] and Llamas with Hats: Cruise Catastrophe in 2013, a mobile game available in the iTunes store for Apple devices and the Google Play store for Android.[16] Steele released a set of text message stickers for Apple devices in 2017.[17]

gollark: Idea: raise children on untyped lambda calculus.
gollark: Cool, it has MANY pronouns.
gollark: > Māori distinguishes between long and short vowels; modern written texts usually mark the long vowels with a macron.IT SPREADS.
gollark: Statistically, you OBVIOUSLY can.
gollark: > The 2013 New Zealand census reported that about 149,000 people, or 3.7% of the New Zealand population, could hold a conversation in Māori about everyday things.[2][6] As of 2015, 55% of Māori adults reported some knowledge of the language; of these, 64% use Māori at home and around 50,000 people can speak the language "very well" or "well".[1]

References
  1. "Llamas with Hats 1-12: The Complete Series". YouTube. 9 May 2015.
  2. "Llamas with Hats 12". YouTube. 12 February 2015.
  3. "Llamas with Hats". Internet Movie Database.
  4. "Llamas with Hats 4". YouTube. 15 December 2010.
  5. "Llamas with Hats 3". YouTube. 3 September 2010.
  6. "Llamas with Hats". YouTube. 19 February 2009.
  7. "Llamas with Hats 2". YouTube. 21 December 2009.
  8. "Llamas with Hats 5". YouTube. 27 March 2014.
  9. "Llamas with Hats 6". YouTube. 14 May 2014.
  10. "Llamas with Hats 7". YouTube. 22 November 2014.
  11. "Llamas with Hats 8". YouTube. 30 December 2014.
  12. Steele, Jason (12 February 2015). "Llamas with Hats: An Explanation". www.filmcow.com.
  13. Steele, Jason (23 May 2011). "How to make a cartoon about llamas… | FilmCow.com". www.filmcow.com. Retrieved 2018-04-20.
  14. Jr, James Whitmore (2011-03-29), Killer Song, Julianna Margulies, Matt Czuchry, Archie Panjabi, retrieved 2018-04-19
  15. "Llamas with Hats: Hungry for Hands Card Game". YouTube. 23 March 2017.
  16. "Llamas with Hats: Cruise Catastrophe iOS and Android Game". YouTube. 17 August 2013.
  17. "Llamas with Hats Stickers on the App Store". App Store. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.