![]() ![]() But in the process, says Sloan, "we lost the creepiness and claustrophobia at the heart of the show."Īlso missing was the unnerving ambiguity, adds Pelling: "looking back at those strange early kids' shows - there's no premise to them, they just start and there's no explanation. They made an initial pilot for a US company back in 2016, expanding the world, adding a load of new characters and even some commentary on current affairs. Unwilling to compromise, it took them a while to find the right commissioner. Their journey to TV, however, would take a bit longer. ![]() Yellow Guy, Duck and Red Guy play guitar (credit: Channel 4)Īfter that first short was screened at Sundance Film Festival in 2012, Channel 4's Random Acts commissioned a second episode in 2013 and a Kickstarter campaign raised over £100,000 for four more. We would rather create an unsettling feeling that you can't quite put your finger on why," says Sloan. "We're conscious of not doing horror and gore for the sake of it. It set the tone for the films that followed: what begins as a cheerful guide to an everyday subject inevitably takes a dark turn, as the object-teacher becomes increasingly tyrannical and the portents like raw meat pile up. your Team Americas and Chuckys - Don't Hug Me I'm Scared was more insidious. But whereas most had dialled up the filth and gore for shock value - i.e. It wasn't the first film to corrupt children's TV for laughs and scares, nor even to use puppets for those ends. Lending itself to scaring your friends, it fast became a word-of-mouth hit and gathered a cult following. Don't Hug Me I'm Scared was one of those mysterious videos that seemingly emerged from the ether. It was certainly far enough to go viral, and truly viral at that. Thankfully, says Pelling, "I think they just thought we were moronic art students who'd gone too far. The fire brigade were called and what they found when they turned up sounds like a murder scene: blood and organs splattered the table, and someone was fanning the fire alarm with a blood-soaked table cloth. Meanwhile their shoestring budget could only afford them "these shitty lights from eBay," says Sloan, and during an all-nighter they ended up melting the roof. "The day before shooting, I remember Joe being like: 'maybe we should have made the main character first.'" And so the sketchbook was born. ![]() "The sketchbook was meant to be a little girl puppet, but I couldn't make it because I was really bad at making human characters," admits Sloan. It turns out that they stumbled onto the inanimate object motif. "I think they just thought we were moronic art students who'd gone too far. "We would make some pretty terrible stuff together," he admits, "stuff that no one should ever see." But it was on just such a weekend that they roped their friends into the haphazard - and hazardous - first shoot for Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. The two met at Kingston University where they were studying similar courses ( Pelling - Illustration and Animation, Sloan - Fine Art), and having graduated they were renting a studio together to get creative at weekends. Sloan says they were also inspired by kids' shows from the 1950s and 60s, shows that may have aspired to innocence but that, now outdated, feel creepy, like the "very English and weird" Watch with Mother (1952-1973). "It may have been as simple as, 'Wouldn't it be nice to build a felt set and some puppets in this corner of the studio to just mess around with,'" says Pelling of its genesis. It's Sesame Street by way of David Lynch, and instead of the life lessons, you get a heaping of existential dread.įor such a brilliantly idiosyncratic series, they make it sound surprisingly straightforward. Red Guy, Yellow Guy and Duck (a man in a red onesie and a mop for a head, plus two puppets) are back to face a new bunch of evil inanimate objects, but this time they are tortured over six, 30-minute parts. The horribly funny puppet show Don't Hug Me I'm Scared first landed on YouTube in 2011, and the voice of that sketchbook has haunted my dreams ever since. It belongs to Becky Sloan who, alongside co-creators Joe Pelling and Baker Terry, is currently haunting us all over again with a new expanded series on Channel 4. But as the sketchbook begins to preach the wonders of creativity more and more aggressively, slowly but surely the puppets descend into madness. ![]()
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