"Llamas with Hats" is a black comedy adult animated web series produced by FilmCow,^[1] an independent company created by Jason Steele after the success of his viral short film Charlie the Unicorn. The first episode was released in 2009, with twelve episodes total.^[2] 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.^[3]

Characters

Carl, voiced by Chris Alex,^[4] is a grey llama who wears a green hat. In episode 4, he describes himself as "a dangerous sociopath with a long history of violence".^[5]

Paul, voiced by Jason Steele,^[4] is a beige llama who wears a red hat with a flower on it. His name and gender are unknown until episode 3.^[6]

Plot

The first video opens with Paul confronting Carl over the dead human body he has discovered in their living room.^[7] Paul questions Carl and discovers that he ate the dead man's hands after 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 he disabled all the other lifeboats.^[8] The third has Carl destroy an unnamed South American country's government and gather the bodies of orphans to construct a "meat dragon".^[6] In the fourth, Carl destroys the city in which he and Paul live with a nuclear weapon and ties the citizens' faces to balloons, which rain down from the sky, allegedly as a surprise for Paul's birthday.^[5] 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 of countless babies.^[9] In the sixth, Paul makes the decision to move out after getting sick of Carl, who has completed the meat dragon mentioned in episode three.^[10] In the seventh, Carl makes a mask of Paul, trying and failing to replace him with a sheep which he puts the mask on.^[11] In the eighth, Carl visits Paul's apartment in an attempt to reconcile, sending him an "apology piano" and "swan piano". He talks to himself while mimicking Paul, alternating between his and Paul's voice.^[12] Episodes nine through to eleven show Carl's further mental decay, hallucinating that the Paul mask became possessed,^[13] and later getting deluded that the mask was Paul, which convinces Carl (who was in reality convincing himself) to "finish [his] work",^[14] leading to the destruction of all life on Earth.^[15] In the finale, Carl discovers Paul's remains, following his death some time between episodes eight and twelve. With his delusions ceased, and no purpose left, Carl tearfully commits suicide by jumping from a bridge.^[3]

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.^[16]

Steele recorded the audio for the series using Amadeus Pro and edited it all together in Final Cut Pro.^[17] Adobe Flash was used to draw individual characters, while Adobe Photoshop was used to draw the backgrounds for the series.^[17] The program Magpie Pro 2 was used for lip syncing, and the series itself was animated in Adobe After Effects.^[17]

Reception

The American television series The Good Wife made reference to the series in the episode "Killer Song," which aired on March 29, 2011.^[18] The series has received over 120 million views on YouTube.

Storybook

A storybook called, "Llamas with Hats: Babies" was released in August 2019, nearly 4 years after the finale was released on YouTube. ^[19]

Games

Two games were created by Steele following the success of the series, the Llamas with Hats: Hungry for Hands Card Game in 2017^[20] 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.^[21] Steele released a set of text message stickers for Apple devices in 2017.^[22]

References