Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is a British surrealist musical black comedy psychological horror web and television series created by filmmakers Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling. The series consists of six episodes, released from from 29 July 2011 to 19 June 2016,
through the artists' websites, YouTube and Vimeo. The series combines segments in live action, puppetry, traditional animation, flash animation, clay animation, stop motion, and computer animation.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared
Genre	Comedy horror Musical Surrealism Black comedy Surreal humour Psychological horror Adult puppeteering Adult animation Science fantasy Satire Parody
Created by	Rebecca Sloan Joseph Pelling
Written by	Rebecca Sloan Joseph Pelling Hugo Donkin (2014) Baker Terry
Directed by	Rebecca Sloan Joseph Pelling
Starring	Baker Terry Joseph Pelling Rebecca Sloan
Composer	Joseph Pelling
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	6
Production
Executive producers	James Stevenson Bretton (2014–present) Becky Sloan (2014–present) Joseph Pelling (2014–present) Thomas Ridgewell (2014)
Producers	Benjamin Lole (2014–16) Hugo Donkin (2014–16)
Cinematography	Max Halstead (2014)
Production companies	THIS IS IT Collective (2011) Blink Industries (2014–present) Clapham Road Studios (2014–16) Electric Theatre Collective (2014) Orb Studios (2015) Focus24 (2015) Peckham Liberal Club (2016) ARRI Rental (2016) Panalux (2016) Pixipixel (2016) CHEAT (2016) Conaco (2018–present) Super Deluxe (2018)
Original release
Network	YouTube Vimeo Channel 4
Release	29 July 2011 (2011-07-29) – present

Each episodes starts like a typical children's series, consisting of anthropomorphic puppets akin to those featured in Sesame Street and other popular children's televison series. The series parodies and satirizes these TV programmes by contrasting this childlike, colourful envircreaonment and its inhabitants against disturbing themes; each episode features a surreal plot twist in the climax, including psychedelic content and imagery involving graphic violence, dark humour, shock value, and existentialism and psychological horror. The six episodes explore and discuss the subjects of creativity, time, love, technology, diet, and dreams.

Characters

• Yellow Guy: Yellow Guy is a yellow, blue-haired humanoid with overalls, making the most resemblance to the puppets featured in Sesame Street. He is rather childlike and curious. Yellow Guy doesn't seem to be very smart, as he constantly asks unintelligent questions, being inquisitive as well. He shows much interest in lessons, and his favorite color is green. In Episode 6, it is shown that Yellow Guy is already aware that things will go wrong after inanimate objects come to life when he is scared of Larry the Lamp and begs for him to stop his lesson about dreams.
• Red Guy: Red Guy is a costumed character with a mop-like head. He often expresses disinterest in lessons, as he is generally negative, pessimistic, and seeming to already know about the topics covered in lessons. Red Guy's favorite color is blue.
• Duck: Duck is a green duck wearing a blazer. He is the second most intelligent of the trio after Red Guy. However, Duck is not very smart, as in Episode 3, he mistook a butterfly and maggot for a bee. Duck is also very interested in technology, as seen in the fourth episode. His favorite color is red.
• Sketchbook: Sketchbook is a sketchbook who is the main antagonist in the first episode. She teaches them about creativity, but because of this, she drives the characters insane as they become too creative. When Sketchbook looks at a certain object, she often sees something else. For example, when she looked at an orange, she saw a smiling, walking man instead. Sketchbook believes that green is not a creative color. It often seems that she would like everyone to follow what she views as creativity.
• Tony: Tony is a clock who is the main antagonist in the second episode. He teaches the characters about time, and is obsessed with it. He gets angry at the characters when they question the existence of time, and is also sadistic, as he rapidly increases the characters' ages, causing them to rot. He forces his lesson on the characters, and is selfish, as he cares about himself more than the characters. Tony is also enthusiastic about the future and its advanced technology.
• Shrignold: Shrignold is a butterfly who is the main antagonist in the third episode, his name being an anagram for "holds ring". He, along with his friends, teaches Yellow Guy about love. However, he nearly deceives Yellow Guy into joining a cult which requires him to forget anything he knew and join Malcolm, the cult's object of worship. Other than deceiving Yellow Guy into joining a cult, Shrignold's main goal is to convince Yellow Guy that love is everywhere, even though there is a lot of hatred in the world as well. When Yellow Guy expresses love for a tree and a stick, Shrignold explains that the former must save the love he has for his girlfriend. He seems to be okay when Yellow Guy is confused.
• Colin: Colin is a computer who is the main antagonist in the fourth episode. He teaches the characters about technology, and is very inquisitive. Colin dislikes being touched, as shown when Red Guy touches him. After a few seconds of glitching, the characters find themselves in a digital world which Colin considers to be his home. He manages to trap Yellow Guy and Duck inside his digital world by exciting them with certain activities that can be performed in the digital world. Colin's selfishness is shown when he brags about his intelligence and abilities. His selfishness is also shown when he constantly sings about himself.
• Healthy Band: The Healthy Band is a band of foods and food-associated items who serve as the main antagonists in the fifth episode (except Bread Boy, who doesn't help the band fulfill their intentions). The band teaches the characters about diet, and believes that normal foods such as bread, cream, and aspic are healthy for the body. They believe that eating foods that normally attract people, along with fancy foods, will cause people's teeth "to go grey", meaning that they will have unhealthy teeth. Its members include a slice of bread, a can of spinach, a steak, and a fridge. Their teachings are nonsensical, as Steak teaches that healthy foods are polite to organs, while unhealthy foods are not. He also teaches that fancy foods will clog the body with unnecessary details. When Duck questions the first teaching, Spinach Can becomes angered and interrupts him. Fridge's teachings strangely contradict those of Steak's, as he claims that having people's teeth go grey is a normal thing, and eating yeast will cause it to go away. The Healthy Band manipulates Yellow Guy into eating Duck, sending giant cans to eat his organs.
• Larry: Larry is a lamp who is possibly the main antagonist in the sixth episode. He teaches Yellow Guy about dreams, although the latter is unwilling to learn about them since he knows things will go wrong if an inanimate object comes to life. However, Larry enforces the lesson anyway, teaching Yellow Guy that dreams are movies that live in his head. He talks about the many things Yellow Guy can dream of, and also forces Yellow Guy to dream of riding a horse, an animal he is allergic to. Larry drowns Yellow Guy in oil after he has a nightmare about the same thing happening, and also taunts him about losing his friends by listing it as one of the many things Yellow Guy can dream of.

Production

The creators, Sloan and Pelling, met at a university where they started a collective known as "THIS IS IT". After producing the series' first episode with no budget, they thought of making it into a series, but later decided not to after creating the first episode.

However, it gained popularity, and so, they started a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter to make new episodes. YouTuber Thomas Ridgewell then joined the series after donating.