
literallyhell.com
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Literally Hell is an independent animated web series that is owned by me (Robert Poller) and not owned by any major big studios. And at the moment we are receiving zero funding other than the funding we are receiving through the purchases on this very website.
We do have a Ko-Fi which you can find just below but before donating we highly recommend considering purchasing Literally Hell episode in the cartoon section. Each episode costs £1 per each episode except for the first episode which is entirely free! We plan on making more Literally Hell episodes in the near future (please check out our Twitch stream to keep updated with us currently making more episodes)
We aim to not only make more cartoons but also take them to new heights to create bigger and more compelling projects. We also aim to hire more Artists! After all, Literally Hell has always been a team effort. And the more Artists we hire, the quicker we can be to complete our animated projects.
All donations are highly appreciated. At the moment we only have one reward tier system where for only £1.99 per month you'll have access to all of the behind the scenes of the Literally Hell series.
Also we do sell merchandise through our Shop section which takes you to our redbubble site where we sell stickers, clothing and more! So if you wish to purchase something that is also an option
Why do we charge to watch our Literally Hell episodes?
Now I know what you are thinking at this point. You are probably thinking "why are we charging just to watch some of our Literally Hell cartoon episodes? Especially when there's some cartoons and animations you can watch for free on Youtube!"
That's fine if your thinking that but here are a few pointers from us.
1) Youtube is really unfair towards Animators and Animation channels due to their bias algorithm. They encourage content creators to upload daily/weekly. Animation takes a very long time to make which makes it unfair!
2) A lot of Animators on Youtube work on solo projects that are roughly 10 seconds long. Literally Hell is a group project where we try to challenge ourself to do make better work than what we did before. After all Literally Hell is an award winning cartoon series and it is an award winning series because of the team effort and not just me (Rob)! And we want to evolve into bigger projects in the near future and hire more Artists.
3) A lot of Animations on Youtube make a lot of parody cartoons. Now don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making cartoon parodies (as long as they're follow the copyright fair use laws) but I personally find it quite tiring to watch parody cartoons and very little else. Granted that there are some (not a lot) original works on Youtube. And half the time when you watch original cartoons or animated shorts they in fact stolen! And when you watch an animated video that has been stolen, the ad revenue goes towards the person who has stolen the video and not the original creator. And that sucks!
Also parody cartoons tend to get a lot more attention than original animation does hence why they are a lot of parodies on Youtube. I personally blame this on Youtube's algorithm.
4) On Youtube there are a fair amount of reaction videos. What are reaction videos? Reaction videos is where someone watches another persons video on Youtube and uploads their "reaction" (they're literally filming themselves watching a video) and as an Animator I (me again, Rob) find this to be very problematic! They are essentially stealing content from other content creators and Youtube has been allowing this for a while now. Animation takes a very long time to make so image someone made a reaction video to any of my videos on Youtube, well I can't express enough how mad this'll make me. Once again, they are stealing content from other content creators. You could argue that they may be giving out extra exposure towards another content creator but I don't believe in this instance that the end justifies the means. I don't care if top Youtube's does it, I don't care if anyone else does it, I still consider it stealing content.
5) We are hosting Literally Hell episodes completely ad free! There have been way more ads than ever on Youtube, Google, Facebook, Twitch and literally everywhere on the internet. So I hope puts things into perspective.
Now at this point you might be thinking "Fair enough. But have you consider getting funding from either Patreon, Ko-Fi or Kickstarter?"
First of all yes! We do have a Ko-Fi. In case you couldn't tell, it is at the very top of this page! You can donate £1.99 a month to have access to behind the scenes of my Literally Hell series such as deleted scenes, storyboards, commentary videos and more! And yet we are still charging to watch our Literally Hell episodes. Here's why.
1) When it comes to art in general, most people don't care how it is made not will they care how long the piece of art will take. Therefore, most people won't care about the behind the scenes stuff and therefore, will not donate. How often do you watch a movie or a series and then watch the behind the scenes stuff? I'm going to guess that most of you don't bother looking up behind the scenes stuff from the movie you have watched and honestly I'm just the scene. I very rarely check out the behind the scenes stuff myself. I am guilty of that too.
2) We charge £1 per each Literally Hell episode which is very cheap in my opinion. Granted that you may not be getting a lot of content with that £1 but I believe it's the best that I can do in our current situation. Now you could argue that by the time we make 10 episodes (if we ever get to complete the series) it would cost you £9 to watch the entire series (first episode will still be free to watch on Youtube) and from there you may think that the price is too high for what we are offering. That's honestly fine if you're thinking that but please consider that we are an independent studio thats literally running from my bedroom. And as proof, here is an image of my office/bedroom.

Literally Hell is owned by me only (once again, Robert Poller) and not owned by any major company. And we are doing the very best of what we can do.
3) Once again, Literally Hell is a collaborative project and always has been since the pilot episode (check out the hell team in the about section) and because it is a collaborative project, I tend to hire professionals to get on board with the project. I hire voice actors/actresses sounds designers and would like to hire more if we get enough funding. And some of the people are expensive to hire but they are professionals after all. You don't hire a professional without paying professional fee. And by hiring professionals raises the chances of winning more rewards at film festivals and getting our series notice. How can I afford this? I live very frugally. In recent years I never go out a spend a lot of money (except for the things I do need i.e food/rent. I don't go out drinking at all (costs too much) and I don't really hang out with friends. I spend most of my time working on Literally Hell cartoon series. And I do have a part time job which you can find more about the the 'Our finical situation' just below.
4) Why not Kickstarter right? Well unfortunately for my current situation Kickstarter is way more harder and riskier to meet our goal. Not only I would have to ask for a lot more money but also set up more rewards tiers for the kickstarter goal. And to top it all of, I would have to work out how to market the crowdfunding campaign which could also cost a lot of money. And I did try to run a crowdfunding campaign for Literally Hell episode 3 and it got bombed! Simply because I didn't strategies on how to market the series (but I end up making Literally Hell episode 3 anyways because I believed in it so much.)
5) Why not pitch Literally Hell as a TV series? Well first of all trying to get a TV series is incredibly difficult. Especially that I don't work within the animation industry. And yes you can argue that a cartoon show like 'Regular Show' was picked up by just a storyboard video on its own and we offer so much more than that. I believe I'm just simply not as lucky enough to get a TV series. But you know what's the next best thing besides from a TV series? An internet web series. However, There use to be a local filmmakers meet up group in my local area which I use to go to regularly to meet producers and other filmmakers. Sadly They have stop hosting ever since covid/lockdown and have mostly being held on zoom meetings. However, I have recently spoken to the guy who use to host these local meet ups and he said he's planning on re-hosting the events again. And from there I'll be able to meet up with a producer and maybe take Literally Hell to the next level. Well here's hoping.
6) How about hosting Literally Hell NFT's? I don't trust in NFT's. I personally believe that NFT's have too much of a bad reputation to be anything good. and the reputation of Literally Hell is so important to me that I dare not risk getting involved in NFT's. What are NFT's? Look them up on Youtube. I'm far too busy to start explaining about that.
Also I've heard that NFT's are bad for the environment too so take that into consideration too.
Don't believe us?
You don't believe us? that's fine. You have every right to not believe that we tell you and that's perfectly fine. If you like you can contact me here and ask me anything you like. Or you can ask me during my Twitch streams. I don't know what my stream schedule is just yet but if I'm not live you can still email me. and I'll do my utmost best to get back to you unless if your being incredibly rude and hugely disrespectful and therefore, I'll just ignore you or block you. Please do be respectful when sending me emails.
But before sending me anything, here's a couple of things you should take into consideration.
1) Animation takes me a lot of time to make and therefore it's probably going to take a while for the next short, episode or whatever I'm animating. I will try and keep you guys updated on my Twitch channel. If you think animation is somehow easy to make then by that logic, every single Youtube channel would be an animation channel! Every single one of them. It would make some much more that there would be a lot more animation channels if making animations was easy to make.
2) I tend to be very busy when it comes to making animations meaning that it may take me a while to reply to your email. I will do my utmost best to reply but please bare aware that I tend to get very busy.
3) Please don't email me about NFT's. I've already expressed my personal views on that and I'm simply not interested.
Our finical situation
At the moment me and my team are only able to making Literally Hell cartoons part time only. I (Rob) personally would love to do this full time but at the moment I do have another part time job and I am unable to quit my part time job at this very moment. I am currently working part time as a ride operator at a theme park. Not an animation job, a minimum wage job at a them park. I don't even work in the animation industry as it is incredible tough to get into.
However, hope is not lost just yet! I do plan on streaming animating through Twitch streams as mentioned before. By streaming through Twitch will allow us to expose us making more Literally Hell cartoons and therefore, extra publicity! So check us out!