The Layzell Bros embody America as a destructive but lovable toddler for Sarah Silverman show

After seeing The Layzell Bros comedy music video for Adam Buxton, Sarah Silverman approached the animation and illustration sibling duo to make the title sequence for her new show. The comedian’s Hulu series, I Love You, America, explores unity in an increasingly divided country, so the concept for the 30-second animation depicts the US as a giant, belligerent, but ultimately lovable toddler.

Made from the night sky, and wearing a red and white striped nappy, the character is “large and powerful, and has tantrums from time to time,” the brothers explain, “but overall is pure of heart. It just needs a little love and nurture.”

In the sequence the baby loses its heart, so comes down to earth to find it. “It traverses the vast and varied American landscape, absentmindedly destroying things as it goes,” Paul Layzell says. The duo used the analogy of a infant as a nation because, as they explain, “a nation is an idea, one that’s born from us all. There’s a saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ so our thinking was, it takes a people to raise a nation. The baby is like us – making mistakes from time to time but ultimately looking to be loved”.

Aesthetically, the brothers wanted to recreate a toy town version of America, “chunky, tactile and bright – as if it was built from children’s play blocks… the detail is readable, but not life-like”. In contrast, the “cosmic” baby needed to stand out, so the animators used a mixture of 2D and 3D techniques. The character and parts of the background were made in Cinema 4D, while other elements had hand-painted textures to add a rough, grainy feel.

The Layzells worked with a team including Michael Marczewski and Erin Hilleli, and Blink Industries, which produced the film. It’s set to a song of Sarah Silverman’s choosing: We Do Not Belong by Psychic Friend.

“I think we created something fast, fun and full of colour,” the brothers sum up, “but that still manages to chime with the underlying optimistic sentiment of Sarah’s new show – bringing people together.”