Simon's Cat

Started in 2009,

subscribers

3,647,143

Simon's Cat's is a series by Simon Tofield, of funny cartoons of a cat and his owner Simon released every month. He uses a simple black and white hand drawn style, with no real dialogue. It is light humour that can be understood by all ages. Simon's Cat has been turned into a book and into short Disney videos.

Box Clever

Cat Man Do

Simon's Cat videos

Francine Harvey

Jeff Klima from the website newmediarockstars.com interviewed Simon Tofield about when he reached 3 million subscribers (Klima, 2014),

Top Comments

Why do you think “Simon’s Cat” has resonated on YouTube the way it has?

Jeff Klima

Simon Tofield

My animation focuses on cat behaviour — I think this is endearing for lots of “Simon’s Cat” fans because they can see their own cat in our films.

Jeff Klima

What’s your advice to YouTube animators who’d like to achieve your level of success?

Stick to what you know. I was an animator who loved cats and was fortunate enough to combine the two. Try finding something you are really interested in and know a lot about and combine that with your animation. Also, don’t be afraid to try new and different animation techniques.

Simon Tofield

What’s next for “Simon’s Cat”?

Jeff Klima

Simon Tofield

We are developing a crowdfunding campaign that will be hopefully launched in July. This is to develop a longer episode of “Simon’s Cat,” in colour! We are really all excited about the possibilities that crowdfunding can offer and we hope that our fans are excited about the project too!

Simon Tofield answers a few commonly asked questions he has about his videos on his FAQ section on his website at (Simon's Cat, n.d.),

Francine Harvey

Why does it take so long to make each Simon’s Cat film?
The films are made using Adobe Flash or TV Paint animation software and are hand-animated in a traditional manner, frame by frame. It usually takes between 12 and 25 drawings to create 1 second of a Simon’s Cat film. Each film can take 10-14 weeks to make, depending on the length, number of characters and complexity.

What software and hardware do you use to animate each episode of Simon’s Cat?
We use a mix of Adobe Flash and TV Paint software, using Wacom Cintiqs or tablets to draw directly in to the computer.. The films are roughed out first to establish timings, and then reworked over a matter of weeks, depending on the complexity of the film. Once animation is approved, the line is ‘cleaned up’ then characters and objects filled with white.

Simon Tofield

Simon's Cat is successful because he creates animations about what he knows and experiences,(Klima, 2014). Also a lot of people own cats so will be relevant and relatable to them.

The hand drawn black and white style is nostalgic for people as it's similar to the cartoons in newspapers and old cartoons.

Cat videos have been a very popular trend on the internet for many years which has always been associated with YouTube, where "'Funny cats' in the title and description generate an average of 24K views,"(Marshall,2015) meaning the animations are part of this trend.

He is getting his fans involved to help him create the longer episodes (Klima, 2014), making them feel a part of his projects.

His light humour with little dialogue can be understood by nearly all ages and languages meaning it has the potential to be famous around the world.

Francine Harvey

Simon Tofield created a "Draw my Life" video which is a popular trend for Youtube which he tells us about how he started Simon's Cat and what he's been doing since he started with a series of drawings but instead uses his animations to tell the story. (Simon's Cat, 2013),

"I was interested in British Wildlife and my cats.

I started animating at a very young age, I was inspired by cartoons and TV and created flipbooks.

I drew a lot of drawings of wildlife when I was younger and then taught myself animation with flipbooks at university.

After university I made adverts as a commercial animator.

I taught myself digital animation by using my Wacom tablet drawing straight onto the computer.

I made a video about my cat Hugh wanting to be fed... Then I saw someone copied the video from his showreel and put it on Youtube and it had become very popular.

So I launched Simon's Cat on Youtube and the website in 2008.

I use my own cat for ideas for my videos.

It takes 2-3 months to makes a video... I start on the story and the rest of the time to create the animation with a team of animators which I direct.

The animations are all hand drawn and are frame by frame. There are 12-15 drawings for one second of the video.

My films focus on cat behaviour... fans can see their own cat in the films... cat films are very popular on Youtube.

I'm developing a crowd funding campaign to develop a longer episode of Simon's Cat in colour."