Bobby Bedford, Jr.
Web Animation
Saturday 8-12
Instructor:
Waqas Hussain
7-27-13
Simon Tofield
I decided to do my paper on Simon Tofield
who is an English Animator. He
attended De Montfort University and studied Graphics and Animation. He now works as an animator and
director in London at Tandem Films. If you go to www.simonscat.com you can be
briefly informed about the artist and the YouTube series called Simon’s Cat.
The colorless animation that he does is about a cat that is always causing
trouble around the house while the owner is just trying to live his daily life.
Simon’s Cat made his first appearance online in a short film called “Cat Man Do”
on March 4th 2008. Ever since then he’s appeared in games, books and
even comics.
Some of his interest includes painting, wildlife, the great
outdoors and his cats. He started animating at a young age and he use to create
basic flip books and try to get the same effect as the cartoons he would watch
on T.V. as a child. He has a
sketchy style and he likes to keep things loose and natural. I can relate when
it comes to keeping the lines loose and sort of organic to get that natural
feel.
He got the idea to make the animation
series Simon’s Cat from his own cat named Hugh. He was originally just trying
to teach himself how to “Flash” He said that his cat was trying to wake him up
because he was hungry and so Simon thought it would make a great animation. So
he went and made the animation and uploaded it to YouTube and later on when we
checked the views he noticed his animation had gotten millions of views. He couldn’t think of a name at the time
so he said he might as well name it after himself since his cat was his
inspiration for making the animation series and the fact that the people he
worked with would always ask him what is going to do with his cat and thus
Simon’s Cat came about.. The sound is recorded after he’s done animating and
all of the sounds that come from the cat are from Simon himself. The other
noises that are produced are by his friend and he’s known as Shrooty who is a
sound designer.
He works in the program Flash to create
the Simon’s Cat animations. Everything is animated frame by frame. He said it
usually takes 12 to 25 frames to make one second. Simon himself animates the
Simon’s Cat animations and he has his four cats named Jess, Maisy, Teddy, and
Hugh to continue to bring him inspiration for more stories.
He say’s the best story ideas for Simon’s
Cat has to come from life. He’s able to add more information the book series, because
it gives him a chance to go out in the world and see how his cat reacts and
interacts with other animals or just different objects he finds lying around.
He can also add more characters that we don’t see in films that he creates. He
feels honored that his simple idea blossomed into something so great. In the
beginning he didn’t promote himself. All he did was post one video on YouTube
and he saw that he had something going and so he continued with by making more
videos, books, games, and comics.
Like I mentioned in the beginning, Simon
is an animator and a director of Tandem films. They are located in Islington, North London. Tandem is an
Oscar winning animation studio that specialize in making creative short films
and commercials. “We believe in the craft of animation and enjoy the
collaborative process of production. We represent world-class directors working
in every conceivable animation style and technique.”
