MA3306 ASSIGNMENT 01 INDEPENDENT ANIMATOR/STUDIO PRESENTATION

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 4^th 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.”