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  • Hello I'm Simon Tofield, and this, is the Simon's Cat story.

  • I've always loved to draw, as far back as I can remember I have always been drawing.

  • As a boy growing up in Leighton Buzzard, I'd love to draw wildlife, I was especially interested

  • in drawing birds, and I'd draw on any paper I could find.

  • I got my first cat when I was nine years old, her name was Shelly she was a very shy, very

  • timid little farm cat.

  • As I got older I kept on drawing and drawing, still wildlife was my favourite subject. But

  • I also started getting interested in doing animation a round about that time too.

  • I'd thought I would teach myself to animate by, creating flip books that were basically

  • big fat pads of paper, which I drew in from the back and worked my way forward. When they

  • were flicked, they created animation, and I was hooked.

  • Drawing was the only thing I could really do so I became... An animator.

  • Back then we used to sit at old wooden light boxes drawing on animation paper. I worked

  • like this as a commercial animator for about 13 years, mostly doing adverts for TV.

  • I thought I'd better have a go at making digital animation. I needed to teach myself this new

  • way of animating. I was still drawing hundreds of pictures, but drawing them onto the Wacom

  • tablet, straight into the computer.

  • So I made my short film about my own cat Hugh trying to get my attention in the morning,

  • to be fed.

  • Although I didn't know it at the time, someone copied this little film off my showreel and

  • uploaded it onto Youtube.

  • And by the time I saw it and realised what had happened the film had become very popular.

  • So in 2008 we launched the official Simons Cat Youtube channel and the Simonscat.com

  • website.

  • The character of Simon's cat still doesn't really have a proper name, but in real life

  • I have four cats, there is little Jess, big Maisy, greedy Hugh and fluffy Teddy.

  • And so between all four of them, they give my loads of ideas and stories for Simon's

  • Cat.

  • People often ask me why don't we release Simon's Cat films more often, the truth is, it takes

  • about two to three months to make a Simon's Cat film. I first work on the story idea,

  • and then it takes most of that time to get the animation done.

  • Ive got a small team of very talented animators helping me now, I direct the episodes and

  • we work together to create the films.

  • Although we are working on computers Simon's Cat is all hand drawn animation. It is made

  • frame by frame and it just takes a long time to make each episode.

  • I am still drawing all the time, filling up sketch books with ideas for stories and gags.

  • I feel really lucky to be doing what I love, and it is fantastic to know that there is

  • an audience out there waiting to see what Simon's Cat gets up to next.

Hello I'm Simon Tofield, and this, is the Simon's Cat story.

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