Simon’s Cat is a feline cartoon character created by Simon Tofield. Simon’s Cat first appeared online in 2008 in a short animated film called ‘Cat Man Do’; the funny video shown here. The cat is based on Hugh, a cat owned by Tofield, who is shown in the video as a young kitten trying to wake Simon in order to get fed. The kitten resorts to more and more extreme measures in order to wake Simon.
This is Simon Tofield’s first animation to be released online, appearing on Youtube for the first time on 4 March, 2008. Today (Oct 2012) it has over 37 million views. The reason why this video is so popular is that any cat owner can empathize with cartoon Simon’s humorous plight in the video. The animation is a little messy, but that’s no surprise, as this was Tofield’s first attempt at using Flash, a digital animation software program. In the four years since this video was posted, Simon Tofield has become a highly proficient animator whose work contains many classical animation gags but also own a special magic that belongs to this animator alone.
Simon Tofield does all of the “voices” for his animations himself; miaowing like a cat, squeaking like a rodent and chirruping like a bird. The only character that isn’t voiced by Tofield is the Robin in ‘Snow Business‘. You can visit the animator, Simon Tofield, and his sound designer, Shrooty, on Youtube or at the Simon’s Cat website.
