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.