Hello I'm Simon Tofield creator of Simon's Cat and this is the director's commentary for Teddy's Tale
That's actually the back of my old house where I used to live,
always draw what you know that's my little tip.
Who is in the Box??
Now this comes from the idea of the long-standing gag really that the cats go out every day,
you don't know where they've gone but they're always having their little adventures,
and they when they whenever they come back they're never hungry, so this was the idea
that the cat is going from neighbor to neighbor and he's got different ways of
getting food, so here he is pulling the heartstrings of a kindly old lady
ohh, he's not alone
And here he is just being an opportunist looking out for
any little scrap bit that someone's left behind.
This dog is actually based on
somebody works with Simon's Cat dog called Bingley so it's a nice sort of Labrador, Golden Labrador
This garden is owned by Mr Potts the grumpy gardener who hates Simon's Cat
because he's always making a mess of his garden so you can see here from the debris
in this garden that he's obviously done it a number of times to annoy Mr Potts
Some of these backgrounds were taken from the cartoon books that I've made so
they're quite good reference if ever I need an idea for a garden
The little stone lion there
The books are very handy for putting little one-liners
and little gags in the film A constant source of material
Oh he's got a heart of gold really Simon's Cat Go on Teddy
This is interesting, that is my the back of my old house there with its little window
and little glass roof
*Meow*
Simon's Cat is
teaching how to how to ask for food
I
had to think of a way to make this window look like a little girl's
window so I stuck some little stickers on it, just to help with the illusion there
Here he is, hapless Simon, I always do Simon as a bit of a chump
So he's just a poor old long-suffering cat owner
You can never win
See the cat's already eaten a lot so he's not that hungry
Next day it's off again, he's gonna do the rounds all over again
Now here's Teddy, this is the first time you see him properly
We did make a film about Teddy and it went down
so well, that we thought it'd be really nice to do a kind of an origin story of Teddy
Now my he's based on my real cat called Teddy, and he was found in a box
by a dog walker, so this is a kind of a little homage to that really
That poor old Teddy lived in a box, he's made the Box he's home though in this version
It's one of my favorite characters who lives in there, a little kleptomaniac hedgehog
So here's the cat trying to 'sell' Teddy trying to make him look very presentable
So I like to do all the voices for these characters and the various ladies are basically me
putting on voices and we normally turn it up an octave or two when we do the sound
The lizard, the bearded dragon, going by on the Rumba there was actually a
little bit of foreshadowing showing that that lady likes to sort of... err she's
got kind of exotic tastes, and likes to dress her animals up so err it wasn't really for Teddy
he didn't like it there very much
*Meowing*
This little hedgehog here is turning out to be quite a character there
He just likes to collect things, and hopefully that comes across with his little decorated house
*Meow!*
This could be my house here and my six cats now
To keep the animation down, to keep the costs down for the animation,
which you've always got to be aware of when you're making these films, we just make the eyes move
So there's a lot of cats there but only all they do is blink really and look
Teddy's quite a shy cat he doesn't really like a lot of noise and fuss
*Meow*
Simon's Cat takes him to his own house, here he is, here's the gnome
After his last experience of the kittens, that's it he's out there
Aww poor old Simon's Cat
So the third day
There's Teddy, he's repaired his little house he's got his little toy there
And this is a new character, we called her Tess because she's quite similar to Teddy
He has to remember the lessons that Simon's Cat taught him how to how to beg for food
And we designed Tess so she looked a bit like Teddy
So you have that old gag of the owner looking like the pet, and vice versa
Here's the cat, he goes off to find Teddy again only to find that he's gone
Which has been removed, so now the cat panics and goes on a mad hunt to find him
Here comes the old lady again. I first drew this old lady in one of
the comic books I did and now she's become an animated character which is nice
The cat's not concentrating so he's getting hit by all the Mr potts's missiles
He's obviously having his lunch
I just love the fact that this little hedgehog has just collected things
over the years that he finds
Ohh he's seen the cup, nice, I think I'll have that he says
Simon trying again, no the cat doesn't want even the Salmon
A bit of a sleepless night here, looking slightly worse for wear
The real life Teddy's a very soft old lovable old bear
he's looking a bit old now but he's still he's still lovable
This is based on an animation director's house
called Rachel who works for Simon's Cat and she designed this back garden
*There you go*
We've given Simon a red shirt in this scene because he's always wearing
blue and it's nice to give him some different clothes occasionally
Don't waste that, The Kitten doesn't waste any food
and there the cat goes off with his new best friend off they go on new adventures
so you see that Teddy did actually get a happy ending in the end
These last little credits are quite fun because you can kind of expand the universe a bit and
show them show people what they're getting up to next so there's the little hedgehog of all these
these new gear
There's Teddy happily ever after with Tess
And there's the bearded dragon who's bit of a character
so I hope you enjoyed the little talk through
and it was nice to do a a film about Teddy after we did that first film, he got such a response and
people were so upset I suppose, the fact that it wasn't kind of rounded off and we don't really
know what happened to him in the end of that very first film, that we thought we have to do like
a little follow-up and and show you know Teddy's tale give it a happy ending so Teddy's fine
People were worrying about poor little teddy living under a bush so you know he's fine he's looked
after by Tess now who loves him dearly and is also living next to Simon's Cat and they're the best of friends
so it all ended well for Teddy!
I hope you enjoyed my little talk through and hopefully see you soon for the next one goodbye *Meow!*