Cloth Cat Newsletter - April 2025


ISSUE 6 - APRIL 2025

April Spotlight - Kim McCarthy

Our Senior Artist Kim McCarthy reflects upon her experience using Blender and Unreal, sharing with us her journey of character creation as a CG artist at Cloth Cat!

Cloth Cat Academy

We have many more exciting courses starting in the coming months! Full details are available on our website. If you're interested in attending an Academy course soon, you can register your interest here. Be sure to check the support section on our website in order to check your eligibility for any bursary funding.

A reminder to make sure you leave enough lead time when applying for any external funding prior to the course beginning in order for your applications to be processed by external bursaries. Media Cymru are also currently offering a ​Development Fund for Freelancers. If eligible, this fund can support any time off you may require from current employment in order to attend training!

Arts & Business Cymru Awards 2025

We are delighted to announce that Cloth Cat has been shortlisted as a finalist for the Arts & Business Cymru Awards 2025. We'd like to say a big thank you to Cardiff Animation Festival for your nomination! The 30th A&B Cymru Awards Ceremony & Dinner will take place at ICC Wales on Thursday 19th June.

Get Animated

Our Managing Director Jon was at The Get Animated Post this month in Birmingham, being a panellist alongside luminaries of the animation industry Julian Bashford, Lou Kneath and Martyn Niman! Jon reported that it was a really informative event over two days and that he was pleased it built on its focus of the business of animation across all age groups.

"This event, and everything in the news since, really brings home the challenges we all face in the industry at the moment. Animation has always been a rewarding business and I'm really glad I get to be a small part of it. I really feel that building new IP and developing for new platforms is the right focus. In the end, we just like telling stories, and our audience enjoys watching them."

Jon Rennie | Managing Director of Cloth Cat

Cardiff Animation Weekender

Here at Cloth Cat we're very excited for Cardiff Animation Weekender at the Chapter Arts Centre next month! From the 17th - 18th May, expect to experience "a vibrant, hybrid programme of animated nostalgia, cult classics and brand new gems," right here in Wales' capital city.

You can check out the full programme of screenings, talks, workshops and social events over at the Cardiff Animation website. Don't forget that the entire weekend kicks off at The Underdog on Friday 16th May, with another edition of Cardiff Animation Nights. See you there!

Cloth Cat’s Top 10 Animated Cats

We have compiled a list of our very favourite animated cats! It was a tough challenge to whittle the list down to just ten! It is still however a work in progress and we're very open to suggestions, so get in touch and let us know if we've missed your favourite!

What are we Watching and Playing?

WATCHING

Resident Alien

Assassination Classroom

A Minecraft Movie

Priscilla

Flow

PLAYING

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Planet of Lana

Storyteller

Cloth Cat

Read more from Cloth Cat

ISSUE 9 - JULY 2025 Help Save Our Upland Water Voles Our second collaboration with the Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru is a wonderfully evocative story highlighting the protection of endangered water voles in Wales. Fully animated and rendered in Blender by the Cloth Cat team, the short film shows how a water vole faces challenges on its way to find a new wetlands home. We’re thrilled to share that the project was featured this month by the Welsh online news service, Nation.Cymru!...

ISSUE 8 - JUNE 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2025 We had a fantastic time at Annecy Animation Festival 2025! Thank you to everyone who made this year’s festival so unforgettable. Jon had lots of positive conversations with friends and partners and would like to give a special mention to Animation UK and Creative Wales for all their support! From spectacular screenings to late-night ice creams by the lake, the festival delivered on its promise of incredible talent, new...

ISSUE 7 - MAY 2025 10 Years of Toot! "Heave-ho, let's go!" We really can't believe it, but it's been 10 years since Toot the Tiny Tugboat was first released! The series was developed from an original picture book by Sebastien Braun called Toot and Pop! It has now been broadcast in multiple countries around the world including the UK, Ireland, Finland, Italy and Canada. All the series animation was completed by the Cloth Cat Team in co-production with producers Lupus Films, the award-winning...