IndieSpam

Street Catz recently dropped out of nowhere on YouTube to a shockingly good reception. This is the first major project by the YouTube animator GameBoyCat. Gameboycat, or Game Morrison, has previously been rather unknown as he has mostly just made short animated skits with prerecorded audio, often taken from other videos or movies. A couple days ago he released his first pilot based on his fictional band named Street Catz. Game has himself produced a couple albums previously which is where the song that appears in the episode comes from. As soon as the pilot was released he suddenly grew a larger audience and the Pilot now has over 300k views on YouTube.

The plot follow a couple of different colored cats: Shank (Andrew Chaney), Blitz (Jay Blep), Rox (Anthony Kirven), and Game (GameBoyCat). They are a band of misfits seemingly on their way to their next concert when Game gets hungry. After asking to stop to eat a chain of fights within the group leads them to all be sent to prison. The show is a character driven comedy where the enjoyment comes from the characters interactions. The characters are got very clear and defined personalities that are made certain at a glance.

Street Catz is limited but not limiting

GameBoyCat pretty clearly has an affinity for classic rock and The Beatles which shines through his work. In earlier releases on his channel he has made Beatles covers, reanimated clips from the Beatles cartoon. The whole episode feels like the best of the 60s packed together neatly in one 6 minute episode which is Street Catz. Watching this short, I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of authenticity.

Although this show is a modern production Game’s love for old Beatles cartoons shine through from the animation style, the soundtrack, to even the accents the characters speak with. Everything with this Pilot screams charm. You don’t usually get something as authentic from modern animatio; indie or otherwise.

The two first two things that I could think of when I watched Street Catz were the Beatles (obviously) and the Hanna Barbera show TopCat. I’m unsure if the characters where in any way inspired by TopCat. It seems like Game might have an interest in furry characters so the fact that they are cats may be truly incidental. The main reason why I thought of it was mostly because of the limited style the show uses.

Hanna Barbera cartoons were mostly made at a low budget and therefore used looping backgrounds, limited movement, and collars separating the head and body for easier animation. Although this cartoon was most definitely inspired by the Beatles cartoon, there is still a lot of overlap considering that both cartoons took a cheaper, made for tv approach which translates into a lot of the same compromises. I think the style fits very well for a YouTube pilot and if you like those old shows I would Definitely give this a watch.

The show feels incredibly stylistically coherent. Yesterday I reviewed Gnome Show and I felt somewhat miffed as I felt that the show sort of betrayed its own premise to create low hanging jokes revolving around ill-fit curses said by pure and wholesome creatures. I didn’t feel anything close to that watching Street Catz.

Everything feels fully realized and a bigger budget wouldn’t necessarily increase the value of this project except for maybe the length and some small quality fixes. These characters have been worked on for multiple years on Games YouTube channel and we see that the earlier incarnations are, to me, a lot more cookie cutter and bland. I’m really happy he took this direction and I hope there are more episodes to come with a larger scope. The show definitely feels limited but not in a way that limits my enjoyment of it.