Can you believe it’s been ten years since the birth of Nyan Cat? It was the perfect meme: a cat, a pop tart, pixelated animation, and a rainbow. Once the song was added, it took over the internet. I mean, really: Neatorama has six pages of posts in the search result. On its tenth anniversary, we may as well find out how Nyan Cat came about and what’s happened since then. Input magazine talked to artist Chris Torres about April of 2011, when he had just started a new job that had nothing to do with memes.
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At the time, Torres was also a digital artist with a small following on his website LOL Comics. A few weeks earlier, after a disastrous magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit Japan, unleashing a massive tsunami, he set up an impromptu charity livestream, doodling viewers’ requests while taking in donations earmarked for the American Red Cross. One fan requested a cat, while another requested a Pop-Tart. Torres decided to combine the two ideas into one doodle: a grey cat that looked like his own pet, Marty, but with a pink Pop-Tart body.
As the meme took off, Torres found himself in a battle to reclaim his creation that was running wild, making money for other people. It eventually came to the point he had to choose between Nyan Cat and his “real job.” Read the story of Torres’ viral kitty here. -via Digg
Source: neatorama