“I think this is the best case scenario for me because when that auction was taken down, I just had no idea where it was going to go. “He’s offered a lot of insight into the NFT space, and I’ve learned a lot from him,” Torres says. The buyer has chosen to remain anonymous, but Torres has developed a rapport with him. “I still can’t believe that happened,” he says weeks later. On February 19, the GIF sold for 300 ETH, worth about $574,536 at the time of the high-profile sale. Earlier this year, he decided to post a “remastered” Nyan Cat as an NFT on Foundation, a highly exclusive platform for NFT artists. “It was such a breath of fresh air coming into the NFT space, because it’s just proof of ownership almost immediately,” Torres says.
One of numerous Nyan Cat variations Chris TorresĪnd now, Nyan Cat is, of course, an NFT. In November 2019, the game Nyan Cat: Lost in Space, originally created in 2011 as an app, was rereleased for the Nintendo Switch. Over the years, Torres continued to iterate on Nyan Cat between 20, he made Nyan Cat GIFs with New Years glasses. Nyan Cat never really left the cultural zeitgeist – even on Google Docs, you can be an anonymous Nyan Cat (this is one of Torres’ favorite adaptations of the artwork). “I am firmly in the camp that meme culture is an art form, and this brought it more to mainstream culture, saying, ‘No, memes are serious, this art is something that we own copyright for, and you can’t just iterate on it like that,’” she says. Internet librarian and meme expert Amanda Brennan, the senior director of trends at social media marketing agency XX Artists, says that this moment marked a shift in how meme makers took ownership over their work. (Torres says he’s not at liberty to discuss the settlement.) They received a settlement for an undisclosed sum in 2013.
So the two cat creators sued for violation of copy and trademark rights. The game included Nyan Cat and Keyboard Cat as characters without asking permission from Torres and Charlie Schmidt, the person behind Keyboard Cat.
and 5th Cell released the video game Scribblenauts Unlimited. This problem became public in November 2012, when Warner Bros. “It took like two years to prove ownership of my work, and it wasn’t an easy time.” “I started noticing that several people had filed forms to copyright my image, like official U.S. Within two weeks of posting Nyan Cat, Torres was already fighting to prove his copyright. Though Torres enjoyed the ability to remain anonymous in public, he shared a common hurdle with all the meme creators: maintaining ownership of their work.
“I was like, should I just put all my time and energy into this? I did, and it was the best choice I ever made.”Ĭhris Torres with Tron Guy (remember him?!) at ROFLCon 2012 Chris Torres “There came a point a year later where I just had to choose: Do I stick with this job, or do I give it a chance and see where Nyan Cat takes me?” he says. He was traveling the world, attending different meme conferences and cat video conventions, but it was difficult to balance the demands of being a meme creator with those of his day job. But for Torres, being Nyan Cat Guy wasn’t always Pop-Tarts and rainbows. In 2012, Cheezburger editor Emily Huh theorized why the internet was so drawn to felines: “Cat owners don't have a ‘cat park’ or a place where they can congregate in person to talk about their cats like how dog owners have a dog park to talk about their dogs.” So, the internet became a virtual “cat park,” and the eye-popping, slightly ridiculous Nyan Cat fit right in.īy the summer of 2011, Nyan Cat was everywhere: There were cosplays and an official video game YouTube even added a custom Nyan Cat progress bar to the video. I think that's what it's all about - when the internet just kind of understands an image and chooses it as something that they want to share with others."Ĭats have been long-running stars on the internet - think of Grumpy Cat, Coughing Cat, Keyboard Cat, or the Kitty Cat Dance. “I posted it on the internet, the internet loved it, and it just organically took off from there. “It was never meant to be anything that it became,” says the now 35-year-old artist. Today, Torres says he could never have anticipated this turn of events. From there, his GIF became one of the most ubiquitous images on the internet. By the time Torres was starting his new insurance job, the video had been picked up by CollegeHumor and E4’s Attack of the Show.
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