The creator of Denis and Me builds his career with Roblox

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Sir Meows A Lot wants his tuna.

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Having only legs poses a problem of access to the container for the hungry feline. The solution? Clone his roommate and have him open a tin can. At the end of the episode, the cat is still hungry and the place is ransacked by the wandering doppelganger. It’s a typical adventure of Denis and me.

Created by Vancouver-based YouTuber Denis Kopotun – also known as Denis Daily – the under-five-minute kids’ show on Wildbrain’s Family Channel is produced by Headspinner Productions of Toronto and hosted by Cartoon Conrad of Beaverbrook, New York. -Scotland.

It’s the latest hit from the 25-year-old’s fertile mind, who started posting videos online at the age of 11 as a fun creative outlet. By 19, he had dropped out of college to pursue his passion full-time and become an internet sensation with his Minecraft and Roblox gaming spots. Some 5,000 views later, Kopotun’s subscriber base is close to 10 million. His most popular video peaked at 30 million views.

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No wonder the animation industry is knocking on his door.

Now in its second season, Denis et moi, is based on characters that Kopotun developed while playing Roblox. The online gaming platform developed by Roblox Corporation allows users to program their games and participate in the creations of other players.

“Ever since I was little, I really loved creating things starting with clay stop-motion when I was a kid,” Kopotun said. “It naturally progressed to YouTube where I ventured into everything from animation to technical tutorial videos on things like how to take a screenshot on a MacBook. The show flowed organically. , because I took one of my favorite animal characters from my childhood given a voice that people put in the game they were playing and Roblox let me create Sir Meows a Lot as a sidekick prop .

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It didn’t take long for Denis and Sir Meows a Lot to become a well-known online team in the Roblox world. When the opportunity arose to take the animated duo’s Roblox adventures into the world of a cartoon, he jumped at the idea.

Headspinner Productions president Michelle Melanson learned about the spots through co-creator and showrunner Diana Moore, whose son was a big fan of Denis. She says the experience of taking Denis and me to the next level has been amazing.

“Here’s this great Canadian creator who built this incredibly popular world and had this great way of portraying it in his videos,” Melanson said. “When the opportunity arose to take this local YouTube star to an animated series, we jumped on it, but the company didn’t follow right away. We proved them wrong with our incredible numbers, not only on YouTube, but also on linear channels like WildBrain TV.”

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This is the first time in his 30-year career that a show has benefited from such a hands-off approach due to the massive audience Kopotun has built for his creative expressions. Not thinking too much about it and letting the creator achieve the “playful, silly fun” they know works is not the norm for all productions. But Denis et moi is motivated by fans on many levels.

“We brought in another fan of the show to be our animation studio with Cartoon Conrad,” Melanson said. “The found studio, Luke Conrad, contacted us because his son is also a big fan and he wanted to be a part of it. So we do the show across the country with a team of about 50 animators who put on the show in a studio from Nova Scotia, me and Diane in Toronto doing post-production with a crew of about five at Supersonic and Denis recording in his closet in Vancouver.”

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Benefiting from provincial tax credits and government funds, Denis and I proved possible on a shoestring budget. But now it’s become a phenomenon and the next step is to take it global. With nearly 400,000 subscribers just for animated YouTube content and over 22 million views for seasons one and two, the product is in the big kids’ playground.

Anticipating the next step, there are full fan product offerings and more. Yes, it’s incredibly cute.

Denis and Me is a pretty impressive achievement for someone with no formal training in early childhood education, screenwriting, or other skills typically associated with such programming. Kopotun says he is happy to tell silly stories, do funny voices, and entertain.

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“I think if you had asked me when I was four or five years old what I wanted to be when I grew up, I probably would have said ‘doing a cartoon, that was my real dream from childhood and life. ‘adulthood,'” he said. “I also think that as you create more and more YouTube content, you take a step forward in how to keep your audience engaged, that is- i.e. to have some sort of story with a setup and build and a punch at the end I think it’s all related to the passion I’ve been pursuing but I have no formal training in all of this.

A particularly popular episode of Denis et moi is titled Lemonade standoff. Kopotun takes into account that he certainly had similar business ventures in his youth, and he learned an important lesson.

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“When an adult wants to pay you $10 for a 25-cent lemonade while the teenagers hanging out argue, that should only be a penny would make my week,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite episodes because I still clearly remember the experience.”

Initially, building his brand meant five years of spending more than eight hours a day in front of a screen. This followed nearly a decade of previous online creation without compensation. Today, he says he goes out of his life for different experiences to inspire spot ideas. He notes these real-world moments to consider them as future virtual entertainment.

Four 11-minute specials aired in February to test the rollout of longer episodes in the future.

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