Originally published 2018-10-06.
Steve Cutts is the London illustrator and animator behind MAN, the 2012 short in which a cartoon man wipes out the natural world, and Moby’s 2016 music video “Are You Lost in the World Like Me?”, a bleak and funny portrait of smartphone addiction. His films borrow the bouncy, rubber-limbed look of 1930s cartoons and use it to show people sleepwalking through consumerism, screens and environmental destruction. The contrast between cheerful style and grim subject is the whole point.
Below is a guide to who he is, his best-known films, and why his work keeps finding new audiences years after release.
Who Steve Cutts is
Cutts describes himself simply as an illustrator and animator, and his work as satire of the excesses of modern society. Before going freelance in 2012 he worked as an illustrator at Glue Isobar, a London creative agency, on digital campaigns for brands including Coca-Cola, Sony and Toyota.
That background is part of what makes his work sharp. He spent years inside the advertising machine he now mocks, and his films often look like the commercials and cartoons they are attacking. His visual influences are the animation of the 1920s and 1930s, especially the Fleischer studio of Betty Boop and Popeye, along with modern comics and graphic novels.
MAN (2012): humanity’s relationship with nature
MAN was released on YouTube in December 2012 and became his breakthrough. Made in Adobe Flash and After Effects, it follows a single grinning man through history as he kills, consumes and pollutes everything around him, set to Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”. Its themes are environmentalism and animal rights, and Cutts has described it as a look at our relationship with the natural world.
The film’s simplicity is its strength. There is no dialogue, just escalation, and an ending that turns the joke back on the audience. Its reach has kept growing: it passed 68 million YouTube views by December 2024, more than double the figure it had when it first went viral.
“Are You Lost in the World Like Me?” (2016)
In October 2016 Moby and the Void Pacific Choir released the video for “Are You Lost in the World Like Me?”, from the album These Systems Are Failing, with animation by Cutts. Drawn in the style of Max Fleischer’s cartoons, it follows a young man through a city where everyone stares at their phones, chasing likes and notifications while real life passes them by.
The video made Cutts one of the best-known names in independent animation. It won the 2017 Webby Award for animation, and the same year it received a Jury Award at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, one of the most important events of its kind. On Moby’s channel alone it has been watched more than 13 million times.
Why the satire works
Satire exaggerates to make a pattern visible. Nobody literally walks off a cliff while looking at a phone, but the image makes a feeling instantly recognisable. Cutts’s films work in a few consistent ways:
- Familiar style, uncomfortable message. The cartoon look lowers our guard, so the critique lands harder.
- Repetition. Crowds of identical figures, endless queues and looping routines show how ordinary habits add up to something absurd.
- No easy villain. The target is usually all of us. The viewer is invited to recognise themselves rather than blame someone else.
Cutts has explained his motivation in interviews in plain terms. “I see a lot of insanity in the way we live,” he has said, adding that he sees commenting on the times as part of an artist’s role and wants his work to get people thinking and talking. It is worth remembering that these are deliberately one-sided works of art, not documentaries. Their job is to provoke a conversation, and they do it well.
A typical Cutts illustration: dense, crowded and built around a single visual joke about modern life. Illustration by Steve Cutts.
Other films worth watching
Happiness (2017). A four-minute short in which a rat searches for fulfilment in a city of rats, a very literal take on the rat race. It moves through shopping, commuting, advertising and pills in quick succession. The film site Short of the Week called it his sharpest criticism of capitalism and consumer culture, and praised its detailed, crowded backgrounds.
The Simpsons couch gag (2016). Cutts created a couch gag for season 27 of The Simpsons, a homage to 1980s action cartoons, which has itself drawn millions of views.
“In This Cold Place.” A second video for Moby and the Void Pacific Choir, continuing the themes of the first.
His website also lists earlier short pieces such as In the Fall and What a Hunt, and he sells prints of his illustrations.
(The Facebook video originally embedded here is no longer available.)
Recognition and influence
The awards kept coming after Annecy. Cutts won a Webby in the Film and Video Animation category for a second year running in 2018, and the same year the director Ridley Scott selected his work for the New Directors’ Showcase at Cannes Lions, a 12-film programme of emerging talent.
Perhaps the bigger measure of his influence is how often his images circulate without his name attached. Stills from MAN and his illustrations of phone-obsessed crowds are shared widely on social media, frequently uncredited. If you enjoy his work, the best way to support it is to watch it on his own channels and buy from his official shop.
Sources: Steve Cutts (official site); Steve Cutts (Wikipedia); MAN on YouTube; Moby & The Void Pacific Choir, official video; Short of the Week: Happiness.
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