YouTube creator Half-Asleep Chris builds a family-friendly world of cats and contraptions
Chris Burton, known online as Half-Asleep Chris, has attracted more than a billion views with videos featuring cats, Lego, elaborate machines and theme-park-style projects. He says he wants his content to encourage creativity and co-viewing rather than chase only the largest audiences.
Chris Burton, the YouTube creator known as Half-Asleep Chris, has built an audience of more than five million subscribers with videos about cats, Lego, machines and elaborate homemade projects. His videos have attracted more than a billion views, although Burton says the projects that take the longest do not always perform best. A 14-month garden jungle boat ride received 9.1 million views, while a video of him playing hide-and-seek with his cat Bella reached 49 million.
Burton has also sent a working Lego rollercoaster into space. That project received 2.4 million views, fewer than a video in which Bella inspected a Lego city, which reached 21 million. About 45% of his audience is in the United States and 10% is in the UK, according to the supplied report.
Burton says he wants his videos to be family-friendly without being simplistic, and hopes parents and children will watch them together. His first book, The Unordinary Book of Ideas, offers projects using household materials and encourages children to spend time making things. Burton is critical of content he considers excessive or lacking value, and says he is concerned about artificial intelligence replacing the learning that comes through completing a project.
Burton is also redesigning part of his home as a recreation of London’s Rainforest Cafe. The project follows the recent death of Bella, who was 17.
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