An animated image of a cat flying through space has brought a St. Edward’s University student online fame.

A co-creator of the video, senior Patrick Jones, told Hilltop Views about how the video was made. He said he and another person, who did not want to be identified, created the “Nyan Cat [original]” YouTube video that has taken over the Internet. They uploaded the 8-bit animation, depicting a cat with the body of a Pop Tart flying through outer space, a rainbow trailing behind and a repetitive song playing in the background, to YouTube on April 5.

The image of the cat, originally called Pop Tart Cat, was created by online personality prguitarman and uploaded on his daily comics website Lol-Comics on April 2. Jones said they found the image through the Tumblr of Anamanaguchi, a chiptune band from New York City that did the soundtrack for the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” game. They combined the image with the song “Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya” by Japanese artist daniwellP to make the video.

“I thought combining the two together was really funny,” Jones said.

The video received a few thousand views the first day it was posted, but it went viral after it was featured on G4’s “Attack of the Show.” By the end of the week, Nyan Cat broke one million views.

The video was also featured on the blog of Daniel Tosh, host of Comedy Central’s “Tosh.0,” and a website devoted solely to Nyan Cat was created on April 25. The website tracks how long visitors have “nyaned” and allows them to post their times to Twitter or Facebook.

Fans began to post imitation videos, with parodies and remixes popping up soon after the video hit a million views. A YouTube search for “nyan cat” yields almost 5,000 results, and videos range from a Nyan Cat piano cover to a video of Slipknot’s “Psychosocial,” muted, with the Nyan Cat song playing in the background.

“There’s one called Tacnayn now, which is a ‘dark’ Nyan Cat made up of a waffle instead of a Pop Tart. There’s also a Gorillaz version, which is just a slowed down version of the song to a Gorillaz video, and it’s surprisingly awesome,” Jones said. “Someone played it over Thom Yorke’s dance from the ‘Lotus Flower’ video by Radiohead — those are just some notable ones.”

Jones has contacted the woman in Japan whose voice is sampled, as well as prguitarman, who has started selling Nyan Cat T-shirts and promoting a free iPhone app.

“They’re both really nice… It’s been fun. I see people reposting it on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, all with their own reactions and variations on it,” Jones said. “The reaction to Nyan Cat has been very positive. We’re at about 6 million views now, so obviously a lot of people find it fun.”

Jones encouraged others to put into action their creative ideas and upload them online.

“Don’t be afraid — our idea was pretty simple, even bordering on stupid, but a lot of people liked it,” he said. “Many of us still don’t understand how far the Internet reaches and just how influential it is.”

Jones experienced the Internet’s reach last week, when Anamanaguchi came to Austin. While he stood in line at the venue, Jones talked to the drummer and told him that he helped create the Nyan Cat video after finding the image on Anamanaguchi’s Tumblr.

“Not only did they like it, they gave us a free shirt and we got to hang out with them,” Jones said. “It seems strange how it all came full circle like that, but I guess that’s how the Internet works.”