Welcome to Sam Cotton's colourful, cartoonish Sydney home

In social media sensation Sam Cotton’s world, art and comedy are ever present.

Best known for his hilarious and touching videos of everyday happenings overlain with hand-drawn illustration, the actor, artist, writer and animator has an affinity for seagulls, a playful love of colour and a bower bird-esque eye for collecting.

All of this is reflected in the three-storey townhouse in Sydney’s Inner West that he shares with his wife, voiceover artist Maddie, and their baby daughter Daisy.

Colourful birdlife adorns the walls and rugs; cushions take gull, crab and jellyfish form; Cotton’s animated creations peer out at visitors; and “chippie chaser” cartoon seagulls are displayed on the wall above the sofa.

“I’m too old to be thinking the way I do, but I’m always thinking of weird stuff and imagining little stories,” Cotton says. “I like to challenge myself and see how magical I can make the most mundane things.”

When the couple first inspected the property after years of renting, they saw the stark white walls, which had an “airport waiting lounge” feel, as blank canvases with endless possibilities.

“We felt stifled a lot of the time with these rental places,” Cotton says. “That’s probably why we’ve gone so hard with this place; we felt like we were bursting at the seams to express ourselves.”

With a chocolate-brown kitchen bench guiding the colour scheme, Cotton “mucked about” with the illustration program Procreate until he had a bold palette for the interior. A painter was hired to apply the pots of Porter’s Paints, and then the couple moved into their vibrant abode.

“There was definitely a part of me that was like, ‘What have I done?’ if I’m going to be honest,” Cotton says with a laugh. “But, after a night or two, we really loved it because it felt like us.”

The family’s kitchen is now “Uluru red”, inspired by Cotton’s time spent in the Northern Territory as a child, and the living room is a contrasting deep aqua for his love of the ocean.

“I like feeling like you’re under the water,” Cotton explains.

The “fun-house” approach extends to the doors, with each one painted a different hue.

Cotton says he isn’t sure why, exactly, although he has always thought a doorway represents endless opportunities for storytelling.

“We have had a lot of fun decorating,” he says. “We have a rule that if it makes us smile, we do it; it’s that playful quality we share.”

The front door is red on one side and blue on the other. Daisy’s room has a bright yellow door, and a deep purple one leads up to “the retreat” – the lovely large main-bedroom suite at the top of the house, which is painted in calming pink, and where far-reaching views over Sydney rooftops can be enjoyed.

There are even two mini doors in the house for their “little lodger”, Steve, a small cartoon fella who Cotton refers to as a “cranky fisherman”. You’ll see Steve featured in the attached video.

If he had his way, Cotton says, each plant and tree in their courtyard garden would also have a small door stuck on it, a little makeshift community living in his backyard.

“My wife was like, ‘You’ve got work to do,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, you’ve got a good point,’ so I didn’t do that,” he says, deadpan.

Working from home, Cotton, whose delightful animations have garnered him more than four million followers on Instagram and TikTok combined, has learned to separate productivity and relaxation with a dedicated workspace.

An occupational hazard (along with a wardrobe of “tracky dacks”) is the risk of working all night when an exciting idea strikes.

Collectors’ items clutter his desk, mostly figurines and memorabilia from childhood favourites – Lego, The Simpsons, Jaws, Seinfeld and Larry David, the latter two informing his love of comedy and acting.

Cotton plays the lead role in the comedy-drama Diary of an Uber Driver, appeared in the TV show Colin from Accounts and was the voice of Chippy the Afghan hound in Bluey.

“I’ve got a lot of childish stuff, like things I loved as a kid, that had a profound effect on me or inspired me,” Cotton says. “My justification is that when you were a kid, that was when magic was real. You didn’t know how things were made; you didn’t know how it all worked.”

Childhood influences run deep for Cotton, who has dedicated time to drawing daily for as long as he can remember.

His grandmother, an avid art collector who had Albert Namatjira and Pro Hart originals (one of which Cotton inherited), once told him that each frame was “a window into a little story”. That struck a chord, and a fascination with art began.

“I’ve got a huge, huge art collection,” he says. “I’ve been collecting for a long time, but it’s really stepped up since I got the house, because now I have a place to put it all.”

The majority of his collection is work by friends, like the lino prints by American folk musician Gregory Alan Isakov. He traded him for a copy of his book, Chippie Chasers, and some animated stickers.

“He was probably pretty bummed out by all that,” he half-jokes. “I should have drawn him something.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, many of his collected artworks feature birds, another lifelong fixation.

“Ever since I was a kid, watching birds compared to watching other animals, there’s always some sort of storytelling going on, some sort of drama,” he says. “They’re getting into arguments, there’s romance … if you watch birds for long enough, you’ll see a little story.”

These “stories”, and capturing them, often dominate family strolls to nearby Victoria Park, where Cotton secures much of his bird footage while enjoying a takeaway coffee.

Every bird has its own loveable quirks, but the Aussie battler, the seagull, is a real favourite.

“It’d be tough being a seagull,” he says, pondering. “Like, imagine if every time you had to eat, you had to rob somebody; it’s a nightmare.”

Cotton says that bird watching, whether in the garden, from his bedroom window or while walking around the neighbourhood, is his favourite pastime. As a result, his iPhone storage is full to bursting, his mind always racing with ideas.

“I’ve always got my head in the clouds, but it’s okay because I love it there,” he says.