Hello human people, I’m Neil Patrice Crumpets,
and welcome to the Eddsworld Documentary! *party horn* Where we have thrills… (yeesss)…
Spills… “we basically water-boarded him” … And shifty eyes! What’s that you say? You don’t know what
Eddsworld is? Well, I’ll give you a quick update, by downloading over 10 years’ of
Eddsworld history directly into your brain, HERE WE GOOOO- well then, now that you’re
all caught up, let’s get on with the informational programming. Say a friendly human greeting to the lovely
meatbags responsible for the legacy of Edd Gould and his show, Eddsworld! My name is Matt Hargreaves and I play Matt
in Eddsworld as well as doing a few other things behind the scenes.
My name is Thomas “TomSka” Ridgewell, and I am the co-writer and co-producer and
co-person in it of Eddsworld. I’m good at talking as well. Professional. Hi there, I’m Eddie Bowley, and I am the
co-writer and co-producer of Eddsworld, alongside Tom, and I also do the voice of Jon, the neighbour,
“I thought she said we were stupid”. Ha he did the thing! I did the thing! I’ve known Edd for a long time through the
newgrounds community, comix community, I used to do a web comic, and Edd was a fan of it,
and we kind of traded messages and stuff and I saw “hey, you do these great cartoons!
You know, let’s be friends.” And so then yeah, we’d meet up at all these conventions
and just hang out and have a really good time and we’d do like cameo voices for each other,
like he’d do something for me, I’d do something for him, and yeah, just bean a firm
fan of the show for a long long time Uhh, actually, I’m underwater, as are you. Hmmm, clearly one of us is lying, so I’m
going to wait until the truth comes out. Fine with me. *drowning gargles* I got involved with Eddsworld somewhere along
the lines of eleven or so years ago, when I first met Edd on a website called stick
suicide and he was making just these really terrible kind of stick man animations, but
to me, at the age of twelve or so I was like “this is the best thing ever” and I just
kind of spammed him until eventually we were friends. Then when kind of Eddsworld started
up where it is now which was with me, Edd, Matt, and Tord, I was there, I was in his
cartoon, because he basically just drew his friends, so when I became one of his friends
he drew me even though I wasn’t voicing my own character at that time. “I guess we will have to judge who is naughty
and who is nice.” Eventually I got a microphone and my voice
broke, “yeah”, and I started being in it. “Pardon me, neighbour, what a lovely day!
Could we perchance borrow a cup of your finest sugar?” “Oh God, you’ve got to help us, our house
is haunted… oh goly… monument… does anyone have a pair of trousers?!” Eddsworld began, for me, when I met Edd, he
was already actually making a comic called Eddsworld with his friends in it, it was him,
David, and a couple of other guys, and then we found a couple of animation tools on the
school computers, various simple GIF stuff with stick figures. Logically, he went from
drawing his friends as the much better drawn characters on the comic, to stick figures,
and then it was then when he got a bit better and he found Flash, eventually I was kind
of drawn into it, in terms of well literally being drawn into the Eddsworld world.
*Dun dun duuunnn* “Matt?” He was always doodling, he was just like,
he always wanted to animate – he was just in his own world – yeah I suppose so. One of the main reasons I think it advanced,
it went further, was he got terribly bullied when he was at junior school, and he began,
people used to watch his doodlings and drawings, and as he did the animations he got more recognised. I think he would have done it anyway. He was having kids throw things at him from
the back of the class and things like that before that, and it was his way of escaping
his own little world, and that’s when he met Matt obviously, and they were both being bullied. And yet the characters were always, just happened
to be his friends from school. In college, he boomed, I think the second
that people got more mature around him, college he’s now like a legend. I mean, a friend
of did the same course he did the next year after and Edward was literally the example
he used, he was the person they were like “this is how you do it more or less” and
he was on the wall, his work was being displayed. And all the time also, when he was in hospital,
it was the fans and this that kept him going, most definitely.
In some strange way, I think he was literally happy to be able to just sit at the computer
and have no one question him, because all day he could sit at the computer, and no one’s
ever going to go like, “why aren’t you gonna, you know go outside and play in the
pond” no no no, he can sit and do exactly what he wants to do literally all day every
day, exactly what he did. He liked making jokes though, that was his
whole thing, just laughing all the time. My journey of becoming kind of involved in
Eddsworld was very very gradual, it was just like one little step at a time. I think the
first instance of me being in Eddsworld was something I’d drawn myself, a character
of me that Edd actually just added that drawing into the cartoon, and then eventually it evolved
into him drawing me, and then it became a voiced character that wasn’t even voiced
by me, then it was voiced by me and then very soon I started writing my own lines because
he’d give me lines and I’d be like “I’m not saying that, I’m saying my own thing”.
“Hmm, what a perplex- what a perplexing crime! Hey, you there! Stop!” “Chase scene chase scene chase scene chase
scene, he’s gonna catch the bad guy, he’s gonna catch the bad guy, detective cool so
awesome, yeah!” I really can’t say how long ago it was,
maybe it was ten years ago, maybe it was eleven years ago, but Edd had me “sign” a “contract”
for my involvement in Eddsworld, where basically it was like this thing he’d drawn in paint
that was like “you belong to Eddsworld and if you ever leave I will kill you”, and
I signed that unknowingly, and I’m stuck for life now – that was legally binding. It’s really hard to say exactly when I guess
I kind of became a “partner”, and I don’t know if it’s quite presumptuous to say that
because I’m sure if Edd were here he’d be like, “you’re not my partner, you are
my subservient!”. I think I started becoming a much bigger role in Eddsworld around about
when I was about 18/19, when I kind of formally started writing fully with Edd, like actually
coming up with the whole episodes, and becoming very involved in the creation of the episode.
You know, I started doing the soundscapes myself, I started providing a lot of the music.
I think Spares is the first episode where it’s like very much me, because that episode
was almost entirely written by me, I did almost all the music, and I did all the sound design
and stuff. So I think that’s kind of the first time I started become very involved,
very very involved in the cartoon. “Oh, bugger”. I remember sitting around, Edd didn’t have
any idea what he wanted to do for the next animation, I wrote down a list of things that
he had already done, followed by a list of kind of stereotypical things we could do.
“Well, we could do cowboys, or we could do like, go to space, or hey, what about Atlantis!”,
and then specifically for the Atlantis one he went, “Nah, that’s stupid idea, we’re
not doing that”. Two weeks later, he started animating 25ft Under The Seat, where we all
go to Atlantis, and he can’t remember it, he said “no, I don’t remember you saying
that”. 25ft Under The Seat was pretty much written while we were in Devon on holiday,
me and Edd, we were walking down the street, and we had already got to the point where
we were talking about going underwater and all that and the Atlantis thing. We were trying
to go back and forth, and he’s like, “what about something like 20,000 Leagues Under
The Sea” he’s like, “yeah, well how do they get there, what about they go down
the toilet” it’s like, “okay great, they go down the toilet” “I know, how
about 25ft Under The Seat”, he goes, “why?”, “because it rhymes! 20,000 leagues under
the sea, leagues, sea, 25 feet ”. He was like, “okay, that works”, and I think
my biggest claim to fame is naming that episode. I thought that WTFuture was a big turning
point, I love that one, that’s the one I watched like because I liked it more than
because Edd made it, d’you know what I mean? I watched it more than once, and I think that
was the first time I started telling friends about it. It was the first time I would like
pull a friend over and say “watch this!”. The one that made me laugh the most was seeing
Victoria playing a female Edd, I’ve always wondered what a female Edd would like, I thought
that was very funny. Of all the kids I teach, that’s a funny
thing, all the kids I teach will make references. I’ve heard one of my students say “I like
trains.” And I was ecstatic. But I like I don’t know, I played it cool, it felt
a bit like opening, I didn’t want to like, because shouting “my brother’s Edd”,
it was two things at the same time, because I know they’d be excited, but at the same
time there would immediately sort of be this sense of complete sadness. It was kind of
nice keeping it to myself. I think one of my favourite things that has
ever happened with Eddsworld is when we were making WTFuture, and there needed to be a
scene where Edd got blasted with a keg of cola *drowning noises*. To do that, basically
we just put towels on Edd. “This is how we do it at Eddsworld studios(!)”
And then just poured- basically water boarded him… We just poured water on Edd’s face
whilst he had to scream the line. “Son of a bi---*gargling*” Edd wasn’t a very good voice actor, so you’d
have to go to very extreme lengths to get him to perform. So I couldn’t be like “Edd,
just gargle some water in your mouth and then say the line”. No, we had to properly drown
him to get that line out there, which is good. I had fun. He didn’t. But I did, and that’s
what matters. Wow, waterboarding, new found friends, and
it seems Eddsworld was getting bigger and better, as Edd kept on creating, the world
began spinning faster and faster, snowballing in popularity. He gained a fandom, worked
with numerous companies and even made the news. “From his bedroom in Lincoln, Edd Gould is helping to shape the views of next generation,
on the controversial issue of climate change.” However, in 2011, a cancer that Edd had already
fought into remission once made an unexpected return. With acute lymphoblastic leukaemia,
a cancer of the white blood cells, Edd and his world momentarily stopped spinning. A
few days later, Edd released a video featuring hinmself, Thomas Ridgewell, and Matt Hargreaves
discussing the diagnosis: “I’m going to be away from a computer
for a while, so work on comics and animations is probably going to be pretty slack because
of the gravity of this illness”. The Eddheads rallied online with a battle
cry that shook the world into spinning once again. “Edd, kick cancer in the head!” *explosion*
Despite his illness, Edd carried on creating. He started work on a new Eddisode, Space Face.
“He’s doing something stupid again, isn’t he?”
“Yep.” “Do we know what it is yet?”
“Nope, but I’m sure we’re going to find out.” But sadly, despite all odds, on the morning
of March 25th 2012, Edd Gould sadly passed away after a 6-year-long battle cancer. Eddheads
from all around the world banded together and shared their love for their late friend,
and inspiration. “Cheers to Edd”
“Cheers to Edd”, “To Edd” “To Edd Gould”
“To Edd” “For Edd” Edd’s final wish was for his world to keep
on spinning, and in June 2012 Eddsworld Legacy was created under the banner “save the show,
save the world” and save the world they did. Raising over 83 thousand dollars, the show came back to life and Eddsworld kept on spinning. But that’s enough of me, let’s find out
how the team got involved with the legacy, the difficulties of taking over the show,
and replacing the heart and voice of the show, Edd. How I got into Eddsworld Legacy was Edd dying essentially half way through one of the animations.
Space Face Part 1, even though that it was already split in to two animations, he died
halfway through animating it – we really wanted to see it finished, Tom decided to
do a kickstarter. Hey Eddheads, right so first of all I want
to let all the awesome people that donated to Eddsworld legacy know where their perks
are and what’s happening and stuff, but quickly I want to apologise for us all not
getting on with Eddsworld as quick as we should have. It’s taking us a while to come to terms with losing Edd, and it’s making it difficult to be funny. “Knock knock”, “who's there?”, “I’m sad” We got pumped up like “yes, yes let’s
do that, that’s great!” and then we got all the money and it’s like ohhh, I guess
we have to do this then. Even though I consider myself a pessimist,
I never really planned for the eventuality that Edd may die, because everyone else in
his life took his cancer so seriously and everyone would always be so sad around him,
I didn't want to be like that, I wanted to be very encouraging and very, kind of treat
his cancer like an inconvenience, kind of in the way he did. So whenever I went to visit
him I would be like “oh my god, what happened(!)” and like “get out of bed, you're so lazy”. “eah buddy you gon’ kick its ass, dancing”
“This isn’t actually Edd having leukaemia the first time, this is it actually returning,” “so if this was a film it would be called
“return of the leukaemia”” But y’know because of that, we never really
properly discussed what would happen if Edd had died and we had kind of joked about getting
him in to my apartment and just recording like hundreds of random lines of dialogue
like “oh no, a banana!”, and just get him through loads of lines of dialogue so
that if he did die we could kind of keep the show going with his voice and just write episodes
around what he said, “There’s a shark!”
“I’ve longed for this day” “back to the property market!”
The day before he died, Paul and I had a conversation, kind of a joking conversation about like,
“oh if Edd dies we will have to get a voice changer or something” and it was like really
dark but then all of that really did happen. “Well this isn't my voice” The Eddsworld Legacy fundraiser was my idea,
and it was probably one of my worst ideas to date, because I really didn't know what
I was getting myself into. We wanted to keep the show going, and Edd wanted us to keep
the show going, and Edd’s mum really wanted us to keep the show going, and the fans wanted
us to keep the show going. But I thought that if I funded the show out of the profits the
show was making through merchandise and stuff that people would accuse me of essentially
profiting off Edd’s death, so I said like I promised I would give all money the show
made directly to charity, but that we would need fan money to kind of help us run the
show and people were still mean anyway and still accuse me of embezzling anyway, so in
hindsight I probably shouldn't have done the fundraiser the way I did. Once that money
was given to us, suddenly it went from being this thing we wanted to do for our friend,
to this absolute obligation and that made it very kind of scary and I think that put
a lot of people off being involved in it. I probably should have just used the money
the show was making to fund the show and then just kind of just accepted that people were
going to be mean anyway, and just lived with that, but I really did bring it on myself
by starting this fundraiser – I burped. I was nervous about taking over Eddsworld,
and in terms of doing legacy if I'm entirely honest, initially I didn't want to do it at
all, I hated the idea, but after a while I really became far more motivated. It probably
took me two years to actually get to the point where I am so happy that we are doing that’s
saying a lot as we are almost up to three years. I'm glad we’ve done it, I'm glad
we’ve kept it going and its really amazing seeing the response we’ve had from the fans,
and even people who have never seen the show before.
I wasn't so much nervous about taking over Eddsworld, I was actually more just incredibly
over confident. When I lost Edd all I wanted to do was business, and just find something
positive that could happen because it’s like this is terrible there is nothing good
about this, maybe we can make something good, give people hope y’know, keep the show going,
I don't know what I’m doing ahhhh. So y’know, we start this fundraiser and it was all big
plans and big hope, and I worked with Paul and it was like Paul do you reckon you could
make like an episode every few months, and how much do you think we will need, and then
we realised, “oh we’re stupid we have no idea what we are doing”
“I hate this part” I guess the only real reason I thought I was
qualified to take over y’know as a show runner was because Edd had for the first time
ever, signed off on an episode I had 100% written, I had written Space Face Part 1 and
Part 2 all by myself and he was like, “yep, this is great” and he had no notes on it
and maybe, maybe that was because he was so sick and wasn't thinking straight but y’know
I had finally written an episode that he needed, so basically he had kind of signed off on
this idea that I could write like him. If I hadn’t written space face before we had
lost Edd I probably wouldn’t have had that confidence, y’know that knowledge that I
know how he would have thought. “Matt, remember that I time I told you I
didn’t hate you?” “yeah”
“I lied” “oh” My first involvement in the legacy was Fun Dead, Tom approached me saying that he was
struggling with the script. I said sure, send me what you got, what I saw was that he only
had most of the first scene, and that was kind of it and a list of jokes, but nothing
really to sort of thread them together. I went ahead and had a go of the script myself
and connected those jokes together and created some new ones, and it essentially created
almost the final version of Fun Dead. “Please keep arms and legs inside the ride
at all times.” I think tom just saw that I was very keen
to just do as much as I could for the show and he saw that I could probably handle a
lot of responsibilities, so he asked if I would also step up and become co-producer
of the show so that involved liaising with the animators, keeping up a good rapport with
everyone, and just kind of keeping everything together so that we could get this project
finally out. Yeah I was nervous because it’s a huge task,
it’s not just taking on a long cartoon project like any other, it’s something with a lot
of emotional connection for a lot of people around the world, so there’s a lot of very
judgemental eyes watching and if you make any kind of slip up they’ll be the ones
to spot it. I was dedicated to making sure that we do a good show not just repeating
the same jokes from the old episodes, no I wanted to do something new and original and
take things in slightly new directions but keeping it firmly grounded in Eddsworld universe,
so yeah things such as giving Eduardo a better back story, that’s not really been done
in an Eddsworld episode before and I’ve see and lot of people really, really like
Eduardo as a character. “Any last words?”
“I’m sorry” “Yeeaah! …what?”
One of the interesting aspects I was able to bring to Eddsworld was toying more with
sort of the characters, to be the fair y’know in the history of the show they’d be fairly
sort of generic, you could almost trade dialogue with one character to another and it probably
wouldn't make any difference at all, so what was sort of a challenge for us was to define
the characters a little bit more. Edd was kind of just kind of the all-round guy but
he might occasionally be kinda sarcastic and he's also kinda the leader. Tom was more the
sort of more dim-witted one with the crazy catchphrases. Matt was more the sort of surly
sarcastic person, and Tord was just kind of also there, he would occasionally have a line,
“phew” “arghhhh”, but nothing really to make him that big a character. Over the
course of the show, the characters had changed somewhat, when Tord left the show, Tom became
more of the sort of sarcastic surly character, “good riddance”. Matt was the vain, dim-witted
one, “nonsense, look at my dvd… What?”. But it still left Edd being the generic all
round guy, “where did you even get this dog?” “I don’t know”. So one thing
I was quite conscious of especially writing something like Fun Dead was that yes he’s
the kinda more natural leader, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is always right, I feel
like that makes him sort of much more of an endearing character, the fact that he tries
a lot but doesn't always succeed, and also introducing aspects to the show such as soft
arcs – there’s like a running subtle story that’s been happening through many of the
episodes now that may only get realised towards the end, maybe.
Recasting Edd was a really difficult decision because I wasn't really sure if I wanted to
go in a new direction with the character, or if I wanted to try and get someone who
basically just sounded like Edd. I originally approached a YouTuber called Khyan, who has
a kind of like very low kind of monotone speaking voice and I thought he would do really good
job at mimicking Edd’s style. “My name is Khyan and these are my thoughts.”
And he just didn't want the responsibility and I totally understand why because no matter
what we do with Eddsworld it’s never good enough, like the voice actors are never good
enough now, or the writing isn’t like Edd used to, or the animation isn't like Edd used
to do it. Duh. Among those people who I auditioned there
was Jack Howard, Dean Dobbs, Jamie Spicer-Lewis, Eddie Bowley, TimH, it was quite a lot of
people that I had screaming in my bedroom for that line, it was good, a good time. It
got down to either Eddie or Tim, I ended up going with Tim because I thought it was an
interesting direction to kinda like have the character be a little bit squeakier and a
little bit more emotive and Eddie wasn't happy about that, no, but he did get brought on
as like co-writer, producer, and director so I feel like he wins in the long run.
Sort of amongst our friends we used to do this sort of monthly poker night and I think
it must have been one of those and happened to be at Tom’s place and he you know, he’d
already been through a bunch of his friends, he’d auditioned virtually everyone and I
think Jack off-hand mentioned “oh, well you might as well audition Tim”, very very
like hadn’t planned for the audition, and we sort of went into the other room. It was
basically the scene in which the spaceship is crashing, and so the audition consisted
of a lot of screaming. So I had to go into the other room and prove I could scream.
“Aghhhhh” *screams* “Ahhh, not the face!” It was very new to me at the time, I hadn’t
done a lot of voice acting, so Tom was kind of there guiding me through it, explaining
to do the motions – I was pretending to hold onto the steering wheel and it kept going
back to a lot of screaming, a lot of screaming… I think one of the main reasons I chose Tim
as a voice actor is because unlike Eddie, he isn’t really an aspiring voice actor,
that kind of rough around the edges element to his voice acting kinda matched Edd’s.
It sounds really mean to say but like sometimes when it’s a bit shit it’s like it used
to be. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. I felt like I got involved in Eddsworld because
I could tell it meant a lot to all my friends, really, and it felt like one of those things
you sort of can’t say no to, it felt like an honour to be invited into help continue
that legacy. It didn’t feel like a sort of like a, “yes! I got a new part in a new
show!”, for all that it was exciting, it felt more like, I don’t want to say an obligation,
I don’t want to say a duty, but it felt like something that I kind of needed to do
to kind of, because it meant a lot to the fans clearly and I sort of, in hindsight,
definitely went and watched back and watch all the shows and kind of saw that this show
had been around for a long time and meant a lot to a lot of people, so it felt like something that kind of, you kind of needed to do for you. What a gruelling process, hm? It can’t be easy dealing with grief whilst also working
on a huge project like this. But what would I know? I never got programmed with emotions.
Who needs them, right? HA HA HA HA. Just like the Avengers, Samuel L Jackson,
I mean, Thomas Ridgewell, called upon Earth’s greatest heroes, or the best he could find
at such short notice. To bring together a team to make their legacy dream a reality:
the voice actors, the production team, the sound team, The Hulk, the animators, and the
leaders of the team, Captain Eddsworld, Eddie and Tom. So, let’s find out their own perspective
on their individual roles, and the true warriors of the legacy, the animators.
There is no such thing as a standard Eddsworld work day, because basically we’re all people
who do other things that are coming together to do Eddsworld, so we kind of just come together
when needed, you know. Eddie took off, Eddie took a couple weeks off work to come and write
all the Eddsworld episodes with me, and then the animators just working when the animators
are working. So there’s big points, there’s points of about one to three months where
the only thing that’s happening is an animator is working.
So pre-production involves obviously heavily the script, Tom and I will sit down, and once
we have the core idea we’ll start drawing like a map of ideas, so like we’ll have
some key plot points or some key jokes that we know we want to go in, and then we create
like a map, like a thread lining up all those jokes and ideas together so it becomes one
sort of hopefully coherent script. After that, it moves onto the voice recording, getting
everyone to do all their lines. “Please keep arms and legs inside the ride
at all times.” “That’s the one.”
Then Matt and I will sit down together and we’ll edit all the audio of the dialogue
together, it’s then passed over to Elliot to do the rough sound design. The animators
start works on that, he or she will be working on an animatic of it so we can give immediate
feedback before it gets too heavily into animation, just in case there’s some very big changes
we want to make, it’s good to sort of nip those in the bud as soon as we can. Yeah,
once it’s all signed off and all happy with, we proceed to final.
So, post production it’s just kind of putting all these bits together, so it’s putting
together the sound design which would already have music mixed in with it as well as the
voice acting, laying it over with the animation, making any other small editing tweaks or changes
if it’s utterly necessary, and then yeah, get this boy out.
The intention with Eddsworld was originally going to be that I would be the producer,
director, and writer so that I would come up with ideas, direct the animators, and I
would be the producer as well which would mean that I would be overseeing everyone and
making sure that everyone was towing the line. It became very apparent quite early on that
I just, I couldn’t do that – I just wasn’t strong enough to do that. So that’s why
Eddie came on, to kind of be my partner on all of those things. It is definitely a team
effort, I’d say that none of my jobs are just me, and the show is probably better off
for that. We’ve had the great fortune to work with
a lot of extremely talented animators since starting up the legacy. Paul Ter Voorde is
an animation god-wizard-maniac. Every frame you can see just the utter dedication and
artistic skill that goes into it. The man is not human. He is incredible at what he
does. And when you see some of the shots he’s done, you’re just in awe at how amazing
it looks “Ice berg, dead ahead!”
“We, are in a plane.” “Oh, yeah.”
“CLOUDBERG” We were also lucky to have Tobias Knitt work
with us on a short episode, and I was very grateful to him because he didn’t just go
into the episode with like blinkers on and doing exactly what he was told, he was willing
to challenge us. We agreed on some points and we disagreed on some points. But, we need
that, we need to be challenged because sometimes there are things we are missing, like there’s
a bit in Hide And Seek, the episode he made, where Matt’s saying “ooh, where shall
I hide? Where shall I hide?”, and he’s saying this very calmly, but Tobias suggested,
why not make him sort of more wild and panicky, and he had this idea of making him running
around in a circle on the spot, and we thought that was a great idea so we re-recorded Matt’s
line just for that reason. The animation style of that episode is very tooney, very akin
to sort of the older style of Eddsworld, and I think a lot of people really enjoyed that.
*robotic dinosaur roar* Sandra Rivas, animator of Mirror Mirror, she
has a fantastic animation style. It’s very like Ren and Stimpy, like John K, it’s very
bouncy, lively, and as of the day of this recording, we haven’t seen this yet, but
I’m really excited to see it because I know it’s going to kick arse.
“okay that’s it” *booming voice* “Nooooo! Not the vase” We’ve also got Anthony Kreid Price, he’s
also got a very great, wide eyed, a very bouncy style like you can see the weight of characters
sometimes, like if a character turns his head, it’s not just like the hair is static, it
would kinda bob with him. It’s just the subtleties like that really brings a lot of
life to the episodes he’s making. “No one hits my neighbour but me”
*explosions* “ehh” We also had Pearl work on an episode of Tom’s
Tales with us. She has a really great, sort of cutesy style, it was purposely done to
look like a black and white animatic. But she still gave that a sort of, I don’t want
to keep saying life again, give me another word other than life. “Death”. *laughter*
She brought a lot of death to the project. She brought a lot of great fine detail to
that project, so although it’s a fairly simplistic looking episode, she gave it everything
to make it a really cool episode. “Okay, throw the ball!”
“Oh no, what have I done” “Hey there what’s goin- oh my god did
you kill that baseball?!” “Uhh, no”
“Yeah, you did! I saw you do it!” “It was like that when I did it”
“I’m gonna tell everyone, I’m gonna tell the whole world!”
“Please don’t do that” “you’re gonna go to jail, you’re gonna
go to jail where you belong!” “Oh no what do I do?!”
We’re very fortunate to get to work with such an incredible team of animators, so
thank you guys. Well, that definitely opened up my non-existent,
pre-programmed eyes to the talented humans behind this extraordinary project. The legacy
has reached its end, Trick or Threat and Christmas Eddventure by Brandon Turner, Saloonatics
by Pearl Zhang and her team, The End Part 1 by Paul Ter Voorde, and for the very last
episode of the Eddsworld Legacy, the crew managed to rally together a huge team of animators
to help out on the big finale. “Okay, my question is, if you had to make
one last video, just a last video before you died, or you just couldn’t make another
one, what would it be? What would it be like?” “Ummm, hmmm... Uhhh, I guess it would be
like, I’d probably like, call in so many favours, like get all the people I possibly
knew who animated to animate a bit of it, just to make it like a great big finale kind
of thing so it’d go out with a bang really. So just like, call in every favour I could
possibly have just for that one final movie.” Proving it’s truly not just one single meat
bag with too many fleshy parts, “kill me”, but having many more fleshy flailing limbs
may have helped the team out, as this legacy project wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops.
A hiatus, unforeseen difficulties, and living up to not just their own expectations, but
the expectations of the world they set out to save – a battle between the show, nostalgia,
and its new found legacy. So the hiatus between many of the episodes,
especially the time it took to getting Space Face Part 2 to getting Fun Dead out, although
we had a couple of short episodes in between, that was quite a gruelling process, Tom was
going through a lot of hard times, it was difficult for him to sort of deal with a lot
of things at once, but also the huge burden that the show can be. There’s a lot of pressure,
there’s a lot of harsh judgement, there’s a lot of people with expectations of you.
That can be incredibly hard to deal with. He was trying to take on a lot on his own,
also relying on people who ultimately failed, so it wasn’t until he got more trustworthy
people on board, such as myself, that we were able to finally get production back up and running. The plan with Eddsworld Legacy was to you
know, just go at it, go really hard, go hard and fast, just knock out episodes like that,
and be wrapped up by the end of 2013 with all the episodes. And here we are in 2015.
It kind of went on this massive hiatus, because I just snapped – I took on all these roles
of responsibility for myself and hadn’t really involved anyone else in the responsibility
roles, so when I just kind of fell apart and didn’t want to do anything anymore, nothing
happened anymore. When I’m being uncooperative, everything grinds to a halt basically, and
that’s why Eddie is such a necessary part because you know, he’s working when I’m not. I think that Tom gets a lot of unnecessary
flack, a lot of the sort of more recent episodes, people are very keen to look for the seams,
to look for the lines, to look for where the change happens. A lot of pinned solely on
Tom, but the thing is, as I think this documentary will establish, it’s not just Tom -there’s
a studio-sized team here, an international team in fact. It’s several people working
together, dedicated to this cause. I think the big break in the series was I
guess, inevitable in a way, because I honestly can’t imagine what Tom, Eddie, and Matt
had to go through, of you know, losing the show’s creator, and also a close personal
friend who literally said “could you please continue the show” so obviously you say
yes. I can’t imagine a world in which you wouldn’t say yes to your friend, especially
if that was sort of a big thing they wanted, but at the same time, grieving takes time,
and maybe it doesn’t hit you immediately. It feels like that’s what happened, it feel
like they sort of said yes, they did the campaign, that energy was sort of still there, but then
getting over a friend who’s past away takes time I can’t imagine not only having to
do your utmost to produce great creative work, but it’s technically someone else’s creation
and you have to do that person justice, and they’re not even around to say whether that’s
what they would have wanted and you’re kind of having to guess that the whole time. I
can’t stress enough how much I respect those guys for pulling through and eventually getting
through that hiatus and getting the show back on the road.
So you see there’s this thing that I call PUD, post-upload depression, what that means
is that when you make a project and you pour your heart and soul into something and then
you upload it, immediately you feel like it’s not enough and you’re just crushed and you
start projecting and you get one negative comment, you’re thinking to yourself, “oh
this is terrible, I could have done so much better” and just one person comments, “this
wasn’t very good”, and you go “oh they’re right, they all know”. This is something
that I noticed in Edd from the beginning, Edd was always like this from 2003, when he
uploaded the first Eddsworld animations, one bad comment would just tear you down and you
just pour all of your insecurities into this one negative comment which would just validate
everything. So when we started putting out Eddsworld episodes, wether we got one negative
comment or 100, it would just tear us down, you know we’d lose all confidence in it
and that’s why I think that a lot of animators only worked with us once or twice, no matter
what they did, the comments about the animation were largely “This isn’t good enough,
this isn’t like Edd’s style, it’s changed, I don’t like it”, and for any creative
that’s horrible. We just can’t live up to people’s ideals, the way people loved
something when they were younger. What we do is we try to keep it as very Eddsworld
as possible, but at the same time I don’t want to just make an Eddsworld episode. I
want it to be good, I want it to be something I can look back on with pride. Something that
we feel really honours the show by ensuring that we do the absolute best we can. I think
that one of the immediate gratifying aspect of Eddsworld is the response from the fans,
the fans are hugely dedicated and very heavily emotionally attached, some having grown up
with the show, some have been heavily inspired by the show with their own productions and
stuff, so Eddsworld means a lot to them. So when we go to like MCM, and panels and conventions,
that kind of thing, you get fans coming up to you, thanking you for doing what you do
and admiring your work, that kind of thing, it’s a huge honour. The show means a lot
to me as well, so it’s a deep honour to be able to be such a huge part of it.
To me, it always just meant, I dunno, like I had this kind of feeling with Eddsworld
which was step up and try and be there for someone else, this isn’t about you. You
can work on stuff, and you can try and convey points and usually there’s the kind of benefit
of and then you get the glory, you get the “you’re so good, you’re so talented,
you’ve done this so well” whereas with Eddsworld I don’t really feel that, it’s
about doing something bigger than myself justice. In a way it’s just humbling, it’s something
that puts things in perspective, in a world where we’re all trying to build brands and
gain followings and stuff it’s actually quite nice to have a project which in that
sense of the word, is kind of, for the love of it I guess.
A lot of the people I know now and work closely with and to the point where, some of my long
term dreams and aspirations are slowly being realised, the fact that I’ve been for the
past few years, so incredibly creatively fulfilled, to the point where some of my long term ambitions
and dreams are finally, closely at least, being realised.
I owe that all to Edd, he was the reason I met anyone. He was always very humble, very
down to Earth, very talkative – he would be happy to chat to anyone, and so he always
made me feel welcome, and from that, just made friends, and from that made more friends.
To the point now that, I can call myself a co-writer, I can be kind of close to calling
that my full time job. I will always be eternally grateful to Edd, because he’s the reason
that all happened. Honestly I can say that there’s a lot of
reasons why I think we did Eddsworld Legacy. I think, if I’m being honest, one of the
main reasons that I kind of rushed into it was because I felt like I’d failed Edd,
as a friend. You know, I felt like I hadn’t seen him enough when he was in hospital, and
I hadn’t helped enough, in my mind I was like, “well if I run this show, and if I
make loads of episodes maybe I can make it up to him”. Didn’t do that very well,
in all honesty. Yeah, I guess I really just thought that I could fix things. They say
that the five stages of grief, you know, it starts with denial, and maybe that’s what
Eddsworld Legacy was to me – was just, this really long, this really prolonged period
of denial, of me just thinking “nyoo, he’s not gone, see(!)”.
I guess that Legacy also just is about honouring kind of Edd’s Legacy, and the things he
achieved by kind of giving him one last hurrah, you know. Taking the show to a point where
it feels like it’s kind of a satisfying point to move on from. Obviously there are
plenty of people out there who don’t want the show to ever end and stuff, but I can’t
do it forever. It sounds very selfish, but losing Edd was probably the worst thing that’s
ever happened to me, and working on Eddsworld is just constantly reminding me of that.
Eddsworld is a show that’s made for the fans, by the fans. It’s not something we
could have done without their full support, to which we are really grateful and honoured
that we, we get to do this, that we get to continue this show, for the legacy, for Edd.
So, thank you. I guess I just want to thank you guys for
making the show possible, and I like to think that we’ve made a bit of a difference in
the world – not just to you guys, and to the fans, but also to the charities we’ve
donated to, and hopefully the show has just caused more good out there.
To the Legacy donators, we’re sorry. We’ve taken a while, thanks for being patient.
Just how much it all meant to him, and how much it would mean to him that it had carried
on, because that’s what he said to me when he was having one of his darkest hours, that
he wanted his world to keep on going with him in it, because that would be like he was
still alive. You know, this has, I mean it’s helped me a great deal that this has kept
on going yes, but he would have been so, so proud of everybody.
I guess, to the donators of Eddsworld Legacy, I have two things to say and that is – thank
you, so much, I didn’t expect the response that we got, I didn’t expect so much generosity.
When we first put out the fundraiser I really thought, I turned to Paul and I said, “this
is never going to work”, but it did. We beat the goal in the space of a few days,
and then we exceeded it and that was amazing. But the other thing I really want to say is
I’m sorry, I made a promise that I couldn’t keep, and I messed around with a lot of people’s
money. I don’t think I lived up to a lot of people’s expectations as well with the
show. So yeah, those are the two things I really want to say, thank you, and I’m sorry.
But I hope you enjoyed the show. Yes. One final thought: the legacy achieved its
goals, and despite its troubled production, the team still managed to raise over eighty
thousand, one hundred, and seventy-six human pounds. All the money gained from the Eddsworld
channels since the start of the Legacy has gone to CLIC Sargent, a UK based charity which
provides support to children and young people with cancer.
So CLIC Sargent is the UK’s leading cancer charity for children and young people. We
actually provide a lot of the support for children and young people diagnosed with cancer,
there’s no research to the work that we do. So we provide support from the point of
diagnosis, and even after cancer treatment has finished, and in some cases we actually
provide support for bereaved cases as well. So on behalf of the team here at CLIC Sargent,
I’d like to say a massive thanks to the supporters at Eddsworld, your donations so
far have made a huge impact on the lives of children and young people diagnosed with cancer.
Thank you, Eddsworld! It’s pretty swell. So thank you, and goodbye, fleshy human people.
Program terminated.
Met Edd a couple of years before he passed at a Newgrounds Meetup in London. He was honestly one of the nicest humblest guys who didn't care about being the most popular person or getting the most subscribers or views, he just purely enjoyed creating content with his friends for other people to enjoy. He was one of my inspirations to be pursue a career as an animator.
It's a shame as Eddsworld comes to a close, it was something I always looked forward to when I was younger, and still do look forward to now. I love how they've done things after Edd's death regardless of the animation, actors or writing because it's always been a very determined bunch of people behind it.
Edd was always such an inspiration