Josh M Shepherd

NO…I’M NOT DOING IT: An Inadequate Tribute and Refusal to say “Goodbye” to ERIC BAUZA a thread by “F” I had a special fondness for Eric Bauza. That doesn’t make me unique. Everybody who had the pleasure of meeting the guy had a special fondness for him, because he was just that type of person. But Eric teetered in that special place between Generation X and Generation Y, which meant he was young enough to have boundless energy and enthusiasm, but old enough to remember what it was like to sit in front of Saturday morning television, eating cereal, drawing Bugs Bunny and doing the voice at the same time in an almost a religious ceremony of spiritual devotion, where the young budding cartoonist becomes one with the cartoon itself. That was the dream. Not only to draw the cartoons, but to become the characters. He wasn’t the first animator to do voices, but most of the time when an artist did voices it was for a character they created (Mike Judge, John K. etc.). When I broke into animation, one of the first and most disappointing wake-up calls I got was just how segregated all the different divisions were. Character designers mostly hung out with character designers, storyboard artists with storyboard artists, background artists with background artists - and none of those artists were allowed to rub elbows with the voiceover talent. That’s just how it was. It seemed completely antithetical to the cartoon-making process, but I was told in no uncertain terms not to fight it, and by all means abandon any hope of ever doing voices for the cartoons you work on. It seemed a little unfair, but let’s be honest: most of us aren’t as good as we think we are at doing voices anyway. Then along came Eric. He was just too good to be ignored. He did what so many of us only dreamed of achieving: He became the cartoon. Not only did he become the cartoon, he earned the mantle of the greatest cartoon character of all time. And he was just so frigging nice you couldn’t help but stand up and cheer him on. He was the living embodiment of what it meant to live, love, eat, sleep, drink, and bask in the world of animation and cartoons. He was the chosen one. I hate that he’s gone, and I don’t expect to see another like him in my lifetime. Saying goodbye feels impossible, and I’m not ready to do it yet.