| “ | Your humor is like a pencil. You can choose to sharpen it, or you can make it dull. | ” |
— Gary Sauls
|
Gary Sauls (born March 5, 1962 in Georgetown, Texas) is an animator, writer, director, and producer who is best known for creating the animated series, Edward and Eric, and for establishing Chatterbox Productions. He usually works with his childhood friend and business partner, Edward Felker. He graduated from School of Visual Arts in New York City. He currently resides in Astoria, New York, which is also where Chatterbox is located.
Outside of managing Chatterbox and most of its shows, Sauls keeps a low profile and prefers to keep his personal life unknown to the public. However, he does regularly post on Twitter, usually to answer any Edward and Eric-related questions, share fun facts about production on E&E episodes (or the show in general), and give updates on any ongoing show/project. He has also been married to his wife since 1999, who has co-written and storyboard directed several episodes of E&E.
Trivia[]
- Edward and Joey are based on Sauls.
- He has co-written every single episode in the series.
- Apart from his usual duties of serving as the showrunner and executive producer for Edward and Eric, Sauls provides the voice for Constantinos, alongside numerous background characters.
- Sauls' favorite Edward and Eric episodes are Are You There, Sauls? It's Me, Ed, Will You Be My Friend?, One Small Step for Pearson, Opposites Day, Eric a la Mode, School Lock-In, and Snod-Ball.
- He is ambidextrous.
- Sauls was so burnt out from working on the movie, the musical and Mr. Enigma’s Factory that he does not remember making the first few Season 5 episodes.
- Most of Lakeside City School's students are based on his high school classmates.
- Sauls highly approves of cartoons that don't focus on continuity, or more specifically, "cartoons where you can just jump into any episode in any season without needing to watch the entire series chronologically to get the general idea". As a result, he made this the case with Edward and Eric. Any references to past episodes are kept brief and not intended to interfere with plots.
- Sauls has set a few rules regarding E&E:
- Do not ever mimic the CalArts style in any sort of way, even if it's something as small as the "bean mouth".
- Characters were to never age no matter how many birthday episodes there were.
- If Constantinos goes through misfortune, it's so the audience can sympathize with him. If Joey goes through misfortune, it's for laughs.
- The first thing Sauls did when Edward and Eric received all of its budget money back after the movie's success was permanently change the show's animation style by making it extremely cartoony.
- When Chatterbox received complaints that Season 5 was "overreliant on visual humor" and that its animation was "too exaggerated", Sauls ignored them and made the animation of Season 6's, and the rest of the show after that, wackier than ever.
- On a Lakeside City Forums thread from 2001, Sauls was asked why Kimberly Matthews was reduced to a Butt Monkey starting from Love-Hate Relationship. He stated contrary to popular belief, it had absolutely nothing to do with Mary Kay Bergman's death; the reason was he simply "didn't like Kimberly's character", and neither did most of the fanbase.
- To debunk the rumor even more, Sauls said he had nothing against Bergman, complimenting her talent and brought up how she voiced other characters prior to her death.
- Joey's short stature was based on Sauls' height from his high school days (5'5). However, he decided to make Joey one inch shorter than himself, as he found it funny that way.
- His username on Lakeside City Forums is YouKnowWhoIAm.
- His inspirations are Stephen Hillenburg, Seth MacFarlane, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Mike Judge, J.G. Quintel, Kohei Horikoshi, C.H. Greenblatt, James Rolfe, Kaz Prapuolenis (better known as just Kaz), Trey Parker/Matt Stone, Matt Groening, and Charles M. Schulz.
- He and Felker both share a burning mutual hatred for the hit (sadly) Nickelodeon series, The Loud House.
- While Sauls is undoubtedly dedicated to all of his work, he would often show up at work an hour or two late when Edward and Eric in its early production stages due to his inconsistent sleep schedule at the time.
- According to Sauls, the inside of Chatterbox usually smells either like "a Blockbuster store", or "a bookstore in the wee hours of the morning, where the scents of fresh coffee and new books are abound".
- Apart from making cartoons, he also has some experience in the world of theater. He has directed Edward and Eric: The Musical, as well as the play, Night of the Living Sled, which he also worked on with Felker.
- Whenever a character's voice deepens from an allergy reaction (e.g. Bill in Chick Magnet and Principal Walker in School Picnic), he usually steps in to provide the voice for them.
- According to Sauls, all of the video games and crossovers are canon to the series.
- When asked about releasing NFTs for any of the Chatterbox shows on Twitter in December 2021, he responded with: "NFTs are nothing more than scams. Like, am I really gonna burn down parts of the Amazon Rainforest just so I can sell a JPEG of a monkey for $6.9 billion? In other words, no I won't. Never will."