Edward Duncan Ernest "Edd" Gould (October 28, 1988 – March 25, 2012) was an English animator, artist, writer, director, and voice actor best known as the primary creator and animator of the web series Eddsworld.
He voiced the character of Edd (based on himself) for the show starting in 2004, and met and befriended the voice actors of the show's other three lead characters either through school (Matt Hargreaves) or online (Thomas "TomSka" Ridgewell, Tord Larsson).
Edd began animating in 2002; he initially used a GIF animation program, but after the website he uploaded to no longer accepted GIFs, he switched to Macromedia Flashnote and began uploading to Newgrounds in 2003 following seven months of training in the program.
He began a professional animation career in 2008, later contributing to Tom's most popular piece of online content, asdfmovie, through animating its second installment and voicing the famous "I Like Trains" Kid character.
In April 2011, Edd revealed that he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia for the second time, having previously been diagnosed in 2006. He did make light of his predicament, using his illness as the basis for numerous sketches on his friends' accounts (some of them quite bleak, both at the time and looking back).
Ultimately, on March 25, 2012, at the tragically young age of 23, Edd died from a recurring infection caused by his cancer. Tom and Matt announced Edd's death in a short video released two days later, which ended with Tom stating, "Edd may be gone, but his world will keep on spinning."
Despite Edd's death, his namesake character was not retired, as his dying words were that he didn't want the series to end. With the reins of the series passed to Tom following his death, and later to Matt (who runs the show today). Edd's voice went on to being provided by Tim Hautekiet (2012-2016) and George Gould (2020 onwards), with several different animators for the eddisodes.
Following his death, Edd was cremated and Tom and Matt scattered some of his ashes atop a mountain in Hollywood in July. The majority of his ashes were buried on his birthday (28th October) in London.
Tropes:
- Author Appeal: Zombie apocalypses (and zombies in general), seeing as several of his early animations were about them.
- Also, Rapid-Fire Comedy, witty puns, green-colored hoodies, and references to Coca-Cola.
- Beam Me Up, Scotty!: "It's pretty swell" is considered his catchphrase, and even wound up as his grave epitaph, despite him rarely saying it.
- Best Friend: TomSka and Matt Hargreaves. Mostly the latter, due to being friends in person since middle school.
- Creator's Favorite: His favorite characters of his show were Edd himself, Tom, Matt, Eduardo and Private Brains from "Zombeh Attack 3".
- Creator's Favorite Episode: Much like many fans, his favorite episode he made was "WTFuture".
- Creator's Pest: He didn't like Laurel from "MovieMakers", claiming that she needed more work.
- Died During Production: He passed away in early 2012 before completing the first part of "Space Face".
- Gentle Giant: He was around 1.91 m/6'2 f tall, yet was known for being polite.
- Pungeon Master: Among one of the best at witticism, so expect a lot of Visual Puns and Literal Metaphors to happen in his works.
- Self-Deprecation: He sometimes made jokes about his own weight, such as this animation
note . - Teen Genius: He had started doing animation when he was in his mid-teens.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Coca-Cola, much like his animated counterpart.
- Write Who You Know: Obviously, the main characters of Eddsworld are based on him and his friends Thomas Ridgewell, Matt Hargreaves and Tord Larsson. Several other characters are also based on real people, such as Paul, Hellucard and Laurel.
