Eric Stough

 

By Elliott Wright

Portraits by Sam Muller

Since his earliest appearances on South Park, Leopold “Butters” Stotch has embodied the enviable qualities of eternal optimism, artistic ingenuity, and steadfast loyalty to his friends. Alongside Cartman, Kenny, Kyle, and Stan, Butters’ uncanny ability to find “beautiful sadness”–even during life’s most trying times–has made him a forever fan favorite.

When creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone started work on the short film Jesus vs. Santa in 1995, they sought support from their “little buddy,” Eric Stough. Much like Butters, the character based on him, Stough’s creative vision, humble demeanor, and knack for animation was exactly what the show’s founders needed as their construction paper side project began to build momentum. Joining the duo as animation director and eventually taking on a producer role, Stough has been an integral part of the team that has just embarked on the show’s twenty-seventh season.

Stough recently attended Anibar, a week-long animation film festival in Peja, Kosovo. He was greeted with a standing ovation, confirming that South Park has resonated with individuals of different cultures and languages the world over. “It was almost like that feeling that I had back in 1998 when Newsweek and Rolling Stone put Kenny and the boys on their covers,” he explains. “All these years later, it’s amazing to see that recognition on an international level.”

How a quiet, self-described “sheltered” kid from Evergreen, Colorado found himself in the heart of the Balkans—after winning five Emmys and a Peabody Award—has been a ride defined by balance, hard work, and trust–not only in himself, but from his friends, too. It’s difficult to imagine Butters himself acting any differently.

 

Who were some of your early influences in animation and art?

I really enjoyed Looney Toons.

I was a huge fan of Halloween growing up. I was the kid who didn’t want to go trick-or-treating but rather entertain and decorate my house. I remember the summer when Michael Jackson’s Thriller came out. I had these cardboard cutout skeletons that I brought to life every time somebody came by. I would play the music on my tape player and have them dancing by jiggling wires.

How did you land on animation at CU Boulder?

I started taking drawing classes because I wanted to be a Disney animator. Trey was working at the film desk and knew that I was interested in animation. He suggested that I start doing animated films.

I could draw decent characters, so I did claymation. I used pipe cleaners and cardboard cut-out eyes—that influenced the look of South Park. Trey had done different eyes in the original Jesus vs. Frosty, and I noticed that once he had seen my two short films. He changed the shapes to have a closer resemblance to my films. He may say, “No, I never did that, Eric,” [laughs] but I think there was a little change for the pilot of South Park.

What were your first impressions of Trey?

Trey and I both went to junior high in the small town of Conifer. His family had a video camera, so I was jealous of that. I wanted to get involved and work on projects with him.

After he left high school, we did the Wizard of Oz and I was the Scarecrow. He was dating the girl that was pretty much my Dorothy, and after one of the performances he came up to me and said, “Hey Eric, man, you deserve the Silver Spoon award. You really nailed it. You were a great Scarecrow.” It felt so good to hear that, especially coming from him.

In college I did a short film called Excanibur. It was kind of like Excalibur, but done with pipe cleaner arms and soda pop cans. Trey was doing the sound design, and at one point he turned to me and said, “This film kicks ass!”

And when did Matt come into the picture?

At Boulder, I did three different types of films. I made an animated film, a Jim Hensen-style puppet film, and a live-action film where I trained a rat to eat peas from a prisoner. There was a guy that I wanted to be my prisoner, but he had to back out. So someone suggested I should get Matt Stone to do it.

Would you tell me about your internship experiences prior to graduating?

Disney had a program where they recruited college students to go work in the parks. That’s how naive I was–trying to showcase myself being a great animator and I’m parking cars at Disney World [laughs].

In school I showed interest in not only animation but also puppetry. My film teacher, Jerry Aronson, had taught Brian Henson a couple of film classes. He called him up and said, “I have this really talented filmmaker who likes puppets, can we get him an internship at the Creature Shop?” I had some friends and family that lived in New York, so I did two months at Jim Henson one summer.

A guy there mentioned to me, “You really need to start small and work up the ladder and kind of bounce back and forth up the ladder. Don’t just get comfortable in one place because you will just become complacent and they will just think of you in that one position. When you go back to Colorado, see if there are any places like that there.”

While I was in New York, I saw there was Celluloid Studios in Denver. And so with my animations, my talent, my teachers who had friends there, and luck, I was able to get a director’s assistant position.

How did you get involved with South Park?

I knew Matt and Trey were working on an animated film on the spirit of Christmas, which would become Jesus vs. Frosty. Trey had pitched me the idea and wanted me to help.

He went over the whole story about how they were going to put the magic hat on Frosty the Snowman and instead of him being jolly, he was going to go around and kill all the kids.

For me, wanting to work at Disney, I hoped to become a great animator and do cute rabbits. But once Jesus vs. Frosty had its success and everybody loved it. I jumped at the opportunity to work on the second Christmas film.

How has the creative process changed from the early days?

Originally, it was done with construction paper. The first two Christmas films were done underneath a camera stand. Most animation is done with 24 drawings per second, whereas these are just construction paper puppets. Some things are glued together and some things aren’t, so they kind of bumped and moved around underneath the camera stand. It took us about three-and-a-half months to do that pilot.

When we started the show we switched over to computers. There was somebody up at Lucasfilm that did a virtual camera stand in a computer and showed us the textures and how we could make it look like construction paper and stop motion as if it was under a camera stand. However, we would have to go out of our way to make it look all bumpy and jittery.

A few years into it, it doesn’t look just like construction paper squares and circles like the first season. It now has a more detailed background and lighting, camera tricks, and things like that.

We still do the show the same way we have done it in the past 22 years. We animate everything on the computer. Every time we get a character drawing we have to do a front, side, and back, and put them on our rigs.

Do you collect or hold on to the old stuff from the early days?

A lot of the pieces were framed and given as gifts to celebrities who helped make South Park famous and what it is today. Elton John, George Clooney–they got a few things. Most of it lives in a big Tupperware bin in storage [laughs].

What does your day-to-day schedule look like?

When we are in production, the writers meet first. It’s Matt, Trey, Vernon and our executive producer, Anne Garefino. Trey will go and write probably about two pages of script to have some characters and storyboarding. Then the storyboarders will work on Thursday afternoon and evening, and Matt and Trey will go in and record voices.

On Fridays there is an animatic, which has the voices alongside some visuals. It’s almost like comic book drawings, very basic stuff. Trey will give notes and we will look at it together. Our technical directors will come in Friday morning, and they are like our layout artists. They’ll take the drawings that the storyboard and art department did the night before and start rigging our rigs, doing backgrounds, and hopefully start setting up some shots.

When the animators come in there will be a few shots they can start animating so that either Friday night or Saturday, we can start doing a retake session. After that, they write for another four-five hours and come out and give us one or two scripts. We will probably have six minutes of show, hopefully, by Saturday night. Sunday and Monday are the same thing. Tuesday hits and we are there 24 hours until we get the show done.

Have you ever missed a deadline?

The stress of hitting our deadline falls upon Matt and Trey because they release the content, the acting, the story, and the script. If I see them, especially Trey, pacing around the room on a Sunday or Monday I think, Oh, we might be in trouble.

As for the shows we missed: “Tweek vs. Craig.” That was the same time that Columbine happened and we had a show where two kids were going to fight, so it was decided to skip the show and not put it on the air.

And the other one: I think it was a Halloween special with the Goth Kids. We were working on the show and the electricity went out. Someone had hit a powerline down the street from us so all the electricity went out in the building and we were unable to finish the show. We have done over 300 episodes and we only missed two.

What makes a good brainstorm for your team? What leads to your best writing?

I think to be a good writer you have to work with what you know. When we were doing the show early on it was really cool. We were all traveling together and kind of hanging out in a party scene in LA before everyone got married and had kids. It was cool to see some things happen in our daily lives that we would apply to our show–people in our lives or things that would happen.

We went to Brazil and none of us speak Portuguese. One night we kind of looked around a restaurant and told the server, “We’ll have whatever they’re having over there.” Afterwards we found out that it was veal. When we got home, Trey wrote a show where Stan realizes what veal is so he and the boys save a bunch of baby cows.

It’s like, how can we make our friends laugh by doing a show about what is going on currently? When we are looking at animatics, Trey will turn to the art director or me and watch our reactions and see how big our laughter is when it starts coming together. It’s like we’re still in college trying to make each other laugh and trying to get our term paper done before the deadline.

How do politics play a role in the show?

I know there is a lot of time where current events happen and I can’t wait to see what South Park does with it. But we aren’t going to do it just because it’s expected. I wouldn’t say that it leads anybody politically. If anything, I think that it opens your mind to think differently.

How has winning awards and getting global recognition changed your life?

Once we start taking ourselves too seriously, we’re the target of the people that we do shows on. We have to be careful of that, so we stay pretty humble.

The biggest award, and I didn’t even realize at the time, was the Peabody Award in 2005. I was able to take my mom to New York for that. Also, having five Emmys is pretty cool.

What are your thoughts on recent advancements in animation and AI?

AI is a good tool to help with things, but I don’t think it can steer yet. There is definitely a human touch that makes something special and unique. Trey played with ChatGPT to do an ending of an episode that we did last run. His point was that it was just so “blah.” There was no emotion or life to it at all.

What advice would you give to young people when they feel uncertainty about their creative path?

If I were to talk to my daughters while they were at a crossroads in life, I would tell them to follow what their heart wants them to do, but have a backup plan in case you have to take a different route. That’s a 51-year-old talking who is a father of two [laughs].

I know there are a lot of people who say, “Put everything all in!” But sometimes when you do that, it doesn’t work out. But when you have your youth, you should still try with your full potential and see how far it carries you.