Eric Fogel | |
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Born | July 28, 1969 |
Residence | Los Angeles, California |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | New York University's Tisch School of the Arts |
Occupation | Director, writer, animator, producer, and voice actor |
Years active | 1991-present |
Known for |
Celebrity Deathmatch The Head Glenn Martin, DDS Starveillance |
Eric Fogel (born July 8, 1969) is an American director, writer, animator, producer, and voice actor who is best known as the creator of Celebrity Deathmatch. He also created cult shows The Head, Starveillance and Glenn Martin, DDS. Fogel also directed several episodes of Daria.
Fogel graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1991 with a BFA in Film/TV. During his time there he created his first animated film, titled Mutilator: Hero of the Wasteland, a film which one professor cited as being "inappropriate due to its violent content." Mutilator would go on to win NYU's Award of Excellence in Animation and became a cult favorite of Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Fogel continued to produce animated shorts, including a sequel to his Mutilator short. He soon had his reel come across the desk of an executive at MTV Animation, which landed him a job at the studio. Where, while working on his first series; The Head, also directed episodes of Cartoon Sushi (which featured the original Celebrity Deathmatch pilot), and Daria.
In 1994, at age of twenty-four, Fogel created his first animated series for MTV. The Head was a bizarre show about a high-spirited alien named Roy, who survived on Earth by living inside the head of an everyman named Jim. The show, which blended sci-fi action and comedy, ran for two seasons before being cancelled by MTV.
In 1996, the same year the series had been cancelled; Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster published a graphic novel based on the series titled The Head: A Legend Is Born. The graphic novel was based on a script from the series that was never animated. Fogel and Gordon Barnett wrote the novel.
Fogels next series was made in stop-motion animation. Clay-versions of celebrities square off in a ring and proceed to beat the pulp out of one another. Celebrity Deathmatch premiered in 1998 during the Super Bowl Halftime and turned out to be the highest rated special in the history of MTV. Fogel directed every episode from 1998 to 2002, along with voicing some characters, and the show became popular enough for Fogel to be named one of the most creative people in the TV industry by Entertainment Weekly. Four seasons and nearly a hundred episodes later, Deathmatch was known over the world and remained as one of MTV's highest rated shows. Most of Fogel's projects have been in claymation ever since.