Erick Hokpings

Erick Christian Hokping (born September 10, 1959) was an American animator, producer, writer, director, voice actor known for having worked with Patrick Sawyer throughout his career and having been good friends, he also participated in several Nintendo Studios projects. unrelated to Sawyer's projects. Hokpings died on August 18, 2018 in the hospital in Glendale, California due a ASTHMA attack

History
Erick Hokpings was born on September 10, 1959 in Long Beach, California, his parents were Jennette O'Sullivan and Peter Hokpings. When he was 5 years old, his family moved to Westwood, Los Angeles. During his university years he studied at the University of California in Los Angeles, where he studied at the School of Theater, Film and Television, since he had dreams of working with large companies dedicated to film and television, such as Disney and Warner. During his studies there he met four people, Patrick Sawyer, Christopher Thompson, Craig Baker and Martha Moore, with whom he struck up a friendship and in 1978, they enrolled in the California School of the Arts after graduating. Six months later, in October 1978, they presented an animated short of two and a half minutes, which was called  Rain does not mean boredom  which was made by the 5 friends for a university project. The animation was mainly inspired by Hanna-Barbera and Disney projects, which were the favorites of friends and that's where they got the inspiration. In 1981 the five friends graduated from CalArts and from there decided to go their own way. Hokpings landed a job at Hanna-Barbera studios while his closest friend, Patrick Sawyer, landed a job at Walt Disney Feature Animation at just 19 years old. In 1988 Hokpings was hired by Nintendo Studios, a newly born company that was on the right track, Erick called Sawyer and told him about the job, who accepted and was hired, but kept his job at Disney until 1996. Hokpings also continued to work with Hanna-Barbera until 2001. In 1990 Sawyer and Hokpings were designing concepts for an animated series aimed at the older teen audience, as they wanted to take advantage of their talent although this was not done at the time due to lack of ideas. In 1992 Sawyer received a license to create a product related to a newly born character, Kirby, who at the time had only released one game for the Game Boy, Sawyer with the help of Hokpings made shorts for the animated variety show  The Cartoon Show  which aired from 1992 to 1993, Erick was looking for a voice actor for the characters, and chose Kevin Miller, someone who had already had participation in other projects as a child actor, Miller was 14 years old at that time and his performance was perfect for the round characters, although the problem was that Miller would be busy with school and homework at the time, and that is why he had to be enrolled in classes on weekends, in order to have more time to do the tasks. recordings, in the case of homework, the school was already aware of this, and therefore, they did not leave many homework assignments to give Miller time to record the episodes. In 1993 when the shorts finished, Erick Hokpings began to give ideas for the future series in which the shorts would be adapted, Sawyer was sure that it was not going to be a success, but that at least he was going to put the best of it, so I accept, Sawyer served as Creator and Hokpings as Developer. For that, Hokpings moved to Glendale, California, because the production company's headquarters were closer there, by the time Sawyer presented his pilot to FOX, Erick suggested that they no longer needed a series like the Simpsons "But it wasn 't to take it badly  Sawyer thought Hokpings's comment was a bit strange, so he thought about what he meant, so he decided to move the series to the network that saw the birth of the shorts, Nintendo TV, after that Sawyer told him he told Hokpings But it' s not quite like The Simpsons, because there will be more to it '' Hokpings found the comment curious, so he decided to continue supporting Sawyer in his project. A few days later, the president of Nintendo of America at that time told Hokpings that they did not want to be involved in the project, so he spoke with Masahiro Sakurai, Nintendo and Hal Laboratory, to divide ownership of the character and his relatives. so in 1993 Nintendo Studios and Sawyer kept the full rights to the Kirby he had designed, while Nintendo and HAL kept the innocent Kirby for the whole family. In 1994, before the premiere of the series, Patrick and Erick started to see the episodes produced at that time, who managed to understand the comment that Sawyer made to him in November 1993, during an interview in 2011, Hokpings said  Since I saw the chapters I noticed what Patrick was referring to when he moved his project to Nintendo TV, and it was much more, the animation was something cheap of course, but I still had the hope that that would not prevent the success of the series  When it premiered the first chapter in 1994, It obtained a total of 5.20 Million viewers in its premiere, thus making Sawyer and Hokpings more hopeful of the series. In 2001 Erick Hokpings left his position at Hanna-Barbera after it was absorbed by Warner Bros. Animation. During his time he would work with Sawyer on all of his projects (with few exceptions) and also with Nintendo Studios. In May 2018, it was reported that Hokpings was hospitalized due to respiratory problems after contracting ASTHMA in 2017. Hokpings was released from Hospital in June 2018, when everything seemed to be going well in August Hokpings had a severe attack of ASTHMA on the morning of 18 August, when he was transported to the hospital it was too late, he had died at the scene, since Hokpings lived with his wife, and since she was not there, their children, not knowing what to do, called 911 a little late, who arrived half an hour later. that Hokpings had such an attack of ASMA. In 2018 Nintendo Studios asks for condolences from Hokpings' closest family and friends, including other companies. The funeral was held on August 29 and he was buried that same day at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Hokpings last project with Nintendo Studios was on Let's Play, and the last project with Sawyer was the movie  The Reptils Attack