Stuart Harold "2-D" Pot is a fictional English singer, musician and member of the British virtual band Gorillaz. He provides the lead vocals and plays the keyboard for the band. 2-D's singing voice is provided by Blur frontman Damon Albarn on Gorillaz' recordings and performances; his speaking voice was provided by actor Nelson De Freitas in various Gorillaz direct-to-video projects such as Phase One: Celebrity Take Down and Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades. In 2017, Kevin Bishop was cast as the new speaking voice of 2-D. He was created by Albarn and Jamie Hewlett in 1998. Development Characterization 2-D was loosely based on Chris Gentry from the Britpop band Menswear and a mutual friend of Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn named Stuart Lowbridge, who has worked as a stage engineer for Albarn since the early days of his career. Before co-creating Gorillaz, Hewlett originally had the idea of forming a cartoon band called "Sour Grapes" with Gentry and Graham Coxon of Albarn's other band Blur. 2-D has been described by Gorillaz' former drummer and writer Cass Browne as being a "composite of Chris, Damon, and lots of other rock frontmen". 2-D was originally created as a representation of the "classic stupid pretty boy singer" stereotype that Hewlett found to be in many bands at the time and was the first character that Hewlett and Albarn created for Gorillaz in 1998, making his first official appearance in Gorillaz' debut EP Tomorrow Comes Today in 2000. He has been described in the Tomorrow Comes Today EP's booklet as being "a sweetheart with a blank sheet of paper where a brain should be". Albarn has stated that Gorillaz' sixth studio album The Now Now is "in the world of 2-D", mentioning that the idea behind the album was to make an album of songs from 2-D's perspective. Voice While 2-D's singing voice is provided by Gorillaz co-creator Damon Albarn, his speaking voice is provided by actor and comedian Kevin Bishop. Albarn has claimed that 2-D's singing voice was developed from a vocal effect produced by equipment in his studio that he has said is "not Auto-Tune, but it was an early form of synthetic voice". Gorillaz engineer Stephen Sedgewick says of the effect, "The main lo-fi telephone-like effect is the typical 2-D sound...I can't tell you what it is, but it's done with hardware. The plug-ins on the inserts are a Waves Renaissance