Channel Frederator Blog

Dan Meth’s NYC Drinking and Drawing 2.0 event was a huge success. It was an epic, fun filled night filled with the hippest and funniest animators, drinks, sharpie smell filling the air, and the right touch of Gorilla.

Dan Meth
Here, we chat with Dan Meth, Founder of D&D, and producers Carrie Miller and Lee Rubenstein.
Cheers!
1) How was Drinking and Drawing NYC compared to the 1st D+D Portland Experience?
Dan Meth: The NYC D& D was had even more people drawing than Portland which was surprising since Portland happened to be at an animation festival. I’d say the energy level was the same, maybe even higher. The films were surprisingly similar in style, but I think the recurring theme of the gorilla tied it together in a more interesting way.
Carrie Miller: I wouldn’t say they were dramatically different, but of course there was a bit of a different feel. The mood was different in the respect that everyone who was there could have done something else. At Portland, we were a part of the animation festival. No one really had much else to do so it wasn’t a big surprise that we had a great turnout. In New York, there’s always something going on. So the fact that people made a point to come out to D&D was a big deal to me. The New York animation community is also very small and close knit. You bump into old friends and almost everyone knows each other.
Lee Rubenstein: The first drinking and drawing experience was tons of fun, but we really didn’t know what we were doing… I like this one way better.

Carrie Miller
2) How do you feel about the final product? The film.
DM: I think the film is fascinating. It’s like a collective stream-of-consciousness. It’s like 100 people’s inner-visions all melting into one another.
CM: I’m consistently surprised at what comes out of Drinking and Drawing. Even though it’s kind of a mess, it’s a very cool mess. And it’s so neat to see how things get from point A to point B. Like, I drew a monkey with a flower and two rounds later I came back and looked. The only thing on the card was a gun. How that happened in 8 frames, I still haven’t figured out…
LR: I love the film, its the closest thing i will get to giving birth.

3) Did everything turn out how you pictured it to? What would be some of the things you would change?
DM: Like I said, i didn’t expect the NYC film to be too different than the Portland film. In future D&D events, we plan on reducing our attempt at organized registration since it usually becomes chaotic. We’re not sure though, we’re still deciding. We’re going to experiment with other drawing mediums, and other lightbox arrangements like maybe a “gauntlet” style line where you move down a line of lightboxes. The possibilities are endless.
CM: I think so. We’re thrilled that everyone showed up and participated. I’m not so sure about pre-registering people and numbers and such. The later it gets, the more disorganized things got. But it’s kind of more fun that way. Steve just started calling whoever wanted to come up. It wasn’t the chaos one would expect and was really kind of fun. You could poke your friend and say - “come on! go do it!” and usually, the person would decide to do it at the spur of the moment. I like for people to have that option.
LR: Everything was just as I imagined.

Lee Rubenstein
4) How drunk did you get, and how was the hangover afterwards?
DM: I didn’t get that drunk. The adrenaline was flowing as I tried to keep the chaos in control. And I didn’t have much time to drink. No hangover for this guy.
CM: Not drunk enough.
LR: I forgot to eat dinner before, so I was pretty shwasted.

5) Where do you hope to see D+D going/touring/ in the future? What is your dream city for it to be hosted in? I vote for Tokyo, Japan. It’d be all Akira style, growing like a demented, flabby skinned baby… you guys have seen the end of Akira right?
DM: I’d love to do D&D in Ottawa. I agree with you on Tokyo… it’s the perfect reason to go and I feel like the artists there would have a whole different approach. Plus, it would probably be more orderly. But where else?… Annecy, Zagreb, Sweden, Holland, London, Bora Bora, Mexico, anywhere would be amazing and unique.
CM: I like the idea of working with festivals like we did in Portland, but I also really like the idea of anyone being able to do a Drinking & Drawing in their own city. We have lots of people asking and I think we’ll see a lot of cities hosting!
LR: I would love to eventually have it global, streaming live on the internets, one film made by thousands of people around the world.

Here’s the film again in case you missed it the first time around.

I had a great time hanging out with the likes of Elliot Cowan, Ben Ross, Amid Amidi, Joey Ahlbum, Cristina Paulos and many more cool kids.

Pimpy the Gorilla & Channel Frederator’s Jeaux Janovsky
I think this pic of Pimpy the Gorilla and I can attest to my evening of awesome.
Thanks to all who came out and partied hard and drew even harder with us.
-Jeaux Janovsky