Channel Frederator Blog

This week’s episode has got the Second Annual Drinking & Drawing Event from our Portland Brethren, Cascade ACM Siggraph. We’ll get some words from them during the next couple of days on how their event went that night. All I can say is I hope their hangover was a lot better than ours!

I can’t believe I didn’t mention and interview our resident photographer and one man macguyver Jared Roessler. El Senor Super Doofus Hyperdrive himself.

He’s the person who was in charge of capturing all the drunken antics, all the doodled madness, and all the animator and gorilla fur.

1) How drunk did you get, and how was the hangover afterwards?
I didn’t really get that drunk until the tail end of the night. Which is to say that I didn’t start drinking until after my fifth roll of film was shot out; I wanted to be able to control just how blurry my pictures were. After we wrapped up, after all the drawings and lightboxes had been boxed up, i slammed back a couple shots of tequila and downed the last of four rather stiff Jack and Cokes. As far as hangovers go, there sadly wasn’t much to speak of. I’ve had far more atrocious benders and know how to nurse myself first thing in the morning.

2) How do you feel about the final product? The film.
As I was hovering over everyone’s shoulders and snapping away, I saw lots of craziness and bizarro drawings which seemed to harbor no right tale or possibility of direction. It was upon realizing this that i knew this crazyquilt would be a mindf*ck for the viewer. Yet this method of animation seemed an apt description of an rum-soaked night or a whiskey binge. The subject matter covered by the attendees fits exactly what you would expect from a bunch of drunks with markers and bar napkins. I would say that the finished piece almost seems to have its own illogical and belligerent agenda, and that’s what makes me enjoy it.

3) What were some of the challenges in getting some of the pics?
Actually, getting the pictures was remarkably easy. Here I am in a room filled with the semi-drunk and they’re all hunched over and blinded by lightboxes and completely oblivious to whatever is going on around them as they focus on their drawings of gorillas or penises or melting faces or what-have-you. But I will say that all the 35mm shots I took were focused by the numbers on the focus ring (i don’t use auto-focus) because it was rather dark in there. I haven’t had to math out and estimate distances in years, so that would have to be the most difficult part of the night. Everything else was a kick in the pants.

4) You got in on some of the drawing action too! Do you remember what was yours in the film and the direction it went?
Heh, yup. I sat down at one of the tables towards the end of the night and looked down and saw a cutesy little puppy with a little triangular tail. I animated the little tail into a horned creature ripping out of the puppy’s hindquarters, killing the puppy.

5) Can you let us know which picture was your favorite, that summed up the night, and also captured the soul of drinking and drawing?
That’s hard for me to do, I feel there were many dynamics occurring that night. From twisted mental drawings and the seething intensity of those on stage drawing whacked-out messes or lovely movements to networking to meeting new people to catching up and laughing with old friends to just kicking back and having good old-fashioned party time. I took over 900 pictures that night and to pare it down to one would omit much of what made the night such a success and so fun for each person that attended. I took some pictures that I really like and feel capture a lot of what the night was about, but hell if the amalgam of 100-plus loony animators and bystanders isn’t the stand-out in my mind.
That said, I’m partial to these here images:

Let’s take a look back at the 2nd Channel Fred Drink and Draw Event in NYC again.

Thanks Jared! Your pictars rawk! Thanks for the interview bud, here’s to many more Pictars! (Hope I get to be in more too!)

-Jeaux Janovsky