Dan Meth's Blog

Yesterday, Fred suggested that I blog about some of my past cartoons. I thought about it and realized that this month marks the 5th anniversary of one of my most well-received works, “The Smart Ass Guide to New York”.

In the summer of 2001, I had just returned to NYC after two years in California. To attract freelance work, I decided to create a cartoon that would make New York clients notice me. I sat in my dad’s basement for two weeks and made this interactive map of the city that had cartoons pop up when you click on certain neighborhoods. I emailed it to a couple dozen people hoping it would get a little viral action. Did it ever.

Within a week, it seemed every office worker in the city was looking at it. I was getting about 65 emails a day, inquiring about freelance work and also just to say they liked it. Soon it had spread to other countries; NYC expatriates all over the world were writing to say it made them nostalgic.

However I soon had to pay HUGE bandwidth charge$ to my web host. I didn’t mind too much because I suddenly had more clients than I could handle. And publicity; there were articles about it in The Daily News, TimeOut NY, and it was featured in an Entertainment Weekly segment on the New York 1 cable network. All by word of mouth.

It went on like that the whole summer. After 9/11, some of the jokes became eerily prophetic; the gas masks in Chinatown, the twin towers in the window of the Wall Street cokehead. I had to change the Rudy Giuliani cartoon as soon as Bloomberg took his place as Mayor. I guess at this point some of the jokes are a little out-of-date and I know the city better now. Also, I have 5 more years of animation experience. So maybe we’re due for an updated version, what do you think?

Dan Meth