Dan Meth's Blog

Our Drinking and Drawing Party in Portland last week was almost as exciting as winning an award three days later. Let me describe it as best I can. At the Someday Lounge, we had over two hundred cartoonists and fans show up and party from 10pm to 3 am.

About half of them signed up to participate in our experiment in live animation. Every twelve minutes a new group of cartoonists came on stage and sat a light-tables to draw 8 frames of animation. They left the last frame they drew for the next cartoonist to follow.

And what a lineup it was. Just a few of our distinguished participants were Bill Plympton, Pat Smith, Pen Ward, Joel Trussell, Jerry Beck, and Dave Levy to name a few. When’s the last time a crew like that all collaborated on a short film? To draw along side those guys was quite an honor.

Best of all was the fact that Javan Ivey took a picture of every frame with his MacGuyver-like camera setup. Because of his dedication, we were able to premier this work of art not ten minutes after the line was drawn. The result was met with applause and you’ll be able to see it for yourself on next week’s Channel Frederator.

the live premier

Finnish animator Eliza Jäppinen

Pen Ward

Amid Amidi, Don Hertzfeldt, Pat Smith, Lee Rubenstein

-Dan Meth