Drinking and Drawing

Host A Drinking And Drawing In Your Town

Are you interested in hosting a Drinking & Drawing in your town? That’s great! We freely allow anyone who asks to “license” our event.  Don’t let that fancy-pants term scare you, though. It’s just that when you use the Drinking & Drawing name, technically, we’re licensing it to you. It’s totally free to do. You’re just getting the chance to use the name, and in so doing, hooking yourself into our great network of other Drinkers & Drawers. This gives you publicity and access to a large part of the animation community that most people couldn’t swing on their own. We let you use our logo and graphics, send you cool coasters, and if you need anything else, we’re here for you! We’ll also blog about your event on Drinking&Drawing.org and if you send us your film when it’s done, we’ll get that out there, too!

So read on for the total insider’s look at how Frederator Studios and Dan Meth run Drinking & Drawing.

Before your event:
If you want your Drinking & Drawing to be small, just tell your friends! We like to have big events, here in New York, and really try to get the word out. A lot of this we do on our blogs, but we also have postcards made that we distribute to local studios and schools. We also use our MySpace page, Channel Frederator RAW, Meetup.com, Craiglist.org. Use any resource you can think of to get your event out there, but also make 100% sure that everyone knows whether they’ll have to be 21, or 18, or of any other restrictions that may snarl things up with a drinking event. If you want to use our cool postcard, just let us know. We can hook you up with the typeface and graphics. 48 Hour Print is a great resource for inexpensive, quick printing.
Also think about your location. Some bars are glad for the traffic on a weeknight, and as long as people are buying drinks, they’re happy to let you use the space. Others may want a space fee. Keep in mind whether or not anyone else will be in the bar or if it’s exclusive to your event. If it’s a busy bar and you’re having your event there, chaos could reign! When we do Drinking & Drawing in NY, the bar is not exclusive to us, but they’re a late night and weekend kind of bar, so we get very little outside traffic. Also, ALWAYS work things out with the bar ahead of time. You’ll need to make sure that there’s enough power for your light tables, etc.

At The Event:
We usually do animations in groups of 8-10, but depending on what kind of tables or bar you do your Drinking & Drawing in you can adjust.
You can buy very inexpensive light tables at Save-On-Crafts. We buy a bunch of light tables and use masking tape to create a nice little slot for a 4x6 index card Each table gets a letter, making sequence A, B, C, etc. and piles are created for each sequence. At the end of the night, you end up with a sequence for each table. We take them back to our office, and usually work the different sequences together with just a few additional frames.
You can work your rounds any way you want. We find that 8 cards for 10 minutes gives people enough time to draw, yet keeps the action going. Whether you want to pre-register people is up to you. We often do, just to get an idea of who’s coming, but definitely make sure that anyone who draws gives you a name and e-mail so they get credit, and so you can e-mail them once you’ve put your film together.
We’ve done events in two ways - one where we give everyone a number and call up numbers x thru y to draw. This is great for knowing who’s who, but sometimes, people forget their numbers, leave early, aren’t listening for their numbers, etc. so you do have to be organized. We’ve also just worked on a first come first serve basis. A lot depends on how big you expect your event to be and the location.

After The Event
After your crazy night of Drinking & Drawing, it’s your job to input each and every one of those drawings! It’s not an easy job, but we’ve worked out a surprisingly easy system! We actually create the same tape getup on a copy stand and take photos of each image. This is a easy, fast way to get the images digitized and numbered. You can do the same thing on a scanner, but it just takes a bit longer. Then, most video editing programs (even Quicktime Pro) import a numbered sequence with ease. From there you can add music, title cards, etc.
There you have it! Once you have your film done, make sure you upload it for us to see at http://www.channelfrederator.com/submit We’ll spread the love.
Our one post-event requirement is that you send us your list of e-mail addresses to savemeaplace@frederator.com . We don’t want them to SPAM all of your friends, but more so we at Frederator and Channel Frederator can develop a relationship with the filmmakers that come to Drinking & Drawing events.

Tips:
- Sometimes it’s tough to get animators out of their seats! We started using a big nasty air horn to signal the end of a round and scare the pants off of ‘em! This also signals the next batch of people to listen for their numbers.
- If you’re handing out numbers, you’d be amazed at how adults old enough to partake in alcoholic beverages can lose things. We started writing numbers on people’s hands or a sticker so they don’t lose them.
- If you take photos at your event, upload them to Flickr and tag them “drinkinganddrawing” This way, they’ll automatically feed into drinkinganddrawing.org for the whole world to see!
- If you have registration, make sure it’s visible and well-signed.
- Have one or two dedicated MCs that call people up, make sure that everyone has markers and the right cards. This person should avoid drinking heavily… at least for most of the night…

A Handy Supply List:
- Lots-o-Sharpies
- light tables
- index cards (we use 4x6)
- masking tape
- extension cords and power strips
- clip board and registration sheets
- numbers or stickers
- table & chairs
- timer
- microphone set up for announcements

Want to bring Drinking and Drawing to your town? Send an e-mail to SaveMeAPlace@Frederator.com