Drinking and Drawing Proves Drunks Are Better Animators

Tonight at the News Lounge, ladies and gents will hunch over light boxes and scribble on note cards while a rowdy bunch behind them waits its turn. It's Drinking and Drawing, a sort of animated jam session where the artistically inclined come together over pints and highballs to create a short animated film.

Here's how it works: You'll receive eight blank note cards plus the last card from the animator who drew before you. Then you'll have 20 minutes to sketch a continued animation. At the end of the night, everyone's note cards will be combined into a two-minute film, a sort of flipbook of everyone's drunken fantasies.

Spawned at NYC's Frederator Studios, Drinking and Drawing is organized locally by Spencer Morin, head of Miami World Cinema Center's animation department. We recently spoke to Morin who was busy serving as a production assistant on a top secret production in the Everglades. (He's also been a PA on 50 Cent: The Money and the Power, Project Runway, and Burn Notice.)

In between responding to commands of "tripod!" (or was that "python?"), Morin explains a Meth Minute, why drunks are better animators, and how he feels about German expressionism.

But first, take a look at what the crazy, pen-wielding boozers at the last Drinking and Drawing created:

New Times: How did Drinking and Drawing get started?

Spencer Morin: It started at Frederator Studios. There was an animator at

Dan Meth, and they had him do the Meth Minute where they kept feeding

him drinks at a bar. He was animating the entire time. It was this

experiment. Then they came up with the idea for Drinking and Drawing,

basically a bunch of animators sitting in bar, collaborating on an

animation.

When I came to Cinema Center, Patrick De Bokay asked me to head the

animation studio and he gave him his contacts at Federator studios. I

saw the Drinking and Drawing thing and said, cool. Let's bring this to Miami.

Do you give the animators an idea or a theme to start them off?

I don't give them anything. I just let them go at it. We're going to be

doing variations on Drinking and Drawing where there'll be themes and

characters. For instance, there's another animation event in development

called Animation Therapy where the animation will be done by cancer

patients and their families.

We hear that street artist Krave is the featured artist tonight. How's that going to work?

The featured artist is going to do a batch of 40 index cards - the standard

animator only does 10 - and he's going to have his own clump in the

middle of everyone else's animation. He'll have a straight 40-frame

sequence of animation, which will come out to a few seconds. It'll be

placed at the end of the piece when we reshoot it for the web. I shoot

the frames for the live feed that night. And then I bring the frames

back to studio, do an animated intro, and reshoot all the frames with

better lighting.

I don't take out any of the bad frames, even if someone's ridiculously

drunk. I don't censor that. It's these spots in the piece that are

really bombastic and insane. You can see who's drunk when they're

animating and to me, it's funny. But it also creates the life of the

piece. That's something about traditional animation that you can't get

in CG (computer graphics) where everything is always perfect. When

you're doing this traditional frame-by-frame animation process and

there's something slightly off, that's not a mistake or problem - that's

character.

What other artists would you like to feature at DnD?

I'm always on the lookout for artists. I'd like to feature a quintessential

Miami artist like Lebo. I'm fairly picky about that stuff. I was brought

up on classical painting and Picasso - that kinda of stuff. I'm pretty

picky about my modern art, which is the main consistency for Miami's

art. I'd love to see more people bring back those impressionist paintings,

maybe even German expressionism.  

At tonight's Drinking and Drawing, you'll get to release the

studio. The drawing starts at 8 p.m. at the News Lounge (5580 NE 4th Ct., Miami) and is free. Call 305-433-5848 or visit miamiworldcinemacenter.org.