Dan Meth

The new art & culture website IVYBETTY.COM interviewed me. Click here to read it… or you know, read it right here:
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IVYBETTY: In my circle we call people who spend a lot of time on the web “web junkies”. I can’t make any assumptions about how much time you spend on the web but after checking your website I can definitely assume you get a lot of inspiration from the web. So I have to ask where/when did this “web-inspired” work start? 

DAN METH: I cannot pretend it’s not true. I am definitely a web junkie. For the last decade I’ve spent my days on the web, made a living off knowing how it works and making things for people to watch on it. And it’s increasingly how I (and everyone else) gets entertainment, knowledge, communication, and certainly inspiration. I’m not sure exactly when my work became knowingly inspired BY the web, but I guess my first cartoon about the internet was 2007’s “Internet People” which kicked off my Meth Minute series in a big way.

IB: Judging from your body of work, your sense of humor seems to drive your work as an artist. Would you agree with that assumption?

DM: I would. Injecting humor into my work is very natural to me and I don’t have much interest in making serious stuff (yet… maybe someday). I’ve always thought that when you make comedy it’s much easier to judge whether or not the work was successful. If a lot of people laugh, you know you did it right. 

IB: What else do you draw inspiration from?

DM: I don’t watch too much animation, which surprises people. While I am a huge movie buff, my Netflix queue has very little animation on it. I read a lot of non-fiction and am becoming a history nut like my dad. Watching and listening to people always gives you ideas. Living in NYC is great for inspiration because you can’t avoid the millions of strangers and their dramas all around you. Just being an eavesdropping smartass on the subway is research for cartoons.

IB: I was also able to spend some time viewing your film work. Your videos are very interesting. Do you create the films solo or do you collaborate with a team?

DM: I mostly work solo but sometimes have collaborators. When there’s enough of a budget for a project I’ve hired assistant animators. The biggest team I’ve had was about 4 or 5 people working on a show called “Nite Fite”. But mostly it’s just me. I consider my voice actors to be collaborators in a way because I encourage them to improvise and often there’s no script.

IB: What equipment did you use for film/animation?

DM: I use everything! Paper, pencils, IMacs, Cintics, digital cameras, clay, and even watermelons.

IB: How long have you been expressing yourself artistically and professionally?

DM: My parents say that by the age of two I was pretty comfortable at utilizing crayons. It’s been non-stop since then. I wasn’t interested in much else, so I had very little choice but to try to do it professionally. (Here’s some funny drawings I made as a kid)

IB: Where can more of your work be found? 

DM: You can find the occasional illustration of mine in various printed zines and magazines. I am part of an annual anthology called Mammal Magazine and I’m also working on a comic book for Traditional Comics. In the future I hope to have some more tangible work maybe in a gallery or as a mural. There’s a whole non-digital world for art, which I often neglect. 

IB: You update your website quite often, especially considering its all original content. How do you stay inspired and have you always been this way creatively?

DM: As a rule, I post something on my website every weekday. It keeps me from slowing down and getting lazy. I generally don’t TRY to think up new ideas…. instead I just keep my mind and eyes open and the ideas will come into my brain when I least expect it. In college, I had a comic strip in the school paper almost every day and that was alot like a blog. It forced me to keep churning out entertainment and gags for the masses.