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BONUS POD 1 – In Interview with Christoph Brown - AKA The Amazing Etch Man and the World's Fastest Etch-A-Sketch Artist
408 Plays6 years ago
On this bonus episode, Erik interviews Christoph Brown (AKA The Amazing Etch Man), the World's Fastest Etch-A-Sketch artist from New York Toy Fair 2020 as his portrait was being sketched! Enjoy!
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Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
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Transcript
Introduction and Toy Fair Recap
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome to our first little bonus pod. Yeah, this is our first bonus pod. It's Eric here, and I had something a little special to share with you. So back when Dave and I went to Toy Fair in February, New York Toy Fair, we got to interview a ton of people. Amy Corbett from LEGO and Todd McFarlane from McFarlane Toys. But one of those interviews that we didn't include in our Toy Fair recap episode was with somebody super special that Spin Master
Meet Christoph Brown, the Amazing Etchman
00:00:42
Speaker
had out.
00:00:42
Speaker
So, at their booth, right outside, they had the world's fastest Etch-A-Sketch artist. His name is Christoph Brown. He goes by the amazing Etchman on Instagram, and that's kind of his superhero name.
00:00:57
Speaker
And as he was sketching people, I thought it would be a great idea to plop my phone down and interview him. So, presented here is some additional interview footage, interview audio from New York Toy Fair of me interviewing the amazing Etch Man, Christophe Brown, as he did my portrait. Enjoy. We'll do a little interview style while you draw. Okay, great.
Journey to Etch-A-Sketch Mastery
00:01:24
Speaker
So, you said that you started in 2002? Well, actually, I started earlier than that, but I knew that I could do it as a career in 2002. I picked up in a coffee shop in Los Feliz, California, which is in L.A. And I just, it was a pocket etch-a-sketch and I was working as a barista at the time. I came to Los Angeles to make all my dreams come true, like most people do, creatively.
00:01:49
Speaker
And I picked up the Etch-A-Sketch in a coffee shop and people started freaking out. So I was like, I should do something with this. And so I turned it into a career. That's awesome. And you had the pocket Etch-A-Sketch already.
00:02:03
Speaker
What drew you into it initially? I could do it, and people were freaking out over it. So I was like, I should probably take advantage of this. And it was providing people so much joy and happiness that I was just like, I was like, well, why not? Let's do something with this. So I turned it into a private parties and events kind of thing.
Etch-A-Sketch's Global Impact
00:02:23
Speaker
And then Spin Master acquired the Etch A Sketch in 2016.
00:02:31
Speaker
We, you know, now I travel all over the country in the world, edgesketching different people. That's awesome. And you mentioned before you train other people on... Yeah, I teach seminars and classes. I actually work with a whole community of edgesketch artists. And it's growing. It's growing. The whole community is growing.
00:02:51
Speaker
It's amazing for such a legacy toy, you know, to find kind of new life in a modern age. No, I think it's amazing. The artist really, you know, like so many incredible artists. It's such an art form to itself now. It's just really cool. And it's very much come back into the ether. You know what I mean? People are really picking it up.
00:03:11
Speaker
going back to the simpler things, easier things. I'm sure stuff like Film Toy Story having an Etch-A-Sketch in it.
Limited Editions and Records
00:03:20
Speaker
Toy Story was a big boost to the Etch-A-Sketch. We have these new limited edition Etch-A-Sketches, special editions that are coming out this year. The Rubik's Cube edition, the NASA edition, and Stan Lee edition.
00:03:41
Speaker
What's special about those, are they just Etch-A-Sketches with a special casing? Yeah, they have a special casing and they're themed out to the actual thing. And actually Princess Etch-A-Sketch and myself did decals. I did the decal for the 60th anniversary limited edition Etch-A-Sketch and then Princess Etch-A-Sketch did drawings in collaboration for Stan Lee. She had Stan Lee's signature and she did
00:04:09
Speaker
the Monopoly edition and the Rubik's Cube edition. These new editions are really cool. The people in the artist, the Etch-A-Sketch community are really excited to get these Etch-A-Sketches. That's great. And you also mentioned before you have a record. Oh yeah, I'm the world's fastest Etch-A-Sketch artist, so I do portraits of people in usually around two to five minutes.
00:04:32
Speaker
But I broke my own record online, you can see it, I sang Stevie Wonder's Superstition while Etch-A-Sketchings Stevie Wonder in 90 seconds. That's incredible. You can check that out on YouTube. I do a lot of celebrity parties, so I've Etch-A-Sketched a lot of famous people.
00:04:48
Speaker
And my favorite probably was Quincy Jones. I was gonna say who was your favorite person to sketch and then who was the most difficult?
Preserving Etch-A-Sketch Art
00:04:57
Speaker
Well, I think Quincy Jones was one of my favorites. Paul Rhett and I actually had an edge off. We were at a premiere and he loves the Etch-A-Sketch and he actually was like I love the Etch-A-Sketch and he's actually a pretty good Etch-A-Sketch artist. I still have his Etch-A-Sketch that he did of me.
00:05:11
Speaker
Now once you have a portrait, obviously we're going to shake this and erase it once you're done so that it's somebody else's turn, but is there a way to permanently preserve? Yeah, so that's what my company does. We actually preserve etch-a-sketch, not to erase. So when I go to a private party event, I usually do it on pocket etch-a-sketches, which it gives me like a minute to compose. So we just do one person after the other, and then we glue down the knobs. We've already pre-drained all the graphite out of the mechanism, so we have one shot to draw on it.
00:05:37
Speaker
And then we just do one after the other. When I get into a zone, I usually can get it down to about a minute per drawing. Yeah, this is definitely the strangest interview I've ever given because I'm watching myself be drawn on a natural sketch while I'm talking to you, which is incredible. Right. And like I said, I'm actually doing a large size, so the detailing is that. But when I do it on a pocket, I can get much more detailing because it's a smaller surface area.
00:05:59
Speaker
So we're going to play this sound by our podcast. Tell our audience where they can find you. Well, you can check out the Etch-A-Sketch at Spin Master Global, and then you can check me out, all my work and all the different time lapses and things I do at Instagram, at Amazing Etch Man, or at my website, which is etchu, the letter u dot com, etchu dot com.
Closing and Credits
00:06:19
Speaker
Awesome. But you should definitely check out all of the things at etchasketch dot com because there's a brand new website that features a lot of our work.
00:06:27
Speaker
This is so cool. Thank you so much for not only drawing me, but providing such a fun interview. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the interview. You have a great day here at Toy Fair. Thank you, dear listener, for hanging out with us today. Subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen, and then tell your friends to do it. Thanks also to Joe Azari, the golden voice behind our intro. Our music is Game Boy Horror by the Zombie Dandies. Find more about them both on our show notes.
00:06:57
Speaker
Follow us on social media at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram and Twitter. Stop by and say hi. Show us your toy hauls and share your toy stories. Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
00:07:20
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation, executive producer Frank Kablaui. This program and many others like it on the non-productive network is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives license. Please share it, but ask before trying to change it or sell it. For more information, visit non-productive.com.