One Hundred Views of Fred

Everyone, please meet Fred.

He’s the star of a short drawing series that I did last weekend called One Hundred Views of Fred.

The title of this series references Katsushika Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji. Completed in 1832, Hokusai’s colorful and meticulous woodcuts immortalized a national symbol in an array of scenes and contexts. His images have since been borrowed and re-appropriated time and again all over the world.

One Hundred Views of Fred is not so meticulous. It is a hasty manifestation of my long-standing interest in multiple perceptions of people and how they are described by our own experiences and through storytelling.

I think the internet is an appropriate place to put all these little drawings, since so much character-pushing happens online. Growing up as a manga and video game fan, my first pockets of interest in the internet developed in the growing numbers of fanfiction and other fan generated media. It was in these collectives that the most popular comic and video game characters assumed new lives—ones that played out in the hands of their admirers.

The readership took on the role of author of the material they consumed and breathed new meaning into it. This is difficult to do in real life, because characters in real life retain authority over their persona simply through living. Each person can only allow so much of themselves to ever be present to others at any given point in time.

I guess this is if there’s no stalking involved, which I also think is an excellent idea for a video game.

characters drawings fred |