Author: Teel

I have now created a work of art where the subject is freedom of expression itself, and the boundaries of inspiration. I selected a fellow artist whom I know has created and profited from the creation of derivative art in the past, but who was now making enough money from his creations that his attitude about derivative works had changed. I contacted him, surreptitiously asking for license to create a unique stylized portrait of one of his characters, a la Andy Warhol’s portraits of celebrities, knowing I would be refused. I was refused. I offered him the painting itself, I offered him 100% of the proceeds from the potential sale of the painting, and I tried reasonably negotiating with him as though I believed it would do any good. It did not; he refused all forms of negotiation or compromise as I had expected he would. He even refered to himself as being a ‘pain in the ass’ about the whole thing.

I then proceeded with my original vision of the painting, which was to make it appear that a derivative work created in good faith and a playful spirit had been forced to be ‘un-created’ or defaced because the originator of the idea was being unreasonable and restricting my freedom of expression. Thus, yesterday I got to the point where it appeared to be simply a partially derivative work (would you know what the subject was if I did not spell it out?), and I contacted the original creator one last time, to give him one last chance to allow the work, or accept the offer of 100% of the proceeds, or to work something out. Again he refused to negotiate, this time saying (this is a direct quote) “I don’t give a shit what you do with the painting, but I don’t want it, I don’t want the proceeds from its sale…” thus giving me excellent ground should he try to take legal action againt my now entirely unactionable position. Thanks, man.

Anyway, the final work really doesn’t depict any character or creation of his, and any part of it that resembles a creation of his is coincidental to my desire to have a factual basis for the actual point of the peice. Which is that if I had not coerced the above quote out of him, and had actually created something that had more than a vague resemblance to a creation of his, I could have faced legal action.

Legal action.

For painting a picture of a chicken.

There is something wrong with the way copyright law is handled in America, and it is not simply with the ridiculous term of each copyright (now 90 years beyond the death of the creator), but also in the way creators have come to behave with regards to their creations. There is no way this one painting could topple the ’empire’ the original creator is building around the actual character he believes it was intended to depict, let alone degrade the value of the character. (At my current going rate for a painting of this size and complexity, I could easily get several hundred dollars, while he gives away an infinite number of depictions of the character in question on his website every day for free.) Yet the creator feels so compelled to totally control the character in question that when anything is created even vaguely or coincidentally resmbling one of his creations, he reacts by trying to stomp it out. If he were to maintain this attitude about his work, it would extend 90 years beyond his death, which itself may be 90 years away, and anyone wanting to draw, paint, or otherwise depict a talking chicken would have to either wait a century or two or proceed with their creation with the fear that they may next be targeted by this creator, who has apparently copyrighted the idea of the talking chicken.

I understand that there should be a certain level of protection for creators, as I am myself a creator, but the current laws and attitudes are too far gone. I certainly don’t need protection of my works more than a year after my death, and corporations (non-entities, as far as I am concerned) should only be allowed use of individual creators’ copyrights for as long as the individual agrees, and for one year beyond the term of their life. Not longer, and not without the permission of the actual person or persons who created the work. Copyright law should not be able to stop individual creators from expressing themselves, but only to stop those who make money from copyright violations from not giving a fair share of any profits to the copyright holder, up to 100% of the profits. Copyright protections are supposed to be there to allow the people who come up with the ideas to make the money off them without having to worry about not getting their fair share if/when someone else uses their idea.

If someone takes your idea and copies it exactly and gives it away for free, it isn’t stealing, it’s free advertising. If someone takes your idea and copies it exactly and sells it, it still isn’t stealing, but you deserve at least a portion of their profits. If someone takes your idea and runs with it and creates something merely ‘inspired by’ it, and sells it, there is a small chance you deserve a portion of their profits, but since they aren’t selling something you’ve created, but an entirely new work, it isn’t actually your idea anymore, and what you deserve there is questionable.

Personally, if I created something that inspired someone to create a new something that had grown out of my own creation, and that it was so popular or valuable that they were able to make money by its sale, I would probably want to congratulate them, and perhaps collaborate with them on future works. In a few years when I’m making more money off this stuff and someone tries to make money from something derivative, see if I don’t hold to my word. It isn’t about this situation, and it isn’t just about ‘inspired’ or ‘derivative’ works, it’s about the whole copyright issue. It’s about the fools in the music industry who believe people getting free copies of their music over the internet is stealing, but will gladly give away free copies of the same music over the radio and in stores on free promotional CDs and consider it ‘advertising’. It’s about the fact that Mickey Mouse is 70 years old and I’m still not allowed to draw him without permission I could never afford to get. It’s about the fact that all the ‘fan art’ anyone has ever drawn (usually among the first things any artist ever draws) could be stopped at any moment by whomever owns the individual copyrights on the inspiring images and characters being depicted.

It’s about freedom of expression.

I give you my new painting (I will have a better photo online next week), which will be available for sale online at Modern Evil and in person at the San Diego Comic-Con 2003 next week,

freedom of expression:

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Tomorrow, Flagstaff.

My grandfather is buying a compressor from a friend of his, and they are meeting in Flagstaff. He needs my help to move the thing from one truck to the other. So I’m going to Flagstaff with my grandparents tomorrow.

My sister is coming up to run the store for the day; hopefully people will come in with money, looking to buy. We hardly had a person come in after lunch today. I spent some time marking a few more prices on things for her. She worries about making up prices for things on the spur of the moment. So do I, frankly, but I’m getting used to it.

My father and brother are also coming up tomorrow. I don’t know what they’ll do, exactly. There are rumblings of my brother accompanying us to Flagstaff, but since we’re going in the truck, I don’t think there’ll be room. Unless grandpa thinks it’s safe for one o fus to ride in back. I never know.

Feeling a bit better today. Going to go to bed early again. See about trying to be well by the time the convention rolls around. I need to figure out if there’s a way for me to pack a couple of paintings to safely check them with the airline. I wanted to have three particular paintings on-hand. One is ‘please’; I wanted to have it on hand because I’ll be signing and handing out mini-prints of it, and maybe someone there will want to buy the real thing. The other two are the two online-comic-inspired paintings. I was trying to do for comics something new, stylizing and portraitizing particular online comics characters in a pair of paintings that are interesting on their own and that work together side by side as well. One of them I have recently lost the rights to create, so while I will (perhaps temporarily) have a photo of the painting as I “wanted” it to be here on the site, I will shortly be permanently defacing it in a way that calls out the ridiculousness of the person who owns the rights to the character. There will be photos of that online soon, as well.

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I woke up in the middle of the night/early morning this morning because I suddenly felt like it was freezing cold. I turned off the fan and pulled the blanket over me and I passed out again.

When my alarms started going off around 8, I remember being roused, trying to stand and finding myself collapsing; luckily right back into bed. This time I was soaked in sweat, and it felt awful hot. I passed out right away again.

Suddenly there was a knocking at my door. I looked at the clock; it was a little after noon. My grandfather wanted to know if I was feeling alright. I admitted that I didn’t feel particularly well, tried sitting up and just barely succeeded as my body tried to fall right back down and my brain tried to shut off. I raspily told him I’d at least have to go downstairs for some water, so I’d see him in a few minutes.

I managed to get dressed (doing nothing else; just taking my pajamas off and putting clothes on) in a little under half an hour. Then downstairs. If you haven’t seen the stairs, don’t worry about it, but for those of you that have, it was harrowing. Anyway, I got downstairs and had some water, and had no appetite, but grandfather offered me some watermelon, so I ate a fair amount of watermelon. As I slowly consumed the melon, we discussed how I felt. We thought my blood pressure might be low, so he checked it with a device he conveniently had on-hand. 112/77. I guess that’s low. I never know. My pulse was 89, which seems low for me, but he thought it was high. Based on my experiences, that’s about my pulse when I’m relaxed, on the verge of sleeping.

I didn’t feel too bad; mostly lethargic. A touch of sore throat, and maybe something going on in my sinuses. A sort of overall body ache, but more like my whole body was just tired more than sore. So I didn’t get much done today. I put a couple of coats of varnish on the wood frame for the sign I’m making for the store. I … stressed out more about transportation.

Did I mention that it’s the stress over money and transportation for the con that I believe is making me sick? Like a constant, low-level fight/flight reaction to something so nebulous. Have I mentioned here (I know I haven’t given full details, no) that our plans for getting to the con have changed just about every day for the last week? I thought I was good yesterday when Angela offered to loan me her car, but then she posted about it and I don’t want to stress her out more than she already is and I didn’t know her car had something wrong with it she was worried about; she told me it was okay. So I talked to my grandfather tonight at supper (Chicken Noodle soup and some more watermelon) and I’m going to borrow some money from him. I can pay him back next month from my unemployment checks, no problem; I just don’t have the money right now, when I need it. And I bought some plane tickets on Southwest (the cheapest ones I could find) tonight, and unless something major changes in the next few days, I will go to great lengths not to have to change my transportation plans again.

Incidentally, in order to save about $60, my brother and I will be leaving for San Diego at around 6AM on Wednesday, even though the preview night at the con doesn’t start until 2PM. Likely, we’ll have no trouble finding things to fill our time, but it means getting to the Airport before 5AM. If dad or Angela can’t get us there then… lemme check the bus routes… nope, it’s not physically possible to get to the airport on the bus by 5AM from where I will be in PHX.

I have to put about an hour of work into this painting I’m working on before I pass out again tonight. Then it’s back to bed. Until I wake up bright and early and ready to sell, sell, sell! Because if I can sell any number of paintings before the con, it will help out SO MUCH! If you’re thinking of buying a painting, please, please, please buy one now! You can’t beat the 50% off prices available if you pruchase online!

Sigh.

I’ve noticed recently that I don’t seem to read comics much anymore.

There are a few online strips, Goats, Achewood, PA, that I still read regularly, but … I don’t know, my reading has just dropped off.

I’m sure part of the reason is bandwidth. I am unfortunately on dialup for th foreseeable future, and simply don’t have the bandwidth to browse a lot of comics. I remember back when I had the bandwidth and the interest, I had a list of over 100 comics that I read every time they updated. No, I don’t even remember what they were.

Part of it stemmed from when I lost my internet access at home for a couple of months and was not allowed to browse from work at the same time; I didn’t read any comics at all for a while. And when I finally could read comics again, I had lost my bookmarks or something, and couldn’t remember what comics I was reading… and somehow didn’t have the interest in going through and reading 90 days worth of 100+ comics. It was just too much. So I caught up on the archives of a few comics, but I never got back to that place where I was reading dozens of comics.

When Modern Tales first launched, I signed up. I was sure it was a good idea; someone was going to try to make money off online comics, and I wanted to be a part of that! And at first, I read most of their comics. But as I read them, giving them all more than adequate opportunities to entertain me, I was continuously disappointed. And the ones I liked (Wedlock, Patent Pending, Lil’ Clango, etc…) kept disappearing or becoming sporadic until I was down to only one or two that I cared about. So after my year pre-paid subscription was up, I cancelled. And around that time I found myself with a pessimistic view of the online comics world. I had stopped reading anything Keen when I lost my internet access, and because of all the negative talk I heard about the whole Keen experience, I never went back.

And now dial-up. I know there are thousands upon thousands of online comics out there, but I simply don’t have the time it would take to even select a few percent of them to read regularly. And I gave up on comics forums a long time ago; too much of it devolves into meaningless blather or flames, and so I’m not in any position to hear about the great new comic everyone is reading. I feel out of the loop most of the time. I make online comics, I host online comics, but somehow I’m not part of the ‘online comics scene’. I don’t know what other people are doing. I don’t know what’s popular, what’s in, what’s out, what’s cutting edge. I read Comixpedia to try to keep up, but the stories mentioning specific comics seem to go right over my head, as though written only for people already familiar with the comics in question.

I’m going to the San Diego Comic-Con International this year, I’m a featured shopkeeper at Cafepress’ booth, and I’m excited about all the hubub that is sure to be present this year about micropayments, but … otherwise I have no idea why I’m going. I never read many print comic books, so that was just barely a draw, and only to the Slave Labor booth. Although this year the artists from 100% of the online comics I read every time they update will be present, I’m not too looking forward to meeting them. Especially Jon.

I think one of the things I’m looking forward to about the con is that maybe it will brighten my waning attitude about comics in general. Of course, the alternative is a possibility, that faced with the reality of the ‘online comics scene’ by walking up to it and chaking its hand at the con, that I will finally see that I should just drop out, have nothing to do with it, stop trying to make comics, stop trying to find new comics to host, stop even reading goats and PA…

Though I hope that that is not the case. If I manage to attend at least one panel with Scott McCloud, evidence from previous years suggests that I will have not less than two new ideas for comics. Although… due to a variety of reasons (the biggest of which being my own procrastination) I haven’t even really made much headway on some of the ideas I got from Scott back in 2000. So maybe that won’t be worth it after all.

I remember the last time I went to the con, I wasn’t sure why I was going, even up to the day I left for it, but I know I had a good time when I was there. And then last year I missed the con, at which apparently I missed the best times.

Still, when I come home from the con, whatever my mood, I will still be on dial-up, and I will still not be a part of the ‘online comics scene’.

And likely, I will still not have all the panels done for my latest attempt at an online comic, The ‘Mouse’ Project, where I tried to push the ‘online’-ness of the online comic to the creation side, but found myself so far from the ‘online comics scene’ that I could not find enough artists willing to sign up online. I am actually preparing pages with a 6″x6″ square pre-drawn and the text and description below. To carry around at the con and try to get people to draw the remaining panels. It