We kicked off the Thursday session with my presentation. I feared it had not been researched enough and that it was an culmination of tangents that I tend to go wandering off on. However, I felt able to discuss the matter of creative theft fluidly enough, and managed to provoke response from the group.

I began my presentation with an apology to Zoe whose own presentation’s slides I deliberately stole.

Louise mentioned that at a recent comic convention she’d attended, she’d noticed creative theft reversed – in that independents were using imagery that belonged to big corporations (such as DC comics) to create fan-fiction. I argued that my issue was with profit – and that whilst it is wrong to exploit brand visuals, it pales in comparison when done by those not reaping massive financial benefits. Also many corporations see this as great marketing – or free advertising! Some have even made their work public domain or given explicit permission for images to be used in certain circumstances.

Zoe enquired into what the outcome of the Tatty Devine vs. Claires Accessories case was…in all honesty, I hadn’t fully researched that particular case, although | had gauged from the TD blog that whilst some of the more uniquely similar lines were pulled/discontinued (such as the dinosaur bones) some were allowed to continue. This might mean their imagery is more accessible to the public domain – such as the moustach which is a popular and iconic symbol in contemporary culture. It also might mean that Claires had more money to put into their legal case…

Flo brought up that sometimes the theft was imperative – such as in fashion where the catwalk paves the way for commercial high street designers. I agreed but also thought that the catwalk itself was an invitation to ‘steal ideas’, where as going onto someone’s personal blog or website is not.

We followed the ‘Got My Goat’ presentations with a discussion about where we all were with the CineKids artwork we are producing for the Gold Award. I admitted I had been slack on creativity but had thought of a flip-book idea thanks to a project Zoe had introduced me to previously that week. Because of my animation workshop being focused around the use of video capture, I began to explain how I wanted to film the hands holding the flipbook, failing to realise an idea with more potential that was handed to me by Flo – to actually create physical flipbooks that could be displayed in the box office.
I’m keen and excited to start work on these!