Is Nothing Original?

Seattle artist, and friend of Letterology, Drew Christie, hits another one into the bleachers with his latest animation short, Allergy to Originality. It was featured on the New York Times Op-Docs site along with his story about the making of his animation. { Read and watch the short over here! } Very timely, as misrepresentation, plagiarism, and the declaration of originality has been much in the news of late.
      Something very familiar struck me as I watched Drew's video: his drawings of the theater box office are direct copies of the iconic Neptune Theater in Seattle. Illustrated point taken! I was slow to his Hall of Mirrors portrayal of originality and the creative process, but I love his sense of irony! Not only is his animation chock-full of unattributed images and literary references, he claims the two main characters are modeled after famed Russian filmmakers, Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Eisenstein. In the process of animating this short, Drew copied images and photographs and traced innumerable drawings, and then photocopied these to further illustrate the concept of derivative works. Below is a look behind the scenes at some of his work on this animation. Drew is most definitely an original!