10-15-2009, 03:34 PM
I've thought about this before. I'd love to try my hand at writing a book, but the first barrier I came up against was the realization that it's impossible to write anything truly original. Sure, nobody has written this exact story before but the concept, whatever it is has already been done by someone else, somewhere else.
Strangely, I think my change of heart came when I watched Mel Gibson's "The Patriot".
There is nothing original about that movie. It's a very standard action movie formula: retired man wants to live a nice quiet life in the country and raise his family in peace, but someone comes along and shoots his kid and burns his house down and you find out that what he retired from was murdering people with an axe, and he was really good at it, and he still has that axe. So when he leaves the body of his dead kid and goes into his burning house to find his war chest and pick up his axe, you know Shit's Gonna Go Down.
Go to the action section of Blockbuster and there will be at least 50 movies there about this exact thing. (The other 50 will feature a police detective who is just about to retire...)
But "The Patriot" did it well. I decided that what was important in art wasn't "originality". Originality is fast becoming impossible and frankly, as with your dot on a canvas example, if nobody else has done it yet, it's probably because it really sucks. What's good in art is to take an old concept, maybe even a popular one, maybe even a cliche, and do it again, but maybe better than anyone else has ever done it. Maybe with a more modern spin on it so that people can enjoy the old concept again, or maybe just so that people who haven't yet been exposed to that concept can find it first with yours.
Because when you think about it, what makes something "cliche", anyway? Why is that bad? It's cliche because its been done so many times. Its been done so many times because it's popular and people like it and they'd probably still like it if you did it again.
I'm sure that when Harry Potter came out, there were probably a hundred writers around the world who broke their pencils in half and threw their typewriters out the window because they were also writing a book about teenage wizards attending wizard school, or had already written that story and couldn't get it published. But, as with The Patriot, I don't see why "unoriginal" should be a negative. It's all unoriginal these days. If it's original, it's probably because it's shit.
What's important is doing your art and doing it well, not doing something that hasn't been done before.
Additionally, as an artist, I would think the important thing isn't trying to best the masters but rather, trying to reach that point yourself. Having followed web comics for a while, it's pretty interesting to go back a couple years and see how the art has changed. Maybe their art isn't bringing anything new to humanity but you can certainly see how, from their perspective, every year is a new personal triumph for their own skill progression, and if someone else happens to like it and buy a t-shirt now and then, well, that's okay too. They aren't trying to invent new art or raise humanity to the next level, but they're doing something they enjoy and putting their own personal spin on an existing concept.
Strangely, I think my change of heart came when I watched Mel Gibson's "The Patriot".
There is nothing original about that movie. It's a very standard action movie formula: retired man wants to live a nice quiet life in the country and raise his family in peace, but someone comes along and shoots his kid and burns his house down and you find out that what he retired from was murdering people with an axe, and he was really good at it, and he still has that axe. So when he leaves the body of his dead kid and goes into his burning house to find his war chest and pick up his axe, you know Shit's Gonna Go Down.
Go to the action section of Blockbuster and there will be at least 50 movies there about this exact thing. (The other 50 will feature a police detective who is just about to retire...)
But "The Patriot" did it well. I decided that what was important in art wasn't "originality". Originality is fast becoming impossible and frankly, as with your dot on a canvas example, if nobody else has done it yet, it's probably because it really sucks. What's good in art is to take an old concept, maybe even a popular one, maybe even a cliche, and do it again, but maybe better than anyone else has ever done it. Maybe with a more modern spin on it so that people can enjoy the old concept again, or maybe just so that people who haven't yet been exposed to that concept can find it first with yours.
Because when you think about it, what makes something "cliche", anyway? Why is that bad? It's cliche because its been done so many times. Its been done so many times because it's popular and people like it and they'd probably still like it if you did it again.
I'm sure that when Harry Potter came out, there were probably a hundred writers around the world who broke their pencils in half and threw their typewriters out the window because they were also writing a book about teenage wizards attending wizard school, or had already written that story and couldn't get it published. But, as with The Patriot, I don't see why "unoriginal" should be a negative. It's all unoriginal these days. If it's original, it's probably because it's shit.
What's important is doing your art and doing it well, not doing something that hasn't been done before.
Additionally, as an artist, I would think the important thing isn't trying to best the masters but rather, trying to reach that point yourself. Having followed web comics for a while, it's pretty interesting to go back a couple years and see how the art has changed. Maybe their art isn't bringing anything new to humanity but you can certainly see how, from their perspective, every year is a new personal triumph for their own skill progression, and if someone else happens to like it and buy a t-shirt now and then, well, that's okay too. They aren't trying to invent new art or raise humanity to the next level, but they're doing something they enjoy and putting their own personal spin on an existing concept.