[potatolicious]

> "How do you prove the inspiration came from the "stolen" art, and not Disney's own film or the original story?"

And even if you did prove it, is it illegal, and should it be illegal?

All art is a derivation of something that came before it. Can someone reasonably claim ownership to "girl painting roses with paint brush as viewed from behind"?

[xsmasher]

The entire idea? No.

But under US law, someone can claim ownership to derivative works.

I think we agree that the artist has an uphill battle proving that the second drawing is a derivative work.

[weareconvo]

And didn't she, in turn, steal the idea of Alice from Lewis Carroll?

[jerf]

Doesn't matter; all works of Lewis Carroll's are in the public domain. As far as I know, this is true in all jurisdictions. The traditional Tennyson illustrations are also public domain. Compare with https://www.google.com/search?q=tennyson+illustrations+alice... .

[weareconvo]

I didn't mean legally, I meant morally. Don't her complaints about having her work co-opted by Disney when that work co-opted Alice wholesale ring a little false to anybody else?

[jerf]

I think that if you took the time to try to carefully define "co-opted" you'd have a hard time really nailing down what exactly is so wrong that no further explanation is necessary by the mere invocation of the word. "Co-opting" happens all the time, every which way. There's no new ideas under the sun.

There's a perfectly clear line here; assuming her account is correct, what she did was legal, and what Disney did is not legal. Legal is not always equal to moral, but with the particulars of this case I'm not feeling the need to draw some sort of complicated distinction. Legality is the entire point here.

[ludston]

You're suggesting there is some sort of equality between her own actions and Disney's, but they are not equal. Disney is making money from of her effort and she is not making money from her effort.

[jnazario]

if you're citing lewis carroll's (well, Tennyson's graphics) work as the artist's inspiration then why not a line from LC to Disney, bypassing the artist entirely?

[jerf]

I'm not 100% sure I can parse your question, but the answer is that the handbag appears to be an exact copy on the inside, with some Disney graphics on the outside. The Disney painting is, as others have observed, much more ambiguous and would be harder to prove (although perhaps not impossible, given the presence of the handbag, if for instance the same "artist" did both).

(In fact, the handbag is quite bad as a result of this mixture, if I say so myself as a rather poor judge of design. The tone of Katie Woodger's work and the tone of the original Disney animated piece are at odds with each other, and the juxtaposition is rather less than the sum of the parts.)

[jnazario]

thanks for the clarification.

didn't like the downvotes for a question but whatever. i by no means want to see artists ripped off, i was just asking about an alternative explanation and its plausibility.

[xsmasher]

That's exactly the question: was the t-shirt was inspired by the artist in question, or not. And I'm starting to come around.

The dress of T-shirt Alice bears more resemblance to the artist's original than it does to the Disney version: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnarc6bdBm1qfkdyso1_500.gi...

The arm/hand position seems nearly identical as well. http://25.media.tumblr.com/0266dadc485f9ffa5a1fee696fd8a32c/...

Before you say "that could be a coincidence" - of course it could. The question at hand is "is it coincidence, or did Disney copy the artist's work?"

[xsmasher]

The Alice stories are long out of copyright, So you're comparing apples to oranges.