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PlayStation Japan recently uploaded a video that was intended to highlight some of the biggest releases for the PlayStation 4 this holiday season, but it seems there was more to the music video than first thought. The video featured titles like Death Stranding, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and others, accompanied by clips of animation under the direction of Kevin Bao. These bits of animation are what sparked the controversy, as other artists began to notice that the video used exact animations from other pieces of work from anime and cartoons, such as FLCL, Steven Universe, and Souviens Ten-Zan. A Twitter post below, from Catsuka, shows the exact moments and compares them with what the pieces assumedly originated from.

Latest Sony PS4 Lineup Music Video is a rip of many animations from all around the world ......
(Steven Universe, FLCL, Gobelins, Souviens Ten-Zan ...).
The video is now offline : https://t.co/LPWyFWzEEw
But you can still find it online : https://t.co/KfS79oRrs5 pic.twitter.com/6Q0hrFK2AT

— Catsuka (@catsuka) December 4, 2019

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Once the claims gained traction, Sony took the video down promptly, and quietly. (The above video is a re-upload.) Meanwhile, the studio that was in charge of creating the video, Eallin Animation, stated the following, in regards to the plagiarism claims:

Failed to fetch tweet https://twitter.com/EallinAnimation/status/1202273300862447617​

 

[x65943]

Damn, I feel bad for Kevin Bao

 

[AmandaRose]

Wow what a dumb fuck. I can't believe he actually thought he would get away with it

 

[x65943]

Wow what a dumb fuck. I can't believe he actually thought he would get away with it

The truth is he has probably been getting away with it for a long time

No one gets caught the first time

 

[gnmmarechal]

Well damn, that's.... something.

 

[IncredulousP]

Damnit, Kevin.

 

[Rabbid4240]

lmao what a dumbass

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Someone call Phoenix Wright, he is going to need an objection!

 

[leon315]

''This comment is COPIED too.''

p.s. from the youtube comments even the song is not original.......

 

[diggeloid]

Well this dude's life is officially over. He's clearly talented, and you don't reach that point without serious dedication and commitment. But plagiarism is unforgivable and disgusting. I wonder what he was thinking.

 

[Xzi]

He was probably thinking that he'd get caught if he plagiarized a single source, but nobody would notice if he plagiarized five or six different sources.

 

[FAST6191]

I imagine this is similar to the tracing debate in comics. That said I don't know that I would have caught such things*... might have to be a new skill to add to the pile.

*I once saw a comment on a film review where someone complained about being able to recognise the backlots of film studios of films of a certain vintage (this is to say between location shoots becoming too expensive and the CGI takeover) and this seems similar.

Also while far from ideal, and no objections to things being pulled, laws being pondered and the artist in question being dropped, I don't know how much I am personally willing to diss someone for tracing/quasi rotoscoping. Lazy as anything and way short of inspiration or homage but hard to get all that worked up about.

 

[GoldenBullet]

I hope everyone realizes nothing is original. Everything creative derives or is inspired by something else. Now that being said, this is clearly someone directly copying various animation and tried to get away with it saying its original. He easily could have gotten away with it if he said that the shots are inspired by the various sources. The difference is whether you lie about it.

 

[raxadian]

He was probably thinking that he'd get caught if he plagiarized a single source, but nobody would notice if he plagiarized five or six different sources.

That may have worked in the age before Internet but not nowadays.

 

[AmandaRose]

He was probably thinking that he'd get caught if he plagiarized a single source, but nobody would notice if he plagiarized five or six different sources.

"And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!"

Sorry don't know why I had the need to do a Scooby Doo quote

 

[Mythical]

Reading it I thought it was probably a silly claim, but to be honest after seeing it. Damn it's uncanny

 

[FAST6191]

I am slightly curious now. Dude in question clearly has some skills. Why then they did not maybe copy a start point and end point, fudge the time a bit (skew key points by plus or minus some number of frames or whatever either way), maybe splice something in the middle of the sequence, and set motions accordingly, possibly losing or adding additional elements (I imagine it was all layered anyway), changing angles/mirroring things


I also forgot another one for copied stuff. Way back when some game dev static shotted an oblivion shop for a background to a game and one of the writers on a site noticed where despite many many hours, possibly even in that shop, I would not necessarily have caught it either. https://lotl.fandom.com/wiki/Backgrounds was possibly it, though not the article I remembered.

 

[spotanjo3]

Not surprised. What's wrong with sicko world like that ? Jeez! Dog eat Dog world, indeed. SMH.

 

[Harsky]

I wonder if this advert was just going to be a Youtube thing only or were there plans to use it for Japanese TV adverts. If it's the latter then oh boy did they get burned so close to Christmas to produce a new advert in time.

 

[ChaosEternal]

Maybe some Chinese company will hire him. I hear they like that sort of thing.