Inpsiration vs Plagirism Playstation Ad Animator loses job

Recently Cartoonbrew reported about a commercial created by Animator Kevin Bao used in the latest Playstation Winter Trailer, it had parts plagarised. Some from Gobelins Student Films and Even Steven Universe.

https://twitter.com/EallinAnimation/status/1202273300862447617?s=20
- EallinAnimation

In a followup the Animation Production Company that helped create the commercial, has stop representing him for more work. Here is all the shots that got copied by.

https://twitter.com/catsuka/status/1202187253889601539?s=20
- catsuka

It can be disheartening as a creator to see your work copied. Thanks to Social Media now you can call out someone. But is is necessary? Its a double edge sword and it exposes the original creator that plagarised as well as what everyone else thinks. Maybe in the future blockchain can help protect works put out by the artists online.

I do not know Kevin Bao or how the project was setup. I feel its already hard to make something good. But here is my thinking. Probably the new Ad was suppose to be similar to the previous music trailer video Lineup in June. It used animation inter-cut with gameplay footage. So the marketing department wanted to keep it in a similar style. Something probably happened in production that he took a easy route to trace frames and cover it up with his own background art. He followed the shots and framing closely to the originals. Probably to save time and make the delivery. But that did not turn out so well.

Plagiarism or Inspiration

Noting is Original though do we get angry if our works we put out there get copied or should we have a different response. I can't answer cause I am only observing.

I feel that this is quite tough now in a digital age. Where you can't just create anythine new, there are ways to make sure you should only look at the source material as a starting point and start transforming it into you own.

This was an earlier ad that had animation spliced with Trailers.

After some discussions I do think that it was ok for Kevin to Copy the scenes and shots as a rough draft or for learning but it should not have gone into the final Images for the delivery. He should have take the time to study the works and their sources of inspiration.

I felt that Kevin should have tried to transform all the inspirantions he got and re-interprete in his own way and undersating. All the while tryng to satisfy the business requirements of the Job.

Some things he could have done is changed the camera angles and make and transform the original ideas of the shot. What was the motivation, was there another way to do it?

This is a good lesson to learn do Copy from your heroes bur Do not forget to Combine and Transform them in your own way. Check out Everything is a Remix on this as well as the Futur Discssion on Plagiarism or Inspiration.

Everything is a Remix