As the second instalment of its kind, the PlayStation 4 Lineup Music Video Winter Mix was to showcase Sony’s extensive game catalogue while accompanied by beautiful music and creative animations. It appears to have failed the creativity part, however, as it’s been accused of ripping multiple animations from the work of other artists – including students.
Initially uploaded on 29th November by PlayStation Japan, the video has been made private by Sony following several accusations of art theft (although a re-upload can be viewed here). One of the first animators to spot the problem was Russian animator Oleg Kositsyn, who replied to PlayStation Japan’s tweet with a copy of his work. Other animators started to identify further rips, and it now seems like the bulk of PlayStation’s video is comprised of suspect animations.
cool animation,
thanks for perpetuating 🙁👍https://t.co/f5uDBKK2hr pic.twitter.com/nE0eJe434G— bbwb anim (@_bbwb_) December 2, 2019
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Catsuka, a French animation website, has since created a round-up comparison video to display the scale of the theft: which includes rips from Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe: The Movie, anime FLCL, and animation collective Souviens Ten-Zan. And, in the replies to the comparison video, yet more rips have been posted.
.@thea_glad Friend of yours? https://t.co/XyLPG4oydA pic.twitter.com/dxlEKAtby9
— Thomas Weeden (@Thomas_Weeden) December 4, 2019
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The sheer scale of the ripping is bad enough, but to make matters worse, some of the animations appear to have been directly copied from the work of students. Gobelins is a school of visual communication based in France, and many of the ripped animations have been taken from short special effects exercises undertaken as part of their studies – such as this animation of the Orpheus myth, and this short work called “Mailed It”.