In 1998, a label company called TIME released a ”12 single called “YUMIKO”, by a group named Anime.
On the included lyrics booklet, this can be seen:
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Does the image of the boy remind you of a certain 1992 anime character?
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It’s Mamoru Chiba, from 1992’s Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon series! Yes, his clothes are recolored, but it’s him, down to the tuft of hair that always sticks up from his head!
I came across this on a forum and had to do a double-take. I then researched “Mamoru Chiba” in Google and…well…..they look exactly the same, save for the art style! Shame on the artist who tried to pass this off as original!
The single was released 2 years AFTER BSSM stopped airing in its place of orgin, Japan. And no, it doesn’t matter that this phony was released in Italy; there was an Italian dub.
An Illustration/Animation graduate from Kingston University 2007, she had great success with her film ‘My First Crush’ and has since gone on to develop a range of characters and designs with her unmistakable style.
However, just this week a girl called Maxine Carsboult was brought to our attention and it appears that she has not only used Julia’s work for her degree coursework but also many examples of students work from Kingston University. She has simply traced much of Julia’s work as you can see from the examples, only very small details are changed.
Maxine’s University has been contacted and efforts are now underway to ensure she pays the appropriate penalty for her outrageous plagiarism.
Examples below:
Some more, notice the cat design from Julia’s existing tattoo range currently on sale. Maxine has switched the angle, changed it a little and added a Santa hat. She’s also cut the arm off short where it normally held onto the original dog.
Next is Julia’s pillow print design featuring the big bear. Maxine has simply stolen, traced and re-coloured.
We found there was a Kingston University connection. This was a poster designed and drawn by a Kingston student for a local pub gig. Now look at the cat in the picture frame as part of the collection shown on Maxine’s website. You’ll also notice much of Julia’s work there too! (beach huts, animal party, the birds, bear etc.) We can only hope this wasn’t her degree show display, since it’s made up almost exclusively of other people’s work.
Copies of Irana Douer’s work, Irana’s are the first 2:
There are some subtle differences, they have been redrawn but the similarity is unmistakeable.
Here are some examples of Maxine stealing Amy Blackwell’s illustrations, again Amy’s are first:
Amy’s have been on sale on the internet for some time, Maxine has simply re-coloured the original.
Finally here is another one of Julia’s works, The Ocelot. Again Julia’s is first and the second picture shows Maxine holding the stolen image (claiming it as her own on her blog) this image was taken from the blog.
If you want to see more examples of Maxine’s theft, check out Julia’s site here : http://juliapott.blogspot.com/
Compare that to Maxine’s site here: http://cowgirlmax.blogspot.com/
Shameful…there’s no other word for it.
There are many more examples of theft on her various websites and we doubt that ANYTHING she has or is exhibiting is her own work. Has anyone actually seen her draw a picture?
…Friends of Julia…
It has also come to our attention that she has stolen the work of Gemma Corell, Amy Blackwell, Nan Lawson, Kate Wilson, Iran Douer and others who at the moment we cannot confirm as of writing.
STOP PRESS – as of the 13th July 2010 ALL examples of Maxine Carsboult’s stolen work has disappeared without trace from the internet.
The following accounts have been deleted:
Facebook,
Twitter,
Tumblr,
http://cowgirlmax.blogspot.com/
http://cowgirlmax.carbonmade.com,
http://flavours.me/cowgirlmax
Her references on the Yellow Jelly site have been removed.
I just saw this on TV, its a commercial for an instant coffee brand called Arlistan. It reminds me a lot to the well known Hayao Miyazaki’s movies, specially “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Princess Mononoke” . What do you think?
This impressive cosplay of the character Kuchiki from the anime Bleach can be seen as one of those ads that pops up all over the place… you know the types… The original picture can be found on google using the tagline “bleach cosplay toothbrush” (And I HIGHLY recommend that fans of this particular anime should take a look themselves, while possibly temporarily disabling the adult filter.) I don’t have definitive proof that the owner wasn’t contacted and permission wasn’t gained, but I seriously doubt that the company went through the trouble of tracking the girl down for something like that.
I’m only posting this as the animation by commercial animation director Siobhan Bowers, is so incredibly close to a film by another animation director Celyn Brazier yet there’s no acknowledgement of insipration which is a shame as I know Celyn wouldn’t have minded as much if she had! Obviously that’s assuming that Ms Bowers has ever seen Celyn’s film, and apologies if this is entirely coincidental Siobahn!
To her credit it’s not a commissioned film however it’s now part of her portfolio for employment.
Here is a synopsis for Blue Sky’s new film Rio. In a Nutshell you have a naive male bird who has been raised by humans in a zoo. He is rare…the last of his kind, and has never had any experiences outside of his safe, predictable cage.
“Blu is a rare species of macaw resident at a zoo in Minnesota who believes he is the last of his kind. When he learns that another macaw was spotted in South America, and that she is female, he leaves Minnesota and travels to Rio to find her.”
Awesome. Great. Sounds fun right? Adventure…romance…parrots. Heres the new teaser trailer.
Now.
On the 11 of May 2010 several official announcments came out with the upsetting news that Pixar’s animated project Newt was officially dead.
Here is the original announcment on the Pixar blog.
The rumors that Newt was in trouble began in February with a web commentAnimation Guild Blog, which has been host to some anti-Pixar comments in the past. made by Disney Legend and animation industry insider Floyd Norman saying that “Newt is dead”. I didn’t give any credence to Norman’s statement at the time and, in fact, opted not to post about it because I couldn’t confirm that it was actually commenting on the
Newt (officially branded newt, logo in all lower case letters) was first announced to media at the Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios 2008 Animation Presentation in New York City in April of that year. The film was scheduled to be released in the summer of 2011.
Two dates to keep in mind here are started 2008 and released 2011.
The film was being directed by Gary Rydstrom, sound designer and director of Pixar’s 2006 Oscar-nominated short film Lifted, and produced by PrestoEverybody Loves Raymond writer/producer Leslie Caveny (she wrote some of my favourite episodes of the series) as writers on Newt.
This article reveals a very tight synopsis of the film.
Rydstrom says the film is about the last two blue footed newts on this earth, a male and a female, who are thrown together by science and can’t stand each other. Newt, our lead, has been in captivity since he was a tadpole. He’s lonely.
Replace blue footed newts with blue parrot (my god not even different colors) and you pretty much have the same premise as a start.
Brook is the name of the last female Blue-Footed Newt. She is in the wild and has no idea she’s the last female of her species. She escapes all sorts of dangers in her day to day life,
In our Blue sky movie Rio the male character is also in captivity and the female is the one found in the wild. This is an odd coincidence.
before through circumstance they both end up in the wild. Newt is worthless out here, but Brook gets him through the trials.
I don’t even know what to say here. If you watch the preview its clear they are both in the wild and its REALLY clear that Blu is helpless and the female parrot is wearing the pants in this relationship.
LOS ANGELES, (May 13, 2009) Twentieth Century Fox Animation president Vanessa Morrison today announced that “RIO,” the latest animated feature film from Blue Sky Studios, will be released by Twentieth Century Fox on April 8, 2011.
BAM! 2011. The same year Pixar planned to release Newt. Wow.
The project has long been nurtured by the Brazilian-born Saldanha, who is putting the finishing touches on “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,”
This is another piece of the puzzle. This director is a totally different director then Newt obviously but it says here he was working on Dawn of the Dinosaurs which was only released in 2009 the same time as the above press release. So did he start working on Rio in 2008 at the same time that Newt was being put into pre-production?…or did her start on Rio BEFORE Newt?
According to THIS article written in April 2008 Newt was already in pre-production. So the question is…which movie was proposed first? By my research Newt looks like it was not only announced way ahead in press releases but it already had a release date in 2008.
Summer 2011: newt marks the directing debut of multiple Academy Award winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom, who made his Pixar debut with the short film Lifted, which premiered in front of Ratatouille. What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet are forced together by science to save the species, and they can’t stand each other? Newt and Brooke embark on a perilous, unpredictable adventure and discover that finding a mate never goes as planned, even when you only have one choice. Love, it turns out, is not a science
It even had a posed synopsis but few people had heard of it at this point.
If Blue Sky has ripped of the animation powerhouse Pixar…I personally think they need to face the charges and come clean. Who knows..it might all be a misunderstanding, but somehow I doubt it.
The 3-d animation industry has a long history of rip-offs and close coincidences. Dreamwork’s Antz to Pixar’s bugs life, Dreamworks Madagascar to Disney’s The Wild and Dreamworks Shark tale to Pixar’s Finding Nemo to name just a few. These are more forgivable, the plots differ even if the animals are the same. This however…seems to have gone too far. What do you think?
In 2005, a group of students at ESRA made a short film called “Above Then Beyond”.
In 2009, Pixar released a feature film called “Up”.
If you’ve already seen “Up”, you might find it remarkably similar to “Above Then Beyond”. Click HERE to watch “Above Then Beyond”.
I found an interview with Pete Docter, writer and director of “Up”, and this is what he said about building the film’s concept:
Pete Docter – “We came up with this idea of a floating house, and we worked backwards from that, thinking, “How did this guy get into the floating house?” And we came up with this whole backstory of him meeting this girl, and they fell in love, and they had this whole relationship. And this failed promise, that they didn’t ever get to go down to South America to live this adventure that they always wanted to do. And so it was kind of based on that.”
The resemblance to the students’ short film made me uneasy, so I had to look into this.
I contacted Yannick Banchereau and asked:
“Did someone in your team go on to work for Pixar?”
“Did Pixar buy the rights to your concept?”
“Was this purely a coincidence?”
His response (translated by Google Translate):
Yannick Banchereau – “Well, no, none of us went to work at Pixar, if you know someone who is in Supinfgraph, you should know that ESRA has a partnership with Pixar, so we concluded that for Pixar to see our film among those that ESRA had sent them, and they “kept” (stolen?) the idea into a feature film …
Unfortunately the film does not belong to us because this was done as part of our studies, so we can do nothing …
Thank you for your interest, it’s good to see that someone has acknowledged our film (even if the quality is far from the Pixar)”
Personally, I can’t help it to think that Pixar used the students’ idea. If they did, it’s disappointing that the acknowledgment for these students cannot be found anywhere.
(Thanks to Dorian Fevrier for first pointing this out to me!)
On Facebook there’s a game called SuperPoke! Pets on Facebook. You create a pet, take care of it, and can buy things for it’s habitat. You can purchase toys and stuff. On thing that poped up today was the Mystical Pandorable Lizard which looked strikingly similar to me for some reason. It reminded me of a pet you get in the RPG World of Warcraft, the Sprite Darter Hatchling. Coincidence?
Vera Brosgol, an illustrator and story artist on such films as Coraline, has apparently been copied by Hot Topic or Pierce the Veil, or both. I suppose when they were going over this with their tracing paper and crayons, they thought that making it more homophobe-friendly and all-around way lamer might place it outside the realm of copyright infringement. Shameful on so many levels.
Update: It seems this might go under speediest resolution ever. Vera contacted Hot Topic today and was already told that they will pull the shirt from their site and stores starting tomorrow (via twitter). This could possibly be the work of a dishonest designer, but who knows. I hope they will also stop all orders of the shirt that may have already been placed. Though perhaps they can send one to Vera as a souvenir?
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