Serial plagiarist animator rips off student & professional animations in PS4 lineup video



On November 29, 2019, PlayStation Japan uploaded the second instalment of the mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 4 Lineup Music Video Winter Mix, which showcased Sony's extensive game catalogue while accompanied by beautiful music and creative animations. However, 5 days later, its animator and director Kevin Bao was outed for blatantly plagiarising animation from official animated movies, animes and student & independent animations, causing the video to be delisted by PlayStation Japan.

What Happened?
Shortly after the video's upload, many people began accusing Sony of blatant plagiarism in the video. The first accusation took place on December 2, when Russian indie animator Oleg Kositsyn (aka brdbrwthbeer on Twitter) published a tweet revealing that parts of the video ripped off his 2019 2D animation reel video. Soon after, more and more evidence surfaced and were compiled into a side-by-side comparison video by French indie animation news website Catsuka. In it, it revealed that the video had ripped off mh:greatestmovies:Steven Universe: The Movie, FLCL and animations from French indie animation collective Souviens Ten-Zan.

Not long after Catsuka's comparison video was uploaded, more evidence was submitted on the tweet's comments, many revealing that a lot of animation created as projects by students of French art school GOBELINS, l’école de l’image were blatantly traced over for the video.

According to PlayStation Japan's official blog, the video's director is Chinese-Canadian animator Kevin Bao, who had received awards from the Ottawa International Animation Festival and London International Animation Festival, and has previously created videos for major clients such as Disney.

This isn't the first time Kevin blatantly plagiarised other animations in his works, as a GOBELINS student known as Insom on Twitter revealed that he had ripped off furry animator Golden Wolf's fan music video for the Grey remix of "Papercut" by Zedd featuring Troye Sivan in his Abema TV video.

Aftermath
Due to the massive amounts of allegations hitting him, Kevin Bao has since gone under the radar and had deliberately deleted all of his social media accounts, including Instagram and Twitter. His official page on the CONNECTIONS job agency's website has since gone offline, indicating that the company had fired him and distanced themselves from him.

In addition, Eallin Animation, Kevin's employer, made a statement saying that they had fired him and distanced themselves from him after he was outed as a plagiarist. This received praise from PlayStation fans due to how speedy the company responded to the controversy.

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