New PS4 Commercial in Japan Rips Off a Lot of Artists

There’s a new PS4 ad out in Japan. A lot of it is animated, and a lot of it looks really good. Here it is:



That’s four minutes of trailers spruced up with peppy music and rather eye-catching animation. And it’s the animation we want to talk about, because apparently, whoever Sony outsourced to do this animation for them (companies like Sony always outsource this crap) probably could have stood to be a bit more ethical about it.

Because they stole, like, almost everything.



Word first spread about when Ian Jones-Quartey drew attention to the animation in a Tweet, noticing how it looked shockingly similar to some animation he did for the Steven Universe movie. It was soon repeated by another animator, Oleg Kositsyn, who identified the exact point where their work was stolen too. The assorted claims from ripped-off artists eventually lead to the video you see embedded above, and ultimately caused Sony of Japan to pull the video from their YouTube page.

Word is, the perpetrator in question was a man named Kevin Bao, who has a history of pulling stuff like this. Whatever else you say about him, you have to admire the gonads of a guy who thought he could rip off some of the most iconic animation from the Steven Universe movie without anyone noticing.

So far, Sony hasn’t commented on this little adventure.