Sou Miyata, the artist recently busted for tracing no less than three pictures in his official Total Eclipse pin-up, has been sacked – and delving into his past works reveals this was far from his first brush with plagiarism, and not the first time he was caught at it either.
Evidence of plagiarism of the most egregious sort was progressively uncovered after the initial discovery of his “Total Eclipse” montage:
More of his works – it is unclear just how many were the result of plagiarism.
The artist’s employers “age” offered official notice of his sacking only days after his antics were uncovered, through a missive so terse it even omitted the customary grovelling set-piece announcement of a “most regrettable” incident:
We would like to announce that on the 10th of June, our company’s illustrator “Sou Miyata” was dismissed.
Additionally, please be aware that from here on the activities of “Sou Miyata” have no connection with those of our company.
There is as yet no comment from the artist himself, although the usual practice in such cases is for the artist to quietly retire for a period as a gesture of contrition after a suitably grovelling statement of regret.
2ch’s role as judge, jury and executioner in these cases suggests the final verdict lies with them:
“Incredibly cold announcement!”
“Sounds like something written by the yakuza…”
“If they wrote anything more they would just end up creating more and more problems.”
“I think there are loads of these guys out there who just haven’t been caught yet. Especially with more realistic art styles.”
“Aren’t there pose collections on sale in book shops for these artists to use legitimately? He should have just used one of those.”
“This guy couldn’t even copy a pose. He traced existing illustrations completely.”
“I bet this wasn’t just a case of him tracing, but the fact that he could only trace and couldn’t actually draw at all.”
“How did this guy think he could become an illustrator? How did they employ him?”
“If creating works of art was so much of a hassle you’d rather trace, why become an illustrator!”
“I can’t help but think this company is trying to escape responsibility by sacking him so rapidly.”
“You think they really didn’t know? They might have known and just let the situation lie.”
“This is not something you normally get fired for. I pity him.”
“It looks like he had been caught at it before so they had no choice.”
“He got busted for tracing the dakimakura, but there were doubts and he was let off. He got busted tracing an eroge – he apologised in a video with the CEO, vowing never to do it again. He traced those pin-ups – instant dismissal.”
“Three strikes and he’s out, seems reasonable.”
“Honestly, after that video of him apologising it would be unthinkable for them not to sack him, he obviously showed no remorse.”
“He didn’t learn from his mistakes at all. Good riddance.”
“He’s getting off lightly. He could have been subject to disciplinary dismissal, forced to pay restitution, and then banished from the industry.”
“This sort of thing might not really be an issue with grey zones like Pixiv, but with commercial works it is absolutely unacceptable!”
“How do you guys even find all these traces! It’s amazing!”
“For this to happen just before your anime airs, it’s the worst, it really is!”
Thinking it is possible to get away with such plagiarism in the face of 2ch’s ability to uncover it increasingly seems more foolish than the actual act…
i can’t believe no one has said this yet…
TRACE ON!!!!!
Pretty sure the company was behind it as far as they could get away with it, then ditched him to save face. Illustrators over there are normally paid crap anyway.
Damn it, he copied POSES!
So what? You don’t mean poses are intellectual property now?
When I take a photo of myself in a pose of an anime character that’s a crime???
He didn’t just copy poses, he traced most parts of the images exactly. There’s a big difference between using a pose for reference, and copying and pasting someone else’s artwork.
what you call, tracing other character, is no different to copying poses. Big deal. He used his own characters
I was shocked !!!
I can’t believe there are people here who actually don’t think this is a trace. Are you fucking blind? The comparison pictures literally look exactly the same. He didn’t even bother changing the bathing suit on the girl on the right.
Also, if you think this “isn’t a big deal” then you are just plain wrong. This isn’t just two poses being similar. This is STEALING. This is like copypasting from the internet for your college paper. If you think this is okay, then you are on the same level of those DeviantArt-tier scum artists that trace from other, more talented people.
I’m totally okay with cloning. Without cloning there would never be LibreOffice, Linux, FreeBSD, Media Player Classic, Gnash, etc.
BTW, his cloned versions with different character designs are way sexier than shit he has “traced”.
LOL looks like there’s a loser with a tracing fetish that has multiple accounts. how sad…
and this is why you should always buy RL stock photos of poses.
Or just take them yourself.
Mikumikudance + 3D custom girl + some mods + some 3D custom girl’s body proportion alteration program = Sheapiest way.
fixed: “Sheepiest way” baaaaaar~
Fixing:”Cheapiest way”
It’s a matter of principle. Copying someone’s work (perspective, line flow, proportions, lighting/tone) all of that add into the pose.
Even if two artist are drawing the “same” pose, you’re going to get varying proportions, different perspective, on top of different line quality and lighting choices.
That’s not even taking into account the different artist’s style that you have to adapt to and try to emulate. Using the above as an example, if you pasted the One Piece girls faces on them, the proportions of the body still wouldn’t be true to that style.
Okay. That .gif animation is giving me seizures!
At least base your illustration on more than one tracing…
Obvious fail is obvious.
Inb4 Chen-04 stating all of those being mere coincidences.
They probably are, unless someone proves the opposite.
Lawl… They did prove the opposite. What do you think all the overlapping images are for? If you can’t see that most of the lines match up exactly, you must have some problem with your vision. 😛
@Chen-04 03:38
So he is standing over the body with a bloody knife and the wounds match the knife’s blade.
Circumstantial evidence!
“So he is standing over the body with a bloody knife and the wounds match the knife’s blade.”
Yes, doesn’t prove anything. He could have picked the knife up seconds after the culprit left it there.
Doesn’t prove anything. So the lines do overlap. Circumstantial evidence isn’t real evidence. We don’t even know if he ever looked at those pictures that he allegedly traced. And even if he did it wouldn’t matter much. Still no real prove.
Copying poses is worse than copying a character apparently…
I think we should Give him Proper credit 😀
He’s not JUST a plagiarist!!!
He’s also a Photoshop Master!!!
if photoshop master actually meant anything, half of 2ch /4ch would be employed
Same pose and out right copying are two different things.
The girls even have similar facial expressions. If he had put a brush in that one girl’s hand, given the on lying on her stomach a book or something, kick a leg up or just moved on hand he would have been fine.
I have to wonder.. how many ways can you draw two girls with there faces together that would no considered to be plagiarizing? The human body only has so many varying poses.. So guess you better not be an animator in this day and age because the pose has already been done by someone else after the hundreds of years of animation.
if you are a true artists you don’t have to worry about such stupid things as saying there is a limited amount of poses to draw/
bewtween the number of different viewpoints (infinite), character designs (infinite), and poses (nearly infinite), limiting yourself in anyone of these categories will ensure a short career as a mangaka/ illustrator/ animator.
Indeed. How many different (nice) character designs can you make until it overlaps with another and is considered plagiarizing?
With that said, considering the whole body is 100% identical almost even to the shading, it was overboard.
Still, it looks nice.
So true there is no such thing as infinite potential eventually there is an overlap between two faces, hair, pose, ect.
Frankly I could never see it; You’ll have to be REAL hardcore otakus to pull out to similar poses 😛
GodMan said
So true there is no such thing as infinite potential eventually there is an overlap between two faces, hair, pose, ect.
too true, if you are a mediocre artist, because if you are not, that argument is pure bullshit.
Or you could just run some program looking through some databases.
http://iqdb.org/
Ha the Sharingan isn’t so useful after all.
What a shame..
I don’t even dare to revise someone’s work, he is really desperate on doing those..
Or laziness is such the work was done by the team and the result was mediocre, and only signed below.
As already remarked one of the most anticipated is another clone.
It was not just poses but overall characters are very similar.
After still complains of Chinese bad clones, what a shame!
…Nothing you’ve said makes any fucking sense.
Did you even read the article?
Yes!!! the artist works in manga series and artworks in Tech Gian magazine and a series of well-known visual novel game Mu luv and will be turned into anime.(What is expected soon)
http://muv-luv-te-anime.com/
His drawing style and very similar to its competitors.
too similar(seems coincidental?)
Several Japanese artists complaining of shoddy Chinese copies of their work and now a Japanese is accused of do the same.
If more than explained in this way then you are not understood then who does not FUCKING SENSE are you!!
A: “OMG that cat just traced his face!”
B: “No, he traced the cat’s face.”
That guy would come again with new alias name.
Photoshop WIN !!!
That guy should just go to China. I’m sure he would fit right in there.
“I bet this wasn’t just a case of him tracing, but the fact that he could only trace and couldn’t actually draw at all”
this….all this!
Repetitive movements of the R-18 is laughing
your mother is a fucking toy
SATANIC ONE TOO!
S B
All i needed to see was one rip-off from an Atelier game…
Bitch went too far… 😛
Bad boys, what you want, whatchu you want, whatchu gonna do, when 2chan’s trace police come for you?
The things people do just to save time and money.
Sou Miyata guilty of Simmonsing
Whoa…
The tracers posing themselves as ‘artists’ at DeviantArt actually has a chance of taking jobs at big hentai companies. lol
Who cares as long as it is fapable!
Artists care.
True artists don’t care. Only people that failed to become artists whine. Mostly because they failed. I mean… if the traced version gains more popularity you really have to wonder what your original did wrong.
Good Riddance
I’m glad he got sacked…We don’t need plagiarizing pieces of shit like him.
I know, seriously. There’s shitty copiers like him all over deviantart. I used to draw also, but when I learned that the majority of the artistic community out there are made up of a bunch of dirty tracers, I lost interest in art altogether. I hope this piece of shit starves.
You’re talking to active deviantart members there, go figure.
Reiq and cutepet do that. i have seen pieces from reiq that resemble works i have seen years before from artists in HF, and Cutepet copies quite often from webcomics i saw between 2000=2005
Other peoples behaviour made you lose interest in art? Then you probably never had any interest in art to begin with..
too true, what is worse, some so called legitimate art studios do it too.
just a bunch of pirates there too.
lol who cares, everyone rips off everyone else in the anime industry anyways…
No, there are plenty of original artists who don’t steal/trace other artists work.
A knock-off artist loses his job, now he roams the streets searching for ways to make more knock-offs.
“How do you guys even find all these traces! It’s amazing!”
Is this guy serious? All it takes to find traces is just run a picture-comparing software that would scavenge network looking for similar images. Don’t underestimate the power of 21st century and GOOGLE
do the honorable thing; kill yourself
I honestly dont see the problem here… if the anime is still good then who cares?
Stuff gets recycled all the time and im pretty sure you can find similarities in all animes if you really spend the time looking for them.
Why the hell would he get sacked for this? ohwell
These people need a LIFE even by my low standards
You say that on SanCom of all places…
/Facepalm
Well… he said he had low standards, didn’t he?
last pic EPIC WIN XDXDXDXD
Picasso said; “Good artists create, great artists steal!”
but the characters are different
But, he was tracing them nonetheless.
only the right one seem fully traced the left one has a different pose on the finger and the lower girl is in a bikini
I don´t understand this. He created obviously different girls, only poses are the same. What´s wrong about this. In art painters use same poseses & it´s alright & normal, but if somebodody use it in anime, then peeople are mad. Ridiculous, he is innocent & good artist, but thanks to stupid & evil people he´s paying for it greatly. That´s not fair!!
I’ve got to wonder if some of the commenters here are blind.
He copied another person’s work line for line. It’s not simply the same pose.
naw, it’s just one person (chen-04) with multiple accounts. even sancom isn’t this stupid.
I only have two accounts. Chen-04 and Chen-03. But Chen-03 wasn’t really an account. At that time (2008) anons could just name themselves whatever and I chose Chen-03.
@Mere Agreed. The commenters here don’t seem to understand that this guy was tracing. He was basically stealing other artists work.
Same poses =/= Tracing
Think of it as this way:
-If he only “saw” the original pic and draws based on what he “saw”, than that’s passable, No matter what you do with this way, you won’t end up with 100% same lines.
-But he “copy pasted” all the lines literally.
It’s the lines that matter here not the pose.
Who says you can’t end up with 100% same lines?
Draw something.
Now draw it again a couple of million times.
Are there really no two versions that look exactly the same?
If not, do it again some million times and if needed till infinity. There will be two versions that are identical.
Draw something.
Now draw it again on a separate piece of paper.
Overlap the two.
Your lines aren’t the same.
Trace on!
Unlimited Trace Works!
My body is the blade of my sword.
Seems they don’t have anything better to do nowadays to play detective on the internet lol
I really don’t see the problem. I mean, All basic anime characters look the same in general. Face, shape, appearance. The only difference between them all is different hair, shape in bust or muscle, eye colors and different types of eyes, skin color and other features. There is no such thing as infinite potential. In time, you will see a repeat. So… I really have nothing else to say to the argument.
are you blind? i guess you are one of those who can’t see the difference between a legitimate article and shitty pirated piece of junk.
The problem here is:
He’s not referencing a pose or make it a base. He literally “copy pasted” it, with some minor editing.
Even my college thesis makes it clear that you’re allowed to “replicate” with different variables and research locations, but DON’T “Copy paste your reference”
@01:32 While in some cases that’s true, Have you really watched that much Anime?
Take this season for example, and try comparing the characters from Hyouka to Jormungand… Do you see how completely different they look? It’s not just the hair, color, or face, but the Art-style Is completely different.
it looks alike! You traced it!
All important question, did the man trace the cat or did the cat trace the man?
The cat lovers are up in arms. They’ll rebel and terrorize if it’s not ruled in their favour.
the question is how old is that picture of a cat. Oodoru Daisousasen or “Bayside Shakedown” in the west TV series is 15 years old and movies are at the top of boxoffices in Japan.
Maybe the cat saw the re-run and is a big fan that´s why it made that face.
http://z0r.de/3172
Fuuu,… look at all this plagiarism.