It has come to my attention that two Scottish individuals,
Adam and Antony Murphy, who own a business called "
Imaginears Animation Studio" are going around pitching a short film idea and designs that I am responsible for.
This blog post was originally made on 10/26/13 and since then I created a blog specifically designed for hosting the information contained in this article as well as future developments.
http://imaginearsanimationscam.wordpress.com
They have setup a website with the intention to crowd-fund a short film (Steampunk AL) using my original art and storyboards.
(The website has been taken down as of 11/13/13)
http://steampunkal.com/
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Above: My original artwork as it appears behind Adam and Antony Murphy on their fundraiser video.
Hi-res images of my original artwork are at the bottom of this page. |
They contacted me initially about a year and a half ago, asking me for both technical and artistic advice and I mentored them and gave them informal advice for months on end
*at no cost.*
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| Above: Notice they introduced themselves under a different last name "wormy" as opposed to "murphy". |
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| Above: They asked about my personal projects and to send over my drawings. |
I continued to mentor them on their commercial and personal projects
*at no cost* and share with them information about my own personal projects and art until they scammed me.
They sold me what turned out to be a faulty machine that they received as down-payment for a commercial project they never completed and they promised me that they would use the money to buy me a software license that I could use to make tutorials and assist them in their learning process, but instead bought themselves an extra software license.
The machine I was sold was a so called "render node" a stripped down version of a desktop meant to be used as part of a render farm *NOT* for graphics/interactive work.
In order to turn the machine into a workstation I had to spend an additional $1500, once again out of my own pocket
.
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| Above: They used my money to purchase a license for themselves. |
I told them to not contact me ever again and to not associate themselves with me (as they were namedropping me in order to win clients over)
Recently I discovered that they took my designs and story ideas and without my knowledge nor consent, contacted a bunch of artists and companies and asked them to collaborate on a short film that they are currently trying to crowd-fund:
(The website has been taken down as of 11/13/13)
http://steampunkal.com/
In their fundraiser video for
Steampunk AL they appear in front of prints of my original artwork:
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| Above: My original artwork as it appears behind Adam and Antony Murphy on their fundraiser video. |
I contacted a previous client of theirs in order to get a better understanding of the scope of the scam.
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| Above: E-mail from a previous client of Imaginears who got scammed as well. |
They seem to be comfortable ripping off artists and animation studios.
Their website appears to be a ripoff from Pixar's.
http://www.imaginears.co.uk/
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Above: Pixar's home page VS imaginears homepage.
Notice that the similarities are down to the font. |
Below you can see a comparison of my original character design sketches, which I posted online about a year ago, Imaginears design, and Russell from Pixar's "UP".
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| Above: my original design. |
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| Above: Imaginears design. |
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| Above: Russell, from Pixar's "UP". |
Below you can see a comparison of Pixar's "Burn-e" main character and Imaginears design for the commercial I was mentoring them for, which was never completed.
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| Above: Burn-e from Pixar's "Burn-e". |
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| Above: Imaginears design. |
They were able to get artists (among which some of my friends who were unaware of the scam) paint the design above, model, rig and animate an animation test of the main character and were planning on going live with a kickstarter, with the goal to finance and produce the short film.
After i successfully contacted their associates and got them to withdraw from the project and remove their association with Imaginears, Adam and Antony contacted me and offered me a deal.
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| Above: Adam and Antony's offer. |
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Above: my reply.
They also appear to have bought two certificates of copyright on October 28th 2013.
For those not familiar with copyright, those belong to the original creator of the art and they can only be sold by that person to anyone else (usually through a contract).
I haven't sold any copyrights to anyone and still own all copyrights to my art.
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| Above: Adam and Antony's linkedin, which features two certificate of copyrights. |
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They recently created a blog with the intent to defame me but within hours from going live the blog was taken down.
I took a snapshot of it, and the blog is still available here:
Because of this, I decided to put online the rough boards for my short film and re-post my original designs from about a year ago in order to be able to prove ownership of the designs and the idea.
I plan on refining the boards as time goes by, but in the meantime, the urgency of the situation prompted me to go ahead an put it live.
https://vimeo.com/77870173
