Guanziling Hot Spring Festival poster accused of 'image theft'   Designer admits plagiarism: thought it was usable

Reported by You t
ru / Compiled by staff

Zhong Mengshun, chairman of Taipei’s Comic Artists Guild, revealed late on the 23rd that the poster for the Guanziling Hot Spring Food Festival had plagiarized works by illustrators from China and Japan. By placing the original images side by side for comparison, it was found that the Tainan City Government’s poster had directly cropped out characters and pieced them together—the image theft was obvious. The Tainan City Government responded on the 24th with an apology and removed the poster entirely. Today (the 26th), the designer responded, admitting to plagiarism.


▲%Following? After exposing and pointing out the similarities between the promotional poster and the original works, the side-by-side comparison photo. (Image source: Facebook post by Zhong Mengshun)(Facebook)

Zhong Mengshun pointed out that the promotional poster for the 2016 Tainan Guanziling Hot Spring Food Festival had plagiarized both the magical girl character from Chinese illustrator spirtie’s “Puella Magi Madoka Magica” and images by Japanese illustrator Siraha. He strongly demanded an apology from the Tainan City Government. On Facebook, he also called on the Tainan City Government to start building Taiwan as an independent country by first using comics and characters created by Taiwanese artists. He ended on a sorrowful note, questioning just how much further government agencies would go in trampling on the work of Taiwanese creators.

The Tainan City Government also responded on the 24th, stating that it did not agree with the actions of the contractor and would hold the relevant parties accountable. In the future, it will strengthen its intellectual

The commissioned execution company, LunChuang Public Relations Consulting Co., Ltd., issued a press release today. The designer admitted to using materials from a publicly shared platform and, based on professional experience, judged that the public materials should be usable. Therefore, the modified version of those materials was used as the final design submission. The designer also expressed apologies and a willingness to make amends.

Press Release from LunChuang Public Relations Consulting Co., Ltd.:
Our company was commissioned to execute the “2016 Guanziling Hot Spring Food Festival” event organized by the Tainan City Government Tourism Bureau this year, as well as to design the promotional visuals for the event. To align with the design theme of the event, our internal team decided to adopt an anime style to highlight the main atmosphere of the event. As our company did not have designers with expertise in this specific field, we opted to outsource the task to a SOHO digital illustrator.

It has been confirmed that the designer admitted to using materials from a publicly shared platform and, based solely on professional judgment, assumed that the public materials were safe to use. The designer then modified these materials to create the final design submission. No separate contract was made with the original creator, which has caused inconvenience to the municipal government.

Our company, due to limited knowledge in the field of comic design, failed to promptly identify the potential copyright infringement in the materials submitted by the designer and did not respect the rights of the original creator. This reflects a lapse in our execution process. Additionally, the use of freelance designers via online platforms was our own independent decision. Therefore, we take full responsibility for the oversight in supervision. We have immediately ceased the use and removed all promotional materials involved in the alleged infringement, and are actively contacting the original creator to offer our apologies and seek to make amends.

Our company has sought collaboration with outstanding local cultural and creative organizations in Tainan. We have officially invited the Tainan Municipal Chengdu Community Cultural and Creative Development Association, a local cultural and creative group, to jointly develop a new design and establish a win-win model that highlights local cultural creativity. We appreciate the guidance from the design community, which will help us to more carefully protect and uphold the value of cultural creativity in the future.