Brianna Wu Is A Notorious Art Tracer and Extremely Derivative Imitator, And Here’s The Proof. GethN7 Follow Apr 8, 2016 · 3 min read

To my intense dismay, Brianna Wu is a very notorious art thief. Note, I do not make this accusation lightly, as someone who claims to be making a career in tech, I find theft of copyrighted assets to make people think you are more competent than you are to be highly disturbing and profoundly unethical.

I’m making a game in RPG Maker, and almost all the art is material derived from others, and I make sure to extensively cite everyone I have obtained art from, and I owe a major debt to more than one artist I have commissioned art from, and to pass their work off as my own is an act of treachery I could never bring myself to do.

Besides, my art skills are rather meager, and I’m barely competent at doing most of the basics in GIMP, so if I lied about my art, people would know if they ever saw any of my own completely original work (I have hardly any to my name anyway since I’m that crappy)

Unfortunately, Brianna Wu does not have any ethical qualms about doing so, and here’s the proof from a very recent incident:

Wu was caught blatantly claiming Sailor Moon fanart as her own when it was blatantly traced, as illustrated here:

http://tweetsave.com/bennottinghill/status/718132419610689537

Brianna Wu made several replies to this, now all deleted, including the original tweet with the blatant trace work. Here are tweetsaves of those tweets:

https://www.tweetsave.com/spacekatgal/status/717905697023913985

Wu of course, as usual, tried to blame GamerGate and claim this to make an excuse for blatant art theft:

https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/718169628749520896

https://www.tweetsave.com/spacekatgal/status/718169628749520896

And Wu decided to be downright abusive when caught lying:

https://www.tweetsave.com/spacekatgal/status/718172680537706498

https://www.tweetsave.com/spacekatgal/status/718173092724477952

This isn’t Wu’s first adventure in tracing, as you can see below:

http://tweetsave.com/spacekatgal/status/668668945726087168

FYI, what Wu won’t tell anyone is that this is blatantly traced Sailor Moon art, this is NOT his own art.

https://lolcow.wiki/wiki/images/e/e1/Shill.jpg

The linked image is a retweet by Imore of an image Wu drew, claiming it as original work.

Not so, it’s a trace of a more talented manga artist:

https://lolcow.wiki/wiki/images/4/47/Wu_Image_Sourcing.jpg

This work would go on to be oft imitated and slavishly copied for many of Wu’s works, both when he was John Flynt, and after transition to Brianna Wu, who is rather fond of both slavishly imitating Sailor Moon and GALS, with the latter being the basis of much of Wu’s art style and the former having many details partially or entirely.

Here’s is an image showing some of the characters from Revolution 60

http://tweetsave.com/spacekatgal/status/474657049091915777

The girl on the left draws heavy art cues from this Sailor Moon character:

http://archive.is/N6J8C

Which also featured in an earlier version of the character, drawn when Wu was John Flynt:

https://lolcow.wiki/wiki/images/thumb/d/d7/Electioneve3.jpg/463px-Electioneve3.jpg

The character design imitates the GALS style rather explicitly, while the hair is derived from the above Sailor Moon influence.

In short, Wu is an incredibly derivative artist.

Here’s more examples:

This image is an early version of what would be reused for the character Holiday in Revolution 60

https://lolcow.wiki/wiki/images/thumb/b/bb/Electioneve1.jpg/463px-Electioneve1.jpg

As can be seen, the art is very GALS like

Wu has also directly admitted to cribbing heavily from Sailor Moon for character design:

http://tweetsave.com/spacekatgal/status/625811593650171904

Here is an image comparing Holiday’s appearance in John Flynt” “Socially Unconscious Productions” (the failed animation startup Wu references) and the appearance in Revolution 60.

https://lolcow.wiki/wiki/images/a/ad/Brianna_is_Flynt.png

As you can see, the art style is VERY derivative and it’s derived origins are quite clear.

Also, compare these two images to see more incredibly derivative work:

https://kiwifar.ms/attachments/capture-d%E2%80%99e%CC%81cran-2016-02-15-a%CC%80-02-16-01-png.73438/

Sailor Moon artwork.

And now Wu’s art work as John Flynt:

https://kiwifar.ms/attachments/capture-d%E2%80%99e%CC%81cran-2016-02-15-a%CC%80-02-17-16-png.73439/

As you can see many details were slavishly copied from the first picture to the second.

Also, Mimet from Sailor Moon:

https://kiwifar.ms/attachments/mimetcapturex29-jpg.61731/

And Minuete from Revolution 60:

https://kiwifar.ms/attachments/ss-001-jpg.61732/

I could go on and on, but I’ve made my point. Wu’s art style is an incredibly derivative mix of GALS and Sailor Moon mining, and that’s when Wu is not outright tracing and claiming the work as his own. Even Wu’s commercial product (Revolution 60) teeters on the border of outright copyright infringement in some places, especially if you compare and contrast Wu’s rather clear art inspirations and actual art produced for Revolution 60 and the earlier works whose art would be updated and recycled for R60.

For someone who claims to be lied about quite a bit, I find this sort of unethical behavior, especially by a “woman in tech”, incredibly disgraceful.