Internet liars get theirs
It's been a long time since I posted much of anything on LiveJournal besides my weekly updates. Anyone who reads them probably has a good idea of what's up with me lately but at the same time I've been so irritated at myself for not using the journal for venting like I used to. I really like having a written record of things I went through and things that are just funny because they're awful, and now I have been out of the habit so long that there's a HUGE chunk of stuff that's gone on and never got documented anywhere outside of short versions in my private paper journal.
I've been saying for a while that I want to get back into ranting on LiveJournal, but I never took the step. Probably partly because I feel like there's a backlog of stuff I want to rant about and I could never get to all of it. But since I'm feeling moved to do so today, I might as well write about something that irritated the crap out of me and is fit for public consumption (because it happened in a very public place).
So here's your breakdown of how I helped get a thief and a liar kicked off of Reddit.
This takes place on the Steven Universe subreddit, which (as should come as a surprise to exactly no one) I frequent. You don't need to know anything about the show to understand my rant.
Part One: A liar shares questionable content for attention
Someone with a two-month-old Reddit account suddenly began posting in the Steven Universe subreddit claiming to be a current Cartoon Network employee and a veteran of the shows Adventure Time and Steven Universe. Her profile said she'd been working there for 9 years, but did not mention any current or upcoming shows she's working on. (Steven Universe's last episode ran March 27, 2020, so the production on it would have been over long before that air date.) Her posts were peculiar: Usually very short and poorly spelled, and then inundated with tortured attempts to steer any comment conversations to an excuse to mention that she had worked on the show. If people asked what her job was there, she always said "I'm a animator" or "I did people animations and backgrounds." And of course wouldn't share her name, but kept making references to being very involved at the top levels, working directly with the showrunner Rebecca Sugar and claiming to have been in all the writers' meetings, which is how she knows all the answers to secrets but totes can't tell us.
She shared images from the Cartoon Network Hotel (a theme hotel in East Lancaster, Pennsylvania) claiming she'd stayed in the Steven Universe suite "with Rebecca" while traveling for work (uh, what work is in East Lancaster?? and why are you staying in the same hotel room as the showrunner? and considering the hotel opened in January 2020 and the show had wrapped on the production end before then, just...what??). She bragged that you get to stay in the hotel for free if you work there, which she totally does. The photos shared were the publicly available stock photos of the SU suite from the hotel's website; they were not original photos, and no pictures of any of the SU Crew were shared from there ever. People asked her questions about the experience and she always answered in the vaguest of ways, constantly trying to remind each commenter that she stayed there for free because of being "a animator" and working on the show.
One thing she did, though, that I wasn't sure about: She shared an image I had never seen before claiming it was "a storyboard [she] drew for the show," and when someone in the comments asked what episode this was from because it wasn't recognizably any known scene, she claimed it was from her storyboard test, and that she'd gotten the job on the show through taking this storyboard test. I wasn't sure what to make of that when I first saw it because it seemed like it could've been legit, while the way she talked and the really obnoxious bragging behavior really did not seem like something an adult would do, much less an adult who'd been a professional in the industry for almost a decade.
I just eyerolled the whole thing at first because this seemed like attention-getting liar behavior from a fourteen-year-old, and if she wants to suddenly pop up more than two years after her job would've ended had she been telling the truth just to brag to a bunch of strangers for internet cred, it seemed pretty harmless. But then . . . the art theft started.
Part Two: The liar traces other people's art and presents it as her original work
This person's next fun act was to post a low-resolution traced image of well-known stock art.
And I mean . . . even people who haven't seen a lot of SU have seen that image on just about every promotional item and ad for the show. It's omnipresent.
The first comment, predictably and rightly, was someone writing "This is traced, right?" After which she straight up said oh no she's freehanding this--and if you're wondering, she is able to reproduce it exactly because she has so much practice after working on the show all those years. God, honestly seeing people say stuff like that is really cringey and awful. It's clearly a line-for-line reproduction in worse resolution. People who work in animation don't use a reference like this and produce a line-for-line reproduction. I've dealt with children who trace a handful of times and they always whine that they're just that good and it shouldn't be so unbelievable that they have this exact reproduction talent, even though they're somehow utterly incapable of drawing the same character in a different pose.
Anyway, tracing promotional art isn't even that huge of a sin but then she traced somebody's fanart. And shit got real.
She posted this art with at least one update as she was working, claiming it's an in-development piece and she's playing around with software, which she was eager to tell us all how it's so different from what they use At Work lol. Because she worked on the show you know. At this point several people started asking questions about this art. Why don't they have faces? Because at Cartoon Network they trained them to do details last so they can "get everything perfect." (??) What's with Amethyst wearing overalls, which she does not wear in the show? She just thought it would look nice. Why is Ruby's gemstone in the totally wrong place? Because she's going to COPY AND PASTE IT TO THE RIGHT PLACE LATER, she does details last, that's just how Cartoon Network trained them to do it.
And I swear it was an accident how I ended up catching her in her lie.
I happened to be searching online for a blanket design that is no longer available. (I'm making a list of replacement cost where possible for a list of my merchandise. And I just couldn't seem to find this one blanket listed for sale anywhere. Most of the blankets still available were fan designs on print-on-demand sites.) Using the search term "cartoon network blanket steven universe," I suddenly ran into this:
It seems that design in the top left is a little familiar. Overalls on Amethyst and all.
Looking at the website where this fan artist had their work for sale on various media, it was clear this was a completed piece that's been in someone's store since February 2021, not an in-progress piece of art that this "animator" should be pretending they're creating right now and sharing progress shots of. And you certainly aren't planning to move a gemstone to the right place if actually the original artist either made a mistake or made an artistic choice and it's clearly part of the finished product. The lie is really obvious and the explanation's airtight, even if all the other nonsense pointing to the truth hadn't been pretty obvious already.
Part Three: A liar gets called out and has a tantrum
I will reiterate that if a teenager wants to roleplay as their fantasy job on a website, it's not really worth my attention. But when you start stealing other people's art and lying that it is yours, I feel like you deserve to get called out. So I decided to wade into the comments and see what would happen if I poked her thieving ass with a stick.
I replied to others--not to her--to explain to them that ACKTCHUALLY, the reason Ruby's gem is in the wrong place and nobody has faces and Amethyst is wearing overalls is that this artist is misrepresenting this art as an original creation, when the original artist completed this design many months ago and currently sells it in THIS (linked) website.
First she shamelessly tried to defend her actions, if you can believe that. The excuse switched from ooh I'm freehanding this art because I'm an experienced, talented animator to YEAH OKAY IT'S NOT MINE BUT I KNOW THE ARTIST AND THEY TOLD ME IT'S OKAY FOR ME TO COPY FROM THEM WITH NO CREDIT. TOTALLY.
A little of our conversation:
Her: Correction I have been given the ok by the creator. And I am free handing it’s really hard to free hand stuff with practice
Me: No. You're explicitly recreating someone else's art without crediting them, line for line. It doesn't matter if the artist is someone you know, or your best friend who's given you their eternal blessing to copy their work, or a complete stranger whose work you admire. Crediting them is the right thing to do, and you deliberately did not. I know why you didn't. You do too.
Her: If you draw something it will never be the same. So in theory it’s you’re version of the original art. I went to art school and learned about plagiarism I know how it works, And I literally got the ok by the creator. stop arguing I’m doing everything right. the creator literally said i do not care if I’m mentioned in it.
Me: The creator of this art is Mas Faust. You're friends with Mas Faust, who sells this design for money but doesn't mind if you make your own nearly identical version without crediting them? It's cool if we send a message to them and ask about it?
Drawings really should be quite different from the original references when you're reproducing them freehand, so hearing you say that to defend a line-for-line reproduction is very odd.
Her: Jesus Christ my god if my drawing offend you so much I’m just gonna delete it then block you so you don’t have to see anything else
Me: You should probably delete the other exact reproductions of others' work that you posted too if you're going to do that.
Her: If it makes you happy I’ll just quit my job at Cartoon Network and tell them I “plagiarized” the show I helped on. Then go live on the streets.
.
...Yikes, huh? That isn't a paraphrase above. That's what she actually said.
She deleted her post to hide the evidence, and then tried to post it again sarcastically referencing SINCE SOME PEOPLE ARE MAD then ok ok it's not my original art but if you need the link then I'll give it. (Still not giving the link or the artist's name.) That one got deleted by the moderators because she'd already been reported for art theft.
Part Four: Thief/Liar attempts to get sympathy and brag some more
So the poor dear went on from here to putter around in comments looking for attention over her lie some more. She responded to someone in a rumor thread to confirm that the rumor was not true (no, Steven Universe does NOT have a return date--it is over), and wasted no time to remind everyone that she knows this because Rebecca told her personally and "we" had lots of ideas for more, hey maybe someday, but "we" can't talk about these things because secrets ya know, btw I'm a animator on the show that's how I know. The person she replied to was so impressed that they gave her Reddit gold and gushed that they couldn't believe someone who Actually Worked On The Show answered their question. You could just see the validation juice pouring off of her as she magnanimously acknowledged that yes, yes sometimes people who work there come into the comments just to hang out with the people and see what everyone thinks, we're just like you tee hee and we love the show too. But then....
A whiny fan started a thread about how annoying and cringey other fans are, which they apparently thought would be well-received in a literal fan forum for the show, and this child wandered in TO COMPLAIN ABOUT ME.
Her: I literally worked as a animator on Steven universe, and a girl was criticized my drawings, And said I was stealing them which got them taken down .
So I had my fun and replied:
said I was stealing them which got them taken down
Someone caught you copying someone else's fanart line for line without credit
Fixed it for ya
Weird that you think this is a place for you to drop your personal beef when you got caught breaking the rules. I wonder if you have anything else to say here besides the utter fixation you seem to have on steering every comment thread into an excuse to mention that you are "a animator" who worked on the show.
Part Five: Other fans begin to take notice
The next morning after all this, I received a private message from someone else who was equally annoyed and disbelieving about this person's claims and we had a chat about whether it was actionable. She'd already traced multiple pieces of art, apparently believing that if she traced then it would look so legit that everyone would believe she was Really A Animator and it would be this huge flex. (Chances are she didn't want to chance posting her real art, as she probably wasn't particularly good at art without tracing and felt this was the only way she could seem legit.) But since we didn't necessarily have straight-up proof that this person was posing as any specific other person, we couldn't get her on impersonation, and art theft just gets your stuff deleted unless it's a pattern.
And then a lovely person came into the comments quoting this person's claim to work at Cartoon Network and wrote "CITATION NEEDED."
The person went on to say okay sure, perhaps you did work there! But that's an extraordinary claim and you do seem to be doing an awful lot of suspiciously fakey things for someone who shouldn't need to trace art and hasn't shared any proof. After all, other people who have worked on the show HAVE showed up on Reddit to answer questions in events before, and they always did stuff like linking the post to their social media where they'd be holding up a sign saying hi to Reddit or linking directly to the ask post. It's very easy to prove you're a known artist from the show, and if you're not a known artist from the show, why spend so much time yammering about your insider perspective and expecting people to take it as read?
After the liar made a weak justification that she does not give out her name on the internet, this person provided the nail in the coffin:
That's odd because I actually went further down in your profile just to see what else you might have done, in case I missed anything that would be clearly construed as proof, and a storyboard you posted here is posted elsewhere, uncropped, under your full name.
Assuming you're telling the truth, I mean.
Well well well.
So our seasoned animator who's bff's with Rebecca Sugar actually CROPPED SOMEONE ELSE'S STORYBOARD TEST and said it was hers. After I got suspicious about this person I did a reverse image search and never could find where this storyboard came from, so I asked this person and the other person who was familiar with the storyboard test and both of them told me it was publicly shared by a Cartoon Network intern a good while back.
A Cartoon Network intern who posted under her legal first and last name, had multiple social media with her first and last name on it linking to her work, was very public about the fact that she had never worked as an animator (she'd been a storyboard revisionist), and had worked on the Cartoon Network shows We Bare Bears and Uncle Grandpa. She'd asked to take this test during her time there but had not been successful in securing an animation job on Steven Universe, and never worked on that show at all.
Over 50 slides from the ACTUAL board test was shared on this link they sent me, too. It was really cool.
And made me sad because right from the beginning this liar had been swiping people's work and essentially putting her own name on it. Like, that's not even tracing, and tracing's bad enough. That's CHOPPING SOMEONE'S NAME OFF THEIR WORK and saying "I did this" and inventing a whole fictional past for yourself, which seems credible enough to some people that they'll give you rewards and get excited over your attention. Awful.
So, there was the real answer. She sounded like a fourteen-year-old taking an inexpert crack at sounding like her idea of an adult who had her dream job...because that's probably what she was.
Part Six: The Liar Self-Immolates
After the person familiar with the real board test confronted the liar with "either you DO reveal your real name online and you definitely never worked on those shows, or you LIED that this was your art and that's not you," this person just didn't comment and deleted their entire account.
I guess there's no point in going around pretending to be a animator anymore if anyone can look at your post history and see you got caught swiping other people's intellectual property multiple times while getting caught in a really sloppy lie.
A few other people in these threads realized they'd been fooled by her and I did the service of telling a couple people who seemed really involved that she had lied to them. Two different people expressed embarrassment and regret for believing her, and one "felt stupid" that this liar encouraged them to try really hard to go to art school and then one day maybe they could totally do what SHE achieved. She literally told the person that if they go to art school they have "an 80% chance of getting to work at Cartoon Network." Because that's definitely how that works and is totally a calculation someone has done based on real science at some point. Ughhhh I really hate liars.
Afterthought
The person who messaged me privately to discuss the veracity of her claims went back and forth with me a few times about why people do things like this. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that anyone who really worked there would create an account (with a name that specifically references a character on the show!) more than two years after the job ended and take interest in talking to the community at such a weird time. The other person thought sometimes people pretend to be insiders because they are planning to make public accusations that someone's a harasser or a racist and thinks building up a profile claiming to have worked with them will be convincing evidence. I didn't think this person was interested in any such thing, and wouldn't be able to pull off any long cons considering the dismal failure she had even trying to seem legit for a claim about herself.
And hilariously, the other person who helped out this joker said this: "If it's so easy to say you work on SU then I should try to pass my fanfics off as official scripts because I worked on SU for real and I know that it's actually secretly script-based and not board-based, everyone is mistaken. At least that lie would not involve theft!" Yeah, really. Let's all claim to be insiders to boost the legitimacy of our weird theories!
Anyway, people like this usually don't conclude that they did something really crappy and "learn their lesson" after stuff like this. Especially considering how unrepentant she was even when caught in obvious lies, how shamelessly she changed her story to justify theft, how effortlessly she went on to complain about me after I was so mean as to get her stolen art taken down for art theft...I really don't think she's deleted herself because she's done any thinking. Seemed like a clear case of hide the evidence and abandon ship. But since she seemed really, really incapable of basic strategy when trying to pull off a misrepresentation of herself on this scale, I think chances are very good that she'll make another account sometime soon and roll back into the subreddit making the same claims with the same telltale mistakes, stealing or copying different art, and thinking she sounds convincing as a one-time employee of the network.
Maybe if I kiss her ass she can introduce me to Rebecca Sugar?
I've been saying for a while that I want to get back into ranting on LiveJournal, but I never took the step. Probably partly because I feel like there's a backlog of stuff I want to rant about and I could never get to all of it. But since I'm feeling moved to do so today, I might as well write about something that irritated the crap out of me and is fit for public consumption (because it happened in a very public place).
So here's your breakdown of how I helped get a thief and a liar kicked off of Reddit.
This takes place on the Steven Universe subreddit, which (as should come as a surprise to exactly no one) I frequent. You don't need to know anything about the show to understand my rant.
Part One: A liar shares questionable content for attention
Someone with a two-month-old Reddit account suddenly began posting in the Steven Universe subreddit claiming to be a current Cartoon Network employee and a veteran of the shows Adventure Time and Steven Universe. Her profile said she'd been working there for 9 years, but did not mention any current or upcoming shows she's working on. (Steven Universe's last episode ran March 27, 2020, so the production on it would have been over long before that air date.) Her posts were peculiar: Usually very short and poorly spelled, and then inundated with tortured attempts to steer any comment conversations to an excuse to mention that she had worked on the show. If people asked what her job was there, she always said "I'm a animator" or "I did people animations and backgrounds." And of course wouldn't share her name, but kept making references to being very involved at the top levels, working directly with the showrunner Rebecca Sugar and claiming to have been in all the writers' meetings, which is how she knows all the answers to secrets but totes can't tell us.
She shared images from the Cartoon Network Hotel (a theme hotel in East Lancaster, Pennsylvania) claiming she'd stayed in the Steven Universe suite "with Rebecca" while traveling for work (uh, what work is in East Lancaster?? and why are you staying in the same hotel room as the showrunner? and considering the hotel opened in January 2020 and the show had wrapped on the production end before then, just...what??). She bragged that you get to stay in the hotel for free if you work there, which she totally does. The photos shared were the publicly available stock photos of the SU suite from the hotel's website; they were not original photos, and no pictures of any of the SU Crew were shared from there ever. People asked her questions about the experience and she always answered in the vaguest of ways, constantly trying to remind each commenter that she stayed there for free because of being "a animator" and working on the show.
One thing she did, though, that I wasn't sure about: She shared an image I had never seen before claiming it was "a storyboard [she] drew for the show," and when someone in the comments asked what episode this was from because it wasn't recognizably any known scene, she claimed it was from her storyboard test, and that she'd gotten the job on the show through taking this storyboard test. I wasn't sure what to make of that when I first saw it because it seemed like it could've been legit, while the way she talked and the really obnoxious bragging behavior really did not seem like something an adult would do, much less an adult who'd been a professional in the industry for almost a decade.
I just eyerolled the whole thing at first because this seemed like attention-getting liar behavior from a fourteen-year-old, and if she wants to suddenly pop up more than two years after her job would've ended had she been telling the truth just to brag to a bunch of strangers for internet cred, it seemed pretty harmless. But then . . . the art theft started.
Part Two: The liar traces other people's art and presents it as her original work
This person's next fun act was to post a low-resolution traced image of well-known stock art.
And I mean . . . even people who haven't seen a lot of SU have seen that image on just about every promotional item and ad for the show. It's omnipresent.
The first comment, predictably and rightly, was someone writing "This is traced, right?" After which she straight up said oh no she's freehanding this--and if you're wondering, she is able to reproduce it exactly because she has so much practice after working on the show all those years. God, honestly seeing people say stuff like that is really cringey and awful. It's clearly a line-for-line reproduction in worse resolution. People who work in animation don't use a reference like this and produce a line-for-line reproduction. I've dealt with children who trace a handful of times and they always whine that they're just that good and it shouldn't be so unbelievable that they have this exact reproduction talent, even though they're somehow utterly incapable of drawing the same character in a different pose.
Anyway, tracing promotional art isn't even that huge of a sin but then she traced somebody's fanart. And shit got real.
She posted this art with at least one update as she was working, claiming it's an in-development piece and she's playing around with software, which she was eager to tell us all how it's so different from what they use At Work lol. Because she worked on the show you know. At this point several people started asking questions about this art. Why don't they have faces? Because at Cartoon Network they trained them to do details last so they can "get everything perfect." (??) What's with Amethyst wearing overalls, which she does not wear in the show? She just thought it would look nice. Why is Ruby's gemstone in the totally wrong place? Because she's going to COPY AND PASTE IT TO THE RIGHT PLACE LATER, she does details last, that's just how Cartoon Network trained them to do it.
And I swear it was an accident how I ended up catching her in her lie.
I happened to be searching online for a blanket design that is no longer available. (I'm making a list of replacement cost where possible for a list of my merchandise. And I just couldn't seem to find this one blanket listed for sale anywhere. Most of the blankets still available were fan designs on print-on-demand sites.) Using the search term "cartoon network blanket steven universe," I suddenly ran into this:
It seems that design in the top left is a little familiar. Overalls on Amethyst and all.
Looking at the website where this fan artist had their work for sale on various media, it was clear this was a completed piece that's been in someone's store since February 2021, not an in-progress piece of art that this "animator" should be pretending they're creating right now and sharing progress shots of. And you certainly aren't planning to move a gemstone to the right place if actually the original artist either made a mistake or made an artistic choice and it's clearly part of the finished product. The lie is really obvious and the explanation's airtight, even if all the other nonsense pointing to the truth hadn't been pretty obvious already.
Part Three: A liar gets called out and has a tantrum
I will reiterate that if a teenager wants to roleplay as their fantasy job on a website, it's not really worth my attention. But when you start stealing other people's art and lying that it is yours, I feel like you deserve to get called out. So I decided to wade into the comments and see what would happen if I poked her thieving ass with a stick.
I replied to others--not to her--to explain to them that ACKTCHUALLY, the reason Ruby's gem is in the wrong place and nobody has faces and Amethyst is wearing overalls is that this artist is misrepresenting this art as an original creation, when the original artist completed this design many months ago and currently sells it in THIS (linked) website.
First she shamelessly tried to defend her actions, if you can believe that. The excuse switched from ooh I'm freehanding this art because I'm an experienced, talented animator to YEAH OKAY IT'S NOT MINE BUT I KNOW THE ARTIST AND THEY TOLD ME IT'S OKAY FOR ME TO COPY FROM THEM WITH NO CREDIT. TOTALLY.
A little of our conversation:
Her: Correction I have been given the ok by the creator. And I am free handing it’s really hard to free hand stuff with practice
Me: No. You're explicitly recreating someone else's art without crediting them, line for line. It doesn't matter if the artist is someone you know, or your best friend who's given you their eternal blessing to copy their work, or a complete stranger whose work you admire. Crediting them is the right thing to do, and you deliberately did not. I know why you didn't. You do too.
Her: If you draw something it will never be the same. So in theory it’s you’re version of the original art. I went to art school and learned about plagiarism I know how it works, And I literally got the ok by the creator. stop arguing I’m doing everything right. the creator literally said i do not care if I’m mentioned in it.
Me: The creator of this art is Mas Faust. You're friends with Mas Faust, who sells this design for money but doesn't mind if you make your own nearly identical version without crediting them? It's cool if we send a message to them and ask about it?
Drawings really should be quite different from the original references when you're reproducing them freehand, so hearing you say that to defend a line-for-line reproduction is very odd.
Her: Jesus Christ my god if my drawing offend you so much I’m just gonna delete it then block you so you don’t have to see anything else
Me: You should probably delete the other exact reproductions of others' work that you posted too if you're going to do that.
Her: If it makes you happy I’ll just quit my job at Cartoon Network and tell them I “plagiarized” the show I helped on. Then go live on the streets.
.
...Yikes, huh? That isn't a paraphrase above. That's what she actually said.
She deleted her post to hide the evidence, and then tried to post it again sarcastically referencing SINCE SOME PEOPLE ARE MAD then ok ok it's not my original art but if you need the link then I'll give it. (Still not giving the link or the artist's name.) That one got deleted by the moderators because she'd already been reported for art theft.
Part Four: Thief/Liar attempts to get sympathy and brag some more
So the poor dear went on from here to putter around in comments looking for attention over her lie some more. She responded to someone in a rumor thread to confirm that the rumor was not true (no, Steven Universe does NOT have a return date--it is over), and wasted no time to remind everyone that she knows this because Rebecca told her personally and "we" had lots of ideas for more, hey maybe someday, but "we" can't talk about these things because secrets ya know, btw I'm a animator on the show that's how I know. The person she replied to was so impressed that they gave her Reddit gold and gushed that they couldn't believe someone who Actually Worked On The Show answered their question. You could just see the validation juice pouring off of her as she magnanimously acknowledged that yes, yes sometimes people who work there come into the comments just to hang out with the people and see what everyone thinks, we're just like you tee hee and we love the show too. But then....
A whiny fan started a thread about how annoying and cringey other fans are, which they apparently thought would be well-received in a literal fan forum for the show, and this child wandered in TO COMPLAIN ABOUT ME.
Her: I literally worked as a animator on Steven universe, and a girl was criticized my drawings, And said I was stealing them which got them taken down .
So I had my fun and replied:
said I was stealing them which got them taken down
Someone caught you copying someone else's fanart line for line without credit
Fixed it for ya
Weird that you think this is a place for you to drop your personal beef when you got caught breaking the rules. I wonder if you have anything else to say here besides the utter fixation you seem to have on steering every comment thread into an excuse to mention that you are "a animator" who worked on the show.
Part Five: Other fans begin to take notice
The next morning after all this, I received a private message from someone else who was equally annoyed and disbelieving about this person's claims and we had a chat about whether it was actionable. She'd already traced multiple pieces of art, apparently believing that if she traced then it would look so legit that everyone would believe she was Really A Animator and it would be this huge flex. (Chances are she didn't want to chance posting her real art, as she probably wasn't particularly good at art without tracing and felt this was the only way she could seem legit.) But since we didn't necessarily have straight-up proof that this person was posing as any specific other person, we couldn't get her on impersonation, and art theft just gets your stuff deleted unless it's a pattern.
And then a lovely person came into the comments quoting this person's claim to work at Cartoon Network and wrote "CITATION NEEDED."
The person went on to say okay sure, perhaps you did work there! But that's an extraordinary claim and you do seem to be doing an awful lot of suspiciously fakey things for someone who shouldn't need to trace art and hasn't shared any proof. After all, other people who have worked on the show HAVE showed up on Reddit to answer questions in events before, and they always did stuff like linking the post to their social media where they'd be holding up a sign saying hi to Reddit or linking directly to the ask post. It's very easy to prove you're a known artist from the show, and if you're not a known artist from the show, why spend so much time yammering about your insider perspective and expecting people to take it as read?
After the liar made a weak justification that she does not give out her name on the internet, this person provided the nail in the coffin:
That's odd because I actually went further down in your profile just to see what else you might have done, in case I missed anything that would be clearly construed as proof, and a storyboard you posted here is posted elsewhere, uncropped, under your full name.
Assuming you're telling the truth, I mean.
Well well well.
So our seasoned animator who's bff's with Rebecca Sugar actually CROPPED SOMEONE ELSE'S STORYBOARD TEST and said it was hers. After I got suspicious about this person I did a reverse image search and never could find where this storyboard came from, so I asked this person and the other person who was familiar with the storyboard test and both of them told me it was publicly shared by a Cartoon Network intern a good while back.
A Cartoon Network intern who posted under her legal first and last name, had multiple social media with her first and last name on it linking to her work, was very public about the fact that she had never worked as an animator (she'd been a storyboard revisionist), and had worked on the Cartoon Network shows We Bare Bears and Uncle Grandpa. She'd asked to take this test during her time there but had not been successful in securing an animation job on Steven Universe, and never worked on that show at all.
Over 50 slides from the ACTUAL board test was shared on this link they sent me, too. It was really cool.
And made me sad because right from the beginning this liar had been swiping people's work and essentially putting her own name on it. Like, that's not even tracing, and tracing's bad enough. That's CHOPPING SOMEONE'S NAME OFF THEIR WORK and saying "I did this" and inventing a whole fictional past for yourself, which seems credible enough to some people that they'll give you rewards and get excited over your attention. Awful.
So, there was the real answer. She sounded like a fourteen-year-old taking an inexpert crack at sounding like her idea of an adult who had her dream job...because that's probably what she was.
Part Six: The Liar Self-Immolates
After the person familiar with the real board test confronted the liar with "either you DO reveal your real name online and you definitely never worked on those shows, or you LIED that this was your art and that's not you," this person just didn't comment and deleted their entire account.
I guess there's no point in going around pretending to be a animator anymore if anyone can look at your post history and see you got caught swiping other people's intellectual property multiple times while getting caught in a really sloppy lie.
A few other people in these threads realized they'd been fooled by her and I did the service of telling a couple people who seemed really involved that she had lied to them. Two different people expressed embarrassment and regret for believing her, and one "felt stupid" that this liar encouraged them to try really hard to go to art school and then one day maybe they could totally do what SHE achieved. She literally told the person that if they go to art school they have "an 80% chance of getting to work at Cartoon Network." Because that's definitely how that works and is totally a calculation someone has done based on real science at some point. Ughhhh I really hate liars.
Afterthought
The person who messaged me privately to discuss the veracity of her claims went back and forth with me a few times about why people do things like this. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that anyone who really worked there would create an account (with a name that specifically references a character on the show!) more than two years after the job ended and take interest in talking to the community at such a weird time. The other person thought sometimes people pretend to be insiders because they are planning to make public accusations that someone's a harasser or a racist and thinks building up a profile claiming to have worked with them will be convincing evidence. I didn't think this person was interested in any such thing, and wouldn't be able to pull off any long cons considering the dismal failure she had even trying to seem legit for a claim about herself.
And hilariously, the other person who helped out this joker said this: "If it's so easy to say you work on SU then I should try to pass my fanfics off as official scripts because I worked on SU for real and I know that it's actually secretly script-based and not board-based, everyone is mistaken. At least that lie would not involve theft!" Yeah, really. Let's all claim to be insiders to boost the legitimacy of our weird theories!
Anyway, people like this usually don't conclude that they did something really crappy and "learn their lesson" after stuff like this. Especially considering how unrepentant she was even when caught in obvious lies, how shamelessly she changed her story to justify theft, how effortlessly she went on to complain about me after I was so mean as to get her stolen art taken down for art theft...I really don't think she's deleted herself because she's done any thinking. Seemed like a clear case of hide the evidence and abandon ship. But since she seemed really, really incapable of basic strategy when trying to pull off a misrepresentation of herself on this scale, I think chances are very good that she'll make another account sometime soon and roll back into the subreddit making the same claims with the same telltale mistakes, stealing or copying different art, and thinking she sounds convincing as a one-time employee of the network.
Maybe if I kiss her ass she can introduce me to Rebecca Sugar?