So, obligatory “omg the fake leak” post here, I suppose. I’m going to try to disprove it.

IF THIS IS REAL, which I doubt but still, IT IS A FRIGGIN’ HUGE FINALE-LEVEL SPOILER. Do NOT look if you haven’t seen it yet and you don’t want to risk it turning out to be true, because it does look extremely convincing and I would believe it if not for the absurdity of the subject. “Leak” directly under the cut.

This is the spoiler.

Simultaneously, this looks both shady and believable. The random Arabic might give you pause, but the picture itself is just so similar to the excellent animation in LOK that it has to make you wonder, right?

Perhaps… perhaps not. Look at his face.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, human skin in animation is usually shaded in either two or three colors, depending on the light source - one color for lit areas and one color for shadows; or a color for highlights, a color for the normal unshaded skin tone, and a color for shadows. The shading present in this shot is both unnecessarily complicated and absolutely illogical. For the lighting in this picture to be plausible, this man would have to be standing in a light source coming from the left of the screen and standing just underneath something casting a shadow over his head. And even then, the shading would not result in a dark reddish blob dozens of shades deeper than the other three colors on his skin. Neither can this be explained away as Amon’s supposed scars, since the blob is not on his face and would not need a mask to hide it, and the eye and the ear are whole and unaffected.

Now, draw your attention to the background.

As a (sadly ex-) New Yorker, these two landmarks caught my eye because they remind me of the Empire State Building and the George Washington Bridge. They are, in fact, real locations in Republic City and can be picked out in any image of the city…

…on opposite sides of each other.

For the background of this scene to work, this man would have to be standing in the general area indicated here:

Not only is the vast majority of it water, but the Empire State-esque skyscraper is being presented from the front view, which is impossible given the location of the bridge.

Also note how the background in the leak is quite a bit more low quality than we’ve come to expect from the talented new painters Bryan loves to gush about.

Yet more proof of this image’s fakeness can be found in the mask.

Even in this far-off detail shot of Amon, we can clearly see that the puce-colored areas of the mask are outlined in red. It’s consistent with every image of the man.

In addition, we can see his eyes in some shots, proving that there is no obscuring factor of the mask’s eyeholes that block them from view.

Now look at the mask here. Blackened-out eye sockets when they should be transparent and black outlines around the puce-colored patches.

Finally, as I showed in a previous theory post about Amon (http://birdbrainblue.tumblr.com/post/21605463190/this-is-a-post-about-amon), we have seen Amon’s eyes and they are not this man’s.

I don’t know how much else you need to prove that this image is fake. But even if, after all of the above, you are still convinced of the shot’s legitimacy, consider this.

How do we know the man in the mask is even Amon? How do we know it’s not an Air Acolyte disguising himself as Amon for a mission? If this image is somehow real after everything I’ve said, we have no way to tell if it is actually Amon.

EDIT: Further examination of the shot revealed this.

The man here has only one eyebrow, and the shading does not carry over into his beard. That seems to indicate this was not professional work.