



It is finally RWBY season again! Since volume 5 ended in January, fans have been met with probably the longest hiatus since the gap between volumes 2 and 3 at 9 months. Though unlike the hiatus into volume 3 where everyone was coping through the emotional hurdle of the show’s creator, Monty Oum’s untimely passing, the hiatus into volume 6 came with a myriad of discussions about not whether the show would keep going but rather its quality as it kept going. The fan base was at a weird state, being harsher than usual towards the story and presentation. Whether or not everyone ultimately agreed with all the criticisms made towards volume 5 and found them valid, the fact it has driven the show’s director, Kerry Shawcross to a point where he temporarily needed to isolate himself from the fandom spoke for itself about how out of hand the discussion got at times.



Between announcements and promotions for volume 6 and other mixed-media projects, the annual Fathom Event Screening on the 25th of October which led to the premiere of the volume proper, it’s probably safe to say that people wanted to move on to better things. And that’s what this blog post is for. While every other fan will no doubt have talked about all the theories, speculations and narrative beats of the volume 6 premiere, if you’ve read enough of my previous posts, you know I like to approach things with RWBY from a production viewpoint. And there’s quite a bit to talk about.

To kick things off, it’s worth mentioning the exclusive production diary that came during the volume 6 Fathom Event Screening due to how much adjustments there have been in RWBY’s production staff in general. In the production diary, Kerry Shawcross and representatives of various departments mentioned about how they all have prepared for volume 6 in particular. One thing to note is Kerry stated how they have spent about as long with using Autodesk Maya as their main animation software as they did with the show’s first animation software, Poser. Yet, despite this, there have been numerous changes in the staff positions at different departments. Some have already been made aware by the fandom while others have been kept under wraps until now, such as Penelope “Penny” Nederlander being volume 6′s lead compositor after only being involved with the team since the latter-half of volume 5. Considering, she brought certain creative ideas into the compositing stage such as her and another compositor, Amanda Gotera, coming up with how to form the lightning effect around Hazel’s arms, it’s very exciting to see what her new position will entail on the post-production side of things.

Then there’s Kerry Shawcross mentioning the lead editor, Connor Pickens’ additional role as co-director, being to a) be brought to recording sessions from time-to-time as a supporting role and b) to help divide the workload of scenes between the both of them that they will go over with all the different departments. That latter role is especially important because it likely clues in as to why volume 5 may have bothered so many fans from a presentation or production standpoint. Volume 5′s production in general was at a larger scale than previous volumes, both in terms of episode count and the number of people in different departments. Despite the fact that just about every department had a supervisor or coordinator to help alleviate things to some degree, Kerry as the director likely still needed to check every scene between many, if not, all the departments for approval. This in-turn may have led to some creative oversights that affected the visual presentation of certain scenes and whether they clicked with viewers.

Bear in mind, some of this is speculative and not to be taken as direct confirmation. But it’s at the very least worth taking in as food-for-thought. Whatever the case may be, between a new co-director to help alleviate the workload, various staff promotions and new positions, fan feedback taken to heart by Kerry and series writer, Miles Luna from as far back as February, and even the Adam Character short having strong aspects of visual presentation, these things all led to signs of a potentially stronger presentation for volume 6. And premiere chapter truly shows.





Back when Rooster Teeth promoted the Fathom Event Screening through a tweet, I wrote a post advising people not to take the idea that a fight scene would occur in the premiere too literally. This wasn’t because I believed there wouldn’t be such a sequence so much as I didn’t want expectations to be potentially misplaced. This was one of those times however where I was glad to be wrong in hindsight based on the opening scene alone which showed so much enthusiasm and competence in the way the camera tracks and steadily stops to briefly highlight and introduce the recurring cast for each volume. RWBY has been no stranger to having camera direction give a sense of character to an action scene (even in the past couple of volumes) and it’s something fairly common in action scenes in anime in general. But it’s throughout this opening scene and the first episode in general that the camera plays a specific role in every moment and to great effect. Though what’s most impressive by far is how the opening scene features an elongated tracking shot, otherwise known as a “long take” that spanned for, I kid you not, 64-seconds! This is an indication of how daring the show wants to be in its presentation this volume.

When seeing this scene, various examples sprung to mind. There’s the train sequence in Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos which also had a train action sequence with some tracking shots, partly animated by Gosei Oda. Then there’s fight sequence in episode 10 of Land of the Lustrous which also featured a long-take that spanned for roughly the same time. But what may be the most fascinating comparison is the highway action sequence in episode 17 of season 9 of Red vs Blue, animated by Monty Oum himself. While it could be validly speculated that the volume 6 train sequence’s long-take is as a wink-&-nudge to that highway sequence and will no doubt bring forth the, “Monty would be proud”, response, what’s especially noteworthy about this comparison is the commentary about the RvB highway sequence that came from one of Monty’s old Deviantart journals of all things:





“So this here is episode 17 of rvb season 9. This episode particularly has the longest uncut action sequence I’ve done to date. I’ve always felt whenever movies do what’s called a “long take” that the action itself kinda suffers due to the simple reason of being safe and lacking the polish of editorial. Particulars come to mind like Hard Boiled or Tom Yum Goong. So I was like why not? I have the advantage of editorial despite living in the realm of action choreography. It being animation, why not do a long take?”

The reason the commentary in particular is so important has to do with Monty’s stance on editing and camera direction. He was always for having editorial play a role in film-making, but he also believed that in the medium of animation, there’s more room for experimentation. Whether you agree with that or not, this is actually something very similar to what Kerry Shawcross said in response to a question in a RWBY panel at RTX:

“No, I mean, I totally understand what you’re saying. I think there’s just a style thing like early on that Monty adapted to. The limitations that live-action shoots, Hollywood shoots have… ya know, they were limitations and it was a “ways-to-get-around” thing. But I think it also bred a style. And I think that was something that he enjoyed and that’s one of the big things too. We’re an animation company, we work on animation. But I think a lot of us are also inspired by live-action or a million other things.

…So it’s one of those things where I don’t think one way to do it is right or wrong. I think using them together, which is something we can do in animation, allows us to find the flow that we want to.”

Unfortunately, this was the same panel where the misconception that Kerry Shawcross leans strictly toward Hollywood cinematic style of action sequences and Monty Oum stuck with the Kung-Fu film style had perpetuated within collective fandom’s mind. This is false on both sides. If the two quotes above should be any indication, both Kerry and Monty have aimed towards taking whatever ideas from any visual mediums they’re interested to apply to RWBY as an animated series. Neither of them have been too selective about where they draw inspirations from. On Monty’s end, you’ll have him take ideas from over-the-top fighting games and Hollywood live-action films and on Kerry’s you’ll have him draw inspiration from scenes in certain anime films. I do hope that by pointing all of this out, the myth that has clouded over the CRWBY’s head for longer than warranted gets debunked.

Switching gears back to the main episode itself, we end the action sequence with a sudden fade-out transition as Ruby helps Weiss take shelter with “lightish-red” rose petals as a neat touch and what follows is the audio playing a big role in Adam’s scene. When the voiceover work is heard before cutting to the shot, we get what’s essentially a J-cut and it really delivers the story of Adam reviewing his bitter state-of-mind as we hear the chilling sounds of him intolerantly killing those that have disobeyed him. I just love how the White Fang throne room setting (say what you will about the story content), invites these creative transition choices. The scene itself also funnily comes off as sort of Kerry’s response to the “show, don’t tell” criticism by having the audio itself present things.

Next is the train station scene and while I expect at least some fans to have already noticed this, we get nice subtle reminders about the locations “Windpath” and “Kujinashi” through a brief showing of the train arrival and departure times. These were locations first mentioned in the Mistral World of Remnant back in volume 4 and may or may not hint at future settings for volume 6. Though this all leads into two bigger things to talk about from a production standpoint. First, the set design for the station which conveys much brightness and warmth through the choices of gold, mahogany, red and white, with light blue accents peppered in-between. This helps to remind viewers that despite the main cast departing towards Atlas, Mistral still has a strong aesthetic presence. Partial credit for this may likely be due to the new environment design team being added to the art department, consisting of Weston T. Jones (who was first brought on in volume 5 as co-production artist), Scott Zenteno and Guang Zou. Now, I say ‘partial’ because the environment modeling team and the lighting team also play a part in manifesting the setting into 3-D, the latter of which I’ll elaborate on in a bit.

I mentioned how there are two big production aspects about the train station setting, the first being the choice of color schemes. The second aspect is how it appropriately eases the audience into the lighthearted tone in the scene starring our main cast. This is a good opportunity to talk about a few things, starting with more camera direction. I’ve brought up before in the past how the camera can add to the personality of various characters in the show, as confirmed by storyboard and camera layout artist, Rachel Doda in the past. Qrow will have sometimes have the camera swerve on him, Ironwood has the camera low-angled, Ozpin in his initial form had the camera straight at him and Nora would sometimes have the camera zip and zoom suddenly. This then brings into question, how does the camera add into Ruby’s personality? With her being as wide-eyed about the outside world as she is, it’s only natural for the camera to provide a zooming out, establishing shot for the audience be as absorbed into her excitement which in-turn leads into the bread and butter of the scene fans have been gushing about: the humor.

Two things fans have been mentioning about comedic banter are how vibrant and fun they are and there are actually reasons behind both of those. In terms of why the characters in general look more vivid (something fans have brought up since the volume 6 trailer came out), this is specifically due to the lighting team. In the first episode of season 2 of CRWBY: Behind-the-Episode, lead lighting artist for this volume, Mark Vearrier, confirmed that the team had purposefully kept the lighting fairly front-on to maintain this bright, clean look and have avoided streaking shadows. While not mentioned in the episode, another observation is how it helps further maintain that 2-D anime feel but in 3-D that even actual Japanese production still sometimes struggle to maintain sometimes with the way lighting is applied on character models, depending on the kind of lighting.

With all that said though, the part of the main cast station scene that also felt full of comedic energy can likely be contributed to the animation team. Despite how it’s been confirmed this past summer who the animation director and assistant lead animator is for volume 6, there was never an announcement as to who the lead animator would be until now. Well it’s now confirmed that Paula Decanini and Ian Kedward are the co-lead animators for volume 6. Paula has been involved with RWBY since volume 3 and was once assistant and then lead animator during volume 4 while Ian has been part of the show since volume 1. While I can’t say much as to why there was never a big announcement about it (they’re probably just not as outspoken on twitter as other people in the team would be), I can say that both were primarily involved with RWBY Chibi. Paula took over Kerry as the director since season 2 and Ian became the lead animator since season 3. So if you’re wondering why RWBY Chibi season 3 ended so abruptly with only 16 episodes as oppose to the usual 24, well there’s your answer. Certain individual animators have most likely contributed to the specific interactions between the main cast and newer characters like Dee and Dudley. But I think the fact that Ian Kedward and Paula Decanini spent as much time being involved in RWBY Chibi and are now lead animators may have also played a factor in the abundant visual gags in the episode from Nora, Ruby, and Yang doing their jump-cut gestures to Ren’s silly thought bubble to the on-point facial expressions.

This of course also extends to Blake’s scene with Ilia, Sun and Neptune, the last of which is now modeled in Maya. I’ve wondered for a while how Neptune would look post-volume 3 and it’s pleasantly surprising how well he blends in. Though as nice as it is to see Neptune, what’s worth highlighting next is Blake and Sun’s interaction in their departure scene, specifically who animated it. Considering that there’s quite a bit of Blake’s lively cat ears and Sun’s active tail, my first guess was Asha Bishi, who has put a lot of emphasis on movable, animal traits on faunus characters in the past. Then again, it’s possible that Hannah Novotny animated this scene since it’s confirmed she pays mind to that kind of thing too. But because of how there are now more new animators than ever and any one of them could have either animated the whole scene or parts of it, it’s really hard to say definitively without any direct confirmation, which we may not possibly know until some time after the volume ends. What makes things more complicated is that another scene right after shows a bit of Blake’s ears responding to her emotions which simply begs to question if it’s the same animator as in her scene with Sun or if it’s a different one.

Though speaking of Blake’s other scene, now’s a good time to talk a bit about the train car scene. While I can’t say for sure who animated what, it’s still worth noting the more nuanced character acting between Blake’s anxious facial expressions, head shifts and cat ear movements that appropriately compliment Arryn Zech’s vocal delivery. And the comedic but softer, more heart-warming gag of Ruby and Weiss sliding into the camera is also a nice touch. This is actually a good time as any to briefly mention about Weiss’s design. Even though most pointed out her blue leggings during the New York Comic-Con sneak peek, her varied model design was shown as early as August and no one even realized it. During the “3-D Animation - Just the Tip” panel at RTX Austin 2018, one of the animators named “Nicole” (unsure if it’s Nicole Moellner or Nicole LaCroix) presented how to add character to poses by demonstrating how she had each member of team RWBY do a dab and you can see Weiss sport the blue leggings there.

Moving on, we get the next action sequence which is the extended version of the earlier one that opened the episode. Here we get a lot of cutting and the camera following certain characters that one-by-one get involved in the show. Something specific about the camera is how it pans at quick speeds to highlight different characters stepping in to the action. This sense of snappiness is a technique film director, Brad Bird has similarly applied in his films that the Royal Ocean Film Society on Youtube refers to as being “playful”:







You see a lot of this throughout the episode from the camera jerking such as Oscar bumping into Jaune as he steps back from the window or Dudley running and leaping from car-to-car past Ruby & Weiss and then Qrow. This even somewhat occurred with the Sphnix Grimm to align with the situation changing from the Grimm facing off the huntsmen to their attention being fixated on the turret. The connecting between characters in a given shot is also something infamous Toei animator, Naotoshi Shida did within storyboards of certain episodes of Dragon Ball Super. I cannot express enough how much I love the way such visual direction adds to the tension within the second train action sequence this episode. It’s just a shame that like the scenes with Blake, it’s hard to say who provided the storyboards outside of possibly Kevin Harger and Rachel Doda, both of which have work on various other fights including the boards for Cinder vs Raven.

As much as the camera work has played a role in the fight scene, that’s not to neglect the animation aspect which actually has gone out hand-in-hand with the visual direction. What stands out the most is Qrow fighting a few manticore Grimm and then later the Sphinx Grimm. There’s a wonderful moment where Qrow mows down one enemy after another and in one instance, the camera is angled from behind him so that there’s quite a distance between him and the Grimm. When he strikes with his sword, the snowy wind makes for a great sense of speed lines, thus presenting more force. Seeing Qrow’s eyes widen with each strike and gunshot also adds to the fierceness of his attacks. Moving on to even more of Qrow, when he fights the Sphnix Grimm, there’s some great back-and-forth, anticipatory action between the two, such as how Qrow dodges each attack and even changes to his bird form before lunging downward. There’s also the Grimm reacting by raising his paws and pouncing on Qrow like a cat. Despite possibly being as old as his mid 40s, Qrow’s slim character design compliments his nimble style of fighting displayed here in general.

Another moment of great animation is from Oscar, actually. When he leaps from the end of one car to another, Oscar’s body goes through a bit of squash and stretch with the sound effects helping compliment that. It really helps sell how because of his inexperience compared to the rest of the cast, jumping across train cars in snowy weather is considered a big obstacle for him. I was immediately reminded of Ren recovering from his fall and angrily charging at the Nuckelavee Grimm in volume 4, which was animated by the now lead animator for Gen:Lock, Kim Newman. That being said, I’m willing to bet Matt Drury may have animated this sequence as I was also reminded of a similar thing in the Adam character short where he sprung off from a tree. To end off the train sequence, it’s worth highlighting how between the Grimm flying away and Oscar and Dudley taking cover from the tunnel, the use of zooming in and out is used to communicate the story. When the Grimm fly away, you know something feels off and when everyone tries to hide, every shot suddenly zooms in fast, raising the tension at an all-time high.

When the tension stops, we get another J-cut from Dudley’s painful groans to inside the train car. There’s not a whole lot to say in this sequence as a lot of it is relatively nuanced character acting. However, it’s the way every character character responds to what is being focused from shot-to-shot that’s noteworthy. A big example of this is Ruby who we see viewing Dudley injured, then the Grimm from the window and finally the anxious passengers. This helps the viewer be caught up to the same speed as Ruby when she calmly but firmly asks Dudley to cooperate before sharing her strategy. This also extends to her expression as she tells her teammates to focus on the big picture instead of impulsively questioning Ozpin. What follows is also some subtle difference between how Blake, Yang, and Weiss respond to Ruby through their faces. Blake looks at the others with uncertainty, Yang sulks, and Weiss questions having to immediately accept the situation. Finally, there’s a nice bit of Jaune expressing concern as he faces Ruby, which causes the latter to realize the issue with what she’s saying. She got so caught up in the plan, that she nearly forgot how much it goes against Jaune valuing the idea of everyone sticking together.





From here on comes the last action sequence of the episode and to reset the pieces in play so-to-speak, we get few establishing and far-off shots to present the distance between the Grimm, each member of Team RWBY, Qrow, Oscar and Team JN_R. This helps set up the next phase of the action which is also worth going on a brief tangent. From time-to-time, fans have argued that the best action is constant action. This always came off as misunderstanding when and why action needs to pause at all, as it’s warranted to provide a state of rest and recovery. While there are definitely bad cases of action taking a pause, the same can be said for action never taking a pause, as it can risk making action hard to follow and thus risk dulling a fight. This is something stated by certain people within RWBY’s production staff, including Rachel Doda and Kevin Harger who have storyboard various action scenes and even Kim Newman who has been a favorite animator among the fan base.



Going back to the scene, we get a focus on Ren through a slow zoom-in shot before a long zoom-out follows as he activates his amplified semblance on the whole train. It’s a nice, subtle way of Ren mentally preparing himself for this huge moment. At the same time though, it makes me suspect that the zoom-out sequence is more complicated than it seems as the transition goes from the top of one train car to inside three cars and then back out to the front of the train. The reason I say this is because such tracking shots in the past have required there to be more than one environment model design to sell the look, such as with a different, more shaky tracking shot back during chapter 10 of volume 3.

Next to highlight is the fight itself starting with Oscar facing the Grimm who I presume John Yang animated. He’s among the newer recruits from volume 5 and had worked on various scenes including part of Blake vs Ilia, Oscar vs Lionheart and part of Ozpin vs Hazel. The timing of Oscar swinging and striking with his cane seemed like John’s thing and it makes me suspect that he also animated part of Qrow fighting the Sphinx earlier in the episode too. Following Oscar, we get a brief focus on Ruby before zooming out to display where the rest of her team is on the train. Between that and Yang grabbing hold of one of the Manticore Grimm, there is a bit of neat animalistic behavior from the Grimm as they dodge and wave their legs for an attempt at momentum. Next, after Blake takes out the tail of one Grimm and Ruby hops from defeating one foe to the next, we see Yang running across the opposite direction which leads to Ruby spotting Oscar struggling as Yang gets into the shot. And then Weiss and Ruby take down one Grimm just so it can collide with the other Grimm that Oscar was facing, which follows with another shot of Ruby looking behind her to see Qrow taking on the Sphinx Grimm. As much as the consistent transition between characters in these fight scenes are worth praising, I can only imagine how much of a nightmare it might be for the storyboard artists and the camera layout team to maintain such continuity.

As the focus centers on Qrow dealing with the Sphinx Grimm, we get the rest of Team RWBY helping out starting with Weiss. Despite being unsure who animated it, I like when Weiss travels across her glyphs like she’s ice skating. Another neat touch is how the Sphinx Grimm’s serpent tail actually reacts to Weiss approaching it before the main head notices. This bit of character in the Grimm is actually something seen throughout the rest of the sequence, such as when Weiss freezes off its wings. Moving on to Ruby again but staying on the subject of character acting, as she tells Blake what needs to be done, I just find it funny how she’s become so accustomed to Crescent Rose that she can give orders while reloading her weapon at the same time. Next, when Yang uses one of the Manticore as a springboard to get in position, brief shot of the camera following Blake’s weapon being swung around. Once Yang and Blake strangle the Sphinx Grimm, we see a bit of anticipatory action of it trying to resist, though it’s here that it’s movements are slower and thus feel weaker as a result.

Skipping ahead a bit, after the Grimm’s wings are frozen and shot off, we get a couple of great split-screen shots which we haven’t seen since volume 2, chapter 9. Though unlike that instance where then editor, Daniel Fabelo wanted to use it as a wink-&-nudge to Samurai Jack, here it’s less experimental and more purposeful as a set-up for Qrow and Ruby to use their team attack. The angled shots and the Grimm getting ready to fire make for a pleasant build-up to the attack and I just love the mixture of character acting into the choreography with Qrow and Ruby’s spin. It’s made self-explanatory as to who’s more experienced than the other. As the Grimm’s fireball launches at the last second, we see a nice-looking explosion, followed by some equally good flame and spark effects, and then interesting snow slush effects which may or may not be the water effects in chapter 2 of volume 5 but in a different color. Because of how jam-packed this episode already is, I haven’t had a chance to highlight the visual effects. By this point, the VFX team have more-or-less perfected their attempt at making fire, wind, smoke, lightning and various other effects resemble what’s commonly seen in anime. However, for this volume, two new positions were added. One being Ryan Bowden as “lead VFX Artist” and Myke Chapman as “2-D FX Artist”. Putting aside the fact the VFX team in particular is now bigger compared to when it was just Jeff Yohn and Quentin Holtz in previous volumes, the 2-D FX artist position is what I find most intriguing. It’s hard to say what exactly that role entails though we may possibly get clarity on that in a future CRWBY - Behind the Episode video.

Finally, there’s the reveal of Maria Calavera whose model design is interesting not just due to her short, hunched, elderly look which has never been quite pulled off before in the show, but also because of her specs. The rigging team probably had a field day figuring out how to make her even function for the animation team, which I can imagine they would have so much fun animating her expressions.





And that is the end of a very lengthy production analysis for the premiere of volume 6. There was a whole lot to unpack due to just how much was going on, not just in terms of action scenes, but also in terms of dialogue scenes. Then there’s the series of staff changes and additions, and even the matter of the opening theme’s presentation, all of which would be impossible to cover within this one blog post alone. I don’t particularly care to humor the matter of whether this premiere was specifically a “return to form” since I always felt that despite volume 5 have quite a few blunders, it never came off as a result of the show overall having “lost focus”. With that said, a lot of strength and confidence was sensed throughout every scene and it can be told that a lot of notes were indeed taken on what to cover for this volume in terms of presentation alone. From the very involved camera direction in the action scenes to the aptly-timed visual gags and attentive character acting in non-action scenes, a lot of promise was delivered. A big part of me felt hopeful that between the reddit Q & A back in February and the Adam character short that things would and I’m just happy and admittedly relieved that my thoughts were not wrong. Here’s further hoping the rest of the volume will turn out great.