With Brunswick farms behind us, it’s time to move on to a series of different settings and a few surprises in this chapter that mark the halfway point for volume 6. With interesting story beats this episode, there are as always equally interesting aspects of the production to add to the discussion.

Before actually getting into the production analysis itself, I wanted to take a moment to briefly highlight on Gen:Lock. I’m unsure if or when I want to get around to throwing my two cents on the upcoming mecha show, but with this preview and the last one prefacing the latest episodes of RWBY, it’s intriguing seeing how this show has been building up attention between interviews and announcements about it’s cast and production. It’s also a bit concerning the kind of feedback from viewers and what they’ve been approving of and expressed being bothered with. Again, whether or not I’ll touch on its production is up in the air right now, but I wanted to put forth my quick thoughts on the matter.









With that out of the way, let’s start the analysis proper by touching briefly on the Haven Academy vault scene. Not a whole lot to say other than the character acting, which I suspect may be Hannah Novotny. The way mouths are seen as either puckered or with teeth shown clenching are the supposedly calling cards, though beyond that, I’m not really sure whether it’s Hannah or it’s someone else. Regardless helps sell the kind of interpretive facial expressions for a character like Neo and the little gestures of Cinder casually forging different knives add to her overall character in a manner similar to what Kim Newman and Millivette Gonzalez did with Pyrrha in the skit they animated during episode 8 of RWBY Chibi season 1.

Speaking of RWBY Chibi, now would be a good time to move on to the next scene highlighting Maria Calavera’s younger self and the behind-the-scenes story behind her being called “the Grimm Reaper”. Tom Alvarado, a writer brought for RWBY Chibi since season 2 who had a small prior experience in the American animation industry writing the “Metalhead” episode of the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series was inspired by Miles Luna’s thread of tweets about the Apathy Grimm to share his own anecdote. Although presented in a more comical tone, the fascinating piece of information to take away was that he thought of calling Jaune’s superhero alter ego, “The Grimm Reaper” before it changed to “The Hunts-Man.” Although Miles and Kerry Shawcross didn’t specify why at the time, they apparently already had the former title planned for something else. What’s also worth noting is how back during the CRWBY Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event back in February of 2018, Kerry answered a question mentioning that during the writing process, a certain character and sub-plot had to be cut out of volume 5′s script and pushed for a later, yet to be tangible point in the story. Between that and Tom’s tweets, it’s very likely that Maria was suppose to be that character.

Just a theory worth sharing based on scattered pieces of information about the behind-the-scenes of the story’s creative process. Moving on to analyzing Maria’s scene itself which the first minute of it was uploaded via Rooster Teeth on Youtube prior to the episode proper, the choice of camera shots and overall setting display an array of callbacks from certain scenes in past installments of the show. The way we see Maria walk across the bridge and responds to the incoming Nevermore Grimm is definitely reminiscent of both the Red trailer and the volume 4 character short and the overall setting and the is akin to that of of the setting against the Nevermore Team RWBY fought in chapter 8 of volume 1. What makes this work so well is how instinctively recognizable the callbacks themselves feel. This is also not the first instance of callbacks being made instinctive through the cinematography. As stated in the production analysis for chapter 2, the reveal of Salem in her past is very similar to that of Salem’s first proper reveal in the end of chapter 12. Another example was when Weiss got stabbed by Cinder’s spear at the end of chapter 11, where storyboard/camera layout artists, Rachel Doda and former lead producer, Koen Wooten, both stated in episode 11 of RWBY Rewind that Kerry was very deliberate about having that shot be a callback to both Amber and Pyrrha being shot at by Cinder. These are just things worth keeping in mind when watching the show going forward.

At the risk of being a broken record, choreography has its place in a fight scene, but so does staging for both the physical aspect and the story being told. In this case, the choice of camera shots help sell what kind of character Maria was as The Grimm Reaper and what her reputation meant for characters like Qrow and Ruby and how they made their weapons and have fought. With all that being said, the similarities between Maria’s scene and the other scenes with Ruby mentioned end there as the rest of the visual direction from here on gives Maria her own identity. Speaking of which, from the start of her bout with the Nevermore onward, most of the scenes were animated by Megan Pellino, Joe Vick, John Yang and Matt Drury with assistant lead animator, Melanie Stern providing the Maria vs Tock segment in particular. If these names sound familiar, that’s because with the exception of John Yang, this is the same set of people involved with the Cinder vs Neo fight. Since volume 3, the process animating fight scenes changed from Monty Oum and Shane Newville doing individual fights by themselves to having fights be done in groups of 2-4, if not more. The names of people involved with fights may have varied from volume-to-volume, but the approach has remained the same.





Unfortunately, despite being familiar with these names, it’s still difficult to entirely tell the difference between all the animators and how they go about fight sequences, particularly Megan Pellino and Joe Vick. However, as an educated guess, it’s likely that they animated the beginning segment with Maria and the Nevermore while the latter sequence between Maria and Tock’s group were done by John Yang, Matt Drury and Melanie Stern. There are confirmations of previous sequences done by John and Matt, making it easier to tell their styles apart. In the past, John did a bit of the Blake vs Ilia fight (likely right before Kim Newman’s sequence), Oscar vs Lionheart, and part of Ozpin vs Hazel. In Matt’s case, he animated Ghira vs the Albain twins in chapter 9 of volume 5 (might’ve been his first action sequence) and much of Adam’s fight segments in his character short. Based on these confirmations and comparing those scenes to Maria vs Tock and the bandits, John may have animated the segment from the start of the fight up until Maria’s aura broke while Matt animated the next sequence after. John seems to have this way of how before or after certain swings, strikes and other attacks, a character will maintain a pose for a split-second before striking again, kind of similar to how the animation director of volume 6, Joel Mann has animated scenes. His sequence also tends to have the camera move a bit wildly but still steadily-enough follow each character’s actions, though how much of that is due to John or whoever provided the final camera layout is unclear. Matt on the other hand does not seem to emphasize as much on the poses leaving a dynamic impression and has the animations feel a bit more continuous. Also unlike John, he’s more conservative with the camera shots being more steady, to the point where it feels like watching a side-scrolling fighting game like Tekken or Street Fighter. Again though, how much of that aspect is the animator as oppose to who does final camera layout is uncertain.

At the end of the day, this is all guesswork so it’s totally possible that I may have mixed-up who did which segments. But it’s still fun to estimate none-the-less. At the very least, it’s definitely confirmed that Melanie Stern animated Maria’s eyes being slashed and quite possibly Tock getting the upper hand on her right before and the rest of the scene right after. What’s more interesting is that since her position as assistant lead animator, this is the first episode where she helped lead a fight in a manner similar to how Kim Newman led the newer animators when she was assistant lead back in chapter 10 of volume 5. Hopefully, this serves as another reminder of how it’s important to pay mind to newer talents working on the show, as I’ve stated in previous posts, even when comparing to some anime productions. Before moving on to the next scene, the choice of having the ticking clock sound incorporated into the action sequence also deserves a mention. It’s amazing how intentionally well-timed it came off right down to the timing being precisely 60-seconds, which I imagine was no easy feat to pull off with director, Kerry Shawcross and co-director/lead editor, Connor Pickens having to coordinate between the storyboard, editing, animation and audio departments.

With that out of the way, let’s shift focus from Maria’s flashback to the next scene in the present. There’s honestly not a whole lot to say about the scene between elder Maria and the others other than that there were some great facial expressions between Qrow and certain other characters to expressed how flabbergasted they were about the former Grimm Reaper’s reputation. There was also a bit of neat choice of angling the camera to highlight both Maria’s praise to team RWBY while having Yang’s self-doubting reaction be made clear. Where the visual direction really picks up though is once Ruby answers Jaune’s call and she holds her scroll towards the path towards Argus. Given the earnestly melancholic discussion about whether to follow the foot steps of one who deemed herself poorly and whether one of the older generation could still contribute something to the newer one, seeing an old throwback to character nicknames via Ruby’s caller id for Jaune provided quite an appropriate change of tone for the scene. From here on, things get uplifting, through the piano instrumentation of this volume’s opening theme, the shift of lighting to create warmer color schemes as a result of likely the art and lighting departments and having the camera get closer towards with each invisible wipe transition of the trees as they travel uphill until the payoff of the city in their site is shown.





Next is the reunion scene between the two teams and while there’s again, not a whole lot to add, there are a couple of interesting notes. First, when Nora is first seen, there’s a moment where the camera suddenly zooms towards Nora. This is to serve as another reminder that choice of camera direction between different characters is indeed a thing as mentioned previous posts and in Nora’s case, shots can sometimes have zippy panning or zooms to compliment her very enthusiastic nature. The second thing is a little mention from Asha Bishi about how another animator did the moment where Jaune and Ruby hugged. She didn’t say who it was exactly, but it’s just something I wanted to acknowledge.

Then there’s the scene establishing Argus which has definitely been a highlight for fans. In volume 5, a lot of fans were especially critical due to how what little of Mistral was shown at the time was partially via the composited still art of residents in one of the market. The backlash, though not immediate, was very understandable and it does seem like a bit of a waste to not have enough on-screen interactions between the main cast and whatever new settings they set foot on given Monty Oum’s intention from the beginning. However, if I were to speculate as to why Argus was provided more premium treatment in its production instead, it may be because the main cast are expected to interact and traverse more within the setting. Knowing this, Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna wanted to make sure more time was allotted specifically for however many episodes would take place. Combine that with a shift in software to model and animate crowds from Autodesk Maya’s Golemn Crowd plugin to Side FX’s Houdini and the creative process behind the color aesthetic and architecture from the art department and here is the end result. As breathtaking as the setting is, it shouldn’t be dismissed how time-consuming it must have been making this setting as fleshed out as it is.

Moving on, we get the first introduction of a character teased for the longest time since chapter 7 of volume 2, one of Jaune’s seven sisters, Saphron Cotta-Arc, fully voiced, modeled, animated and everything! There’s a lot to cover about the Cotta-Arc family scene in general, first and foremost being Saphron’s voice actress, Lindsay Sheppard, who has previously done some voice acting work, most notably Aria from the Pokemon XY anime. Second thing to mention is that seeing team RWBY meet Saphron was actually animated by Nyle Pierson, who you may remember for first contributing to volume 6 through his animation of Yang and Blake walking through the blizzard in chapter 5. Seeing someone new to the show’s production do facial expressions and the right combination of surprise and eagerness from Ruby is delivered very effectively, all while making sure to show the other characters in the background express finding the behavior awkward in response. It’s unclear if the next set of animated cuts are also from Nyle or not due to the similarly exaggerated nature of the expressions and body language of the characters, but kudos to him either way. This is also a good opportunity to talk about the storyboards for the Cotta-Arc living room scene which were done by Cassidy Stone. This is the same storyboard artist that provided the scene of the main cast eating the ramen hot pot in chapter 7 of volume 5 and it was actually Cassidy’s first work on the show. Between that, the scene of Ruby and Weiss in the storage room and now this, it’s clear that her forte is providing lively banter between characters in a way that rekindled some of the aspect more prominent in RWBY’s earlier volumes. The camera layout also deserves some credit, namely for that bit where Jaune firmly points at Adrian and the camera is timed to shake at that moment to sell his annoyance. One more thing to note was Jaune and Saphron’s family photo which may have been drawn by art director, Patrick Rodriguez.

Next is the introduction of Terra Cotta-Arc, Saphron’s wife which has undoubtedly invoked the fan base into a fervor of positivity over a visible representation of a married lesbian couple. As significant as these characters are for adding another log to the fire of making a minority feel more inclusive through fictional media, what especially works here is that in the short screen time, we get an inkling of what kind of relationship they have. Between the expressions, gestures, choice of dialogue and types of voices from Lindsay Sheppard as Saphron and Rooster Teeth layout coordinator and associate producer, Jamie Smith as Terra, we can tell that one is slightly more free-spirited and easy-going while the other is a bit more grounded, stressed and concerned with ethics (i.e: whether students helping professional huntsmen is “legal” or not). Both clearly have a strong rapport at the end of the day, but it’s the small bits of information in-between that gives that insight. Straight or gay, romantic or otherwise, that’s important to depict in any relationship between characters.

That small tangent aside, one more thing to add about the scene was the cast eating sandwiches. This moment was at least partially animated by Collin McAtee who funnily enough, did the scene while eating a Jimmy John’s club lulu sandwich. The animation was nicely done, especially with Ruby’s eagerness to chow down as well as Blake’s subtle reaction through her cat ears. Though what I wanted to note in particular are the modeled sandwiches. Since it was confirmed that the modeling team handled the ramen food in chapter 7 of volume 5, I assume that they also handled the models for the sandwiches by providing different ones for certain characters depending on how much was bitten off. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, though I felt with Ruby eating her sandwiches in particular, there could’ve been different models of the sandwiches not being bitten off as much to make the animation of her eating them feel more seamless. But it’s all really minor.

There’s one more shot at the end of the episode of the gang at the Atlessian base, though given the preview for next week’s chapter on RWBY Rewind, it’s best to put a pin on that until the next production analysis. Speaking of which, that marks in end of this episode’s analysis. Definitely a variety of scenes that all provided different purposes and different tones, all done very effectively. To go from Cinder and Neo to Maria’s backstory to the present to reuniting with team Jaune, Ren & Nora to meeting Saphron and her family, all in roughly 15-16 minutes, was done very effectively and never felt jarring. We’re now officially at the halfway point with what seems to be an overall more well-received volume thus far and it’s pretty exciting to see what else will be in store from here on.