So a wave of news just came out earlier today regarding some announcements of staff positions for the 3-D animated shows, RWBY and Gen:Lock at Rooster Teeth Animation. The first being that animator, Melanie Stern is being promoted to Assistant Lead Animator for RWBY volume 6 and Kim Newman is being promoted to Lead Animator for Gen:Lock. So what does this new set of information mean? There is much to talk about, give clarity, and address some concerns attitudes forming that are admittedly a bit upsetting. So let’s go more in-depth about it.



To Start, the first and most immediate intrigue out of these announcements is that it directly confirms a question that was raised back during the announcements of Joel Mann and Dustin Matthews being the animation directors for RWBY and Gen:Lock respectively. The positions of Animation Director and Lead Animator are not actually the same and this gives some context to the supposed, “production hierarchy”, for lack of a more accurate way of putting it. So that definitely helps shed some light on things in that sense. Though before moving on, a few people out there have unfortunately made this assumption that needs to be clarified. Kerry Shawcross is still the director for RWBY. The position of Animation Director is only relevant to the animation department within RWBY’s production pipeline where Kerry’s position as director encompasses the entire production of RWBY. It seems like an obvious thing, but I want to make extra certain that the record is set straight.

the next piece of information to go over is that despite Melanie Stern becoming the assistant lead animator for RWBY, it’s unconfirmed who the lead animator will be yet. It’s uncertain whether that’s something to be announced by before RTX 2018 or during, but that’s worth bearing in mind. With that said, there’s the matter of questioning just who Melanie Stern is? What scenes has she done? What is her style as an animator? Honestly, these are difficult questions to answer since information about the scenes she animates are more relatively scarce. It’s the main reason why she, among certain other animators like Hannah Novotny, Andrea Caprotti, Hero Liao, Nicole Moellner & Paula Decanini have not received an Animators Spotlight Blog dedicated to them so far.

However, there is a bit of confirmation as to which scenes she has done. So we can go through a mini animator spotlight, so-to-speak, though bear in mind that some of this will be speculative on my part, so take some of what will be said with a grain of salt. To briefly go over, she was first recruited and credited to animate on RWBY since chapter 6 of volume 3. However, the first confirmed scene she worked on according to then co-lead animator, Dustin Matthews in the volume 3 Crew audio commentary track, was Torchwick playing with the controls in the Atlessian ship in chapter 10. The next confirmed scene she animated was the Team RNJR vs Petra Gigas fight along with Joel Mann, Chris Rainbolt and a bit of Nicole Moellner. It was never specified which parts she did, though my personal guess (and this is where the speculation starts) is she animated the segments from when Ruby fired the lighting dust cartridge to when Jaune runs away from the Grimm’s tree arm. It’s also possible she animated the part at the end where Ruby fires the finishing shot against Grimm. More on the reasoning behind these guesses later. Next is Qrow vs Tyrian which in the volume 4 blu-ray director’s commentary, Kerry does actually confirm that Melanie Stern animated the part where Qrow gets struck by Tyrian’s tail only to the end of the episode. But she might have also animated from when Ruby sees the the side of the building burst with debris before Qrow gets knocked back and recovers, onward. Again, that is speculative. Then there’s chapter 11 of volume 4 where Tyrian speaks to Salem. Between the volume 4 blu-ray crew audio commentary track and this tweet, Melanie may have likely done everything from when Tyrian enters the room to him assaulting the Beowulf with Joel Mann providing the motion capture as Tyrian (fun fact: he assaulted a Ruby body pillow while mo-capping the scene).

In volume 5, a few more scenes were confirmed as to what she did. In the Weiss vs Lancers fight, she animated from the moment right after the knight jumped and started skydiving to when it defeats the Queen Lancer. This was all confirmed in an interview with her and a few other people in the production crew for episode 6 of RWBY Rewind. Speaking of which, Melanie was also confirmed to have co-animated with Kim Newman Yang and Weiss’s reunion with Ruby. Based on the character acting, she likely did the latter part from when everyone else sees Yang comfort Ruby to the end of the episode. Finally, there’s Raven vs Cinder which was a team effort between her, Joel Mann, Asha Bishi and Austin Hardwicke. By process of elimination between how the other animators approach scenes like this, Melanie may have animated the beginning segment until after Cinder struck back when her Grimm arm was attacked. It’s also possible she may have done the ending segment when Vernal and Raven successfully got the jump on Cinder, but I’m more doubtful she did that part than the former I described earlier.

Everything I’ve uttered is a result of two methods: 1) Using whatever resources are available to find any confirmation and 2) studying how the animator approaches a scene to guess what is not as precisely confirmed. The latter is honestly more of a challenge because it requires constantly observing the timing of movements and use of the camera. It also helps to more deeply understand how other animators assigned to the same scene also approach timing in order to go through process of elimination. In the case of Melanie Stern, she has this sense of making the camera steadily zoom in or out towards a character in focus in a given shot. Sometimes she’ll also make a couple of quick cuts between two aspects of a given fight. These are not much to go on and thus some of what I say could be off. Again, I remind those that these are speculative and not to take my words as one-hundred percent gospel. It’s honestly more preferable to study more of her and other animator’s scenes for yourself to make your own educated guesses. With all that said, I hope this helps give some idea on how to approach these things which is actually similar to how some people in the Sakuga community actively study and interpret who does what in a given scene of an anime. There’s a video from Youtuber named Anime Ajay who provided very sound advice on how to identify Japanese animators using much of the same approaches I described.





Now comes the part where the matter of Kim Newman being the lead animator for Gen:Lock takes a more negative direction. To say that this announcement in particular made RWBY’s fandom in certain sections of the internet feel concerned would be putting it mildly. A lot of fans who honestly didn’t recognize her work until right when the latter-half of volume 5 was premiering, over two years after she started working on the show, people developed a strong, immediate attachment to the way she animates, assuming she’s carrying on the torch of how Monty Oum did things. For fans to express being anxious is understandable to at least some degree.

However, as much as I want to fully sympathize with the majority, I find the matter to be overall disheartening. One of the biggest problems is how overreactive the responses are. With fans collectively treating this matter like the sky is falling or that the universe is doomed are completely lacking context. First and foremost, as I said earlier, we know Joel Mann will be the animation director and Melanie Stern will be the assistant lead animator, but we don’t know who the lead animator is. It’s very important to keep that thought in mind in case any future announcements are made.

Secondly, there’s a lack of understanding about what effect these positions in the animation department for RWBY. In volume 5, right after Kim Newman announced being the assistant lead animator, chapter 10 aired and a few new names were mentioned that worked on that fight. I’ve already mentioned this in the Honorable Mentions part of my RWBY Animators Spotlight series, but it bears repeating here. Erika Soosar, John Yang, and Jason Dickol were all mentioned as newcomers during volume 5 by both Kim and Melanie that were learning things from the former on their work during volume 5. And it’s confirmed that at least two of those three animators have been adopting ways to create action sequences in the next few chapters. John Yang was the one that animated Oscar’s bout against Lionheart in chapter 11 as confirmed in episode 11 of RWBY Rewind and then Ozpin’s brief fight against Hazel in chapter 12. Meanwhile, Erika Soosar animated most, if not all of the Weiss vs Vernal fight, a bit of Mercury fighting against Yang and Lionheart’s death. These two alone were tasked with their own action-oriented moments after only working on RWBY for nearly a whole volume. Let’s not dismiss Jason Dickol either who worked with Austin Hardwicke on Yang vs the Bandits. And these were just a few of the all-time high of new animators recruited for volume 5.

Even if all of what has been said somehow makes no personal difference, maybe even gives a worse impression somehow, or you think the quantity of animators is irrelevant, it’s still important to contextually understand why any of this matters. When RWBY first started 5 years ago, every animator was left to do their own sequences by themselves unless mo-cap was involved, regardless of the type of scene or skill. This did make for an easier way to identify styles and tells from one-another, but it also meant animators were often usually doing their own thing and creative inputs felt more solitary. Even at times when ideas for animating characters or shots were shared between animators, it was just in a tight, small circle with mostly animators who were already familiar with each other and no newer animators to learn and adopt any ideas. This was especially made evident in fight scenes where usually the only animator other than Monty Oum to do a fight scene was another animator who already knew how to do fight scenes by emulating the former.

But volume 3 of RWBY marked the beginning of a different system. For fight scenes especially, groups of 2-4 animators were assigned together for a given fight, creating more of a collaborative experience. A lot of the animators back then were new to the idea of constructing full-scale fights, but this all the more encouraged communication. This would even be beneficial for some newer animators being recruited. For instance, when Kim Newman worked with Dustin Matthews and Austin Hardwicke on the Team JNPR vs Team BRNZ match (a fight many probably wouldn’t consider being well-animated), one of her first works in the show was Nora showing off her semblance for the first time and hammering her opponent below the belt. If you compare that to any of her volume 4 or 5 works, the difference is night and day. Same goes with animator Millivette Gonzalez. Her debut scene in the show was Yang and Weiss’s conversation with Flynt and Neon before their match started. If you look at that scene and the shots she animated in the Yang character short, you may find it hard to believe they were animated by the same person. With Asha Bishi, her contribution to the ending segment of the Team RNJR vs the Nuckelavee Grimm fight as her first fight scene animations are great then only to further improve within just several months by the time she worked on the Weiss character short. Even Chris Rainbolt who was first recruited for volume 3 initially as a camera layout artist, debuted as an animator with a simple scene in chapter 11. Since then, he went on to hone his own style to animating characters in fight scenes such as with this segment of the Team RNJR vs Tyrian fight.

These animators were improving themselves when collaborating with one another to construct various scenes in RWBY. Now these animators are either assigned to more significant scenes to animate or have been tasked with guiding more newly recruited animators. In the latter case, a mentor system had been established and there’s a chance some of the fresh blood I previously mentioned will be tasked with more works to show off their stuff on RWBY even with Kim Newman having her time and attention focused on another project. And bear in mind that even back in April, Joel Mann had put out a job listing for any potential 3-D animators with one of the several qualifications being, “Strong sense of visual storytelling (emphasis on character performance, fight choreography, shot composition, and timing).”

RWBY has been in production for 5 years now and while that may seem like enough time to expect a sense of efficiency, do also expect the web series to last for an indefinite number of years with more time to mold and groom skilled animators in the future. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing really boils down to one of two different perspectives. Do you want to see the same, already skilled animators monopolize action sequences throughout however long a show is running or do you want to learn of newer talent grow in time and eventually witness the fruits of their labor?