



Previous Volume 6 Production Analysis Posts:



Chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, & eleven



“Defining” would probably be the best way to describe a lot of the moments in this episode, as both plot lines had practically as much to highlight and analyze as the last chapter. Let’s break down all the whys and hows through the production.







Opening the episode is some interesting motion capture with the Atlessian soldiers. Although mo-cap in RWBY is nothing new and there was probably some touch-up through key animation, it’s strange in terms of how noticeable it felt. Then again, they’re faces are hardly shown so all there is to read are the body gestures, hence why it probably felt more obvious than usual. Not really a good or bad thing, just an observation. Skipping ahead a bit, as Oscar explains a blind spot to the others, we see some more of dust cannon fire effects, likely ice dust since the same blue-colored smoke effects are there. At this point, there’s not much particularly new to say about the type of effect so much as how it looks viewed from another angle. This actually helps give a bit more to analyze as to how the effect is constructed when fired. It seems that at least in this case, given the shapes of parts of the the cannon fire as it dissipates, there may be a bit more of 2-D effects than presumed. There’s also a blue-filter effect layered through composting somewhere within the effect of the cannon fire that increases width at first and then thins out.

There will be more to speak in terms of effects, but there are a couple of side notes to quickly mention. First is just the way Ruby climbs up the cliff side. It’s a small moment and a little funny-looking given the circumstances, but it’s also great little animation considering that it may not have been mo-capped at all. First she squats a bit more as she pulls Crescent Rose, then she makes a great leaping pose when climbing up and once her weapon pierces through the cliffs, her body suddenly drops as she holds on. From then on, it’s rinse and repeat and combined with the way her weapon bends as she pulls and swings it and how her cape flaps as follow-through animation as she settles in a squatting position and the gesture feels more convincing. Considering that there’s definitely a wrong way to pull and swing a tool akin to a giant scythe, there’s something to appreciate about the whole sequence as an animation enthusiast. And speaking of Ruby’s weapon, Crescent Rose, that’s the other side note. It’s easy to forget, but despite it’s size during scythe mode, when viewed from the front or back, it’s relatively thin, which helps somewhat to remind the viewer how a 17-year-old girl can easily carry something so seemingly-massive.

Skipping ahead a bit, we have Ruby getting into position to fire at the missile carrier. Seeing a close-up of a bullet fired has been done a few times before, both in RWBY and even in RWBY Chibi. The way the effect is done tends to vary slightly in each occasion and here, there’s no trail until after the bullet ricochets against the missile carrier. Similar to the mo-capped movement of the Atlessian soldiers though, this is just a neutral observation. That said, what’s more interesting is what comes after. When Cordovin preps up a lightning dust blast, we get a close-up shot of Ruby with her pupils gleaming while viewing the lightning. This trick was likely from the compositing team, but ever since it was revealed back at RTX Austin 2018 that lead compositor for volume 6, Penelope Nederlander and Amanda Gotera both came up with the electricity effect flowing around Hazel’s arms during volume 5, I’ve felt especially curious to learn which ideas for effects have come from who. Though this is a question that may not have an answer any time soon, assuming there will be one at all. On another note, although I’ve talked extensively about the lightning dust cannon fire in the chapter 10 production analysis and this effect is more or less the same, I’ve neglected to mention the way it fires. Whereas the earth dust fires in split-second bursts, ice dust fires more like a beam with a poofy smoke effect and wind dust fires being shaped and timed to draw a combination of the earlier two dusts, lightning dust fires starting with a brief electrical spiral and then follows with a flash and then a laser expanding in size with a series of electric rings surrounding it. The overall blast itself actually lingers the longest in comparison and constantly emits an array of electrical stream effects that reach and extend to the airship, its controls and Maria’s specs for at least several seconds. This just goes to show how much thought is considered as to keeping the timing of each dust cannon fire consistent.

Next up is the scene where the airship crashed. Right before cutting to it, we get an off-screen bird transformation from Qrow and though there was nothing wrong with it being animated, it shows how the idea of having Qrow transition from his human form to his bird form can be trickier to make the idea feel more seamless rather than the other way around. Once getting to the crash site itself, we get what is essential a damaged model of the ship as part of the environment as oppose to it being its own model. This is actually now as good of a time as any to mention something that I’m a bit upset for not spotting sooner. Since chapter 10, the staff credits included a vehicle designer within the art department named Scott Zenteno. As one would guess, this position refers to him designing vehicles for the show which upon reflection, there have not been much of between volumes 4 and 5 outside of the design for the average Mistral airship and the ship Blake took to Menagerie. Now what being a vehicle designer for volume 6 means for Scott is not just limited to designing the airship the gang steal since he apparently also designed Cordovin’s mech suit. Just a quick acknowledgement to make about a rather late entry in the ever-growing production staff.











As Cordovin approaches the crash site, we get a sequence of Ruby attempting to face her while Qrow tries to stop her. At least most of this sequence was confirmed to have been animated by Hannah Novotny via her Tumblr account through the tags underneath her reblog that say “my shots, except the last one”. Having spoken of her before, her animations here are a bit more nuanced and some of the tells I’ve mentioned about how she does character acting seems to be lacking. Although with Qrow, the way his eyebrows greatly raises and then slightly lowers as he is slightly taken aback in response to seeing Ruby’s stern face and the way his mouth slightly opens is an indication of small anticipatory action that I’ve used to describe Hannah’s animations before. The same observation can be referred to the next shot when Ruby slightly raises her head while saying, “I need you…”, and then firmly lowers her head when saying, “…to trust me”. Moving on to the next sequence, we get Ruby’s defiance against Cordovin accompanied with some very abundant, emotional character acting out of her in a couple of shots. After learning that Alyssa Lisiecki animated much of Jaune’s meeting with the Red-Haired Woman a few episodes back who I initially assumed to be Asha Bishi, I’ve been careful not to conflate the two and their animation styles. However, since it was confirmed that Asha animated a much later scene in the episode, it is somewhat safe to assume that this was Alyssa. In the shots that focus on Ruby there is a combination of the glimmer in her eyes, the the mouth movements, way her head shifts, and the way her shoulders raise and lower respond accordingly to each part of what she says to help further make it clear at which points is she feeling defiant, frustrated and stern. It’s the kind of character acting one would see in animators who excel at that kind of thing in anime such as Shinji Suetomi, Toshiyuki Tsuru, Akira Hamaguchi, Masayuki Nonaka, Yuki Hayashi, Masami Mori & Masashi Kudo, the character designer for Bleach.

Once Cordovin prepares to fire, Ruby zips into the barrel of the cannon with a whip-like animation akin to when Joel Mann animated Ruby in the volume 4 character short. As Ruby mounts her weapon and aims at the dust, she dons a very wide stance with her posture down, then bounces herself back up a bit and then back down again to prep herself. Assuming that it was Alyssa who did the previous sequence, it may have extended to here as well. Whether it was her or someone else though, Ruby this entire episode has been granted with character acting that greatly reminds the viewer who Ruby is in action. She then breathes in to signify how crucial it is that she times her move just right and as she fires and escapes, we get an amazing assortment of rock and ice suddenly forming, explosions, lightning, debris, steam, and bursting air/water. It’s so absurdly incredible that one would wonder how difficult thing of a thing it was to pull all that off. The bursts towards the bottom, possibly done via compositing, emits a transparent effect akin to seeing through streams of rushing water. The explosion effects are very similar to the ones from when Ruby maneuvered around all the missiles in the last chapter. Then there’s the earth and ice sprouting which convincingly creates small debris. It’s one hell of a spectacle. Finally, we get Ruby falling down the sky unconsciously and having her left arm and leg be limp enough to effectively be lifted a bit along with her body rotating while coming into contact with each of Weiss’s glyphs helps sell how much her stunt took out of her.









Once all is said and done with that part of the episode, we’re out of the conclusion of one fight and into settling another one that starts with some more character acting. As mentioned previously, it is pleasing to see how the facial expressions coming from Adam unmasked helps compliment Garret Hunter’s vocal performance, making it much more convincing (*note: that footage has audio). That’s not to say Garret was never improving over the course of the show until now, but since this is the final scene featuring his character as he currently is, what Adam says, how his lines are delivered and what his eyes and mouth emote makes what he says and does feel more engaging. Of course, it helps that Arryn Zech and Barbara Dunkelman equally put forth convincing performances as well, but more on that later. Also, side note, in case it was not made clear by now to some viewers, the ending credits displays Adam’s unmasked design (likely drawn by lead concept artist, Erin Winn) with the branding mark clearly stating “SDC”, short for Schnee Dust Company and not “600″ like some reactors initially thought.

What comes next is the final conflict between these characters and within the first ten seconds is a very interesting observation. I previously pointed out how the first 10 seconds of the fight sequence were very similar to snippets of the fight between Naruto, Sasuke & Momoshiki in Boruto, episode 65 which that specific part was animated by Weilin Zhang. It’s not confirmed whether this was an intentional nod or not, but if it is, then I can’t help but suspect Kevin Harger once again provided the storyboards. The reason for this is back during RTX Austin 2018, Kevin was a panelist for the Just the Fights panel hosted by Torrian Crawford and each panelist was to present a fight sequence they were fond of, be it their own or someone else’s. Considering Kim Newman was the one who provided clips of episode 65 of Boruto, expressing how some parts excited her while other parts made her cry, Kevin was made aware of the episode by at least that point, if not sooner and might’ve used it as partial inspiration. Of course, I could be reaching at the end of the day but if that’s the case, then Blake and Yang vs Adam plays a light homage while still having each of the characters consistently fight in their own respective ways.

At the very least, what is clear is the animation team behind the fight consisting of assistant lead animator, Melanie Stern, Matt Drury, John Yang, Megan Pellino, Joe Vick, Vito Ferber & Asha Bishi at the end. This is mostly the same team as the last episode and having to proceed with things back-to-back, as exciting as it probably was for them, must have been equally exhausting. The fruits of their labor definitely shows though, starting with the double-teaming effort on Blake and Yang’s part who I presume Melanie did, though at this point, it’s not totally clear. What’s probably so great about this portion is that the camera is positioned at dynamic angles that help to draw the viewer’s eye to where each character is in a given moment. In one shot, when Yang exits the shot from the front, Blake appears from the side. When Blake kicks Adam, Yang in the next shot is positioning herself to attack. When Adam recovers, we see where both Blake and Yang are positioned at a given shot. Once Blake gets a kick in and then dodges Adam’s strike, Yang steps in and after she gets a few hits on Adam, Blake appears again after Yang is off-screen. Even the moment where Adam deflects Blake’s gambol shroud has a long shot of Yang in the middle which cuts to a close-up of her being alert only to have her appear two shots later to grab the weapon. This is similar to what I mentioned liking about the train fight sequences in the chapter one production analysis. There is a smooth transition between characters in a given space that the fight feels more interconnected and it’s something that certain storyboard artists/animators in anime incorporate into fights.

Skipping ahead slightly to right before Adam and Yang’s portion of the conflict, we get another small character acting moment that once again displays the synergy between Garrett’s acting and Adam’s facial expressions. This also extends a bit to when Adam remains on the offensive when he lashes out at Yang who just quietly observes Blake climbing up. This segment also seems to have said character acting mo-capped, though obviously polished with key animation by whoever animated this segment. We then get a couple of strikes from him, including his buzz-saw trick (there’s audio within the footage) from the last episode which according to sound designer/engineer, Philip Spann, is supposedly based off of the foley sound of skill and power saws running using a tremolo effect. Adam of course being as charged as he is, comes equipped with red-accented lightning and forming a black silhouette while in mid-air and when he strikes down, Yang herself gets a near-black silhouette for a split-second. Once Adam sends another blast at Yang, we get the attack viewed from Yang’s back accompanied with some wavy blur compositing and more realistic-looking smoke effects. An interesting touch is that when the smoke appears, we get one brief yellow lightning and then a bit of red lightning afterward.









Then comes the big part. Despite being unsure prior, it’s very safe to say judging by the very dynamic poses and great anticipatory action that John Yang without a doubt animated Yang’s “gotcha” punch. There’s obviously a lot to talk about this moment in general, the first being how he has Yang’s fingers smear to convincingly present the wind-up which leads to the next cut of Yang pulling Adam’s sword towards her, thus creating a bigger wind-up and then the effects of her punch with a bright trail to show the arc of it which follows with a couple of seconds of slow-motion. Then it gets to the next cut where sparks, ring effects and another trail effect shows to add to the sense of impact right before Adam is flown away. That’s all just one thing about the moment to talk about for the record. There’s also the effect of Yang’s semblance itself, a first since the production staff migrated to using Autodesk Maya and 3DS Max. Up until now, the hair on Yang’s semblance simply had a quick burst of fire and energy and the rest was just a matter of keeping her eyes red and having her fight more aggressively. Even the idea of Yang’s semblance according to Miles in the volume 1 blu-ray director’s audio commentary was initially meant as a bit of a running gag for her character:

Miles: “So this was um… A bunch of people were like “Does her hair give her power, what’s goin’ on with her hair?” Honestly, it’s just because we thought it’d be funny. It, she’s Goldilocks!” Kerry: “She takes care of herself.”

Miles: “She takes care, and. And a bunch of people were like “Oh, this, this self-confident girl like why does she care what other people think about her?” She doesn’t care what other people think, but her hair is something that she takes care of and she really likes it and they’re screwing it up.”

Monty: “Yeah.”



Somewhere along the line though, the trait was presented more earnestly and in this specific case, the effects are much different. Instead of being a brief burst, the fire-like glow coats over her hair and does so consistently and it features small fire sparks emitting off of her hair. Complimenting it of course is a burning sound effect as Philip Spann describes it that unsurprisingly took inspiration from the Dragon Ball franchise. Finally, there’s the voice acting. At the risk of being frank, Barbara Dunkelman who otherwise provides great acting in dialogue scenes, was lacking in expressing shouts and grunts when fighting. In anime dubs, voice actors in action-oriented scenes often put forth a sense of build-up in a yell which can vary from actor-to-actor, from scene-to-scene depending on the context of the direction. Even Christopher Niosi who has only been consistently voice acting for a few years as of this post has worked on roles that required such a vocal delivery. Sometimes voice actors have their shouts and grunts change depending on what the character goes through over the course of the story, such as how Johnny Yong Bosch once explained how he had his character from Bleach, Ichigo yell differently between the beginning and the end of the Soul Society arc. In comparison, whenever Barbara shouted as Yang before, there generally was more of a strain. Granted, Barbara is not a voice actress first and foremost, but she has dipped into more voice acting on occasion through characters like Cosmos in Fairy Tail. That and her type of yells have been a consistent thing since the beginning of RWBY. This is why it was a very pleasant surprise how much of a difference was made when her shout had more of that kind of build-up to it, to the point where if one didn’t know any better that it could have come from a different voice. Then again, it sounds similar to how Barbara sounded when Yang performs her astral finish in Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle, which as a fighting game, how a character shouts or grunts can affect a gamer’s playing experience. It is possible that by that point, Barbara was getting a better grasp of how to handle such vocal delivery. It also helps how much the yell aligned with the timing of the wind-up for the animation.

After the punch, it is shown how Yang’s semblance dissipates which releases the flame coating off of her hair. Staying on the subject of her semblances, there has been some consistent confusion on when one’s aura shimmers and when it breaks. Philip Spann once again provides insight from an audio perspective about the matter, stating how canon sounds do exist for both characters and that aura breaks in particular have a bass drop effect. While it is difficult to tell if that’s what happened with Adam, it’s definitely clear that this was what happened with Yang. Skipping ahead, we get Blake climbing back up with a surprise attack which then leads to one cut after another of Adam and Blake noticing the Gambol shroud and Adam first lunging after it with Blake to soon follow, which between the timing that displays “show, don’t tell” and the sound effect of Adam kicking the pieces as he’s knocked back should’ve made it clear that one intended to go for the kill first and the other quickly reacted as a result with Yang to follow. Speaking of which, there is an interesting touch where in the shot where as Blake is about to strike, a glistening effect is shown on the tip of the Gambol Shroud piece she has. What follows is another interesting bit where the blood spreads around where Adam gets stabbed, though it’s unclear whether this was at all done in compositing or something else. Adam’s slow walk and fall was all actually animated by Matt Drury which was quite fascinating considering how much of a fan of the character he was. This does however serve as a reminder that he and the other people involved with each segment of the fight are animators and not just “fight choreographers”, meaning that they can be equally capable at character acting. To cap off the death, Philip Spann once more gives sound design insight stating that despite not having any influence over the script, he did try to give an explicit bone-crack sound as he hit the rock. Finally, we get the aftermath where Blake breaks down and this was the part Asha Bishi animated. There are cues in the scene that make it evident it came from here, the most obvious tell being the way Blake’s arms and hands harshly shaking and her hands clenching as she drops to the ground she felt about what she did which followed with her abdomen strongly inhaling and exhaling as she cries in front of Yang who readily consoles her. What adds to the scene is the long shot of the two in front of the waterfall which carries over the framing from the end of the last chapter where just their hands were in front of the cliff to now having the both of them in front of it.

Ending the episode is not much, as it simply is a setup for the finale episode. Though we do get a small funny bit with the communication device, an amusing, flabbergasted expression from Cordovin and a good gulp from one of the soldiers in response to witnessing the Leviathan Grimm. This penultimate episode did not have as much going on as the previous one but due to the moments themselves being bigger in terms of both presentation and production, there was just as much, if not more to break down. As the finale comes, there’s something interesting to mention about updates regarding the production itself or rather lack thereof. Usually by now, certain members of the Crwby like lead animators or one of the producers would mention when a certain phase of production would wrap-up. Back in volume 5, then co-lead animator, Joel Mann confirmed on January 9th, 2018 that the animation stage ended before the finale premiered on the 20th. For volume 4, Joel confirmed that animation was done on January 26th, 2017 before its finale on February 4th. Before that, Gray Haddock mentioned how volume 3′s animation ended on January 23rd, 2016 while that finale premiered on the 13th of February.

Usually, there is a 2-3 week period where the main production phase is ending before post-production needs to be finished. However, no mention came from anyone this time. The closest we got to anything remotely resembling a confirmation was Kerry talking about doing some super casual, relaxing things on January 19th (which he very much deserved), which at least implies whatever production that involved him overseeing and approving as the director was likely done. It’s not clear this lack of sharing the status of the production was due to simply forgetting or if it was a personal choice or if the fact Gen:Lock was around the corner that all attention was directed towards that instead. It’s hard to say but I’m not really worried about what that could mean for the finale episode. That said, Neath Oum, the voice of Lie Ren, did once again state that whatever big moment coming in these last batch of episodes didn’t even occur yet. What could that mean for the finale? We all would just have to hold out butts until then.