Chapter Text

KS: I've been working on this show for a very long time, basically since Day 2. Monty had his dream, had his idea, and came in the next day and was like, 'alright let's make an anime together', and I was like 'cool, let's do it'. And here we are, six-plus years later.

KW: When we first started on RWBY Volume 6, Kerry told us and Miles told us that this was going to be a be a big season. I had to laugh because they told me in the first episode that we'd have a train. You have something like that moving that fast covering that much ground and a set that needs to be that big, that alone told me how big the season was going to be.

KS: I think Volume 6 was absolutely one of my favorite seasons to work on. Probably the hardest season we've really ever done. At least in terms of scope.

KW: The thing about RWBY and the way that it has been handled for some time is that it's a traveling show.

JC: The Team is moving every episode, going to new places, discovering new things, a lot of new sets, a lot of new assets, things that on the technical and production side we have to work on.

Ruby Rose: I'm a Huntress. My team and I are heading to the Leviathan and can weaken it for you to attack.

SD: From the producer side we go okay how can we implement this into the pipeline. And how can we have this visually sing on-screen.

KW: A producer is somebody who has perspective. It's about understanding how each team works, what their needs are. The amount of intelligence and thoughtfulness that has to go into solving problems each and every day is gargantuan.

KS: Something about this year's story just really fell into place for us early on. Miles and I write the scripts but as it goes through storyboards, and as it goes through camera, and animation, and asset, everybody adds something to it.

JC: We try to foster an environment that allows the artists to be artists, to not have to worry about technical things, and can just focus on their art and what they're best at.

KS: More than anything that's my job is to not tell everybody what to do. Every lead on the team, every supervisor, every producer, always wants to make it the best they can make the show, and we work with a ton of really creative and smart people, and it's how to make all of their ideas work together as well, too.

CP: A large part of what I think the job of director is, is just harnessing all that creativity and letting people make their own choices and bring stuff to the show. For instance in the Chapter 11 fight there was a bit where Ruby is kind of hanging on to this giant mech and she slips down in front of the visor. And an animator asked, 'well I was thinking maybe they could just have a cute little moment where she kind of waves'. Like that wasn't in the script, that wasn't in our initial brain-dep[?], but that was like, that's great, like, go do that, and that's like one of my favorite moments of that fight.

JC: Staying on schedule and staying communicating is the most important thing. It's a very big pipeline from storyboards all the way through post and audio. And we need people in each of those departments staying focused and communicating to everybody else.

CP: We have desk reviews and desk reviews are great. It gives the animators a chance to ask questions in real-time, and you can give them feedback in real-time. And if I'm in a space with a person and I can just show them, I think a lot of times it's pretty illuminating because there's just some concepts that are hard to explain in written format.

KS: The best part of working about here is hands-down the people that we get to work with.

KW: We get to make a show that we're really proud of but I think at the end of it all, I think we're most proud of the relationship and the team and the studio we've built.

JC: Everybody's very passionate about this show, so they want to make it the best they can. They want to leave their mark. They want to create a legacy that will be bigger then just them as individuals.

KS: I know how much this show means to a lot of people, and this show means a lot to me. I just want to make this show the best it can be, because we do get messages of people saying they're going through a rough time, but, you know, they saw the work that we're doing and they're now on their own creative path. It feels like we're all doing something really worthwhile here. So I really hope everybody enjoyed this volume, because I know that we did.

Atlas ATC: Mantis 5-1, welcome home.