RWBY Thread III: Time To Say Goodbye

Stop: So gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
so gotta few things that need to be said real quick.
We get a lot of reports from this thread. A lot of it is just a series of people yelling at each other over arguments that have been rehashed hundreds of times since the end of the recent Volume. And I get that the last Volume - and RWBY in general, really - has some controversial moments that people will want to discuss, argue about, debate, etc.

That's fine. We're not going to stop people from doing that, because that's literally what the point of the thread is. However, there's just a point where it gets to be a bit too much, and arguments about whether or not Ironwood was morally justified in his actions in the recent Volume, or if RWBY and her team were in the right for withholding information from Ironwood out of distrust, or whatever flavor of argument of the day descend into insulting other posters, expressing a demeaning attitude towards other's opinions, and just being overall unpleasant. That tends to happen a lot in this thread. We want it to stop happening in this thread.

So! As of now the thread is in a higher state of moderation. What that means is that any future infractions will result in a weeklong boot from the thread, and repeated offenders will likely be permanently removed. So please, everyone endeavor to actually respect the other's arguments, and even if you strongly disagree with them please stay civil and mindful when it comes to responding to others.

In addition, users should refrain from talking about off-site users in the thread. Bear in mind that this does not mean that you cannot continue to post tumblr posts, for example, that add onto the discussion in the thread, with the caveat that it's related to RWBY of course. But any objections to offsite users in the thread should be handled via PM, or they'll be treated as thread violations and infracted as such.
 
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I'm not commenting on current RWBY volumes, I haven't watched past Vol 3. But I'm very proud of my fanfic bookbind so I'm foisting it upon this thread. I'm particularly proud of that hand painted Crescent Rose and FN-SCAR on the back cover, LOL.



 
Any particular reason you didn't watch more than that?

Didn't personally like it much after that. I watched it for the fight choreography, and S4? I think it was? Started with them changing Ruby's semblance to be a big wad of red flying through the air instead of animating her individual moves. I had precursors of this happening during the underwhelming Ironwood fight scene during the Vytal Festival sequence, but Ruby's premier in the next season really drove it home for me. I like shows like Equilibrium, A:tLA and the first 2 seasons of RWBY because of the really great over the top martial arts choreography worked naturally into the world. If it has a plot, that's nice too, but RWBY... kind of didn't, not even from the start XD So without the martial focus, all they had left were character designs and the plot. That just wasn't enough to keep my interest.

Also, I wrote the story above during S3-S4. The fandom was really active and really prickly at that time and for multiple reasons I had bad run ins with multilple bad actors. Kind of killed the joy for me too. But hey, but I'm glad if other people still enjoy it! Find joy where you can :) And I did like it enough to write a completed fanfic, so there's that too. :)
 
I can see that; in my view the plot really kicks off with the final act of s3, before that is prelude/establishing material.
 
I watched it for the fight choreography, and S4? I think it was? Started with them changing Ruby's semblance to be a big wad of red flying through the air instead of animating her individual moves.

IIRC, the lead fight animator passed away during production of Season 3 and then there was some kind of controversy with his replacement.
 
IIRC, the lead fight animator passed away during production of Season 3 and then there was some kind of controversy with his replacement.

Yes, this. I was a Dead Fantasy fan before I was a RWBY fan. In fact I found out about RWBY through Dead Fantasy. Note the vast library of Final Fantasy fanfics in my repetoire... 🤣
 
IIRC, the lead fight animator passed away during production of Season 3 and then there was some kind of controversy with his replacement.

Alright, to go over the changes after s3 due to Monty's passing:

Monty used an animation software which was not industry standard by the time RWBY started, Poser, and thus so did everyone else. When he passed, they switched to Maya, which is easier to find people who knew and to make it easier for the rest of the crew. This would be why stuff like RWBY's semblance changed and any other visuals you care to name.


After Monty left there was a controversy, but not with a new lead animator, just one animator on the team - Rather Shane Newville, a long time friend and collaborator of Monty, soon quit and wrote an infamous letter that complained about how things were going, but really from my POV reads more like 'because I was Monty's friend and know his family I should be given more control of the show to better fit his vision since I know it best, also I don't like how business-like things are becoming with set hours, I liked it when it was a more relaxed atmosphere when I hung out with my friend and we would do super long grind sessions.'

The Shane letter has been used a lot by haters who evoke 'Monty's vision,' as it neatly erases that the plot and writing was always a collab, and the vision he was evoking was him + Monty's wife (who was not involved in the writing) and not the current writers and showrunners, Monty's brother, etc.. It also overlooks that Monty improvised stuff constantly and the long-term planning stuff was more the others than his set vision.

I don't have a good image of Shane, as you can probably tell.


Without Monty, and losing some animators like Shane, it did take some time for them to get their feat under them choreography wise- they did have some very excellent fights in s4-5, but the fights were overall more inconsistent.
 
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Not to mention the budget being stolen to make Gen:lock at the time.

Yes. The head of animation, Gray Haddock, diverted funds for his project. RWBY still got enough to get by, he didn't want to kill the golden goose, but other shows just got canceled, and it still lead to iirc 5 having budget issues.

Not only did this hurt RT, but he put so much people on crunch time to get Genlock s1 out that no one wanted to work on s2 and it got handed over to HBO Max, resulting in majorly sucky output. IMO one of the big reasons rooster teeth died by knocking down RT to only having one pillar to rely on.

Also really goes to show how immortal RWBY is. It's gone through so much that'd kill most shows.
 
Not only did this hurt RT, but he put so much people on crunch time to get Genlock s1 out that no one wanted to work on s2 and it got handed over to HBO Max
I thought they still wanted to work on it but with better pay, hours and a larger team?

But otherwise yeah agreed, good breakdowns!

As someone who's worked in the industries a little bit and knows people in the industry's, Shane's letter didn't radiate with righteousness to them but was the lashing out of someone in grief at best and an entitled diva who would be hell to work with at worst.

Anyway, Pyrrha:
 
To be fair, they were advertising it so hard because they'd thrown so much money at it and needed to show something for it. Which makes the nearly non existent merch for Gen:lock kind of baffling.
 
To be fair, they were advertising it so hard because they'd thrown so much money at it and needed to show something for it. Which makes the nearly non existent merch for Gen:lock kind of baffling.

Yea, there's the art book, the comic, and a novel. No Holon toys or plushie pilots or anything.

If it got merch like RWBY that'd have been great.
 
No Holon toys or plushie pilots or anything.

Hell, a little Nugget figure, with or without articulation!

Then again, RT always was weird about merch in general. Despite the fact that merch is the big money maker for shows these days, theirs was always so haphazard at the best of times. And mixed quality too. I had a number of shirts after my local comic store got a decent supplier in Australia, and they flaked so badly.
 
Started with them changing Ruby's semblance to be a big wad of red flying through the air instead of animating her individual moves.
Others have already mentioned the rest, but I do want to mention something about this. Ruby's semblance looking that way actually is something that changes due to the story. However, I don't know if it was influenced by animation downgrade, since I can't tell you whether or not its harder to animate a human body in motion or a bunch of rose petals bunched together.

Essentially semblances are representative of the person, so when the person changes significantly their semblance also ends up changing. We see this with both Ruby and Ren.
Ruby's semblance changed to be super speed while literally turning into a bunch of rose petals. This allowed her to both ignore weight limits she had earlier(such as struggling to carry Penny), fly while in petal form, and split apart while in petal form. All of it seems geared torwards the struggles she faced in volume 3. If she could split apart, she could have gotten past Mercury. If she could fly and carry people, then she could have gotten Pyrrah of the tower before Cinder shot her.
Ren's semblance changed to allow him to be an empath. Ren's semblance I am also less clear on, since I spent less time focusing on him so I'm having a hard time remembering what happened to him in volume 8. It did happen to be geared torwards his current struggle however, since him getting the ability to sense emotions led to him convincing the Ace Ops to let them go.

It still isn't clear what counts as a significant change, since we only have two examples to draw on, but we do know that Yang's semblance didn't change after Volume 3.

BTW, does anybody else seem to remember Blake's semblance literally grabbing her and throwing her after volume 3? It popped into my head as another possible example, but I can't seem to remember where I remembered it from.
 
BTW, does anybody else seem to remember Blake's semblance literally grabbing her and throwing her after volume 3? It popped into my head as another possible example, but I can't seem to remember where I remembered it from.
It also appears to let her pull more typical ninja shit, like Replacement from Naruto.

You thought you just grabbed her? No, you grabbed a handful of bombs.
 
Ren's semblance I am also less clear on, since I spent less time focusing on him so I'm having a hard time remembering what happened to him in volume 8. It did happen to be geared torwards his current struggle however, since him getting the ability to sense emotions led to him convincing the Ace Ops to let them go.

I never got Ren's semblance either. He always seemed like "the character they threw in so Monty could do some voice acting" without much further thought than that (until later seasons, it sounds like). In my story, I just completely ignored whatever his Vol 1-2 semblance was supposed to be and made him a martial artist version of Kitty Pryde. Way easier and more interesting than whatever they started him out with. I also changed Jaune's semblance because he felt like a wasted opportunity in vol 1-3. And I made Ozpin and Oscar creepier. 🤭

(Feel free to read it, it's linked in my sig here ;-) )

Personally, I loved the early fight sequences and have watched later volume youtube supercuts of fight sequences and the magic for me really was Monty's choreography and motion capture, because the later ones aren't as good. The volume ... uh... 9? Ruby vs the cat fight was getting closer to it, but being the nerd I am, I really watched it and paused it and looked at the martial moves and it was goodish because they recycled s1 (or the trailer I think) moves in that fight pretty much 1:1. So no wonder. Really what brings the choreography to the next level is when animators remember to incorporate physics into the impossible moves. So on s1 -2 for example, Ruby's weapon "feels" heavy but she can still use it well. S3+, suddenly everyone and everything is weightless. It takes away from the impact (pun intended) of the animation. Granted, I took animation classes when I was in art school so I look out for shit like that because it's one of the things my first teacher drilled into my head - never let your figures float in space - but it's what I miss the most and was Monty's singular talent (as shown b his previous 7 or so Dead Fantasy shorts).

*nb - Studio Ghibli is also excellent at this like Monty Oum was. But they don't do action. You can just see it in the way people put on their shoes or the like in those movies.

*nb no. 2 - whoever draws the one punch man manga is also excellent at this. serch for manga panels converted into animated gifs to see what I mean, it's really interesting
 
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I never got Ren's semblance either. He always seemed like "the character they threw in so Monty could do some voice acting" without much further thought than that (until later seasons, it sounds like). In my story, I just completely ignored whatever his Vol 1-2 semblance was supposed to be and made him a martial artist version of Kitty Pryde. Way easier and more interesting than whatever they started him out with.
He always had the same semblance, it just wasn't really useful during the early volumes. It evolving from hiding emotions to showing them to him so he knows what is going on while still being able to hide it from Grimm is a really good utility Semblance for his job as a Huntsman.
 
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