RWBY Animators Spotlight # 5: Asha Bishi & Kim Newman
Previous Animators Spotlight Posts:
Joel Mann & Harley Dwortz
Ian Kedward & Millivette Gonzalez
Dillon Gu & Austin Hardwicke
Honorable Mentions
So far in previous Spotlight posts, quite a bit of time has been spent touching on certain animators that have been part of RWBY’s production since the first couple of volumes. And though I’ve referred to a handful of newer names in the web-series’s production, there are more who have become more involved that also deserve a mention. This post will be dedicated to two of those animators, one who joined the production in volume 3 and the other who joined in volume 4.
Asha Bishi
I said before that Volume 3′s production had arguably as big on an overhaul as volume 4. And while that’s true, let’s not dismiss what changes occurred in the latter. Whereas the third volume’s production underwent changes in terms of establishing and adjusting phases, teams, and positions, much of the changes during volume 4 were in terms of the animation process itself. Contrary to what some might think, Rooster Teeth had always used Autodesk Maya, albeit for just modeling characters at first. But volume 4 was when Maya replaced Poser Pro as the main tool for animation. As a result, various assets had to be rebuilt from scratch and new plug-ins and approaches to using the software were considered. This led to a challenge for the animation team, especially with the schedule cutting things close between RTX 2016 and the volume 4 premiere on October 22nd of the same year. But veteran animators and newcomers for volume 4 had tackled those challenges. Asha Bishi, a newcomer during volume 4, would be among them.
Like any animator who starts small when involved in the show, Asha’s first scene in volume 4 was one of team RNJR’s various trekking scenes in chapter 2, where they talk about Shion village and Jaune’s trips with his family. This scene, as faint as it is, is where her way of animating in the show can be identified. Asha usually makes character animations feel snappy yet lively through facial expressions or body language while still maintaining who the character is, as seen in the way Jaune’s eyes embarrassingly shift around in her scene.
Eventually, her snappy way of animating dialogue-oriented scenes would prove to compliment the fight scenes she would be assigned with. One of her first bits of action-oriented animation were Ren and Nora’s successfully-cathartic attempt at pinning down and killing off the Nuckelavee. What sticks out in her shots the most is the way Ren indifferently yanks his father’s dagger off of the Grimm’s flank as he walks towards and defiantly deals with the Nuckelavee’s sudden attempt to intimidate him. We would then start to see Asha’s skills at animating fight scenes develop further within the volume 5 character shorts, namely Weiss’s. Some have referred to Weiss’s way of fighting in her character short as more of dancing than fighting. Whether or not that’s ultimately meant as a compliment or a criticism, some of those moments are simply due to Asha applying her forte; snappy character acting. The way Weiss swiftly unleashes fire dust, lunges at the beowulves and decapitates a couple of them with twirls and a sense of grace but cockiness are all intentional.
Now I bring up the matter of how Asha does character acting in both dialogue and action scenes, but there is one character who probably brings the most in her style, and that’s Blake Belladonna. But how exactly does a character as serious and emotionally withdrawn as Blake bring the most in Asha’s animations?
The moment where Blake ditches her bow has been widely deemed as a positive note for Blake’s character within RWBY’s fandom. But believe it or not, it’s also been a great moment within the animation team, and it’s not hard to see why. With faunus characters, what could’ve been misinterpreted as certain characters having ears and tails as prop, can now be seen as genuinely-nuanced behavioral traits. Blake as a result has been able to communicate more openly with her ears and thus adds a range of emotion and secondary action animation. Believe it or not, much of how Blake and her mom, Kali’s ears move are generally reflective of how a real cat’s ears would shift depending on their mood.
Now, none of this is to say that Asha is the only animator who does this, but you’ll definitely see a difference in some scenes in volumes 4 and 5 where Blake barely moves her ears at all and scenes where she moves them a lot. When Blake’s ears are expressed lively, there’s a good chance Asha did it. Besides Blake and Kali, this also extends to other characters, faunus or not, like Sun and his tail (these are the actual shots she did), Sienna’s ears and Weiss’s ponytail. Of course, she still animates well-emoted scenes for other characters in-between, such as Yang and Weiss’s reunion.
There are two Japanese animators Asha Bishi can be compared to when it comes to the way she animates, Hirotoshi Takaya and Akira Hamaguchi. The former has utilized a swift way to express character movement in various anime projects since the 90s. Some of the works Takaya has animated for include the Magical girl anime Mysterious Thief Saint Tail (a TV series that fell into obscurity in anime compared to other shows of the same genre), the Shonen anime Kekkaishi, and the TV anime adaptation of the Japanese role-playing game, Tales of the Abyss. The latter animator I referred to, Akira Hamaguchi, often sprinkles a bit of frame modulation in his works, meaning he will go from animating on 1s to animating in 2s or 3s or vice-versa. Between that and his character animations having a sometimes swiftly and bouncy feel, Hamaguchi’s scenes have their own sense of liveliness to them.
Here are the list of scenes confirmed/presumed to have been worked on by Asha Bishi:
Most of team RNJR walking scene - Vol 4, Ch 2
Most of opening scene with Blake on ship - Vol 4, Ch 3
Some of Blake and Sun’s dialogue on ship - Vol 4, Ch 3
Yang coming up to her room and eavesdropping on Taiyang, Oobleck and Port’s conversation - Vol 4, Ch 4
Blake seeing her parents again - Vol 4, Ch 5
Blake, Sun, and Ghira confronting with Corsec and Fennec until Ghira asks, “Know what?” - Vol 4, Ch 5
Team RNJR walking until Ruby says, “I don’t know! I lived in a small area. I’ve never been this far away from home!” - Vol 4, Ch 6
Team RNJR stopping in Oniyuri and unleashing their weapons as Ren senses Tyrian - Vol 4, Ch 6
Weiss and Jacque arguing until he smacks her - Vol 4, Ch 7
Jacque stripping Weiss of her heiress title - Vol 4, Ch 7
Blake and Ghira’s talk from when Ghira says, “And you pulled yourself out”, to the end of the scene - Vol 4, Ch 8
Team RNJR and Qrow’s conversation from when Qrow says, “Look, I had the same questions”, to him saying, “Like I said, the schools are an important part of stopping Salem.” - Vol 4, Ch 8
Yang and Taiyang taking a break from sparring from Taiyang petting Zwei to Yang sitting up from the ground - Vol 4, Ch 9
First few shots of Blake and Sun chasing Ilia - Vol 4, Ch 9
Nora falling from the tower to pummel the horse part of the Nuckelavee Grimm and Ren killing it off - Vol 4, Ch 12
Oscar meets Qrow - Vol 4, Ch 12
Weiss landing in front of Schnee emblem statue and striking a sweep of fire at the summoned Beowulves - Vol 5 Weiss Character short
Weiss maintaining focus after seeing more Beowulves summoned, then lunges and strikes down three Beowulves - Vol 5 Weiss Character Short
And here is Asha Bishi’s most recent demo reel:
Kim Newman
A couple of times before, I briefly teased mentioning about a certain animator gaining a lot of attention. And that animator I referred to was Kim Newman. Kim has developed a positive reputation within the fandom during the middle of volume 5′s run for very specific reasons, but more on that later. For now, let’s dive into when she got her start on production of the series.
As stated before, every animator who has worked on RWBY, regardless of how good they’ve gotten in the eyes of the fandom, had to get their start on smaller scenes somewhere and Kim Newman was no exception. During her first few weeks working at Rooster Teeth during the production of volume 3, she provided bits-and-pieces of both the Team JNPR vs Team BRNZ fight and the Team SSSN vs Team NDGO fight, with her very first animations being Nora showing off her semblance for the first time, Sage and Dew clashing, Gwen’s knives dropping on Scarlet and Sun’s drop-kick on Octavia. Judging by these shots alone, one probably wouldn’t easily tell this was Kim, given how back then most animators who had been working on the show up to that point were getting their sea legs with constructing full-fledged fights. but small signs of her approach to animating scenes can be seen, such as how the camera distorts a bit when Gwen’s knives fall toward Scarlet.
By the latter-half of volume 3, another side of Kim Newman’s animations would be seen through facial expressions. The first noteworthy example is Team RWBY in their dorm room in chapter 8, where not only do we see how she’s just as capable at character acting, but that she manages to sell Yang’s expressions through the first actual tears in the show. Not just comedic tears done in compositing or characters wiping their eyes with their hands to fake the gesture, but rather real tears. And this would be far from the last scene of that sort she’s done. Two other scenes she’s done that were even more emotional involved Ruby... witnessing both Penny and Pyrrha’s deaths. Yeah, these kinds of things she’s insisted on volunteering for, going as far as adding tears for Ruby’s reaction in the former scene when they weren’t even in the storyboards or animatic. Though what’s really worth noting is how she captures the expressions and gestures in both scenes at making Ruby feel helpless while making other characters like Pyrrha feel briefly content in her final moments before being struck. Also, fun fact: Kim had a replica of Pyrrha’s crown on her desk when animating the scene... okay, well, maybe not necessarily a fun fact. But this is all to point out how dedicated she was to mo-capping and animating her favorite character
The scenes Kim Newman animated throughout volume 3 would prove to be an signs of things to come in volumes 4 & 5 as her skills would not only improve, but she will also develop traits in her style that can be best described in one word: ‘intense’. From here on, the way she animated how fast and hard characters attacked and weapons and fists were swung would be more refined. She would also more often angle and/or distort the camera in a manner that winds up adding a sense of dynamism that would be seen among certain animators in anime. I said in part 3 of the this Spotlight series how Dillon Gu used the camera to apply a sense of speed for the character. For comparison-sake, if Dillon used the camera to help show how fast the character was going, then Kim used the camera to apply the sense of distance, to display how far one character was from the other they faced depending on the setting. This is made most evident in shots like Blake being flung to the sky above the Water Dragon Grimm, Ruby dodging the reach of the Nuckelavee Grimm, Yang standing ground against the Ursa, and Weiss summoning her knight against the lancer.
Kim still just as much strengthened the use of the camera in her scenes as she has character acting, where strong emotions are applied both during and outside of fight scenes. Though not as gut-wrenching as the stuff she’s done in volume 3, she still couldn’t help but find herself still working on scenes where characters are emotionally crying such as with Ruby and Yang’s reunion and Yang and Raven’s verbal confrontation, the latter of which she mo-capped and animated alongside another animator, Melanie Stern. And in the case of fight scenes themselves, she makes sure to communicate to the viewer moments where a character is feeling shocked, alarmed, angry, focused or in Tyrian’s case, playful. One of the best examples of this is in chapter 10 of volume 5. When fans think of that chapter and Kim Newman in terms of fights, they think specifically of the fact Sun is using his “gun-chucks” mode for the first time in a while. And while that moment was great to watch in it’s own right, it’s her part in Blake and Ilia’s fight that arguably better captures use of intensity described earlier. Not only does it fit the setting of the inside of Blake’s being set on fire as a visual metaphor for the heat of battle, but it even effectively compliments the fueled, angered voice acting done by Cherami Leigh as Ilia, a character that served as the biggest departure of all the roles she’s voiced in anime and video games.
I mentioned earlier that Kim gained a reputation within the fandom for certain reasons during volume 5 and when I say that, I’m referring to her position. Since volume 3, Joel Mann and Dustin Matthews have most consistently been credited as the lead of the animation team. By chapter 10 of volume 5, Kim Newman was officially promoted to Assistant Lead Animator. Though she wasn’t the first to be credited for this position (that honor goes to Paula Decanini during volume 4 who is now the director of RWBY Chibi season 3), it’s this role where Kim managed to help lead the team of animators who were brought on board during volume 5. Animators like Erika Soosaar, Jason Dickol and John Yang (or “NWBY” as she aptly put it) have in response expressed enjoying their experience working with her.
So with all of this mentioning about her skills and position in the web-series, what Japanese animators could her style even be compared to. Some may by default compare her to Yutaka Nakamura or Norio Matsumoto since they have done some of the most popular fight scenes in very widely-known anime. But the comparison can be considered unfair as both animators have had 30 years of animation industry experience under their belts whereas Kim has only had a few. Plus the comparisons can be seen as too obvious and broad. One could argue that since she’s gone on record that her passion for animation was inspired by the Shonen boxing anime, Hajime no Ippo, then she could be compared to say, animator Yoshiyuki Ito, who did certain scenes in the series and has done character designs for various Studio Bones titles like the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist series, Soul Eater, Star Driver, Space Dandy, Concrete Revolutio, and the spring 2018 anime, Dragon Pilot: Hisone & Masotan.
Though a more appropriate choice, the two animators that Kim Newman can be best compared to in my eyes are that of Aito Ohashi and Takahiro Shikama. With the former, Ohashi has been fairly new to the anime industry, having made a presence in the more recent Pokemon XY and Sun & Moon series and Gundam Build Fighters with angled cameras and swift animation to give a feel of how fast and how far characters are moving about in a given setting. So that’s the comparison to Ohashi. But what about Shikama? Having animated scenes for anime like Kurokami, Star Driver, Sacred Seven, & most recently, Darling in the Franxx, Shikama has a way of timing punches and kicks to either be thrown or hit hard and fast. Every hit and sword strike capture great force, combined with fierce facial expressions.
Here are the list of scenes confirmed/presumed to have been worked on by Kim Newman:
Nora unveiling her semblance for the first time - Vol 3, Ch 2
Octavia of Team NDGO surfing and sliding across the sand - Vol 3, Ch 2
Sun drop-kicking Octavia (all of the models weren’t fleshed out yet. They just used blank, grey models or ‘proxy models’) - Vol 3, Ch 2
Gale of team NDGO dropping her knives around Scarlet - Vol 3, Ch 2
Animating part of Weiss in her and Yang’s fight against Flynt and Neon - Vol 3, Ch 5
The part where Yang launches toward and charges at Flynt’s attack (presumed) - Vol 3, Ch 5
Team RWBY in their dorm room after Yang’s match - Vol 3, Ch 8
Ruby trying to escape from Mercury - Vol 3, Ch 9
Kim Newman improvised from what the storyboards/animatic (asst. Editor, Stan Lewis’s animatics)
Ruby’s tears after seeing Penny was not originally in the storyboards
Qrow, Glynda & Cardin attacking the Atlessian Knights and Grimm - Vol 3, Ch 11
Cinder killing Pyrrha and Ruby unleashing her silver eyes - Vol 3, Ch 12
Jaune training in the forest - Vol 4, Ch 2
Blake climbing up Sun’s clones and then diving to clip the Water Dragon Grimm’s wing - Vol 4, Ch 3
Qrow vs Tyrian until Tyrian takes his weapon from him - Vol 4, Ch 7
Ren recovering from letting go of the Nuckelavee Grimm’s grip and wildly charging at it - Vol 4, Ch 12
Ruby, Jaune and Ren working together to pin down the Nuckelavee Grimm’s arms - Vol 4, Ch 12
Yang fighting the Ursa Grimm from when she charged and stopped its arm attack to before it knocks her across the forest - Vol 5 Yang character short
Weiss shooting at the Lancer Grimm - Vol 5, Ch 2
Weiss summoning the knight and having it run off the ship - Vol 5, Ch 2
Kim did most of the mo-cap for Weiss using dance moves in K-Pop as a reference
Yang, Weiss, and Ruby’s reunion - Vol 5, Ch 6
Blake and Ilia exchanging blows after the former sets the house on fire - Vol 5, Ch 10
Sun attacking Ilia - Vol 5, Ch 10
Yang and Raven’s argument - Vol 5, Ch 14
And here is Kim Newman’s most recent demo reel: