RWBY Volume 6 Adam Character Short - A Shot-by-Shot Analysis
Trailers and shorts in RWBY are very interesting and unique format as far as works of fictional entertainment go. They can be so tricky to describe that even the show’s late creator, Monty Oum himself, admitted he was not entirely sure what to call the pre-volume 1 trailers at the time they were first released. Whatever you or I call them, these small works can serve various purposes for this serialized web-series. On the one hand, they can give a very thorough idea of how the characters being focused on engages in combat through their movements. At the same time, they can also provide a piece of a character’s story, igniting many theories from within the show’s fan base.
How well a short or trailer can convey either of those aspects or any other ones depends greatly on its presentation. This is why I believe the Adam character short sticks out so well.
Before RTX, things were dead-silent as to what the future of RWBY’s main story would entail. So when RTX Austin 2018’s first RWBY panel showed the premiere of the Adam Character Short, word had naturally spread about the implied quality. This extended to a handful of fans learning of a snippet of the short without the post-production polish via a stream of the RT Animation Audio panel (oops). But aside from this, there was only so much to interpret. That is until Friday, August 17th, when the piece had officially been released to the general public. With the Adam short being the longest of any of the previous character shorts yet at a whopping 7 minutes, there is a lot to cover regarding both the animation and the visual presentation.
Speaking personally, this is by far the strongest of all the character shorts by far based on one factor: its visual direction. And there’s a strongly implied reason as to why this is. Back on February 12th, RWBY’s director & writer, Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna respectively, as well as RWBY Chibi director, Paula Decanini, took part in an “Ask Me Anything” Session over at the RWBY sub-reddit. It was there when Kerry particularly responded to a question about the matter of “show, don’t tell” by stating that was what stuck with him the most. Love it or hate it, volume 5 left many fans with various mixed emotions, including concern for how the show would visually convey its story in future installments. However, between this character short and the announcement at RTX that Connor Pickens, the lead editor for volumes 3-5 of RWBY being promoted to co-director, these were signs how much Kerry took such particular feedback to heart.
Although it’s one thing to state the short itself applied “show, don’t tell”. It’s a whole other thing to elaborate on all the different ways it was utilized and why it matters. Sadly, there’s no confirmation as to who provided the storyboards, another important role in visual direction. In fairness though, who provides boards for the characters shorts are rarely ever stated to the public with one exception being that Kevin Harger did the ones for the Yang short at the “Just the Fights” RTX panel. What can be confirmed though are the animators confirmed to have been involved with the Adam short, as stated by volume 6 animation director, Joel Mann:
Melanie Stern
Matt Drury
Joe Vick
Asha Bishi
Hannah Novotny
Michelle Yi
Erika Soosar
Vince Cappelluti
Just like with the matter of “show, don’t tell”, equal concern has been expressed regarding Gen:Lock’s production have more of an influence at Rooster Teeth Animation, leading to certain fan-favorite animators in RWBY’s production being permanently taken away. However, I have gone on record on how vital it is to acknowledge the merits of both newer and veteran talent since like it or not, the former will have more of a presence in RWBY. The Adam character short is especially noteworthy due to not just the number of animators being double that of past shorts, but five of the eight animators were recruited during volume 5′s production while two were recruited during volume 4′s and Melanie Stern, the assistant lead animator for volume 6, was first brought on during volume 3. This makes things both interesting and complicated, the latter of which has to due with how for some animators, there are little-to-no sources confirming who did what in RWBY thus far. Though certain animators have confirmed or at least implied what sequences they did, making for a good opportunity to examine their skills.
With that said, now is the time to decipher how the Adam short stand outs shot-by-shot and scene-by-scene.
Scene #1: Outside of the Schnee Dust Company Plant
The biggest thing worth talking about in this scene is how the cinematography is in great effect. When Adam is introduced, we don’t just see his model in plain view first thing. We see a shot of his shadow, then his feet, then his mask, and finally a slow pan up to his face as we are teased with not seeing how he actually looks. With reaction shots of the other faunus characters sandwiched in-between, this captures not just importance in Adam’s character for the short itself, but also to his own kind that look up to him. When fans of RWBY think of cinematography, it’s generally believed to not be capable of more then making things prettier. This completely mis-represents the purpose it serves. Cinematography is more about using elements of camera direction, lighting, staging and timing of each shot to help tell the story within a scene. Camera direction as one element, has played a role into helping convey different characters in RWBY since volume 3, as confirmed by certain people in the show’s storyboard and camera layout departments. Ozpin’s level-headed mindset by having the camera point straightforwardly at him, Ironwood’s display of authority from low-angles, Qrow’s drunk nature through the camera tilting, and Nora’s bundle of energy by having the camera dramatically pan and zoom along with her. Their characters have been further utilized by the camera in varied ways and Adam is no different.
Beyond that, one other aspect of visual direction in both this scene and the short in general is the use of transitions, namely the invisible cut. It’s a fairly common trick used in film-making but it has never used in RWBY outside of chapter 9 of volume 2, nor has it been used as consistently until now. More will be talked about this technique, but the gist as to what it greatly presents is the passage of time for Adam’s story.
Scene #2: The forest skirmish between the White Fang and the Humans
Before going over the next scene, it’s worth quickly addressing the setting. Some fans have speculated that too much time and resources may have been spent on the Adam short which could affect the production of volume 6. However, in terms of the models of the environments, specifically the forest set, it seems similar to the set in chapter 4 of volume 5, albeit with more varied placements of trees and open space and different lighting. The same goes for the set in the next scene with Blake and Adam which may have been from the Blake Character short. Although it’s all speculative, these observations can imply that at least on the modeling team’s end, not too much time was spent on the short.
Moving on to the beginning of the sequence itself, one bit that stands out is Sienna’s ears and the way they move. This is actually something seen a little earlier with the one faunus girl when she sees Adam and it’s noteworthy for three reasons. First, while there’s not a lot of information as to how real life tigers communicate through their ears, it’s possibly similar to how house cats use their ears to express various emotions. This in turn leads to the second noteworthy reason, how it adds depth to what certain faunus characters express at a given moment. It can even be seen with Sienna’s character which, assuming such similarities between tigers and cats are there, indicate that Sienna was feeling defensive and alert in the first shot next to Adam. There will be more moments where the animal ears add to a character’s emotion both from Sienna and Blake later on.
The third and final reason this is all worth bringing up is the matter of who animated the beginning of this scene. One animator in RWBY’s production that has made consciously applied movement to animal ears and tails is Asha Bishi. I’ve mentioned before how her way of moving characters, faunus, human, or Grimm, usually feel snappy and lively which makes character acting her greatest strength. And while the character acting is also strong between Ghira, Adam, Sienna and other minior characters here, I’m not positive it’s her. If I were to take a guess, Hannah Novotny may have animated this sequence. Hannah and Asha were both recruited during volume 4′s production and while both are great at providing expression through the characters they animate, the former is slightly less snappy with her movements based on the confirmed shots she did and thus feel a tad slower. That said, she does provide little touches herself when animating scenes like shrinking and shaking of pupils within the eyes and even movement of animal ears, hence my guess.
In the midst of the skirmish, there’s a brief as a bullet hits the window next to Ghira, it leaves off an neat electricity effect. Jumping ahead to when Ghira gets shot with more electricity and aura effects, we get to the first big action sequence in the short and right as he lands on the ground, I love the look of the small dust that forms. The VFX team have expressed in the past taking inspiration from visual effects seen in anime to help compliment RWBY’s aesthetic. They were already accomplishing that by volume 5 in the Anime Skies Fight and I think they almost perfected it here. We’ve definitely come a long way from the days how smoke and dust use to look like in the show.
We then get a quick rotation shot to show where Adam’s target is and according to Matt Drury, this moment is what he animated. He has gone on record as to how much of a fan he is of Adam’s character to the point where he did motion capture for him in volume 5 and even dyed his hair red, and boy, does it show in how he made Adam fight. Between him dashing, parrying, doing jump-inside kicks, and turning around as he crouches to jump for the tree and use it to spring himself across in rapid succession, Adam rides this balance between being using martial arts and being animalistic. The part where he jumps off the tree is an especially good use of squash and stretch and not an example of bad animation, in case anyone considered that. To get a clearer idea of what does and doesn’t make bad animation, Youtube Anime Ajay provided a very insightful video explaining what is and is not bad animation to respond to a practice commonly made by fans in the anime community.
Going back to the short, the camera steadily follows Adam barrel-rolling to the far right, leaving some more good-looking anime dust and then sets some nice staging between him and his enemies in front of him as he blocks their attacks. One quick thing to note is how Adam twirls his weapon with the smear effects. The spinning smears throughout this short have invoked some big groans within the fan base and I would be lying if I didn’t have my minor gripes with it. However, the smear effects themselves are not inherently a problem and there are two instances where I believe it works for different reasons. This is one of them. The reason why it works here is through a combination of where the camera moves and zooms and how Adam’s hand moves is seen twirling the weapon. It’s very subtle when playing in normal speed, but it is there. Really, if there’s anything off about the animation is how the spinning just starts without a slow-in and thus feels a little too instantaneous. Though more will be elaborated on this later.
That tangent aside, what I love is how the camera zooms to angle Adam as being seemingly bigger in perspective compared to both characters he’s blocking bullets from. As icing of the cake, you see the shift in facial expressions from the girl on the right with the hoodie as she expresses being intimidated by Adam and ends up anxious for the girl next to her as she looks to her right. After pinning the one girl in the yellow outfit unconscious, we see a brief yet clean combination of smears and sparks as he blocks another bullet and then he dashes to trip the gray-hoodie girl and hit her in mid-air. As nice as it is to see action scenes done at a break-neck pace, having a moment where a character winds-up before performing a certain action can add more impact. What Adam did as he swung his weapon back before gutting the girl was a classic example of anticipatory action, one of the 12 principles. My only criticism regarding this moment was that I wish the moment where the girl was hit lasted a few frames more. Though it helps that in the next shot, we see the facial expressions of the girl who deeply regrets having faced Adam before being knocked back down to the ground. I can’t help but feel sorry for her in particular.
We then cut to Adam going towards another gunman while swiftly dodging bullets and once again using the tree to his advantage before kicking the latter unconscious. With the bright gunshot effects, because they are so close enough to the center of the camera, it helps makes the speed of Adam’s sidesteps feel somewhat blinding. The only slight problem is the smear effect of Adam’s kicks. Similar to the moment where he kicked the gray-hooded human, both use just red for the smears when they could benefit more from using a combination of red and black to consistently follow with the color of his shoes. But in the grand scheme of everything in motion at normal speed, this is all relatively minor. Then we cut to what is either the end of Matt’s sequence or the start of another animator’s. Either way, the faraway wide shot is really great at showing how unstoppable he is while appropriately charging like a bull. The next set of shots that follow a clever way to make the launch of Adam’s sword show how much force it had to make the girl emit such a reaction when being hit in the gut. Then follows the sword twirling in mid-air and here is where I started having issues with the use of smear animations. Though as I said before, more on that later.
Then there’s the human hiding who gives an anxious facial expression before deciding to fire, effectively displaying the fact he is making a split-second choice. Between what came a couple of shots before and what comes next, Hannah Novotny might have animated these parts. Though it’s somewhat of a shot in the dark based on her tweet of doing some action shots. Speaking of darkness, we then see Adam’s signature slash, which the compositing itself is presented slightly differently from the Black trailer. There, it’s timed so that the darkness fades after he absorbs the laser attack. In this character short though, it’s timed so that it disappears after he strikes. It’s different, but it works well here due to how it blackens his body, making him appear as a silhouette while the background fades to near-black and that all disappears once he draws his swords and strikes, making for great impact. It also helps that the way he’s posing with his back facing the camera and his should in front of him makes him more menacing in a manner akin to that one shot of Neferpitou from Hunter x Hunter.
As the human is struck in the next shot, there’s an interesting effect where the pupils in his eyes disappear that feels like something out of the One Piece anime. Just as an aside to talk about the music, I love how it suddenly stops to add to the shocking effect of Adam having brutally killed someone. Next, in the shot where Ghira and Adam look down at the human, we get really clever staging. Not only are they both framed so that only they follow the rule-of-thirds, but your eyes are easily drawn to the remaining humans that appear behind the tree in the far right and then flee. As the scene follows with Sienna defending Adam and calling him a “hero”, Adam makes a surprised reaction that tells a fair bit considering we can’t register his emotions through his eyes. To close the scene, we get the White Fang members cheering as they walk towards Adam, creating another great invisible cut while Sienna and Ghira stare down.
3) Adam and Blake at the rooftops
I mentioned before that there was another scene I believe Asha Bishi animated and Blake and Adam’s scene is it. At first I was only 70-80 percent sure it was her. But this was before Joel Mann confirmed who animated the short. Since then, I’m now 80-90 percent sure. Much of her tells can be identified here, especially with Blake. The various pupil shifts, the slight expanding and wincing of the eyes, and the abundant character acting with their body language and even Blake’s cat ears.
What I especially liked was the end where her hair is flowing in the wind for two reasons. First, it created an opportunity to show that the strands of.. hair, fur maybe, were flowing from her cat ears, something I’ve admittedly never seen before. It’s a small thing, but it showed a neat attention to detail in the modeling. Second, the way her hair flowed and how her fingers seamlessly dug into them is another sign of how we’ve come a long way from the days where hair when being touched or pull around felt more like large clumps than individual strands that could be felt between the fingers.
We are then shown another invisible cut and by far my favorite one of the fall leaves flowing after the wind gets stronger and harsher, indicating that Blake feels a hidden bit of uncertainty by trusting Adam’s words. These invisible cuts have really excelled at presenting the passage of time in Adam’s story and they reminded me a lot of how the anime Haikyuu used a combination of match cuts and invisible cuts to help visually enhance the story of certain characters. Again, I’m very unsure who provided the storyboards for this short and thus the transitions. Though the invisible cuts may be applied by the editing team. Either way, this is how cinematography is displayed in great effect.
4) Adam, Sienna & Ilia at the White Fang facility
As the short transitions to the second set of action sequences, we are treated to a several-second rotation shot where Sienna flails her chain weapon at her enemies wildly but precisely. Melanie Stern confirmed she animated Sienna fighting and honestly, I had initially thought animator Austin Hardwicke may have done her scenes. So I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong this time. As camera stops to face her, we get more of her cat ears shift, this time to help her confidently stay one step ahead of the Atlesian Knight about to attack her from behind. Next, Sienna uses the mech as a spring board to launch across the hall. Although the camera as she leaps over the Adam and Sienna is zoomed a bit too much and makes the shot feel slightly more claustrophobic than warranted. That being said, moments that follow with Sienna kicking her chain weapon against one mech and then shooting the snapped off arrow-end to the other mech opposite of her are examples of the sequence riding this balance between being chaotic and readable. Sienna delivering her smirk right after also adds a lot to her personality in the limited time we see her fight.
Now would be a good time to quickly talk about the Atlesian knights themselves. First, while seemingly trivial, it’s an interesting attention to detail to have the electricity around them be red as oppose to a more generic yellow or blue to better match their color scheme. Whether that was the VFX or compositing team’s idea is unclear, but it was neat to see regardless. Second, the way we see one of their feet into the camera after the one prior fell is a brief yet smart way to draw focus to the remaining androids. It also helps that between the White Fang being blurred from afar helps stage the distance between them and their opponents. One thing the camera does consistently well in this entire second fight sequence is stage the distance between characters, as we’ll done again shortly. Moving on, Adam blocks more bullets with with some sword spinning smears, though we do get a bit of slow-in and slow-out smears as he as he draws his sword and again before sheathing it. Then get the staging of the previous shot mentioned in effect as Ilia runs ahead with the camera making a nice low-angle shot with some slight rumbling as it trails her.
Once she finishes her attack, it’s Adam’s turn to run ahead and we see a classic case of slicing a few mechs which cuts pause as he sheathes is sword for dramatic effect. This is where Matt’s other animated sequence in the short is presented and a few things are worth highlighting: First, the slash effects quickly fading one-by-one. Second, the way the ends of Adam’s coat flaps down as a follow-through after he pauses. Third, the way the mechs slightly shifted from where they were cut. And fourth, The way the camera tilts to indicate how much damage was in effect. All of these aspects demonstrated how swift and overwhelming Adam’s attacks were. It also helps to given that quick moment of pause. As I said before in the forest skirmish scene, having a time and place to slow down can make for greater impact on a certain action. The same can go for having a character pause before a certain action is performed as demonstrated here.
The scene then proceeds with a sequence of Adam destroying two Atlesian Knights in quick succession. Right away does this moment one-up the previous one in terms of both direction and animation. With the direction, as Adam shoots his sword, we cut to the hilt hitting the first android and with another example of the camera, perfectly staging the set-up and distance of where Adam’s targets are, The sword being shot and bouncing up also easily draws the viewers eyes to where Adam will go next. We then cut to another shot of the sword twirling in mid-air and here is where the smear animation is best presented in the short. In previous cases, the spinning sword lacks the slow-in and slow-in frames. Here, it properly displays the momentum of the sword as it slows down which leads to the next thing Adam does. Hopefully, this settles the matter that the smear being used at all isn’t the problem, nor is it what it’s referencing to. Rather, it’s about how it’s animated which if you look at various anime, there are a myriad of ways to present smears. Back to the sequence, as Adam jumps to the android and off it by shooting its head, he then kicks the sword in mid-air to the other android in a manner similar to animator Ken’ichi Fujisawa did in a fight scene in Naruto Shippuden.
We end Matt’s animated sequence to move on to the next one where the Schnee Dust Company personnel fire across the hall and we get a nice change to red lighting to signify how treacherous things will get for both sides. As Adam, Sienna and Ilia dodge the bullets, we see some good character acting maintained in how they each take cover. Adam using his sword skills to defend himself, Sienna acrobatically staying out of fire and Ilia clumsily back-stepping which makes her inexperience compared to the former two self-evident. Next is more of Sienna’s tiger ear shifts as she and Adam notice the canister creating some anime smoke screen effects, through they’ve been visually filtered a bit. As Adam and Sienna counterattack, the latter climbs up the wall and jumps off which gives a glimpse of how much her weapon resembles a tail. And following that, we get more of her using her chain weapon to flail the gun she lassoed to knock all three of her enemies around her with slightly chaotic but steady camera shifts,
Next is Adam getting more action through a brief shot of him charging towards the camera which reminded me of how Winter first struck against Qrow in chapter 3 of volume 3. The latter cut was part of animator, Ian Kedward’s sequence in that fight, but I’m unsure of who animated Adam’s portion of this sequence from here-on. Jumping slightly ahead, we get an interesting transition from Adam slicing to Sienna throwing her chain around. Only it’s not completely a transition, but because it’s a split-second and their actions flow well, it feels like one at normal speed. With more of Sienna’s agile moves, she snaps off her arrow again which starts with her facing towards the camera to then cleverly rotate around the arrow to highlight what it’s going to do. Moving ahead, we get one more action moment with Adam, this time with some additional funny character acting from the SDC guard as he tries to dodge the former’s strikes and attempts a right hook only to get schooled by Adam’s hilt again. Though it doesn’t end right there as we see a couple of shots of Adam framed dominantly, about to stab the guard while he’s down and he pleads for his life. Though there’s an excellent delayed reaction where Adam responds to Sienna’s call as if he got caught up in the blood lust. This short has been a good opportunity in general to add character to Adam and Sienna through just their facial expressions alone.
5) Adam and Sienna in the Throne Room
After all is said an done, we get another invisible cut to the throne room with another White Fang member running across the SDC facility hall. It would’ve been funny if it’s the same member that did the invisible cut after the forest scene, but they have different skin tones so that’s sadly not the case. In all seriousness, we don’t get any visual direction that’s too daring aside from the establishing overhead shot starting the sequence. An interesting observation is how in comparison, the seen that first introduced Sienna in volume 5 had he and Adam’s positions mirrored only she’s on her throne and Adam’s kneeling. This may visually support the fact Sienna was considering treating Adam as her equal in the future, so long as he did overstep his boundaries.
Not much else to add before moving on to the next short sequence through a transition that’s not an invisible cut but is something more like a jump cut? It’s honestly hard to describe, but it does go along with the motif of passage of time. One other thing to mention is the flame and how it’s animated. it doesn’t feel at all like a 3-D visual effect and is instead more like it was animated in 2-D with some filtering effects. Beyond that, not much else to add for the remainder of the short, though that’s not a bad thing since a moment of rest is needed to close off after two extensive action scenes. The only two things worth stating have to do with Adam. First is how when Adam is on the throne, there’s one shot where he is of distance from the White Fang members and another where we don’t see his full body from behind the throne. Both indicate the relationship between him and his followers. At this point in his story, he is less concerned about looking out for his fellow kind as he is about stroking his ego. To conclude, we get the most ironically-funny shot in the short where Adam gets exactly what he deserves and walks off leaving his mask behind feeling defeated. Some would find the choice to have him animated walking awkwardly to be strange when connecting to his last scene in volume 5. But in the context of the story of his character short, it works thematically.
Final Note
This was quite a short to cover, but there was so much packed in that both reinforced some things spoken by Blake before about Adam’s character while still peppering in insight into his psyche through a combination of facial expressions, adjustments to his line of dialogue and the in-genius transitioning techniques used. And there were still a couple more small details that weren’t fully covered like the red markings in Adam’s design added after the first scene or Ghira’s slightly younger character model. The visual direction demonstrated in just 7 minutes how in-spite of his hostile streak, Adam’s shift from the White Fang hero looked up to by his people to the tyrant whose thirst for power and dominance made his own followers turn on him.
While the short not totally perfect, its storyboards outmatch even the Weiss character short, which is saying a lot considering it was one of my favorites. It’s still a shame we don’t know who did the boards, but between them, Kerry and Connor, the ideas definitely payed off. The animators themselves also cannot be commended enough for the effort they poured into the short. There have been a few newer recruits being recognized by other more veteran animators, including Erika Soosar, John Yang, Michelle Yi and Jason Dickol. With Matt Drury added as another name, I do hope more fans will keep an eye out for them. Though none of this is to leave out the other animators involved with this short whose shots were unconfirmed, as they deserve to be kept an eye on in the future.
No doubt will there continue be criticisms and concern regarding the short though, as many wonder whether this will hinder on volume 6′s overall production. While the debate is a whole other subject for another day, it’s worth bearing in mind for now that shorts and volumes are two different things and the scale between them in terms of skill-set and more importantly, management, are night and day. For now, I intend to keep enjoying this short for both its story and as a potential sample of things to come.