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psyga315 · 4 years

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The problem of "I Watch RWBY For The Fight Scenes" and how to account for when that logic fails.

“I watch RWBY for the fight scenes.”

You heard these words before at some point in the RWBY community. Ever since the Red Trailer back in 2012, there was a huge emphasis on fights as shown with the titular “Red” doing nothing but battling proto-typical Beowolves. No huge emphasis was put on story bits like how she was visiting her mother’s grave or on the music (Red Like Roses pt. 1 has only 4 verses and most of it’s instrumental), and Ruby isn’t even voiced in the trailer. Hell, for a good chunk of RWBY’s pre-production stage, fans perceived Ruby as a stoic girl. RWBY’s core has been the fight scenes… Right?

Well, it doesn’t really take a rocket scientist to figure out that isn’t true. While an argument can be made of how RWBY’s fights are what makes the show, the case can’t be held true for its quantity and quality. Volume 3 is the only Volume in RWBY where there’s at least a fight scene per episode (the sole exception being Episode 8, Destiny), some even having two or three packed into one episode, making the Volume more of a roller coaster, especially in the last quarter. Conversely, Volumes 4 & 5 are the volumes with the fewest amount of fights, both totalling to 5 spread out across their 12 and 14 episode run, respectively, with Volume 5’s feature fight, the Battle of Haven, being the subject of massive ridicule to the point where a two-hour video was made to detail all the errors made, among them being that the core climax of that fight occurs off screen.

However, the reverse can be held true. Some criticisms for Volume 3 include that the fight scenes were either extraneous or had poor quality to them while the highlights of Volumes 4 & 5 were things that they made up for in spite of having the fewest amount of fight scenes. So, this begs quite a few questions towards RWBY.

Most of them, however, can be summed up into one: “What feature of RWBY can match or even rival its alleged selling point in case the viewer encounters a drought or lack of quality in fight scenes?” For these, we’ll break them down into some categories. I will try to be as fair as possible for this.

The first, obvious thing, would be:

Plot, Setting and Theme

Can a viewer enjoy RWBY for its plot when the fights prove lacking, evocative themes or even its rich environment? It depends. One of the biggest things that fans enjoyed about Volume 3 was its development of the plot. Suddenly, the world expanded and there’s tons of depth and lore to an otherwise standard “wake up, go to school, save the world” deal.

However, later complaints of RWBY involve the plot in some way. One of the biggest conflicts between fans in RWBY’s 7th Volume was the execution of its cliffhanger which involves the main villain flying in with her army of monsters, many arguing that at that point, the plot has entered a phase known as “only the author can save them now”, which causes some fans to even beg for an explanation as to why Salem never did something like what she did before.

While the setting in RWBY has been interesting, at times, they end up with the short end of the stick. No case is this more truer than when Mistral, reputed as a two-faced Kingdom which had both a cultured surface and a seedy underworld, was reduced to a few paintings and a couch and only now have the people at Rooster Teeth decided to shed more light on it as a setting for their Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

The themes are extremely interesting to dissect, especially since there’s a meta layer to some of them with the passing of Monty Oum leaking into some of the plot developments and even music decisions. This, too, however, is subjective to taste, though due to the nature of themes themselves and not because of execution. One person could have a completely different interpretation of what RWBY’s core theme is compared to another’s, and that leads to their opinions. For instance, a common theme that critics picked up on in RWBY is “Kids vs. Adults” as they end up reading the conflicts that occur in RWBY and Ruby’s wording in her speech to Qrow as “kids rule, adults drool”, something they took contention with.

While plot, setting, and theme are there, it isn’t enough to supplant fights should they fail too… So, what about…

Characters and Relationships

Can a viewer enjoy RWBY for its characters and relationships? I feel like this would be a strong case to make, but at the same time, this is also a bit of an oxymoron. While the characters can sometimes feel interesting and their relationships even more, the problem is that the characters sometimes lack the focus necessary to be fleshed out and their relationships even less.

You might heard these complaint before: “Bumblebee came out of nowhere”, “Black Sun/Fair Game was bait”, or even “RWBY has too many characters!” and that is, in of itself, a bit of a problem with RWBY. When it takes the time to do character arcs and relationship progression, it is pulled off masterfully, though whose arc it was is also subjective. A key contributor to the problem is how RWBY’s focus is spread too thin.

There’s, on average, 13 characters that make their first appearance in each Volume of RWBY, about half to three quarters of them go on to make reappearances in other Volumes and even a few of them become major characters. This becomes a balancing act for RWBY to juggle all the characters and developments, leading to two characters getting a massive shaft: Ruby, the main character of RWBY, and Oscar Pine, a plot important character.

Ruby has the criticism of being a flat character. While there’s no inherit problem in of itself, the fact that the plot has been shifting and stakes become raised while the most we got out of Ruby before Volume 6 is that, sometimes she expresses sadness, was concerning. Even after Volume 5, a common complaint is that her “character development” consists of her delivering speeches.

Oscar’s problem is that the most pivotal moments of his character are relegated to the background, to the point where his nickname is “Offscreen Pine”, as every Volume since his first in Volume 4, there has always been some moment of his story that happened off screen and, often, it was that moment that makes his character arcs of those Volumes incomplete.

That is also a bit of a problem with relationships as well. Sometimes they end up being complete without any actual set up or they do have set up, but it’s either a red herring for the actual ship or, most infamously, it was never intended to be a ship to begin with. Now, there are ships that have been well-developed, but, again, it’s subjective. One such example is Bumblebee, which, to this day, has been hotly debated as whether it’s the best ship RWBY’s done, a rushjob of a ship that was only made to appease the fans after a lackluster Volume, or, at worst, a ship so polarizing, that merely criticizing it would have you accused of being a homophobe.

In fact, some characters develop at different rates, to the point where it is almost whiplash and requires a fan to actively point out how the development was foreshadowed from the start of RWBY (which, itself, leads to a common criticism). Two infamous examples of this are Adam Taurus, who only appeared in a short trailer before making his full debut appearance three years later and showing a completely different side to him, and General Ironwood, whose status as an antagonist is still being debated to this day.

So, these two fields are also wild cards in terms of enjoying RWBY… So, what then? Perhaps we could turn to…

The Community

Watching RWBY is one thing, but talking about RWBY with other people might make it worth it, right? … Yeah, depends. RWBY has become a rather… interesting subject matter. Trawl around the internet enough and you’ll find people in a fight about whether RWBY was good or not… though it’s more often one side calling the other side names and insults nowadays.

No example is truer than Youtube, which if you ask a RWBY fan, is a minefield and that, if you watch just one video of a person saying how they dislike even one aspect of RWBY, you’re suddenly swarmed with videos on “RWBY sucks and here’s why” essays… Even though that’s not how the Youtube algorithm works.

Even RWBY’s Reddit isn’t safe from this. Since the end of Volume 6, it had fractured into a smaller subreddit, RWBY Critics, where people freely share their opinions of RWBY that they would otherwise be judged harshly on the main Reddit. It feels like, when you traverse through the RWBY community and interact with it, you either love it or hate it and your first impressions could mean the difference between getting welcomed or rejected.

It doesn’t help that, with every hiatus in RWBY, the fanbase becomes more and more unstable, to the point where a contest made in good fun with the purpose to help Rooster Teeth with designs for Grimm (a win-win) was eventually turned into a toxic environment simply because one of the artists chose to base a Grimm off something that people found culturally insensitive and made even worse when endorsements were made in favor of and against this aforementioned Grimm, eventually forcing Rooster Teeth’s hand in removing the public’s ability to vote and judging on the three remaining Grimm designs (two of them ended up being removed for different reasons).

I know that was a very specific example, but it highlights just how broken the community has become. It bears repeating: a fan contest where Rooster Teeth would use the winning design in RWBY ended up becoming a flame war because one of the designs was determined to be problematic and a couple of people promoted/denounced the design, effectively rigging the contest to be centered around this one design. I will not be surprised if, years down the line, when someone else chronicles the worst dramas in RWBY, this would at the very least get an honorable mention.

And then there are where you stand on certain characters or plots. Should you ever find that your opinion differs from the majority’s opinion on a certain matter, prepare for a world of hurt or even being asked “why do you even watch RWBY?” That said, I doubt the entire community is as dark as I put it. I think there’s parts of the fandom you can enjoy, like fanmade content or even just a simple conversation with a close-knit group, especially if you enjoy RWBY…. Which, I guess leads to…

So… What do you watch RWBY for?

The point of this article was to see what part of RWBY one can find enjoyable when fight scenes prove to not work and, given what I said, you might expect me to say that there’s nothing enjoyable… Though, surprisingly, my conclusion is a lot more optimistic than that.

If you watch RWBY solely for the fight scenes, then prepare for droughts or lack of quality, or even just watch fight compilations. However, if you watch RWBY solely for the plot, setting, themes, characters, relationships, or even the community itself, then you’ll need to be prepared for similar problems.

There’s two keys to enjoying RWBY: having tolerance or patience, and having more than one thing to watch RWBY for. I think a major reason why you usually have a bunch of people drop RWBY after a volume is because they were disappointed with how RWBY did something or how RWBY lacked in something and decided to quit while they were ahead. For the most part, it might be that they took all they could get from RWBY and decided they had enough.

That said, I’ve seen people sing praises for RWBY’s story, setting, theme, characters, relationships, and even community. It’s led me to think of this struggle to find enjoyment in RWBY to be similar to a theme found in the show: the theme of persevering in the face of despair. Several characters in the show have become bitter, cynical, or even evil because they had enough of the hardships that the world threw at them while the heroes are those who try desperately to keep moving forward in spite of that.

And it’s not easy, I will admit that. It’s not easy to come back to enjoying RWBY once you begin to feel contempt for it. After the finale of Volume 5, I felt confused. Before, I had wanted to enjoy every episode of the Volume, but this one felt so rushed and so incomplete that I found myself thinking “that’s it?”. While I started to become cynical about RWBY after Volume 4 and had temporarily dropped RWBY in between “The First Step Pt. 1”’s release and sometime after “Breach”’s premiere, it was Volume 5 that made me begin to lose enjoyment. Just knowing that Rooster Teeth could do something like Volume 5 again had me lose faith.

However, there are moments that made RWBY enjoyable for me. Certain episodes were hailed as being good watches, there were a few plots, characters, and relationships I enjoyed (even ones I normally wouldn’t got some delights), settings I wished would be better explored, and I’m always going to examine themes of RWBY since that’s one thing I enjoy about it.

And, true enough, RT has done stuff that even the more hardened of critics enjoy. It’s all about patience, tolerance, and perseverance.

I know this isn’t a straight and narrow answer, but there are no easy answers. The major takeaway from this is that “I watch RWBY for the fight scenes” has the potential to backfire and you need backup reasons to enjoy RWBY and a little bit of patience in order to appreciate RWBY.

#RWBY #RWDE

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werewolfgabby · 4 years

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Evaluation

This was a really interesting project to work on, as it was a task to make a games concept but with a literature based starting point. I came up with the base concept for the game (Halloween Dating Sim) before we even started this project as it’s something I hadn’t really done before yet, and would give me a chance to explore a new aesthetic. I also really wanted to do a game like this as it would allow me to work on my background drawing skills - since they are a huge part of these types of game.

Since I already had a brief idea of what I wanted to do before I started, I chose to research all the books that had supernatural themes or creatures that weren’t regular humans - so that I could relate it to the monster idea I had. I chose these books to research: Woman in Black, Jekyll & Hyde, Frankenstein, Let The Right One In, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The main book that I chose to influence this project was Jekyll and Hyde, since I loved the mystery and secrecy aspect of the novel, as well as the main character - Jekyll - and his issues with split personality and the supernatural. This Victorian Gothic novel combined with my original idea to make the dating simulator meant that I now had a dual genre game. While the initial game appears to be a modern dating simulator set in a cursed town, it is actually a detective game which allows you to expose the darker side of the town’s residents. In that sense, the novel starting point has actually stayed very prominent in my project - there is a character who is based on Jekyll & Hyde who is the main villain, and the main character you play as (Bailey) almost takes on a similar role to Utterson, trying to solve the mystery.

For this project - Cauldron Hollow - I have created many different characters, some background artwork and a book cover, as well as some fake screenshots of how the game-play could look. When I went into the project I had planned to create more expressions and poses for each character and draw more backgrounds, but due to my limited time frame I am happy with the amount of work i’ve been able to produce.

The Characters

I wanted to design a range of date-able characters for this game so that I would have more examples of character design for my portfolio. My poor time management definitely affected the outcome of this work quite significantly - as it was at least a week into the project when I started making the characters. I gave myself some time to think about the designs but did very few concept sketches before jumping into the final artwork, as I was worried that I wouldn’t have any actual finished work to show if I didn’t do it quickly. I wanted to have a decent amount of characters to show a lot of variety in the designs, which led to me having hardly any time to focus on each one.

I did all the artwork over one weekend, which was a very poor idea - as I had no time to come up with several iterations for each. On top of this, drawing 9 characters in such a short amount of time left me severely burnt out by the end, and as a result some character artwork clearly has significantly less effort put into it. The character I made last, Robin, as a result was the one I liked the least - the colours didn’t really fit properly, the pose was a little rigid and the linework was messy. I think that this was partially due to the type of brush I was using, which I don’t think is suitable for the kind of clean line-work I was after - as a result I will change my brush for the next project to try and get a more appealing finish.

If I could redraw these characters, I would do a lot of things differently. I would dedicate more time to each one and really focus on the ‘quality vs quantity’ as my mindset for this project was ‘more work means better’. I would also spend more time creating multiple different looks for each character so I could then pick the best concept and refine it, rather than finalising the first result in my head. On top of this, I would like to spread out the character design across a wider period of time, so that I don’t overwork myself on one - or even just do less characters.

There are some things I did like about the character design - I did try and vary my poses more; each character does have a fairly unique pose (even if the anatomy isn’t great, which I’d like to focus more heavily on in the next project) which I haven’t really tried before, and I think that they definitely look better because of it even if it isn’t a massive change. I also really like the colour schemes of some of the designs, and the outfit design I did, as I think it matches the kind of aesthetic I was going for. One final thing i’m glad I did was to keep the characters consistent in terms of shading, highlights, art style and brush texture - they do all look like they’re part of a set rather than all being drawn in completely different ways. I think the fact that I used a consistent colour palette throughout the project definitely influenced this, as I found that most characters fit pretty nicely together.

The Backgrounds

I came into this project wanting to improve my backgrounds, since they’re a big part of dating sim games and aesthetics. I am actually really happy how they turned out since I’m not normally very confident with them. The first background I made was of a bedroom and window, which I coloured in the same way that I had done the characters. Thanks to the perspective drawing feature, all the features of the room look relatively accurate, which I’m really happy about. It was only the hand drawn features (such as the pumpkin clock) which look a little out of place- but to remedy this I think I just need more practice with perspective.

For the window background, if I could improve it I think I would have added more detail to the walls - as the painting and picture frames are empty. I would have also liked to make the space outside of the window a lot more detailed - but I was too tired after drawing the initial room to bother spending more time on it. To fix this, I could have left it and came back later to finish it off when I was inspired to do it.

I coloured the room with the same colour palette I had used for all the other work, which complimented the character well but also left me with a very limited range of tones that I could use. Overall, I think that trying to work entirely in a certain set of colours was a nice experience, but I don’t think it was really noticeable at all for the most part - I think I should either use 4-5 colours in a palette next time or non at all, but it was still an interesting experience.

I was planning on creating a range of backgrounds but I had not anticipated how much time I would spend on the next one. It took me over 7 hours to draw from start to finish, and while it was absolutely worth it, it didn’t really give me a lot of time to do anything else. This is also an issue which I think can be fixed with practice - as I was still pretty new to the idea. I do really love the Garden background and how it turned out, especially thanks to all the soft lighting and level of detail which I included. For these backgrounds, I actually looked at a variety of reference images while creating it, and it really paid off I think - so hopefully I will continue to do so in the future. While I’m really happy with the few backgrounds I did produce, it would have been nice to have the chance to do more.

The Book Cover & Designs

Having to design a book cover was a pretty challenging part of this project as it’s new to me, so I wasn’t really sure what to put on the front. I did a few different ideas and eventually settled on the one that would allow me to both draw a background and a detailed character. This particular scene involved me having to draw a foreshortened character, which I struggled with. I kept at it until it looked right to me, but in hindsight I could have just looked up a reference to help me. Like the other backgrounds, I looked up reference images for the building rooftops, and as a result I think they turned out really well.

The actual character artwork had some issues initially - her face was too wide, the eyes were slightly wrong for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint, and the whole thing looked a bit flat. I ended up having to change the colour palette at this point just to help the character stand out from the background. I’m glad that I went back and fixed all the issues before finishing the work, as i’m a lot happier now with how it’s turned out, although the face still bothers me a bit. I think if I could do this again i’d love to attempt an actual painting, rather than just soft shading and adding overlay layers, as it’s something I haven’t done in a while. I’m happy with how the character is posed as well as I think it actually looks different from my usual static poses. On top of this, I’m really glad that I went for a handwritten title as it gives it more of a fun feel. I do however think that it doesn’t really show the dating simulator aspect of the game- but I would have liked to create an alternate cover that is a lot happier and more pastel if I had more time, to show the dual genres present in the game.

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