#animators spotlight

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:

*Last Updated May 6th, 2019

This is a personal small project I’ve considered doing, inspired by The Canipa Effect’s Animator/Studio Spotlight videos & AnimeAjay’s Dragon Ball Super Animation Supervisors mini-series. I’ve spent a few months researching animators that have worked on the 3-D anime-inspired webseries, RWBY for a while out of desire to acknowledge and better appreciate what they’ve worked on. And as of this post, I decided to take the plunge and make a blog post using info from a combination of tweets from animators, con panel videos, blu-ray/dvd audio commentaries, behind-the-scene videos, and demo reels.

Expect some variation between posts, but the general structure will feature a brief mention of when each animator got involved in the show, an interpretation of their scenes and styles while partially mentioning the 12 principles of animation as a frame of reference, a personal comparison between certain Japanese animators (since many of RWBY’s Production staff take inspiration from anime and are anime fans, I’d figure why not do this), a list of scenes and shots that were either confirmed they worked on or can be presumed they did upon observation (and I could be wrong as to which scenes some animators did) and a demo reel of each animator. Since I’m still new to the idea of making blogs, I have no idea what kind of attention this will get if it gets any at all. Hopefully, people will like it, maybe learn a thing or two. Anyway’s let’s get started!

Joel Mann

To kick-off this series of RWBY animator spotlights, we’ll start with Co-Lead animator of RWBY from volume 3 onward, Joel Mann.

Joel’s time working on RWBY at Rooster teeth started during volume 2 with one of his first scenes being Cinder, Emerald, & Mercury’s meeting in their dorm room, in chapter 5. It’s throughout most of volume 2 that he spent time on interestingly big scenes due to either the importance of said-scene or the challenges doing so. Moments such as Ozpin’s speech in Volume 2 were what fell into the former, where Joel studied footage of speech performances and listened to the audio track for Ozpin so frequently that by the time he did motion capture, he had it memorized. And then moments like the students dancing together at the ballroom in chapter 6 of the same volume fell into the latter of being really challenging. Considering Volume 2 was the first time he did serious animation in a couple of years (as confirmed in the vol 2 blu-ray animators audio commentary), his character acting turned out pretty decently.

Since then, he has either spent timing doing motion capture as characters like Tyrian or spends time on action sequences. The first fight he got to animate was Team RWBY & Team JNPR fighting off every Grimm in Beacon in Chapter 12 and it was one of the rare occasions where fight sequences were not largely done by either Monty Oum or Shane Newville (though the former did animate the Team CFVY part). And by volume 3, he would become co-lead animator, sharing the position mainly with animator Dustin Matthews. Since then, his traits with animating fight scenes have started to fully mold. From the Qrow vs Winter fight to Ruby vs Neo & Torchwick to Weiss & Blake vs the Atlessian Knights & the White Fang to Ozpin and Cinder’s face-off (the latter two he was given a week to do each), he increasingly pushed the envelope of squash & stretch and staging, the former animation principle he utilizes on characters to create a zipping, flashy speed. Joel only goes further on the exaggeration by the volume 4 Character Short and Chapter 1 of Volume 4, specifically with Ruby’s semblance..

In terms of the latter principle, staging, this can be seen when characters in Joel’s sequences are making various stances, to the point where they sometimes pause for a split-second. This combination of staging and squash-&-stretch are what have made the bulk of how Joel has approached dynamism into action he has animated, though this has garnered mixed feedback from the fan base. Some have heavily praised him strongly by even mistakenly assuming he “worked closely with Monty”, which was hardly ever the case while others have criticized him for not resembling the way Monty animated enough and being too “stop-&-go” or having characters “teleport” too much. Ignoring the fact it’s in an animator’s nature as essentially an artist to possess and develop his/her own identity when approaching a sequence, something Monty Oum himself was always for, Joel has simply been honing his craft the way he would feel makes sense. When he has characters do certain stances or poses, it leaves a memory in the viewer’s eye whether it’s Ruby making hang time while having her feet planted on the bottom end of the sickle part of her weapon or making a quick sliding rotation as she lands before stopping or Ren staying crouched onto the Petra Gigas’s arm before jumping back and back flipping. Best case scenario, you get something like the wide-angle shot in the volume 5 Weiss Character short where Weiss both swiftly and elegantly lunges at each and every Beowulf.  

Of all the animators to compare him to in the anime industry, his works come off similar to Arifumi Imai, who’s known to contributing scenes in shows like Attack on Titan, One-Punch Man and Sengoku Basara. Imai, like Joel Mann, uses a lot of zipping and trails through flames, smoke, smears or other visual effects, as well as exaggerating the human body to an absurd but effective degree (yes, that guy cart-wheeled the horse he mounted on). Another example would be animator, Masayuki Kunihiro, who has consistently been working on anime projects from studio Ufotable such as Tales of Zestiria the X, Fate/Zero, Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works and God Eater. As one could see from those examples, Kunihiro shares that sense of staging through extreme poses and stances before having characters strike and lunge with that sense of distortion found in squash and stretch.

Here are a list of confirmed/presumed scenes Joel Mann worked on:

Cinder talking with Mercury & Emerald about Pyrrha - Vol 2, Ch 5

Team RWBY at the dance - Vol 2, Ch 6

Ozpin’s speech - Vol 2, Ch 8

Ozpin approving Team RWBY’s Search & Destroy mission request - Vol 2, Ch 8

Weiss, Blake & Yang’s discussion at the campfire - Vol 2, Ch 10

Team RWBY & JNPR fighting off the Grimm at Beacon - Vol 2, Ch 12

Parts of Qrow vs Winter fight - Vol 3, Ch 3

Part of the Cinder, Emerald and Mercury vs Amber fight Scene - Vol 3, Ch 7

Weiss and Blake vs Atlessian knights and White Fang - Vol 3, Ch 10

In the Volume 3 blu-ray/dvd Director’s Audio Commentary, Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna referred to Joel’s time working on this scene as, “the Joel effect”, since he did this scene within a week.

Majority of the Ruby vs Torchwick and Neo fight - Vol 3, Ch 11

Between the Volume 3 audio commentaries, Gray said about 10% of the fight was animated by Monty whereas Joel said the Ruby vs Neo parts were what Monty Oum did.

At least a third of Joel’s time spent animating the fight were manually applying hair and clothing physics in every shot. This was a challenge due the setting being windy in the sky.

Ozpin vs Cinder - Vol 3, Ch 12

Ruby slaying each Beowulf (presumed) - Vol 4 Ruby Character Short

Ruby fighting the Beringel until she fell through the collapsing roof (presumed) - Vol 4 Ruby Character Short

Provided mo-cap of the Beringel using child crutches

Team RNJR counterattacking the Petra Gigas after Jaune lays out his plan (presumed) - Vol 4. Ch 1

Part of the Qrow vs Tyrian fight - Vol 4, Ch 7

Wide-angle shot of Weiss striking each Beowulf and sprouting icicles from the ground - Vol 5 Weiss Character Short

Yang clashing fists with the Ursa and breaking its arm (presumed) - Vol 5 Yang Character Short

Part of Raven vs Cinder fight - Vol 5, Ch 13

Harley Dwortz

Next on the animator spotlight is Harley Dwortz. Having been involved in Rooster Teeth animated projects since Red vs Blue season 10, Harley was one of the first animators brought on during volume 1. When fans look back at volumes 1 & 2, they tend to refer Monty Oum’s own fight sequences or scenes that match that presentation from certain other animators. That may be what made the characters introduced to the audience what they were in combat, but animators like Harley brought out everything else about the characters behavioral-wise. It’s in such non-action scenes where Harley shines as an animator.

When Monty, Miles, and Kerry developed and fleshed out the story and forged volume 1′s script between June 2012 and April 2013, they established various traits about the the main cast such as Weiss and Blake preferring to drink coffee and tea respectively and Yang being sensitive about others messing with her hair. However, animators such as Harley Dwortz added a lot of expression to whichever characters they animated. This is most evident with Weiss Schnee, who has an especially girly and sassy body language that Harley puts forth a lot of thought into in her assigned sequences. In chapter 7, as janky and rough the motion capture was, the idea both Weiss and Ruby’s attitudes as they bicker with each other is made evident from the way Weiss walks in response to being told she’s bossy. In chapter 8, Weiss emotes an exaggerated distress as she falls which then leads to Jaune’s enthusiastic response as he seized the opportunity to rescue her. Even the team RWBY dorm room scene in chapter 2 of volume 2 brought forth both rather unusual and yet fairly appropriate character acting from Weiss between her thinking seriously while balancing on a chair to her shyly tip-toeing to recover and maintain her composure, a silly scene that required a bit of “trust” on Kerry Shawcross’s part.

She was even subject to praise by the late Monty Oum in the volume 2 blu-ray directors audio commentary, feeling encouraged to improve the rigging or virtual skeletons to put simply on the characters. This even extended to her adding animation tricks in the more limited Poser software that Monty himself never thought of, such as Neptune’s head-shaking in chapter 4 of volume 2 and Ruby’s arm flailing as she got the choke hold from Yang in chapter 7 of the same volume. Harley goes that extra mile with expressing the right gestures for the right characters, whether it’s Pyrrha frantically moving back and forth to guide Jaune who clings on to a Deathstalker, Neptune being moved around by Ruby while smiling and being still like a cardboard standee, Ruby being awkwardly fidgety when attempting to strike a conversation at her Mom’s grave or Ren and Nora’s rather out-of-sync waltz which follows with Penny’s rather adorable dance (which of course, got a laugh out of Miles Luna).

It’s worth putting into context why any of this matters. The character acting established by animators like Harley is what set the foundation for how these characters would be depicted in mixed media projects be it in manga installments or in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle. In the case of the latter, Weiss’s idle animation where she nonchalantly checks her nails came from something Harley herself did. This can even apply to animal characters like Zwei who was the first person to animate the character and according to Monty, she and animator Dustin Matthews previously worked on animating animals in The Sims 3: Pets Expansion. It doesn’t matter if it’s scenes from the earlier volumes or in the ones past the narrative time skip like Qrow and Raven’s meeting at the tavern or Ruby laughing at Jaune’s hoodie as her head inflates. Harley takes pride as an animator thinking about how to express each character, even when they’re just standing and talking. 

Whenever she’s not preoccupied working on RWBY or Red vs Blue, this attention to character acting from her is also very present in every skit she has animated in RWBY Chibi. In the Shadow People skit in episode 5 of season 1, Harley gives Weiss an extra bounce in her steps which would seem too silly if the character models were more normally proportioned but make perfect sense as their super-deformed versions. Same goes for Ozpin in the Director Ozpin skit episode 1 of Season 2, where he shuffles his feet around as he walks like something out of a Charlie Brown cartoon. That’s not to say she constantly exaggerates in RWBY Chibi, as the focus is on making the animation believable and engaging in the context of the show’s aesthetic, be it the way Ozpin’s cheeks move as he whistles or the way Weiss’s ponytail slips off of Ruby’s hand. 

Harley’s quirky and expressive animations would be comparable to certain animators that have done similar scenes in the popular, on-going, magical girl Precure anime franchise, namely animator Yuki Hayashi. You can watch Hayashi’s own scenes on mute with no context as to what the characters are talking about and still get a good grasp of their chemistry and personalities. He has also done some freelance work, animating in shows from other studios, including the popular, meme-worthy, dancing sequences in he ending theme of the first season of Blood Blockade Battlefront. Another animator known for great character acting is Norimitsu Suzuki. Although he’s known for bigger things like his smoothly drawn liquid, explosion and smoke effects and 3-D-like rotation, he is also great at animating characters express themselves. If you’ve seen an ending theme from a Studio Bones title like the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater or Star Driver or the first ending theme in Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear-Card Arc, that’s where Suzuki’s knack for having characters walking, running, dancing or whatever other gestures is best seen.

Here are a list of confirmed/presumed scenes Harley Dwortz worked on:

Ruby and Weiss arguing about each other’s personalities - Vol 1, Ch 7

Jaune holding on to the Deathstalker Grimm’s tail until he got flown to the sky - Vol 1, Ch 7

Jaune picking up Weiss as she falls but they both fall anyway - Vol 1, Ch 8

Weiss asking Blake what’s wrong and the girls discussing about the White Fang* - Vol 2, Ch 2

Harley mentioned how the part where Ruby, Weiss and Yang walked into the room was difficult because of how they weren’t really walking into the space they’re in. She had to stitch in mo-cap of walks together.

Animating Weiss zipping off the chair and back in position was also difficult due to the hair simulation on Poser only registering one character at a time and she used three Weiss models for each time she zipped across.

In the Volume 2 Director’s Audio Commentary, this is what Monty Oum and Kerry Shawcross had to say about Harley in this scene:

Monty: “She puts in that extra mile to put in like the asymmetry and like, she records her own face {Kerry: Yeah, she does.} and then acts the camera.” Kerry: “If you go look at her, for like, from her timelines, the end of it is just like her face, like, just shot at her desk. Of just like, her acting things out.” Monty: “I also, y'know, I, I, I, I’ve learned from watching them work on this stuff that I need to do a better job of like, making the rigs. Suddenly I’m in the animation commentary, make the rigs more capable (Miles chuckles.) of them to allow to do this kinda work because it’s like…”

Team RWBY going over their White Fang Investigation plan until Sun and Neptune interrupt - Vol 3, Ch 3

Ruby decides who Sun and Neptune can pair up with on the White Fang investigation - Vol 2, Ch 3 

Harley, like the other animators, was given freedom on how she wanted to animate the scene and thus had Neptune frozen stiff and swaying when moved next to Yang. According to Kerry Shawcross in the Volume 2 Director’s Audio Commentary:

Kerry: We have a pretty big policy of, if an animator has an idea just like, just go ahead and just like rough it out, just like we’ll watch it, we’re, we’re probably gonna go with it. ‘Cause that was Harley when she was like “Can I make Neptune like, stiff when she pushes him?” And I was like “Yeah, absolutely you can.”

Jaune approaching Pyrrha in a dress and asking her to dance - Vol 2, Ch 7

Between all four of the Volume 2 dvd/blu-ray audio commentary tracks, It’s unclear whether she did the actual Team JNPR dance itself or if it was Monty Oum as the fandom presumes

Jaune mentioning to Pyrrha that he has 7 sisters - Vol 2, Ch 7

Part of Zwei’s introduction - Vol 2, Ch 8

Oobleck bonking the one White Fang member as they board the train - Vol 2, Ch 11

Ruby and Oobleck facing one of the Mechs - Vol 2, Ch 11

Ironwoods forces mowing down the Grimm at Beacon - Vol 2, Ch 12

Opening scene of Ruby at Summer’s grave - Vol 3, Ch 1

Sage Ayana and Dew Gayl’s brief bout - Vol 3, Ch 2 

Scarlet and Neptune’s brief fight (with help of Carmichael Simon and another stunt coordinator) - Vol 3, Ch 2

Harley stated how unlike a non-fight scene where camera layout, prop and models are all set for her, in fight scenes have less information to go off of aside from how the modeling vaguely moves and thus animating can feel “nebulous” as she phrased it,

The latter-half of Weiss, Winter and Ruby’s conversation from the slap onward - Vol 3, Ch 3

Weiss & Winter’s conversation about her training - Vol 3, Ch 4

Yang and Neon talking before the match - Vol 3, Ch 5

Mo-cap for Neon - Vol 3, Ch 5

Pyrrha initially agreeing to being the Fall maiden - Vol 3, Ch 6

Opening scene where Salem and Team WTCH have their meeting - Vol 4, Ch 1

Team RNJR with the blacksmith - Vol 4, Ch 1

Weiss talking to her father in his office - Vol 4, Ch 2

Raven talking to Qrow about whether Salem has the relic - Vol 4, Ch 4

Weiss talking to Henry Marigold at the reception - Vol 4, Ch 6

Kid Ren and Nora hiding from the Nevermore until it leaves - Vol 4, Ch 10

Harley’s most recent Demo Reel: