Okay guys, I'm gonna be honest about RWBY

I agree wholheartedly. They knew the constraints, they accepted, for better or worse it' s up to them to make it fly. That being said some of the issues could result from producers ingerance, which would shift the blame on them. I have no idea how controlling Roosterteeth is in that case though ...

I just watched the first episode on youtube. It' s way too short for me to form an opinion about the story, I' ll just say I' m not hooked, but on a technical level I' d say it' s decent. Perfectible, but decent.

 

And the fact that the series is aiming for that sort of thing makes it pretty unremarkable to me. I've watched Sailor Moon and Soul Eater already. I don't need another anime that seems to try combining them.

But I don't mean to say other people can't enjoy it, that's perfectly fine. Just putting out my own opinion of RWBY.

 

Because I like Roosterteeth and I like RWBY. I'm not saying it doesn't have its faults, because it does, but in my opinion it's a good series.

Jiku, you're awesome and all, but just because you have a differing opinion than I doesn't mean you can undermine my own opinion.
We can agree to disagree about the series as a whole, but don't say my opinion is wrong.

(as for the 3D thing, I might be biased because I personally am better at and prefer to do traditional animation. So you might have me on that one.)

 

wtf is RWBY and why should I care

 

It's an anime-esque web series by the guys who make Red vs Blue. I guarantee that you'll hate it. It looks like the kind of thing I'd like, though.

 

I don't attack opinions, I go after arguments to the greatest extent of my abilities. It's my fault if I seemed like I was trying to take yours from you. My meaning was actually to invalidate your argument in defense of them and question your position. The defense, the difficulty argument, is invalid and wrong. No nice way to say that. The question, which I think is what was the problem here, was out of mere curiosity. Because if your defense, the reason you have the opinion, is wrong, there is no reason for you to maintain the opinion. But you've given me enough to move on ahead. I don't think quality is an opinion that you can just have. You need to be able to back it up. You can like something and think it's enjoyable with no back up. But to say it's good, you need to be able to defend that otherwise it feels kind of like you're just saying something without sorting out your own thoughts and disrespecting the initial work by not thinking about it in a serious manner.

 

RoosterTeeth DID warn us some episodes would be shorter than others. Monty himself at RoosterTeeth Expo said "We're doing something called 'varying consistency', meaning same time each week, different length episodes so we can keep on schedule."

So they're doing it to keep on- you know what it's the spam zone **** this noise.

 

No offense meant to you, but this is just a bad excuse for backing up arguments and conversation and such.

 

None taken.

To be honest, I actually just have up halfway through since I can't force people to change their opinions, no matter how much stuff I back up my arguments with

 

I don't think I've ever seen you give it a chance. You don't actually back things up in a well constructed and clear way. I know that I'm often unclear and have to make various changes to my initial position to clarify my initial intent, but I do that because I want to communicate with all of you in a meaningful way. I don't want to just write you all off as idiots who won't take me seriously. I don't want to just assume that you're all so hard headed and stubborn that you won't even acknowledge my points and ideas. I don't want to just give up.

It's your right to give up just as uch as it is mine not to, so this isn't a critique. It is just an observation that perhaps you haven't given the good fight its due chance.

 

yea okay so I was a bit tipsy last night and shouldn't have been on the internet so my explanation was sh*t.

BUT I was correct when I said RWBY had it's faults while still being good. Yes, the animation is not quite to a professional level, but was anyone really expecting, like, Pixar? I knew going into it it wasn't gonna be the best thing on the market in that area, and therefore gave them some leeway (especially since I used to enjoy Dead Fantasy, Monty's previous work, so much). They are a very small studio (I think ten members total for the production team? I could be off) and you couldn't possibly expect them to be on par there, not even with RvB, since that one uses stuff straight from Halo.
Perhaps if they'd done it in two years instead of one, it'd look a bit better. The first trailer premiered sometime in the fall of 2012, which leads me to believe, based on other stuff they'd done, that they'd only been working on it since the spring or summer of that year. Again, could be wrong. But big budget animated movies take years to produce, even with teams of hundreds working on it. Rise of the Guardians, by comparison, started production in 2008, released at the end of last year, and cost $45 million to make. I feel like if RWBY, purely from an animation aspect, had tried to be any more ambitious than it was, it would have taken more money, time, and resources than it did, and interest on the project would have been lost.
Therefore, despite not being the best, I'd like to cut it some slack there. It's definitely goodlooking compared to a lot of the stuff you'd see on the internet.

From a writing standpoint, again it's not the best thing in the world, but nor is it the worst. It's solid and funny, and part of the problem is the delivery of the lines (which I don't blame on the actors, as they're not professional actors but people they just pulled from around the RT office). That, however, is subjective, as everyone's taste is different, and no one's gonna think everything is funny. I really feel like once the series picks up a little bit more (which it's doing right now) and the plot starts getting going, it'll really start to shine.

I also really really like the character designs. They're original and interesting, to the point that I'm currently contemplating a Ruby cosplay.

Even when I'm not smashed my explanations aren't the best but yea here's my defense, take it as you will.

 

Blake's voice actress is just one of the writers' girlfriend :P she doesn't even work there

 

I' m not sure what you mean by that. In terms of ressources no, I don' t imagine anyone would expect them to have that much money to work with. In terms of polish however it' s not that farfetched a goal. Take South Park for instance (yes, it' s CG, the earliest seasons were done with Maya), its design and animation style were purposefully minimalist in order to deal with deadlines more easily, and thanks to that they were able to attain the same level of polish as Pixar.

RWBY obviously took the same kind of approach in its design (almost no textures, just cell shaded uniform colors, cartoonish backgrounds), but its animation aimed much higher than that and it shows : some shots here and there could clearly be improved, you can tell they could have fixed them given a few more time. Not that the average viewer cares about any of that, it' s nothing major, I' m just nitpicking cause I' ve dabled in CG.

I didn' t know RWBY came from the guy who made Dead Fantasy, which was clearly made by someone who mainly cared about animating stuff, not design or story. Incidentally I was the same, I thought modeling, texturing and writing was rather boring but animating stuff and watch it come alive was fascinating to me.

 

You explained why you're willing to accept a lower quality of product and you explained why you like it. I was never in opposition to you thinking any of those things because they're just opinions. But the fact remains, those things will never make it good. Good, as I use it, is just the quality. Quality is how well it's made, no caveats, no qualifications, no explanations. Something like, "Good, considering they had a low budget," doesn't mean good, it means that it was better than people would have to expect based on other factors. Certain things have enormous advantages when it comes to their chances at being good because they have more time or money, but I don't care, it doesn't stop them from being good or bad at the time they roll out and the same is true for things that don't have the advantages. None of this means that you can't like it. None of this means that you can't love and adore it. Liking something isn't even necessarily correlated with how good it is. That's what taste is. So you can cut them slack if you want, but you should acknowledge that it's not something that is incumbent on anyone, so other people won't do the same.

On that front, you're defining good from a relative standpoint and I'm not. Unless you decide to move off of the relative scale, you can't even argue with me on the same terms. So, you're not right when you say it's good. You're right when you say that it's good for a cheap show with a short production cycle. Those two things don't even intersect though.

Other things to consider, if you check the staff roll at the end of each episode they have around 40 people on each one, not 10, and more than 10 of them are animators. You're also constant comparing them to Pixar, which is silly, because they use low poly MMD models not the massive 50k+ poly rigs you see on the big screen. Low poly is no excuse to look bad and it's not the reason at all why people rip on the animation.

The writing is something that I have to say desperately needs improvement. The dialogue is the crowning success of it. It sounds campy and cheesy, but human enough to not kill the mood. The VAs are at least on par with most of the anime dubbing industry of today(very low bar, I know) so I'm actually not going to complain at all there. That's good enough. But the plot is generic shovelware JRPG. The character development is on par with a children's sitcom and the world building is clumsy and slow. I'm going to say the writing is the best part of the show right now, but it's not good either.

The character designs are good on paper, sans Miles and Monty. I honestly think that the cape was a terrible idea though. Low poly models cannot do flowy things well and they knew that and decided to go with it without mitigating it in any way. That's a little meta, though.

So, you're doing a lot better than most people who try to defend their given series and I really appreciate that you've stayed civil with me in spite of my manner. I'd like to see you be a little more objective with your use of the word good and I'd like you to be more willing to criicise things that you like, but still, it's been good.

 

I totally see where you're coming from on most of this, honestly. You make good points and back them up. Honestly, I'm a poor debater, but I'm trying my best. I'm also a terrible critic, I know. Honestly, I'm really sick right now, though, so I think I'm just gonna let this one go unless someone else wants to pick it up, because I am kinda really out of it right now.

Also, I'm civil with you because I consider you a friend. If you were just some punk I'd probably be a lot less patient ahaha.

 

I think that, besides you being sick right now (get better soon D: ), you seem to be naturally more emotionally connected to characters than Jiku, so that you have a harder time being objective about the series. I totally get that though, as some of my friends are the same way. Sorry if I have perceived you wrongly though.

But I have to agree with Jiku, on his point that the RWBY team needs to cater to their strong points, in order for the series to work as well as it should. It's like how an indie developer such as thatgamecompany aren't even close to the scale of AAA game developers such as Rockstar, yet Journey was critically acclaimed, because the team knew what they were capable of and stuck to that.

Also, Liam from The Switcher gives a pretty accurate review in my opinion (it's near the start of that podcast). Doesn't comment about size of team or how long they've been doing this stuff. Just gives objective criticism.