MILES: Kerry, you start. JESSICA: (laughing) Only if it's just like that.
MILES: Kerry, you wanna start? KERRY: Hello, everybody!
MILES: Wait, are we rolling? KERRY: We're rolling.
KERRY: Hello, everybody! We are here with myself and Miles Luna. MILES: Hey.
MILES: And some blonde- KERRY: And Jessica Nigri!
MILES: Uh, I mean Jessica Nigri. JESSICA: Hello!
KERRY: She is the voice of Cinder Fall.
MILES: Cinder Faaall.
MILES: She's a bad lady in RWBY. KERRY: Yeah.
CINDER: We have big plans for you Roman.
MILES: Originally we wanted to call her- MILES & KERRY: (pronouncing like how it would be in Spanish) Cinderella.
JESSICA: You guys are so Spanish.
[Miles and Kerry start laughing]
KERRY: Sorry, we lost it. JESSICA: (silently judges)
MILES: You got here yesterday and you've been hanging out with us.
And now, we're doing a RWBY production diary about voice acting, performance and animation.
How have you been enjoying your time at Rooster Teeth productions?
JESSICA: It's like legitimately like a dream come true.
Because I've been a Rooster Teeth fan since I was 14. And I remember quoting Caboose.
Hi, Joel.
CABOOSE: Hello!
KERRY: How did Monty approach you? MILES: Yes.
JESSICA: Um, actually it was at New York Comic Con (NYCC) 2012.
Jessica: He took me behind a banner and was like, "I wanna show you something I've been working on.
And I really think that either you could make something for it or be a part of it."
And I was like "Mmm, okay.." MILES: Having you here in person recording the booth and stuff
MILES: has been even- even better, it's awesome just to get like be right there,
MILES: where we're able to talk and give feedback and stuff like that.
JESSICA: The recording booth was incredibly fun and like, at first, I was nervous,
but you guys are just super awesome. JESSICA: (as Cinder) Do what, Roman?
Her character and personality are completely opposite to mine.
KERRY: You don't say? JESSICA: Yeah! (laughs)
I have to find my dark place, like I have to. [all three laugh]
CINDER: You'll know what you need when you need to know.
LINDSAY: (as Ruby) Yaaaaaaaang!
Yaaaaaang!
LINDSAY: When we did our first table read, actually, it was when I tried the voice for the first time
and originally, I always thought of Ruby, and Monty explained Ruby as someone who is pure innocence,
like everything that comes out of her, both in her physical actions and her emotions are just completely honest.
I used to do a voice it would be like,
"Kitty!"
Like, I'd be picking up a cat and messing with it like, "Ohh, I'm a fat little kitty, ohh..."
And that just kind of developed into Ruby as I went along.
[Lindsay warms up her vocal chords]
LINDSAY: There's a couple of different techniques that I use to warm up.
(as Ruby) I'm Ruby!
I'm Ruby!
Hi! [giggles]
LINDSAY: The lip trills I was doing is definitely one of those and it helps a lot.
Kinda helps shove your voice up in your nose.
Which is exactly what happens when I'm doing my
"Yaaaang!
I'm just trying to shove it up in there.
And of course,
gotta shake it out.
CAMERA LADY: Gross.
LINDSAY: No, I do actually not wear shoes when I record
because it helps me go back to being a kid, and throwing away all the things that I have to do in society
so people think I'm normal.
RUBY: Look, guys, it's been a good two weeks.
And between more exchange students arriving and the tournament at the end of the year,
our second semester's gonna be great!
GRAY: What I like about the booth is:
you can do whatever you need to to get this sound that you want.
There's a couple of us, and Lindsay's one of them, where
it's a delight to, sort of, peek in the window and see what she's up to.
She does all sorts of cool physical things to get into the character
and also get just the right sound.
MILES: And it's so tiring. KERRY: Yeah.
MILES: It's so much fun, and it's like,
At the end of a recording
like, after– after they leave, we have that moment where we look to each other and we like,
KERRY: [sneezes]
MILES: We sneeze, we sneeze.
KARA: Doing Weiss's just a little bit difficult.
I basically sat for about two hours and read over the script and did about five different voices.
Weiss:Congratulations on being the strongest child to sneak your way into Beacon.
Bravo.
Kara: I finally found some sort of balance. And I found one that... for me... matched what the description had been of the character.
Arryn: Finding Blake's voice was difficult because you had to find a
good level between interesting and not interested.
Blake: [uninterested] Right.
Barbara: Miles, Kerry, Monty described her as being very similar to me in a sense of attitude and mindset.
So, I kind of just took it as well I'm going to pretend this is me and I'm just going to voice it like I would voice it.
Yang: Who's that?
Voice [off screen]: My name is Glynda Goodwitch.
Yang: Oh
Barbara: I think, uh, seeing the animators do their work and to actually bring our characters to life
is really cool for me personally because you're just in a sound booth doing a voice for this character
and you don't know what it's going to look like when it's actually animated.
Lindsay: As actors, we do our best to do the voice and portray the character as we think it's written
and what the directors and the writers are trying to get us to get to.
They somehow manage to do it with the body movement and it's insane to watch the process come together.
Shane: First we have to set up your skeleton.
Jessica: What does that mean?
Dustin Matthews: This is a mo-cap camera. It is an infrared camera.
We have 24 of these placed around the perimeter at various height and they track these dots that you see on my suit.
And it's able to triangulate the data and tell us where we're at spatially here which then translates into the 3D space in the computer.
Shane: So I have a walk that we recorded Jessica doing. And then we take that data and put it on a character.
If we have a big acting scene where we need to convey emotion,
like sometimes putting on the suit and acting it out is a lot quicker for getting the message across.
Monty: The motion capture especially helps with, the human side of things.
Because,
very often when we say we have motion capture.
People assume that the motion capture is there for the action.
that we go in there, we're doing our punches and kicks.
When very often, the action is more-- is better hand-animated
The motion capture is there mostly for performance.
Monty: There's only so many ways to kick.
You can kick high, you can kick mid, and you can kick low.
But, there's an infinite number of ways you can perform a scene.
It's way more useful in that aspect.
Joe: Especially on season two, we're pretty tight in the area that we work now.
So we kind of all kinda look over each other's shoulders.
Joe: And if we have a question about something that's like, "Oh, you know. here's a scene i'm working on right now
how do i kind of, simplify it, and get what i need?"
Joe: And it could be something as simple as just an-- eye blink.
or just like a headturn. Or just something simple.
Monty: The advantages of using 3D for what is a pseduo-2D animate show
is essentially 3D animation does a lot of the work for you.
In 3D, there is such a thing as "tweening" where you make one pose, you make another pose
and the program will create the poses in between for you.
Harley: There doesn't need to be a lot of minuscule movements.
It's been fun trying to strive towards that style because it's something new
it's something new to, like, master.
Gray: Because we've seen these characters for a year now
people are starting to get a pretty consistent idea of what's a Weiss gesture or walk or facial expression.
And, you know, the difference between that and Ruby or , you know, Blake's quieter nature and so forth.
It's neat to look at some of the animators from across the room at their desks while they're working on a scene
and they'll be studying themselves in the mirror either for facial expressions or they'll be playing out a scene
in their head and, uh, figure out when is the character is going to be excited or not or kind of pull it in a little bit
and then add that to the performance also.
*Funky dance music begins playing* Hayley: I usually just get my phone and videotape myself
while I listen to the audio and try and take those key poses and translate them into the animation.
If it's a Weiss scene, I know she comes from a nice background. She has a lot to prove.
She's... proper. So when she acts , you know, her back is straight; her chin is up.
With Ruby, she's young. She's not trying to be pretty, but she is.
If she's standing there I may not give her so much hip. I may have her stand square on her feet and
sort of act, like, nonchalant.
These girls are extremely feminine in the way that they move, so I don't have to dig very deep to pull out, like, that performance.
Austin: Even going back to like Red vs. Blue season 10 it's been a sausage-fest.
Like, it's just been filled with guys. And it's very fun and interesting to really, like, figure that out.
To really do the feminine side. We're great at it now. We've been working on it a bunch.
Hayley: I'm pretty impressed with the hips on Austin.. and Dustin.. and all the rest. They're pretty good.
And anything that doesn't come across in the MoCap, as animators... everyone here is more than capable of pushing things to where they need to be.
Nora: *grunt* Jaune: No, no, no, no! Nora: wheee *various battle noises*
: I think the action's what sets it apart from other shows. With 3D people tend to clean up the animation more
and make it more slow and fluid. But it's, it's a lot more comparable to fighting games where you're
mashing buttons.There's a lot of combos and stuff going for us.
Monty: Team RWBY is a tactical team. This time around I have the challenge of showing Team RWBY as
also a cohesive unit. Like, they've been together for this much time now. They should be able to read each
other's movements and be able to move off cue.
What they're going up against is something that is equally formidable in power as the monsters of last year
but with the tactical cunning of a person.
Ian: So one of the cool things about this season, is that we don't have the shadow people anymore.
Now we have actual people.
It's kind of strange thing where you won't necessarily pay attention to them, which is what you kinda want.
It really sets the tone that it's a vibrant city.
Gray: The physics engine is substantially improved and what that gets us is-
it saves time on what we call secondary animation. It lets us do more, more quickly.
Previously, they'd have to spend substantially more time on their own to make sure that the hair followed
the body just right or, if the person is wearing a dress or a skirt, does that flow with them just right?
Monty: Performance is very important, doesn't matter what medium it is.
At the end of the day, we're still looking at people and they need to behave like people.
There are things you need to notice as an animator, that most people wouldn't be seeing.
You're constantly observing people and seeing how different people act when they feel a certain way.
It's kind of creepy I guess.
*off camera laughter* You, like, people watch more 'cause you're trying to figure out
different mannerisms and stuff that you can use in your animation later when you have to animate
a character that is in that position.
Monty: You can have all the technical skill in the world.
But the most important thing, do this as often as you can, watch movies or watch shows or watch things
where people act and just keep your eyes open.
Miles: Thank you for watching everybody. We hope you enjoyed this look into how we bring the
characters of RWBY to life.
Now next time in the RWBY Production Diary we're going to be taking a look at
the compositing, editing, and sound design that goes into an episode of RWBY.
As well as, how we finish rendering an episode.
Jeff, what is rendering?
Jeff: Well Miles, rendering is the process of taking a 3D model and burning it into a 2D image.
What that really means is taking all of the geometry, the shaders, the textures, the lights, the camera angle
and uh figuring out the vectors necessary in order to put it together.
Vectors are used to calculate the perspective that the user would see the scene through
which you know could be anything that you want, which is very exciting. *fades out*