Installa Steam
Accedi
|
Lingua
简体中文 (cinese semplificato)
繁體中文 (cinese tradizionale)
日本語 (giapponese)
한국어 (coreano)
ไทย (tailandese)
Български (bulgaro)
Čeština (ceco)
Dansk (danese)
Deutsch (tedesco)
English (inglese)
Español - España (spagnolo - Spagna)
Español - Latinoamérica (spagnolo dell'America Latina)
Ελληνικά (greco)
Français (francese)
Indonesiano
Magyar (ungherese)
Nederlands (olandese)
Norsk (norvegese)
Polski (polacco)
Português (portoghese - Portogallo)
Português - Brasil (portoghese brasiliano)
Română (rumeno)
Русский (russo)
Suomi (finlandese)
Svenska (svedese)
Türkçe (turco)
Tiếng Việt (vietnamita)
Українська (ucraino)
Segnala un problema nella traduzione
Regole e linee guida per le discussioni
1 
Segnala questo messaggio
I can understand the mindset. I had a rough time trusting folks again after a nasty breakup. Anyway, I'm going to try to hit all the bases here.
With that said, many people were quick to jump on RT following Shane's letter. Almost all of them seem to have forgotten that Miles and Kerry are the lead writers. Monty may have been the one to create the world of Remnant, but one has to imagine that Miles/Kerry also had to become very well versed in it's backstory if they were to be the lead writers.
Plus as we all know, Monty's main talent was in animation, specifically over the top fight scenes. While he did come up with many of the ideas behind the world itself, do keep in mind that writing a fight scene is an entirely different beast when compared to writing a story driven, dialogue heavy scene. I'm sure that's where Miles and Kerry came into the picture. Personally, I find it insulting that Shane is claiming that he knows the direction of the series better than Miles and Kerry. Now, I'm not saying that Miles and Kerry are infallible, but I am saying that they've been on the project since the start. As the lead writers, they undoubtedly worked very closely with Monty on the story related aspects of RWBY.
I haven't read Shane's letter since it originally saw the light of day. There were parts I just skimmed, but I feel I read enough to form a decent opinion. Honestly, I feel that Shane hero worshipped Monty to a point where if he wasn't working with him or knew him, he would have been nothing more than an obsessed fan. This is a guy who couldn't adapt to change very well. A guy that pretty much sabotaged his marriage over this whole situation.
Now regarding the fact that Kathleen Zuelch apparently "confirmed" Shane's account of things, I have this to say: why hasn't anyone else?
Some would say it's fear of retaliation or fear of upsetting the fans. I doubt that. I think it's less a case of confirming/denying things and more a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If RT comes out and gives their side of the story you'll have people that will defend them, yet some will take Shane's word over theirs. On the flipside, some will say silence is admitting guilt. However, in the case of ludicrous claims it would sometimes be best to let it go. Any type of response has potential to stir Shane up again. At that point, it just devolves into "he said, she said." Granted, it doesn't explain why Kathleen would come out and confirm things. It's possible that there are some aspects to Shane's story that are right. It's part of the reason why so many wish RT would respond. In a situation such as this, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Overall, the whole thing is messed up. Shane should have just kept his mouth shut, Kathleen should have stayed out of it, and RT needs to issue some kind of statement, even if said statement is a simple "Shane was let go, we will not address anymore questions on the matter, but we do wish him the best in his future endeavors."
I think it would be best to mention that unlike Miles and Kerry, Shane isn't even credited as a writer for the series anyway. He was the lead animator and a voice actor.
After I read it and thought about it, I felt it kind of seems like he's angry because he felt he should have been the "main guy" for RWBY after Monty died.
Also,
"Finally, I was told that the animation department was going to be moving off site, away from the mocap stage, and that I was going to be sitting at a normal desk like everybody else." - Page 21
So, when he says "away from the mocap stage", that means no more mocap? And yet they clearly used mocap for Volume 4's reveal. So I think it's less that they weren't going to be using the mocap stage anymore and more that they didn't need to at the time.
That said, while it may be best to let it go, I've never been very good at that.
You should try listening to that one Frozen song.xD
There's no closure to be had anyway, even if RT does release a statement. It will only inflame the argument.
That said, you guys did convince me that Vol. 4 is worth watching, so thank you for that. I was going to skip it because of all this.
The company line is the point when an organization founded on core ethical principles, foremost being the enjoyment of their work, abandons those principles in favor of monitoring money flow and what could possibly be done to increase profits regardless of the health and desires of the staff.
We see that as being the case with RT. To be quite honest, the best possible thing RT could have done was abandon the project at the end of S3. It's pretty obvious to everyone that S4 is not going to have the same "spark" as the previous seasons, a spark which fundamentally binds Monty fanchildren to RWBY's own personal fanbase.
Of course, a decrease in popularity and quality always happens when a celebrated work loses its original creative lead; even MLP:FIM is an example of this, although its creator left of her own accord.
Shane was pretty much moving off of the deep end, but he was nonetheless an important member of the team. Monty's death affected him waaaaaaaaay too much, to the point that he even risked the livelihood of his family, and RT responded to this... NOT by requiring him to use a counselor, but instead by firing him.
By all ethical standards, what RT did was WRONG. It was RT's responsibility to recognize Shane's issues before they went out of control and help him get back on track, but they instead made use of his dedication to get more work from him before kicking him out.
So in that regard, RT's current leaders are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who have lost the company's initial integrity and don't know what the ♥♥♥♥ they're doing, which will INEVITABLY harm the potential success of the RWBY franchise.
But as for who knows what Monty's vision was, and the actual details concerning these events, we don't know because we don't have enough information. All that we know is that RT handled things poorly, and that's all.
We have 3 different rivalries here, each with two sides:
1) Artistic Freedom vs Literary Freedom
2) Employees vs Executives
3) Consistency vs Maleability
I'm a writer. As a writer, specifically, I have no artistic talent. Whenever I do a work, I'm considering plot, flow, and worldbuilding before anything visual.
Literary Freedom is the ability to focus solely on the story, regardless of the effect on the art. It uses dialogue, script, and character development to drive the entire work.
Artistic Freedom is the ability to focus solely on the art, regardless of the effect on the story. It is chaotic, allows room for constant change, and focuses on visual stimulation.
Monty was an artist, period. His vision only worked because of the Artistic Freedom he was allowed, a freedom that Shane shared but Miles and Kerry did not.
So when Monty died and Shane was the only other person used to Artistic Freedom, it was easier for other employees to make a full switch to the Literary Freedom that Miles and Kerry preferred.
The problem is that Artistic Freedom and Literary Freedom cannot both exist at the same time; they directly oppose one another.
When Shane said that the other employees did not understand Monty's vision, this was most likely what he was referring to - that RWBY should remain based on Artistic Freedom than Literary Freedom.
When you're a writer, everything must be scripted. EVERYTHING. When they made the choice to force the animators to organize and log every single instant of the animation, it was purely for the writers' benefit and the animators' detriment.
If RWBY had followed the Artistic path, it would have its story in 9 Seasons what we got in 3, but in return each episode would have focused on the movements and visuals of the characters, which is what people watched RWBY for in the first place.
But ever since Season 2, the story started taking over. Monty fought the speed-up and managed to retain the Artistic Freedom he wanted, until he died, which is why Season 3 mostly abandoned complex, dynamic animation in favor of story-progressing simple, static animation that resulted from Literary Freedom.
Of course, the execs would prefer the writing side because it would get them more money faster, even though the new methods of animation caused the show to take longer to make in the long run. But since results (aka money) would happen faster with a more quickly progressing plot, they supported the writers instead.
I said before in a thread here that the timeskip made complete sense because it allowed the writers to abandon literally everything in the show from Monty's vision and instead progress with a small cast that they could control and develop. This fits perfectly in line with Literary Freedom and was a great way for them to abandon Artistic Freedom for their own benefit.
All of that said, I agree with Shane. Not to the point of taking a "side" (although 99% of problems in the entertainment industry are caused by execs making ♥♥♥♥♥♥ decisions) about who was unethical and who wasn't...
But rather that I believe that RWBY should have focused on Artistic Freedom rather than Literary Freedom.
Remember: I, myself, am a writer, and even I think that RWBY should have focused on Artistic Freedom.
As a storyteller, I'm probably going to abandon RWBY halfway through Season 4 since Miles and Kerry don't have the literary expertise to create a plot that I haven't seen before, and thus banking on storytelling alone will just lose me. I enjoyed RWBY because of the Artistic Freedom that resulted in this narrative I had never seen before in a society that treats literature as superior to art.
Additionally, when it comes to Sheena, most people on the Internet keep calling her a ♥♥♥♥♥ due to the spread of misinformation by haters. They say she brought a cat in knowing that would kill Monty, that she was a dutch wife that wasn't important enough to Monty for him to mention her, and she spreads around "murder cat" cosplay to make fun of his death.
That's all BS.
Monty absolutely loved cats and had already been getting shots because HE fed and housed cats for years, so her bringing a cat in the house wasn't strange at all and his cat allergy was never lethal. What killed him were the allergy shots creating a rare negative reaction that was NO ONE's fault, and this was only from an allergy shot he was supposed to be getting regularly, so it had nothing to do with Sheena.
Monty didn't show her off to everyone because she was his little secret, in that he wasn't one to show his wife off everywhere and that he didn't want his image to ruin her personal life. They were only married for a short amount of time, but had been together before that, but tbh he most likely married her because he wanted a wife despite being too busy to go home that much. She may not have been with him at work, but whenever he DID go home he conversed with her enough for her to know his mind, although the claim that she knew him best is a bit far-fetched.
As for the murder cat cosplay, those idiots didn't look into the works' descriptions and see that they were FF / Nekomimi cosplay/drawings, and had absolutely nothing to do with the cat that Monty adopted, who Sheena still takes care of, and who had nothing to do with Monty's death.
As for whether or not Monty's and Shane's method of animation was better than everyone else's, that's a definite yes. Look at independent works they made (Dead Fantasy, Megaman X) and you'll see that RWBY really doesn't have the level of animation that it should have, thereby verifying that Shane is an incredibly talented animator who should get hired by any reasonable company on the spot. RT didn't just let him go, they burned him out of spite, otherwise he wouldn't be in an "you'll never work in this town again" situation when his skill and experience alone are enough to land him a permanent contract with another company.
If not for Shane, Season 3 would have taken MUCH longer to release, and he really did work overtime to get done what everyone else was either too incompetent or too lazy to get done.
Season 4 took so damn long to make, from what I can see, because they've adopted their "better" (worse) system that takes them a million years to do anything in, but hey - now it's all scripted and catalogued! Yaaaaaay! (I believe he said these exact words somewhere in the letter.)
Perhaps I'm speaking to deaf ears here, as most people don't understand the level of ♥♥♥♥ animators and developers have to go through when some idiot exec decides to not only change the program everyone's working in, but also the entire system of hardware and data sharing that they based all of their work on.
Point is, just like you can't "just" change a game from Unity to Unreal 4, you also can't "just" change a show from Poser to Maya. Not only did the execs make the change, they made it mid-season, and all of the animators had more work to do trying to make transitions.
I do hope some company out there is smart enough to hire Shane to use Poser and recreate all of the assets that made the works release 3x faster and 3x smoother.
Until then, the industry will still be ruled by idiots.
I don't agree with the way Shane kept reiterating that ONLY he and Sheena knew what Monty's vision for RWBY was. Monty had a team of his friends that was with him from the beginning and Miles, Kerry, and everyone else was a part of that team that helped create RWBY. He talks about how they didn't give tribute to him after he passed away and was "proud" of what they were doing with the show without Monty, yet you see panels and videos of the team not being able to talk about him afterwards without needing a moment of silence or holding back tears
Jeff Williams talking about his tribute song Cold: https://www.twitch.tv/pax3/v/62407850?t=01h50m45s
The team talking about Monty at RTX 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAyUlvUqDFo
From Monty Oum moments video a fan made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=n0rdAi_nleA#t=1556
Also, Monty himself talks about how he worked with Miles and Kerry when he was working on scenes for the show (from this interview http://www.creativebloq.com/animation/rbwy-anime-action-dynamic-3d-twist-9134477):
"If the deadline is fast approaching and I’m short on the shots I think I need, I simply work with our writers Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna to re-imagine the scene."
There are also many times during panels and other videos where they would laugh and talk about the moments when Monty talked to them about creating the show RWBY and telling them about the ideas he had for it, some of which Monty himself was there talking about it with them (which just made me skeptical about Shane saying that "some of their responses was very underwhelming" when he talks about Monty explaining his ideas to his other collegues)
While I see his point about wanting to keep Monty's workflow because he felt that was more efficient for the two of them, the problem is that it wouldn't work in a large team setting when the rest of the team needs to access all these different files to work on. I'm not an animator, but still have an art related job and my manager and I have to copy files to a network drive regularly at work because the artwork and marketing material we make needs to be used by my other coworkers and bosses in the company daily and they need to be able to access it when they need it for customers or trade shows. If it's all just sitting on our own computers, then there would be a problem when they need a file and me or my manager is not there to give it to them, especially if it's something they need immediately. We have to keep track of progress on what we're working on because otherwise our bosses and coworkers are left in the dark on how much longer it will take for us to finish the material they requested. If we didn't keep track of it and communicate with each other on the progress, then it would just get delayed because none of us would know who's working on what and sometimes we can't progress until things are checked over and approved before they're finalized.
Someone did write about this from an animator's perspective if you are curious about this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/4jbepv/an_animators_response_to_shanes_letter/
Also, him stating that having to sit through "boring" storyboard meetings when he didn't want to waste time when he could be making cool animations instead made me raise an eyebrow because even in animation, they go through scripting and storyboarding when they create scenes (and even then, scenes might later get changed). Shane saying he was only there because he wanted to work with Monty and that a career in animation wasn't his goal, it made me question the passion he says he has if he doesn't really care about the process of animation. The guy is talented I'll give him that (seeing as he did things like finishing the Yang vs Mercury fight after Monty had only started it before he died), but if he only made those fight scenes only because Monty was there and now that Monty's gone, will he have the same "passion" when he moves on to another company?
I do admit that the fights were what got me into RWBY in the first place, but that was not the only thing I watched RWBY for. I don't watch shows only for the pretty visuals, so I actually liked that they were developing the story and characters more alongside it because if I wanted to watch nothing but cool fight scenes, I would have just rewatched Dead Fantasy.
Also on your point of movements and character visuals, I thought they improved in Volume 3 as their movements were more fluid and the expressions they did in certain scenes added to the emotional impact. There was even a moment when one of the animators on the team was amazed on how Dillon had managed to animate Ironwood in one scene when his model wasn't supposed to be able to move like that: https://twitter.com/chompotron/status/693525512417779713?lang=pt
Monty himself talks about telling a story in RWBY (same interview I linked earlier http://www.creativebloq.com/animation/rbwy-anime-action-dynamic-3d-twist-9134477):
"Many of the creative choices in RWBY come from researching the methods anime uses to tell stories. Working from that rule book means that I can do as little work as possible to effectively tell the story.There were several years of research and development that went into exploring what the eye will accept as the minimum for a believable performance."
Shane also says they aren't honoring Monty's vision by changing the story and taking out scenes, but (same interview again), Monty himself says that he changed things around in RWBY:
"If a shot or sequence isn’t working, I’ll cut it, move it, or use it later - sometimes several years later."
Monty was also the one who thought of the idea of the Maidens after Volume 2 and wanted to include them in Volume 3's story and did things like creating the character of Neo ten days before her debut in Volume 2, so it wasn't like Monty himself had his ideas and story for RWBY so set in stone.
The whole thing about Sheena though is one thing I wonder about as well because we don't have the whole picture about what went on (though the part about bringing her onboard just because she was Monty's wife I don't agree with). JJ actually confirmed that what Shane said about him being fired was false and that Yuri Lowenthal who replaced him was the better Mercury. He left because he felt he wasn't being paid enough for his voice over work and how they were treating people in the company (this mistreatment he talks about though does raise a question on what's been going on in the company though I'd rather not judge based on one side of the story that Shane and JJ have given): http://imgur.com/a/eOvqe
I'm skeptical about what Kathleen supporting what Shane said about it being all true considering she hasn't been there at the company so I don't know about her saying that if she wasn't actually there when this was going on (twitter post where she says she hasn't been working at Roosterteeth for 3 years): https://twitter.com/kzuelch/status/730954503344689152
Overall though, I think Shane was emotional when he wrote this letter and his tone of "Monty and I" throughout the letter makes me think he was a little too obsessed over Monty (he even implies that he hung out Monty's wife more than he did his own family). Not going to believe either side 100% though because we have only seen Shane's side of the story and I've already pointed out the problems I had with some parts of it. He's talented but if he wanted to continue to pursue animation, I think some of what he says in the letter doesn't help him (like others have said, he most likely broke a non disclosure agreement by posting the letter online in the first place).
Great points.
I also don't agree with the idea that Shane and Sheena were the only ones that knew what Monty wanted, but I do believe that Shane's belief that the show should have focused more on animation than story was correct.
Shane stated in the letter that before everyone had a shared network drive that they could take home, and RT changed everything and said that all data had to be placed individually and separated while all staying in the company. What you're saying is in line with Shane's way of thinking, though I do understand where RT is coming from regarding not taking work home since that risks the exposure of company secrets (something they tricked Shane in order to lock away so he couldn't spread the data to the public).
I think it's more that he felt the storyboard meetings tried to make everything so script-specific that there was no freedom of action for the animators. The problem was that the animation was supposed to follow literary logic when it should have only followed artistic logic, and these storyboard meetings got in the way of the creation of free-form animation.
I do believe he would have the same passion so long as he was given creative freedom when animating; he just needs a company that gives their animators space.
Of course RWBY was supposed to have a story, but I feel that the animation was forced too much in line with the story. Even though emotional expressions were improved, choreographed animation like with fight scenes decreased in quality.
As for the improvement overall, that was due to Dillon's input and the increase in techniques and experience of the team, with the techniques front being largely due to Shane's asset creations and secondarily due to personal discovery from each animator.
As I've said before, literary narrative requires that everything is scripted, and this allowed the animation to fall more in line with the storytelling, but as a result some amazing animation potential was thrown out due to time constraints and plot inconsistencies (which would not have happened if the execs and writers took more of Monty's ideas into account, apparently).
What Monty says about storytelling fits more in line with artistic narrative which, once again, was abandoned in favor of literary narrative. As for the changes he made, it seems that Shane believed that if Monty made the changes it was okay but otherwise it wasn't, so I do see a problem there, but perhaps this line of thinking would not have occurred if there was more artistic freedom given, especially to him.
I don't agree with Sheena being put on just for being his wife either, but Shane said that even her having a minor role would have helped RT and the show since she atleast had some extra insight into Monty's vision. Looking at her background, she really is qualified for this work, but even so she'd be a novice and perhaps RT did not want to waste time training a novice with no actual examples of her work (while Dillon had examples).
While I dislike that Shane lied about him being fired, the point still stands that even an outsider saw that things in RT were getting pretty bad, especially when it came to the treatment of employees.
I think that Kathleen shared it out of obligation and only supported the parts she actually knew about, which is why she directly stated that she wasn't there for the whole thing. However, even a bit of support makes Shane's account seem more legitimate, just which parts of the account are legit and which aren't is something we don't know.
NDAs are...tricky. There's an amount you can say without breaking the NDA and an amount you can't. Most often company secrets are the only things off-limits with personal experiences only being included if it's a major company. Due to the timeframe of his entry into RT, I don't think the NDA he signed would have been detailed enough for him to have broken it.
As for being emotional, that's understandable, but he was as calm as I believe he could've been when writing the letter, which is why he waited months. Let's not forget that he had:
- Depression
- Marriage Problems
- Death of a Friend
- Opposition of Vision by Other Members of the Company
- Overwork
- A Complete Program Shift
- A Difficult Time Fitting In
- Office Changes
- Been Tricked by His Superiors Who Lied to His Trusted Friend in Order to Erase Everything That Defined His Life Those Few Years
- Gotten Fired Instantly
- Homelessness
- Was Employment Burned
- And Was Pretty Much Abandoned By Everyone (except Sheena)
Basically within 2 years, everything crashed and burned. Someone who had absolutely no confidence was whisked to his dream job by his hero who treated him as an equal, then said hero died and everyone started changing everything and threw him away once Monty was gone. Then they employment burned him.
I don't think the letter could have been anything BUT emotional, and I'm surprised that his mental state hasn't deteriorated into goop.
Regardless, ♥♥♥♥ RT's executives and I really do hope he gets a better job with a better employer that doesn't play employment poker with other companies. Maybe Trump will hire him. o.0
https://www.twitch.tv/pax/v/87164539
time: 02:54:43
RT people dont know what is going on at RT
Now I'm feeling bad for the GE devs because they must have had to deal with this, too.