RWBY Discussion: Volume 7 Designs

hey man you know what I like outfits and really character design in general I got my degree in studio art with a painting emphasis and basically everything I learned during college I put into character design designing characters is what I like to illustrate the most and Ruby has made a major impact on that when the red trailer came out back in 2012 I was still just a junior in high school but the sleek use of color and silhouette immediately grabbed me and I started trying to learn how to utilize such color theory in composition in my own art before I even knew what those terms meant I've already talked about why team Ruby's original looks are so great in a previous video and I don't want to repeat myself too much for this one but I wanted to bring up their initial impact on me to help explain why I care so much about what clothes these kids put on or how they style their hair this sort of thing matters for a visual medium and thinking about Ruby's designs too much has helped me get to where I am today and where I am today is talking about our heroes newest iterations from volume 7 with the start of the Atlas Ark the whole gang has some fancy new duds and honestly I've really struggled to figure out how I felt about these new designs hopefully by the time I finish this script I'll have a more concrete opinion to explain for this video's conclusion so to get to that conclusion let's shut up about my dumb backstory and get into the real meat of this video over analyzing the cast's designs starting with ya so this volume is kind of odd in that almost every character got a new hairstyle Nora's cut her hair back to being shorter Blake chopped most of her hair off Ruby's given herself a fashionable windswept look Weiss and Ren started braiding their hair John's hair has finally gotten out of the 2000s the only kids who didn't change our Oscar who didn't get a new outfit and yang this is a pretty big shake-up for the look of the show almost no one has kept their iconic silhouette and with six out of eight heroes changing their looks so dramatically all at once it feels a bit like taking a turn too sharp well it's not bad to change the core design elements of your character it usually helps to keep them consistent soggy keeps her pigtails even when she dons a disguise Edwards changed from braid to ponytail still keeps the silhouette the same and of course there are exceptions bulma's hair changes in every arc and no one's really complaining about it but for characters like Bulma who do change so drastically so regularly it's done to either facilitate a character gimmick or fanservice which is fine but just not really seen in Ruby often big changes to designs are motivated by character acting like a visual representation of their major development and I think that's my issue with the new hairstyles in Ruby that they seem to be simply changed for the sake of change as opposed to having a character motivation behind them Norah's changes pretty minor just a short trim back to how it used to look before they were on the road for a couple months I'm a bit distracted and why she didn't cut it when they got to Haven but whatever no need to split hairs on this haha Ruby's windswept look it's cute and fits her speed based moves really well but what prompted the change just wanted to part her hair differently why does Blake cut her hair so short we just see her looking in the mirror for a sec with let's do something a little different expression cutting it after finishing her shed with Adam would have been trite but at least it would have been something wrens braid is uniquely weird and that it's consistent but in relation to when he was still in school this looks like a regression back to him being less experienced after the big change we saw last time into adventurer unlike Nora Wren changed a lot at the start of vol 4 which coincided with his arc for the volume so jumping back to what he used to look like feels less like keeping with a preference and more like a step back Weiss really dramatically changes completely changing her slick ponytail to a thick chunky braid and totally altering her bangs to frame her face went way differently why I just can't see why Weiss decided to do this throw whatever head can and you want had it it's still just head Canon the only one given a real excuses Jean homeboys been pushing his hair out of his face for years now and quite frankly this new look helps him stand out from the sea of boys with the same messy do so yeah I don't hate their new hair simply because it's different but rather because I can't see any reason to do most of it it feels like they're doing their best to alter the kids from what they were originally designed to be for no reason and I just don't get why change equals growth I guess but I wish it was more clear how growing prompted this change but I think it's time to narrow our perspective a bit so we can reel get into the nitty-gritty on each of these new looks so let's start with I really like Ruby's new look the giant boob window and ridiculous sleeves have been replaced with some actually sensible clothing I missed the cute poofy skirt though as her new silhouette is a lot less dynamic now but overall it feels appropriately warm for Atlus relatively protective and fits her color palette really well last volumes look felt like they had forgotten she was supposed to be red like roses but this time there's plenty of reds in the design without it becoming too much though I will say that there's a problem in the production of her design so since like volume 4 only insists on giving ruby tanned skin so in her concept art for volume 7 Ruby's gray shirt acts like a cool colored complement to all the Reds in her design except in the show Ruby's about his colorless as paper Ruby's pale skin tone makes the cool pop become washed out he puts a weird amount of emphasis on her arms and face I know the slight color variation may not seem like much but this plays a huge factor in character design concept art version has excellent color theory in show version looks ashen and sickly either ein Lee needs to start actually coloring Ruby's skin tone to the proper pale hue or arti needs to start following eye and lays colorations more closely so as to avoid these sorts of mishaps in the future Weiss's design is too dang much a lot of weird volume with her poofy jacket sleeves and braids and makes her top-heavy but the shitload of belts and pouches on her waist draws the eye to all that messy detail and the pop of red seen on the inside of her skirt just continues to draw the eyes away from the rest of her there simultaneously nothing to focus on and too much to look at with Weiss unlike Ruby's changed skirt I actually like this new silhouette for Weiss as it feels like a more mature version of what she already had going on and she still has that wide Belle shape in the look which helps a lot why is she wearing so many Blues what happened to her representing the color white I'm glad we finally veered out of the shitty swatch of gray she's been stuck in but in terms of representing her designated color this outfits just as bad as volume fours this royal blue is nice but why is it the primary color on her shouldn't it be an accent why is it only found in her jacket her design feels so lopsided by not incorporating that bright ass blue anywhere else on it slap that into her shoes guys balance it out I like the idea of Weis having her red accents back now that she's reunited with her friends but really this execution of it feels little more than simply being an idea we almost never see the red inside her over skirt and the red jewels in her earrings and tiara are too small to make an impact a valiant concept but a failed execution I'd say on the topic of failed executions let's jump back into Isis hair on top of the out-of-nowhere changed to her look the braid just does not look good it's really bulbous and wide looking more like rope than hair and especially near the top it's got so much mass that it sort of looks like it was rushed out I hope they'll think about fixing that for the next volume also as a minor nitpick I wish her bangs went the other way while the show's literally never addressed her scar I would assume she'd want to sort of hide it under her hair maybe she's putting it on display to show her two fans against Jacques if we were privy to why she changed her hair so drastically we wouldn't have to wonder about it Weiss's new design is overall serviceable but feels like whoever designed it didn't really have any ideas and just came up with something random for her blake similarly feels like a case of she needs to change but i don't know what to do with her and the shittiest part about it is that she's just been riad fitted with all the worst elements of her last design restrictive looking sleeves you giant dumb coattails yuck giant heels that are bad for being a ninja black and a fuckload of white glue that points for consistency I guess but this doesn't feel like an improved loadout this feels like a shitty rehash of the garbage design Blake was just in they just took them in Hazari outfit and swapped the aesthetic to cyberpunk the coat looks stiff like she's limited on movement her coattails muck up her silhouette around her legs these heels look so bad for combat why is she wearing so much white in the past incorporating white was basically a necessity for Blake because otherwise her torso would get lost and all her hair but she cut her hair you can put her in as much black as you what now and keep her figure easily recognizable but instead they completely ignore their own color palette for the character to just cover her in Weiss's color I mean look at how great this edit looks she looks sleek and it has the purple really pop why is Rooster Teeth afraid to put the character representing the color black in black I'm also going to talk about something unique with Blake and that's her model I'm not a character modeler so I don't know how it works but there are some elements about the model that hurts the design that I want to mention first her hair again cutting it is fine that's whatever but the way they model it is super ugly it's just a blob of dark gray dripping down her head there's no style they just lopped off the bottom part of her hair and the engine and called it a day and the worst part is that every illustration of Blake has her hair cute and styled to frame her face and the in show version [ __ ] it up now luckily art he's already stated that they've tweaked Blake's model for the next volume but the image they've shown has her in motion so it's hard to tell what they've done to it but I'm hoping her hair will look a bit less sloppy for volume 8 the other thing about Blake's model isn't actually something I noticed at first while watching the show I've recently made a video discussing how boringly similar the character models all look in the show and within the mountains of people insulting me or saying that representation doesn't matter I noticed a recurring element of people saying Blake's boobs had gotten bigger in volume 7 they looked the same to me though so I decided to find out why people were saying they were bigger and I think I figured it out people kept mentioning this scene where Blake and yang talked in the truck and yeah those titties are accentuated and I think the reason people were so distracted by them is that roosterteeth modeled Blake's cat suit to be literally skin tight in reality we should see some fabric stretched between her breasts and admittedly fudging the rules on cat suits and physics is nothing new but I think changing this a little bit in the future may help keep her assets from being so distracting but anyway Blake's new look blows they just recycled her last outfit and covered it in dumb zippers without considering how to actually improve her design yang is neutral positive she's got her old silhouette back which is nice but it just kind of lacks a bit in terms of having any wow factor I think it would help if her jumpsuit was tan and not this poopy gray brown that they got going on similar to Ruby I'm Lea tends to give you a skin tone more color than the actual show resulting in another washing out of her colors I don't love how not warm Yang's look is like she's got the jacket but refuses to zip it up despite only having a tube top on underneath and with having her thigh fashionably exposed it just sort of looks like Ning's not taking the cold environment very seriously I also think it's kind of weird how many similarities Yang's new look has with Vern all I'm assuming making parallels between these two wasn't an intentional decision by Artie but it does still end up raising some eyebrows you know yang is however the only member of the team that actually has some of her teammates colors incorporated into her design or at least the only one that does it well the white fur on her coat the stark black elements in her belt it seems Yang's the only one who remembered the girls are a team and should be designed to look good together overall I'm not wildly impressed with Yang's new getup but I'm also not disappointed by it it's one of the stronger designs of the volume for sure figured I'd actually talk about Ranger this time around so let's start with Wren not a fan I've already talked about how his hair makes him look like he's regressed in terms of design but for the rest of his look it's just a cluttered mess what's with all these crossing lines on his torso why is there so much [ __ ] on this arm what's his primary color supposed to be red looks haphazard like whoever designed him had no idea what to do when just through everything they thought of onto the page and what a Down gray this is from his last look he looks inexperienced and unconfident he'll the new model even makes him look younger looking at Ren's two most recent designs as a perfect showcase for less is more [Music] another too much design what's with all these lines and layers and colors and why is it such a departure from her previous looks she's had this cute modern thing going on with her bomber jacket and pink skirts why have we suddenly shifted into high fantasy this is a total deviation to what she had been wearing and so lacks any feeling of growth by completely alter a character style you just drop whatever development we had seen in their previous iterations added a coat for more protection got higher boots for more comfort during travel ditched the restrictive looking metal corset and now got really into Tales of Graces it looks like she was styled to look like she was an atlas as opposed to be styled to show how she's developed over the past three volumes Jean hands-down has the best new look for vol 7 across all new outfit changes Jean has stayed consistent while clearly growing with each iteration I don't know why they only do this with Jean but he gets the lucky distinction of always getting upgrades added on to his design vol 4 got better Armour and shoes nice vol 7 got a haircut a streamlined jacket without the hood a more protective looking pants and even better shoes radical he's only going up he gets minor changes that actually show how he's adapting to the environment and changing as he gets better on the field while the rest of the cast just to jump into completely different looks every three years I'll take a second to talk a bit more about his hair it had gotten a lot of ridicule when it was first revealed and I absolutely partook in that bandwagon however as the volume went on I got more used to it and have come to terms with the new style my only real problem is that it's styled up John's hair has always been very downward facing and I suppose it being up like this could signify how he's finally stopped moping over pyrrha which is fine but it's just a very dramatically different look to jump into and be like if Nora styled her hair to be straight down we've always seen it curl up so it'd be kind of jarring and weird I guess I just wanted to figure out why so many people hated his new haircut at first because it's not just that we all hate change I found these edits of John and they look great if he'd come out looking like any of these I don't think there had been as much [ __ ] slinging due to them keeping his hair a bit more in line to has previously been personally I'd have given him a ponytail because pyrrha had one and John's designs showed EKKO hers a bit but what we got ain't bad Jean mops the floor with how well they design him each volume I wish all the other characters got the steadily getting better equipment treatment he gets his colors are consist his silhouette is consistent his growth is consistent jean wins best new look the biggest problem with the designs for volume 7 is how totally unconnected all the kids look Ruby and Jean feel like they still belong in the world of remnant Ren belongs in a cyberpunk show Yang's wearing normal modern clothes Weiss is dressed like she's in a high fantasy Blake just jumped out of a futuristic spy thriller and Norah's cosplaying as a tales of character they look ridiculous standing next to each other I could grab a random lineup of characters from unrelated properties and get just as much cohesion in the group as the show currently does and this has been a building problem for a while now back in volumes 1 through 3 ruby was a modern fantasy the kids wore stuff you could theoretically buy from the store with few alterations Monte loved cosplay and so one of his characters to be easy to cosplay for but then volume 4 happened and we started to lose the script this hi-tech fantasy world with guns and airships suddenly crash-landed into traditional fantasy no one had a gun anymore side characters were given simple traditional clothing and the very idea of the holographic street lights we'd seen at beacon was completely left at the wayside Ruby's world changed genres as beacon fell and the characters designs began to suffer for it some of the cast kept the modern looks some went more traditional like the background characters and the only way they knew how to make their outfits look like fantasy was to cover them in belts and this lack of focus has only gotten more prominent with volume 7 put Nora and ran next to each other and I bet most non viewers wouldn't even know they were from the same show yang looks ridiculous being in the same shots as Weiss hell Weiss looks ridiculous standing next to her entire family a bunch of modern normal suits and then a [ __ ] Disney Princess ruby has no style and the character designs suffer for it the showrunner slapped a random genre on to each kid and didn't bother to care that the group looks totally disconnected from each other and like complete aliens to the rest of the world I hope that the next time the kids all get new outfits roosterteeth has figured out what they want this world to feel like so that way our protagonists can not only look like they belong together but also so they can look like they actually belong in the show before I wrap this up I kind of just want to rapid-fire some thoughts that don't really fit anywhere else in the video I guess think of this like a bonus round all right so Sanders outfit is too damn dark and has too much black her limbs all blend together into a blob I like pennies long hair but the curls framing her face looked kind of weird I wish she had another layer in the middle why did winter and Ironwood get new outfits when their old ones had so little screen time what's his coat is sick I wish we got to see it more well I like the Aesop's uniforms and means they're really lacking in terms of color it doesn't help that their designs are basically all just a bunch of shades of brown why do the happy huntresses all wear the same outfit in different colors feels less like uniformity and more like it's just lazy if you're going to bring up classism so much this volume why would you design wise to lean in on the princess / eros look she's been ostracized from her family so why keep the Royal design for her I wish Yang's hair was longer like how it used to be back in vol 3 if you gotta have a Robin Hood character why would you put them in so little green and why would you make it a poopy barf shade of green may marigold has this really cool braid and makes me want to see her do more why doesn't Blake have gold accents in her outfit she's dating yang now isn't she put some of her girlfriends color on her I like that they forgo making Harriet a Faunus and instead simply imply bunny ears with her hair it's cool well the beard eventually grew on me I still prefer iron wood with a 5 o'clock shadow that one's just a personal point though Salem's new look is so similar to her old one that my friend hadn't even noticed she changed why make her a new design if you're gonna do so little just wanted to give her a bigger titty window if yang penny and cinder can have such stark blacks and their designs why did they insist on putting Blake in this purpley blue just have her wear black fam I wish when Lee had gotten a new outfit crossing my fingers for next time neons new look is super cute and a good upgrade from her last outfit Flint looks really similar to his old design still looks good I just wish it was a bit more distinct Flint and Leon's teammates look so uninspired and boring I can't even be bothered to remember they exist Neos outfit looks too cold and I could do a shitty job protecting anything her hair is pretty but just covers up what she's doing during a fight seems like the priority for her new design was just make good fanservice crow looks way better in this warm palette why is Blake sleeves unzipped but then clamped together at the wrists this looks dumb the random bandana tied to Yang's leg is pretty goofy looking why not incorporate it into her design more naturally I'm disappointed we don't get a CCL exclusively because I'd like to see her in a new outfit overall does a real lack of anime hair color in the designs these days it makes the heroes stick out like giant neon thumbs stop being afraid of colors Homeslice alright so now that we've come to the end of the video have I managed to nail down my opinion on the new designs kinda I figured out why it's been so hard to give an overall consensus on the new duds it's because there's no running theme between them I love some of the new redesigns I hate others and it's almost impossible to judge them as a group due to lack of cohesion I suppose if I were to offer some advice for next time I would say narrow down a style for this world consistency can help with character design try to keep in mind the show's color motif and maybe try to keep the girls in their designated color more and to remember that the show is team oriented and as such the teams should be designed to fit together I think it should be mentioned that there are plenty of things I do like for these new looks I'm glad that they veered away from all the unnecessary belts I'm glad that giving all the girls boob windows doesn't seem to be a top priority anymore I like that the kids are allowed to have more vibrant colors on them again I just wish the rest of remnant would follow suit it feels like I'm being really negative and I don't mean to be I do really like some of these new outfits unfortunately I think I'm unhappy with the majority of them I still wouldn't call this round of designs a downgrade though I think the production for this volumes new looks was just a bit unfocused it's not a nightmare to look at these designs by any means but I am more excited at the prospect of seeing them change as the kids grow over these next few volumes [Music]

Channel: Twiins iink

Views: 149,051

Rating: 4.8915606 out of 5

Keywords: rwby, volume 7, rwby volume 7, outfits, design, rwby design, ruby rose, ruby, weiss schnee, weiss, blake belladonna, blake, yang xiaolong, yang, lie ren, ren, nora valkyrie, nora, jaune arc, jaune, cohesion, twiinsiink, twiins iink, twiins, edit, edits, color, hair, rwby hair, rt, roosterteeth

Id: 3HiDsj58j4E

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020

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[u/Bearry2347]

What do you all think of her opinions here? I mostly agree with her tho I wish she went into greater detail on Penny’s, Oscars, and Qrows new looks too.

Unrelated side note: I kind of hate this thumbnail? I like the idea but Ruby’s leg looks weird, Blake’s nose looks wierd and Wiess’ face is too flat