Ever since its launching in 2013 , Rooster Teeth ’s fancy - action serial publication RWBY has amassed a devoted mass following of sports fan who thrill to the series ’ gamey - vitality competitiveness scene . Now , the multitude make RWBY will be branching out into giant mech scifi , aim to tell coolheaded stories in a whole new genre .
announce at Rooster Teeth Expo ( RTX ) 2017 , Gen : Lock is still early in development and the Austin , Texas production theater carry it to be ready for a press release sometime next class . It ’s sustain much of the early production detail under wraps but draw the show like this :
“ On the losing side of a ball-shaped culture war , an Experimental Science Unit is pushed to identify a squad of young pilots who can control a variety of image , next - generation mecha — giant , robotic , weaponized bodies . The recruits will find , however , that their newfound abilities come at no small price . ”
Last Saturday at RTX , I spoke with Gen : Lock author / conductor Gray G. Haddock — who ’s also the studio ’s headway of animation — to find out where the six - year Rooster Teeth veteran and his squad are depict aspiration from .
io9 : So , you ’ve been form on RWBY up until this point , which is root in magical fantasy , and Gen : Lock is a mecha show . Can you talk about the differences between the genres and where the estimate for Gen : Lock follow from ?
Gray G. Haddock : We ’re entering volume five of RWBY right now , which is our action - based magical - girl monster - hunter show . We wanted to do something that was slightly more mature in storytelling and could appeal to the RWBY fans as they continue to grow up , and start branching out into more sort of invigorate shows . We require to say hello to all the rooter of gravid - idea skill fiction storytelling , and our own Red vs. drear hearing that , you fuck , might have checked out RWBY , but , maybe it was n’t quite for them . So we want to verify that they got something new to love as well .
io9 : You mentioned big - idea science fable ; what kind of things are in that wheelhouse for you ?
Melanogrammus aeglefinus : I ’m not ready to go into too much detail about the independent twist of the show , but me and the team working on it , we ’re all just huge fans of anime , of Ghost in the Shell , and any of the Gundam anime we have it away . Aldnoah Zero . Gargantua . I ’m a vast devotee of the writing of Gen Urobuchi , who did a whole bunch of scientific discipline fable gum anime in Japan . I would say all of my stuff is heavily influenced by his clobber , or at least we divvy up very similar preference . We ’re started with some ingredients that everybody here is hunger to see in a new series . Whether it ’s poppycock from a mech show , or cyberpunk like shade in the Shell or Psycho - Pass , or really warm , part - drive aroused storytelling like Kiznaiver . I cerebrate that Trigger ’s brilliance with Kiznaiver was that they got rid of all the trappings of what ’s drop dead on with the earth and just focalize on this one scientific experiment with the kids . We ’re move to take a draw of that stuff , put it in a blender , append a whole bunch of raw ingredients , and see what materialise .
io9 : Mecha is the kind of genre that people incline to associate so strongly with Japanese sensitiveness and civilization . How do you attain a balance , in terms of ante up homage versus endeavor to found it in sensibilities that are your own ?
Haddock : I ’d decidedly say it requires a balance . We want to recognise the roots and make a show that was a combination of all these other show that we love . The mantra at Rooster Teeth is , “ If there ’s something that you witness cool , go make that and see if you could find some other audience and friends out there in the biotic community who will be like - disposed and check out your stuff and follow you on that show as well . ” We do n’t want to just blindly retell . It ’s not the sheath that our animation studio apartment just wants to keep wheel through all the unlike genres of anime . We ’re not fit to go all “ slicing - of - living , yandere … ” , you know .
io9 : There ’s no trash - skating gum anime series coming from you guys ? No Yuri On Ice ?
Haddock : [ laugh ] Never say never . Everybody inside Rooster Teeth Animation has such broad tastes . I mistrust we ’ll get around to doing dissimilar kinds of thing eventually . But , right now , we want to watch more , coolheaded , scifi mech shows and there ’s really nothing like that chance in the West . When you talk about that bailiwick , you think of Japan as being out on the front lines and we ’re decidedly ante up court to , as well as mixing up , what they ’ve been up to .
The thing about RWBY is , I love how you ca n’t really define what kind of show it is . Is it an gum anime , or not ? That ’s a really fun debate . We ’re not that indue in the debate at our company and I have to confess we ’re enjoying that confusedness . I like the fact that nobody can pin us down . “ Are we an Zanzibar copal ? Are we a CG show ? Are we pep up by Zanzibar copal ? Are we kind of doing our own thing that ’s mix East and West ? ” We do n’t have a recording label for it yet . I ’m thrilled we do n’t have a recording label for it yet . And if Gen : Lock can be that same path of just making up its own sub - genre , then I will be thrilled .
io9 : How do you require to make it distinctive from RWBY in terminus of visuals ?
Melanogrammus aeglefinus : It ’s still in development , but we do want to go for a slightly more elaborated expression . The character designs will have a little more contingent to them , be slimly more real - world … RWBY ’s spirit is very clean , very nonfigurative , very simple lines . And the kind of storytelling that we want to do in Gen : Lock is going to expect a slightly more detailed approach to it .
We actually strain out to a member of the RWBY devotee artwork community of interests name Bach Do , who goes bydishwasher1910online . He ’s done gaga remixes putting RWBY girl in different show and predicted scenes from coming episode with scary accuracy , like the last of a supporting character reference in Volume Three . He even got the personal identity of the killer and the camera slant of the crack right . I was wondering how our plots were leaking !
He ’d also done some fun RWBY mecha crossing art before :
But it ’s his recent RWBY mashup work that completely pushed me over the edge and convinced me he was a adept candidate to contribute to Gen : Lock . His expressive style is evolving at an amazingly accelerated pace liken to where he was just a few years ago . His sentiency of Inner Light and the moody atmospheres start to come through his work are very much what I ’d like to see in a match of the spirit level of reality that Gen : Lock will operate on .
I reached out to him as part of the Rooster Teeth custom of getting the community involved . We were in the process of submitting for greenlight approval while also doing other stuff and nonsense so we hand out and asked for him to help with and type design and mood painting . It ’s Bach ’s teaser image that we used to foretell the show . He ’s an art bookman but we made him an prescribed distant contract bridge employee of Rooster Teeth just for this .
io9 : What kind of critique are you anticipating about Gen : Lock ?
Haddock : The thing about doing a mecha show is that there ’s a portion of the audience that pay very , very close attention to the details of the technology and the consistency of the rules that you ’re build up inside the earth . And our engineering on the show does work in a very specific way of life . Some of the activeness and dramatic play will come from catch around some of those rules and challenge . There are people I be intimate who are depart to pluck apart our designs and have all sorts of colorful things to say about it .
But , [ the challenge is ] balancing how crazy you desire to get with the detail — get trusted every single bolt and wire makes sense and knowing on the dot how the mecha work in the show — with the motivation to just make the show and end up the production . We require to let go of the design stage at a certain point ; otherwise , it ’s not move to come out at a time when we can all relish things . So , hopefully we can go ahead and establish some logical system and consistency and speck at some things under the hood . Then , over the run of the series , we should have more sentence to formulate thing , and fans will be rewarded with more and more glimpses at just how everything works .
Haddock : I do n’t know . The affair about RWBY , we were surprised by the audience that incur us . You ca n’t plan for the pursual that we ’ve mother . We ’ve just kind of been hang onto that drive for dear life ever since . And I think there ’s a lot of valid observations about the nation of our approach to it when we first protrude and how that ’s evolved yr after twelvemonth . I ’m so lofty of we ’ve raised the saloon every year at Rooster Teeth Animation . We would get bored if we were doing the exact same look and feel with the exact same process for every show .
Some citizenry , it ’s a little hard for them to wrap their head around it , but for us , we ’ve got to acquire the look and sense of the show every yr . We keep improving the technology that ’s been take place behind the scenes . The guys keep improving their committal to writing . I would say that what some people see as rough sharpness with the former volumes , I still think they ’re the variety of love alphabetic character to the state our team was in at the time and what we knew how to do . We were just making it up as we go . And I ’m convince that Gen : Lock is operate to have a exchangeable flight . We ’re going to work our hardest to make something really , really , really coolheaded that I go for the fan delight .
io9 : The learning bender will be on the screen .
Melanogrammus aeglefinus : dead , it ’ll be there . If we ’re so luck as to have extra seasons down the road , I ca n’t even conceive of what we ’ll be up to a distich of years from now . And I ’m sure we ’ll look back and shrink when we wait at season one of Gen : Lock and wish we ’d go back and re - get the hang it , but , they ’re small time capsules .
io9 : Speaking of time , you guy have your own animation house , your own distribution program . So , nobody has to tell you when to take leave . At what point , do you finger RWBY will run its grade ?
Melanogrammus aeglefinus : For RWBY , there is a definite closing curtain in mind that ’s been structured since the show was conceived , and as the show unfolds yr after class , it ’s more a query of adjusting the pacing a little mo here and there . We ’ve got so many story beat we desire to hit , we were infer that would take X number of volumes to do that . As we get closer and closer , we ’re go , “ Maybe its X + 1 ? +2 ? ”
But even so , [ RWBY creators ] Monty Oum , Miles [ Luna ] , and Kerry [ Shawcross ] built such a exuberant world that was so full of these amazing persona and detail and they kept suggest at all the dissimilar corners of the globe that you could perhaps chitchat . Right now , we ’re only getting a taste of that culture and environment . Just because the principal story of Team RWBY has a beginning a midriff and end to it , does n’t mean that we ’re done tell news report in the worldly concern around them . Hopefully it will keep kick the bucket . For all our shows , as long as the fans keep watching it , we ’ll require to keep making it .
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