RWBY Chibi

Join the cast of RWBY in a new series of cute, comedy shorts with infinite possibilities! It's playing tag! It's baking cookies! It's posing as police officers! It's... really quite absurd. It's RWBY CHIBI!

RWBY Chibi is an animated web series and spin-off of RWBY produced by Rooster Teeth Productions. The show features stylized "chibi" versions of RWBY characters and focuses on lighthearted comedy rather than plot and drama.

Summary
Each episode of RWBY Chibi is around 4 minutes long and consists of several lighthearted self-contained comedy shorts (or segments) with little to no overarching storyline, though there are multiple recurring themes and running gags throughout the series. Individual shorts range from a few seconds to a few minutes in length.

RWBY Chibi is non-canon to the continuity of the main show. According to Gray Haddock, it is meant to be a spin-off series for younger audiences after RWBY became too mature.

Release
The show was first announced as part of Rooster Teeth's 13th Anniversary celebrations on April 1st, 2016. Sneak peeks of the show were shown as extra content at RWBY Tugg screenings on April 27th, 2016.

The first episode premiered on May 7th, 2016 as part of Rooster Teeth's "Summer of Animation", alongside Camp Camp and Red vs. Blue Season 14. Like RWBY, episodes are released weekly, airing on Saturdays for Rooster Teeth sponsors and the following day for registered users of the site. Episodes are also uploaded to YouTube the week following the sponsor release.

RWBY Chibi ran weekly until the start of RWBY Volume 4, which premiered on October 22nd, 2016 (totalling 24 episodes).

On January 23rd, 2017 a new season of RWBY Chibi was announced, set to be released for May 2017.

On May 3rd, 2017, Rooster Teeth released a trailer and revealed the Season 2 premiere would be on May 13th, 2017.

An exclusive trailer of Season 2 was posted on Entertainment Weekly on May 10th, 2017.

On January 16th, 2018, it was confirmed that the third season of RWBY Chibi would start airing on January 27th, 2018.

Development
Original ideas for shorts stemmed from collaborative pitching sessions, where various Rooster Teeth staff members were invited to share ideas and jokes that could be further developed into shorts. Some shorts were also based directly on fan-comics, with the original artists given writing and story credits on the final episode. Shorts each have their own titles and are worked on by individual teams.

The character designs for the show were created with help from Hajime "Mojojoj" Nakamura, a Japanese fan artist well known in the RWBY fan community for his fanart. He was contacted by Rooster Teeth and the designs he provided were later used as references for creating the 3D models used in the show itself.

The show is animated in 3D in the program Autodesk Maya, unlike previous volumes of RWBY, which were animated in Smith Micro's Poser. Animators were also given much more creative freedom than on the main show, as shorts are less closely storyboarded, allowing them to get their own intuitive feel for the comedic timing of the shorts. Unlike the main series, RWBY Chibi does not use motion capture.

The animation team working on the spin-off show is separate to the team that was working on Volume 4 of RWBY. Animation for the first season of RWBY Chibi wrapped on September 16th, 2016.

Soundtrack
Jeff Williams and Alex Abraham, who compose the music for the main series, also worked on the music for RWBY Chibi. The music includes remixes and rearrangements of songs from the RWBY soundtrack in a variety of styles, including 8-bit versions, as well as new compositions. Casey Lee Williams contributed vocals.

Alex Abraham had uploaded some tracks from the soundtrack to his SoundCloud for free public streaming.
 * "Mirror Mirror" (Ice Queen Remix)
 * "From Shadows" (Little Black Bow Remix)
 * "Beacon Theme" (Carnival Remix)
 * "I Burn" (PleaseDon'tSueUs Remix)
 * "Ren is 'It'"
 * "Boop" (Pancakes Remix)
 * "Little Red Riding Hood"
 * "I May Fall" (Unauthorized Snuggles Remix)
 * "This Will Be The Day" (Friendship Is Semblance Remix)
 * "Junior Detectives — Upgrade Time"
 * "Pillow Fight"
 * "Red Like Roses — Lazy Little Butt Remix"
 * "Cinder ________?"
 * "The Sitcom"

Season 3
The characters of RWBY Chibi are noted as having slightly different personas to their counterparts from RWBY. For example, Miles Luna says that chibi Jaune is more "angry and feminine" than his canon incarnation, while chibi Ruby is "kind of a little shit".

Most characters have one or more unique screen wipes that transition between scenes in an episode. Each wipe matches the character's personality and theme, for example, Ren's takes the shape of a yin-yang symbol, while Zwei's wipe takes the shape of dog bones.

Inconsistencies

 * Main article: Inconsistencies/RWBY Chibi