At the start of 2022, I got tired of waiting for someone else to make a proper RWBY font, one that actually looked like what's used in the RWBY logo, and decided to make my own based on videos and images released by RT. My goal was to get as close to that as possible. I didn't expect RT to ever release the official font, so I figured if I wanted it, I would have to do it myself. You can read more about that here, in the original post I made about all of that: A More Accurate RWBY Font

Today, I was contacted by R. Zane Rutledge, a (now former) 2D effect artist at RT, and the creator of the official font. He had a story to tell me about how the font came to be, and a gift. I asked if I could share the story and he told me that it was just parts of something he'd already put together to send somewhere else, and he sent me the full message to share:

Hello RWBY fan!

You might or might not recognize my name from the credits of your favorite show. I worked at RT for the past 6+ years — until a few weeks ago, when VFX wrapped up their run on the last episode of season 9. I’ve worn a few different hats around there over the years; on RWBY 4 and 5 I ran the Compositing department as their Lead, and then when Gen:LOCK season 1 started I moved to that team as Visual Post Supervisor and left RWBY for season 6 (in capable hands). Anyway, when GL ended and that whole thing imploded, I came back to RWBY for season 7, but the lead/supe positions were filled, so I went back to doing hands-on shot work as 2DFX Lead. (1 of 2 artists on the team, heh.) For 7-9, I’m the guy who makes sparks fly, muzzles flash, Yang’s hair burn, Penny's jets flare, smoke and dusts poof (the 2D ones), wind, etc etc. All that fun stuff. In season 9, every time a bunch of multicolored leaves flap by, or glowy spheres float past, that’s me. ;-)

Anyway, like many of my coworkers, I’ve always enjoyed the passion of the RWBY fan community. It’s a really great feedback loop for the creators and CRWBY really appreciates all of you.

When I first started at RT back on season 4, I kinda HATED the RWBY-esque fan-made font that was in the public domain… the kerning and such just offended my senses, so I started working on one of my own. I was very careful to do so only in my private spare time, not company time, as I intended to release it for the public, and hopefully replace the one that was already out there, mucking up YouTube fan videos with bad kerning and sloppy spacing (and no lowercase). ;-P

Well, after I finished it I realized it might be smart for me to run it past the powers-that-be at RT and get official signoff approval, just in case. And lo and behold, they didn’t want me to release it at all, but instead decided to keep it only for internal use! I’ll admit, I was pretty irritated at first, and protested, but I got nowhere. In spite of my intentions for gifting it to the community, I’m basically a “team player,” so my effort died and I let it go, and somewhere along the way it became some kind of “official” RWBY font for the company. (I actually think the merchandise people eventually used it like some kind of test for piracy or something; I’m not really sure. But of course it soon went on everything, posters and games and calendars and all that. And while I was never actually compensated for my time/effort, I guess it was kinda cool that it became a part of RWBY forever.)

Anyway, now that I’m no longer at the company, I guess I can do as I’d originally intended and give this little gift back to the community. Not exactly sure where to post it or what, but if you’d like to use it in any personal non-commercial capacity, feel free. And also feel free to share it. That was its original intention, anyway, and even if RT never chose to gift it to the fans as they could have, that’s still why I made it in the first place.

So here it is.

FWIW, I don’t expect anything for this share, but if fans or anyone wanted to, I guess I wouldn’t turn down a coffee as thanks.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rzanerutledge

Anyway, hope you enjoy season 9. I lot of hard work from a lot of talented artists went into it.

I sincerely hope we all get a RWBY season 10.

Cheers,
zane

r. zane rutledge
http://zane.tv

Before he contacted me, I didn't even know who made the font. I haven't seen it credited anywhere. It sucks that he was never compensated for the work, but we didn't even have a way to know it was him as far as I know. I hope this post will bring some light to that information, at the very least it should be known whose work it was.

As you've probably already figured out from the message, the gift I got was the actual font itself. So, if you're here to find that, here you go:

Here's a quick preview of the font:

You can try out the font yourself by typing in the box below:

It is a bit unfortunate that there are now three different fonts out there. The RWBY_Style font, my recreation of the official one, and now the one that's actually used as the official one. But at least mine was pretty close to the real deal since it was made from official images. I'm going to keep the old post up about my font, but I recommend that everyone use the one from this post over that.