About

Monty Oum was a self-taught animator and screenwriter. His crossover fighting videos gained him the attention of several video game and Internet production companies, most notably Rooster Teeth. Along with contributing to Rooster Teeth's popular machinima series Red vs. Blue, he created the original web animation series RWBY.

Online History

Haloid

Haloid, Monty's first published work. depicts a Spartan from Halo, Bungie Studio's FPS video game series, fighting Samus Aran from Metroid, Nintendo's action-adventure video game series. Using assets from Halo 2 and Super Smash Bros. Melee, Monty shows the two characters pitting their universe's arsenal of weapons, as well as their own unique abilities and skills, against each other and eventually against the Covenant enemies of the Halo universe. The video's conclusion also fully reveals the secrets inherent to the two combatants. Haloid would prove to be Rooster Teeth's introduction to Monty's work, but their partnership would not be realized until 2010^[1].

Dead Fantasy

Monty would follow up Haloid with one of his most famous series where characters from Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series fought characters from Tecmo's Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series. Although the series appears to have been made purely for fanservice, Dead Fantasy 5 shows glimpses into a sinister plot involving DOATEC, the antagonist of the Dead or Alive series, capturing the Final Fantasy characters for research purposes. Besides the five installments in the series, three more episodes were in development, alongside two videos featuring the characters dancing to music.

Red vs. Blue

Although Monty lent a hand in working on one of the final scenes of Season 7, he would officially join the Red vs. Blue animation team for its eighth season, Revelation. Fans at PAX East 2010 watching the debut of the final chapter of the series' Recollections trilogy would see the introduction of pre-rendered computer animation alongside the series' standard Halo video game footage. Monty's involvement would continue until the end of the Project Freelancer saga in Season 10, when he would start production of his own original animated series.

RWBY

Although Monty had conceptualized RWBY many years beforehand, he would not officially start on his most famous work until towards the end of Red vs. Blue Season 10. While eating at IHOP with fellow Rooster Teeth animator Shane Newville, Monty sketched out the world of Remnant onto a napkin using ketchup^[2]. From there, he also developed the color-coding convention used for the characters' names^[3]. The series has survived Monty, with Season 3 premiering on October 24th, 2015.

Reputation

Monty left an indelible mark on his Rooster Teeth colleagues and fans. He was known to be a workaholic, staying at the office long after most of the staff had left, although he would happily strike up a conversation with anyone else working late. Monty found inspiration in many different kinds of animation, picking apart motion techniques in everything from Hollywood movies to anime to independent online productions. He was also a stickler for efficiency, ripping out many of the keys on his keyboard that would interfere with his work and entering :55 on the microwave instead of :60 to save an extra key press. In order to save computer processing cycles and mouse clicks, he memorized keyboard shortcuts and maintained older editing software on the lowest graphical settings. Although Monty was also an accomplished dancer, it is his work ethic that is indeed his most defining trait, foregoing vacation and sleep to get things done to perfection and continuously moving forward from one project to the next^[4].

Death

Monty passed away on Febuary 1st 2015 at the age of 33 of a severe allergic reaction to a medical procedure. Countless youtubers mourned for his death and a gofundme page was set up for his family to pay for a funeral for him.

Search Interest

External Links