Rooster Teeth’s Monty Oum Passes Away

Rooster Teeth CEO Matt Hullum announced that RT’s Director of Animation and RWBY creator Monty Oum has passed away. He died at the age of 33.

Last Friday, RT co-founder Burnie Burns announced that Monty was “hospitalized in critical care and it is not known if he will recover.” Friends and fans raised a total of over US$200,000 in three days, to help with Monty’s medical expenses and wished the animator well.

Monty was well known for his hit web animation series, RWBY, that premiered in 2013. He started uploading his fan videos in 2007, starting with his Halo and Metroid mashup, Haloid. In the same year, he released Dead Fantasy. His two works helped him launch his career in combat animation, and he was hired by Namco Games in 2008 to work on Afro Samurai.

In 2010, he began working for Rooster Teeth’s flagship series, Red vs. Blue, as the series’ character animator and choreographer. His original animated series, RWBY, won the 2014 Streamy Awards for Best Animated Series, and was also awarded Best Animated Series by the International Academy of Web Television in the same year.

Rooster Teeth has announced that they would not be uploading videos today in memory of Monty.

As of February 1, RWBY was made available on Netflix.