Monyreak "Monty" Oum was an American web-based animator and writer. A
self-taught animator, he scripted and produced several crossover fighting
video series, drawing the attention of internet production company Rooster
Teeth, who hired him. There, he provided custom animations for Red vs. Blue, and
created the original animated series RWBY.
Oum attracted attention within the gaming community after releasing the hit
video Haloid in 2007 on GameTrailers, which a Destructoid article called "the
most interesting Halo-related fan movie in existence". The video has received
more than 4 million views and is the most watched user-created content on the
site. In October of the same year, he released the first video in his Dead
Fantasy fan series which, like Haloid, featured fantastical combat sequences
between characters from two different established games series. He released
five episodes of Dead Fantasy, a preview of an additional episode and two music
videos featuring the heroines of the series. After Oum announced that he had
started working for Rooster Teeth, the series was put on hold.
Oum suffered a severe allergic reaction during a medical procedure and fell into
a coma on January 22, 2015. He died on February 1, 2015.
Early life Oum was born in Providence, Rhode Island
in 1981. According to Oum, he was "Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and
Japanese." Oum married Sheena Duquette on May 10, 2014. He had four older
brothers and two older sisters. One of his brothers, Neath, has taken his place
as Lie Ren in RWBY. Career
= Fan videos and other early independent work=
Oum dropped out of high school and began putting together fan videos as early as
2002. In January 2007, he discovered some reverse engineering techniques
online that allowed him to extract models from Halo 2 and, utilizing assets
from Super Smash Bros. Melee, created the "ultimate showdown" between a
SPARTAN and Samus Aran in Haloid, a portmanteau of their respective
franchises. In the years following Haloid, Oum released a number of similar
mash-up combat videos in which characters from the Final Fantasy
franchise fought against others from the Dead or Alive franchise of fighting
games, under the title Dead Fantasy. In total, five full videos in this series
were produced, along with two music videos in which various of the series'
heroines dancing to pop music—a preview of an additional episode that was never
completed was later leaked online but never officially released by Oum.
= Industry work= Two months after the premiere of Haloid,
Oum was hired by Midway Games as a Combat Designer. In 2008 he was hired by
Namco Bandai Games as a combat designer and animator for Afro Samurai. In 2009,
Oum met Rooster Teeth co-founder Burnie Burns at a panel during San Diego
Comic-Con International and the two discussed the possibility of Monty
working for the company, but it wasn't until PAX East 2010 that it was
announced that Oum had been hired as an animator for the company's long-running
web series Red vs. Blue; previously Red vs. Blue, despite its military science
fiction setting, had been light on combat, emphasizing humour and
storytelling, but with Oum's involvement, the series began to feature
elaborately choreographed fight sequences similar to the content of
Oum's fan videos. This trend continued through the completion of the 10th
season of the show in 2012. Previous to the conclusion of season 10
of Red vs. Blue, Oum had pitched an idea for a series of his own; anxious to see
the production deadline for Red vs. Blue met, Burns told Oum that if he could
complete work on season 10 of Red vs. Blue on schedule, Oum would be given the
opportunity to make his series. At PAX East, that new series was announced as
RWBY with Oum serving as lead animator and over-all creative director for the
project. Like his previous work, RWBY featured highly involved and fantastical
combat sequences between super-powered characters that garnered strong fan and
critical praise. However, unlike all the series that Oum had worked on
previously, the show had no thematic or stylistic links to an existing game
franchise. Instead, the show featured characters and storylines of Oum's own
design, which he chose to base upon existing fairytales and folklore from
both western and eastern cultures. In the lead-up to the release of RWBY's
first season, Oum and Rooster Teeth generated buzz for the show through the
release of four trailers, each of which featured one of the show's main four
female protagonists. The show itself premiered in July 2013, available for
free viewing on Rooster Teeth's website and on YouTube.
RWBY was fairly well received, being a commercial success for Rooster Teeth and
garnering Oum his greatest mainstream recognition yet. The series was popular
with Rooster Teeth's existing fanbase, but being a coming-of-age story
featuring four young female protagonists, the show also proved
popular with a younger female demographic. Two seasons of the show
were produced, with a third in production at the time of Oum's death in
early 2015. Despite Oum's key roles in several aspects of RWBY's development,
Rooster Teeth announced on March 9, 2015 that the show would remain in production
and that work on a third volume was already underway. The company stated
that Oum had shared much of his vision for the future of the story with the
rest of the production staff and that these ideas would remain the basis for
future work on the show. A video game adaptation, which was in development six
months prior to Oum's death, will also go ahead as planned.
= Style= Oum's animation was noted for both
extensive detail in character design and for the frenetically fast-paced nature
of his combat sequences, which were a major component of his work. A dancer, a
martial artist and a cinemaphile, Oum himself claimed to adapt the style of
his animation from a wide variety of sources, citing classical action and
martial arts films, video game combat and various forms of animation as all
having had an influence on his own work. RWBY featured characters with generally
normal human body proportions, but occasionally featured exaggerated
features for comic effect as well as other visual humor. Numerous of Oum's
co-workers at Rooster Teeth referenced him as having an obsessive work ethic
with regard to his art and projects, with numerous Rooster Teeth podcasts
making reference to his "machine-like" qualities with regard to his work.
Death On January 22, 2015, Oum was
hospitalized following a severe allergic reaction during a routine medical
procedure that rendered him comatose. On January 30, Rooster Teeth co-founder
Burnie Burns stated that Oum was "in critical care and it is not known if he
will recover". A donation page was set up for the medical expenses on GoFundMe;
the goal of $50,000 was reached within three hours, with the fundraiser
reaching $100,000 in four hours, $150,000 within 24 hours, and $243,000
within 12 days. On February 1, 2015 at 4:34 PM, Oum died as a result of the
allergic reaction. His funeral was held on February 7.
A tribute podcast to Oum took place the day after his death. An episode of the
popular series Death Battle, whose animator and cast were heavily
influenced by Oum, dedicated the episode Boba Fett vs Samus Remastered to him,
and also had an animated dance sequence that paid tribute to his work, though
the song used, Shine from the RWBY soundtrack, was removed due to copyright
some weeks after. Accolades
References External links
Haloid on GameTrailers Monty Oum on Facebook
Monty Oum on Twitter Monty Oum's channel on YouTube
Monty Oum at the Internet Movie Database Monty Oum at Find a Grave