“RWBY” Creator and Director, Monty Oum Dies at Age 33
To the surprise of anime fans around the world Monty
Oum the director and creator of the anime-like web series “Red vs. Blue” and
“RWBY (RUBY)” fell into a coma during a medical procedure and died on February
12015.
According to Wikipedia, Oum was born in Rhode
Island in 1981. Oum stated that he was "Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese,
and Japanese." He 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 (Halo)
and Samus
Aran (Metroid)
in Haloid, a portmanteau of their respective franchises. Two months
after the premiere of Haloid, he was hired by Midway
Games as a Combat Designer. In 2008 he was hired by Namco Bandai Games as a Combat Designer/Animator
for Afro Samurai. In 2009, Oum met Burnie
Burns at a panel during San Diego Comic-Con International
and the two discussed possibly teaming up. He was officially announced as
working for Rooster Teeth as character animator and choreographer at PAX East
2010, and in 2012, he was announced as the creator and lead animator for their
latest series, RWBY.
Fans of
Oum were crushed to hear the sad news and many express grief by honoring Oum
through original art.
To answer
the many inquiries from fans, a Rooster Teeth spokesperson
has stated that Oum’s “RWBY” will expand on as a game, and many of the series
fans also hope to see that expansion grow into regular ongoing anime.
RWBY is
about four girls brought together for one legendary purpose. Rwby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang
are students beginning their first year at Beacon Academy, a school designed to
train warriors possessing special powers to become huntresses and hunters of
monsters. Unfortunately, monsters aren't the only threat to the of Vale. There is the bold and gentleman Roman Torchwick and radical White Fang members like Cinder, Neopolitan, Mercury
and Emerald. These five antagonists are from a radical political
organization in Remnant,
and before the year is over, they
will show the students of Beacon that keeping their grades up is the least of
their problems.”
“RWBY” is
streaming on Crunchyroll in the
original episode segments and on Netflix in two uninterrupted
animated film-like volumes.
