Monty Oum Presentation Note Dump

This post contains the research and development I went through before paring it all down for a 10 min powerpoint presentation. It might do well to present a more holistic picture in the form of a video essay…

Monty Oum

QUESTIONS

Who is Monty Oum?

Animator, dancer, martial artist
Creator of RWBY

How did Monty Oum become Monty Oum?

The Globalization of Anime in the US
- Cowboy Bebop, Soul Eater, Fullmetal Alchemist, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Dance & Martial arts
Otaku culture in the US

Why is Monty Oum important/What did he do?

He was good at fight scenes which illustrated character.
Some hallmarks of his animation were rhythmic timing and strong poses, all while developing a story through his characters’ motivations and personalities.
- For example: analyze fight scene here

What were the specific virtues of Monty’s animation?

Clear flow between actions
- Convincing weight given to each hit
- Rhythmic timing, like a piece of music
- Gives the audience time to feel the impact of a hit, varying framerates
- Character development (RWBY becomes a leader – train scene)
- Good balance of wide and close-up shots to see the choreography and characters’ emotions
- Is it too fast paced/dynamic? Does rising ADHD rates in children play into the pacing?

What is the legacy of Monty Oum?

RWBY faced growing criticism in the seasons after Monty’s death, both for writing and animation quality
His devotion to his work has inspired many artists but also may have perpetuated a culture of obsessive work which plagues many animation studios.
It’s kind of weird because it’s admirable how many renowned artists are so focused and driven in their work. After all, great things come of it, but when it’s expected of an entire studio under the pressure of being replaced and an “Olympics of Suffering”, it becomes abusive.
- Animation, whether done well or poorly, is hard to learn and takes a lot of time and practice. Monty happened to have a lot of prior knowledge having grown up as a dancer, martial artist, and fan of anime.
- This is important because art does not exist in a vacuum. The most convincing and human stories you can tell are the ones that you yourself have some experience of.
- The writers for RWBY did not have that background, and although they did research on anime, what they seemed to take from it was an amalgamation of tropes and aesthetics without a deep understanding of the medium.
- To Monty, the vast amount of effort he put into his work was worth it, because he had a specific vision developed over years of experience and he was able to execute it well.
In 2019, Rooster Teeth was facing growing criticism from its past and current employees for poor work conditions and crunch culture. The CEO and co-founder of Rooster Teeth Matt Hullum released a statement apologizing to those affected and assuring that steps had been taken to improve. Coincidentally, their Head of Animation stepped down at the same time.
In recent years, studios all over the world have been called out for mistreating, not paying, and overworking their animators.

Is Monty over-glorified? Was his writing/storytelling really that great and could it have saved the show?

Apparently, Shane wrote a letter when he left about how RT ran Monty’s vision into the ground?!
- I think Monty’s death cemented RWBY as his magnum opus and put a lot of pressure on the remaining showrunners that would not have been there, or at least existed to a lesser degree, if Monty had just left.

Did 9/11, the Bush era, and the Obama era affect Monty Oum or RWBY?

Maybe mention something about American/Texas culture, American Individualism, the military complex
- Atlas, arguably an allegory for American exceptionalism and its military complex – but does RWBY’s go much beyond “thing bad”? Yes, a bit.
- Amongst RWBY’s themes in later seasons is that those in power should not keep secrets from the people and our main characters, even if its understandable that you don’t want to spread dysphoria
- It DOES warn that in heavily leaning into right-wing ideologies (Capitalism, exceptionalism, nationalism, individualism, military complex), even for the “right reasons”, leads to fascism.

What are the main criticisms of RWBY from its fanbase?

It used to be really badass, now it’s not
- Characters have become superficial husks of themselves, their dimensionality removed, their development stunted (Qrow may be an exception? Probably not though.)
- The fights are more generic and don’t reflect characters styles as much… Even if their styles changed, they are never explained. “It’s not like a character’s fight style can never change. In fact, it’s a common trope in shonen anime for our protagonists to observe and learn from their opponents’ styles. That never happens in RWBY, though. We have a big flashy fight, whose only objectives it achieves is to look cool and declare a winner. Sometimes they show some growth in character throughout the fight – Ruby becoming a leader, Yang learning that she’s overconfident, etc…. point obfuscated @-@
- Ok, so to say that there is NO character development post-Monty is a bit of an overstatement. There are certainly attempts to put characters through arcs of growth (Yang’s PTSD, Qrow’s alcoholism), but the problems these characters face seems contrived because the writers don’t know how to write a teenage girl going through self-esteem issues. She loses her confidence which according to the writing, seems to have been completely stored in her right arm which was cut off, but because she feels bad for making her dad feel bad she overcomes it. This is not how girls overcome their issues. For fucks sake, let her cry in her dad’s arms and have her dad tell her she shouldn’t have to risk her life and limbs because she’s a fucking child, and then have her realize she’s not ready to stop fighting. Instead of a “get back up because that’s who I am” its…
- The dialogue is horrible sometimes
- Too much time wasted on slice of life instead of developing the plot (in early seasons?)
- Lack of continuity between fights
- The worldbuilding is ass after season 3 – The characters explore different nations which are expected to be different, but it’s more like they’re from different worlds altogether.
- It really seems like the writers had a tenuous grasp of anime and didn’t know how to take settings and make them their own thing. They took a lot of stuff that FEELS like anime but to doesn’t acknowledge how those things worked in the first place.
- The villages in AtLA were different but all felt like they were a part of a unified world. Omashu was a city with modern technology for its universe – it had a mail system and believable structure as a city. But in RWBY, you have a post-modern city Beacon with robot soldiers and mechs and some villages that look like they were taken straight out of AtLA, with no technology at all? Even small villages in the real world have cellphones and computers!
- Bad animation – weak poses/silhouettes, characters changing fight styles for no reason,
- The writers don’t seem to know where they’re going sometimes
- BASICALLY, there’s a huge disconnect in worldbuilding, character development, fight choreography, between Seasons 1-3, when Monty was alive, and the seasons after
- HOW COULD YOU NOT MENTION FANDOM CULTURE???
  - Because it’s not really relevant nor worth more than a passing mention

Was Yang’s “Lesson” Misogynistic?

I get irrationally angry when I hear how Yang needed to lose her arm to learn a valuable lesson. She was overconfident in her strength and had to be taken down a notch, so an even stronger bad guy cut off her arm. It seems like the writers and most of the fans agree with this statement and don’t really question it at all, except to criticize how easily she got her arm back and didn’t go through much character development with her dad in regaining her confidence.
~~It also served as a way~~ to transition the story into a more serious tone with life and death stakes, but there are other ways to do that (which they did!).
- Actually, it didn’t. Yang knew the whole time she was fucking risking her life, she learned that when she went looking for her mom as a kid and almost got killed by Grimm until Qrow saved them.
This moral lesson in the writing completely misses the point of why girls (and Yang in particular!) finds confidence in physical strength in the first place.
- Subverting gender stereotypes – being as physically strong/stronger as men are
- Proving her worth to her mother, Raven
- Totally fucking missed opportunity to develop Yang’s character through her relationship to her dad and mom. They sort of tried, but totally missed the point.
- Who are you to tell a writer when the point of HIS writing should be? First of all, I’m not telling the writers what they should do, I’m using examples of what I would do as a basic example of other possibilities which would achieve the goals they seem to intend. I am analyzing their goals, what they might be, what they accomplish, and what they don’t.
Think about it… How many overconfident shonen-type characters can you name which get taught a lesson? How many of them are made to feel helpless afterwards only to turn right back into their old selves once they showed some humility?
- Ranma ½ Analysis – cat weakness arc, moxibustion weakness arc
Therefore, is Yang’s lesson just a flimsy justification to put strength-minded girls “in their place”?

Did Sheena Oum kill Monty Oum?

Some losers on Kiwi forums put forward the idea that Monty’s secret wife actually murdered him by bringing home a stray cat when he was allergic to cats
Monty was getting regular allergy shots, so the theory is that the additional exposure to allergens via the stray cat triggered a severe reaction
Except that’s not how allergies work. His allergies would have been getting better with repeated low exposure as long as they were not severe
Sheena got a lot of donations after Monty’s funeral and purportedly got a boob job, making some believe she was exploiting her husband’s death for money
There is not a single person who knows Sheena who has anything to say about her other than how good and cool a person she is so I’m going to put this one down to misogynist internet trolls…

Ask Shane:

What exactly was Monty’s workflow?
We all know Monty was a hard worker, and RT apologized last year for effectively overworking its animators. (fix) Do you think Monty perpetuated that kind of crunch culture or that his name was used to perpetuate it?
Can you tell me about your experience with overwork in animation?…

OUTLINE

Setting the Stage – Cultural Context

Globalization of Anime in the US in the 80s/90s
Intro to the web animation boom of the 90s/2000s
- Newgrounds
- YouTube
- Geek/otaku culture
- Video games
- The foundation of Rooster Teeth – development from small indie company to media corporation
~~FANDOM CULTURE.~~
- ~~The rise of social media~~
- ~~Stans, simps, social media “armies”~~
- ~~RT, RvB, RWBY, and Monty all had their own fanbase, with some overlap~~

The Rise of Monty Oum

Born in Rhode Island, moved to Texas
Dropped out of high school, started doing web animations
Hired at a couple of game companies, then Rooster Teeth
Worked on RvB and created RWBY
Animation & storytelling visionary, but he did not care about writing
Died

Monty Oum’s Legacy

Drop in quality on RvB & RWBY after his death
Changes to RT’s pipeline, work practices as a result of the company being sold around the same time
Known as a hard worker, but may have perpetuated Crunch Culture
Comparison to Hayao Miyazaki
Obsessive Work Ethic & Crunch Culture in Animation – Prioritizing Hard Work over Creativity
- Passion, devotion, and sacrifice
The movement away from crunch culture
Fan discourse, Lettergate, lost opportunity

Conclusion

Work hard but do not over value hard work alone as it can become an abusive Olympics of Suffering. If the best stories come from real life, live a meaningful, healthy life so you have good stories to tell.

Notes

An Open Letter to All Who Treasured Monty Oum by Shane Newville

May 2016
Sparked both juvenile toxicity and mature discourse amongst RT, RWBY, and Monty fans – valid criticism and useless vitriol
Shane suffers from crippling depression
- As artists do
- His journey to becoming an animator was fraught with extremely low self-esteem
- Before working at RT, Shane was struggling to make ends meet with a wife and two kids
The Ultimate Monty Simp
- Shane obviously idolized Monty to the ..nth degree
- Monty pulled him out of destitution and allowed him to become successful doing what he loved and getting better at it
- He really wanted to keep Monty’s vision alive and was extremely upset that ideas of his were taken out/changed
- You cannot blame Shane for idolizing Monty, but you can blame him for dogmatically clinging to the idea of “Monty’s way”
- Also cringe: He 100% wanted to be the new Monty
- Velociraptor – Shane seems to have a gatekeeping attitude with his reverence for Monty
He had his workload doubled after Monty died and was fired for “poor performance”
So Monty had ideas for RWBY character and worldbuilding, he brainstormed and came up with a structure
Montourage: used in reference to the people who showed up for Sheena when Monty was hospitalized, but still kind of a funny moniker for Monty simps
Sheena was an uncredited but essential influence in RWBY’s early seasons
Monty’s office
- So Monty and Shane would crack out shit at night in an empty studio, with no one to bother them and inspirational shit on all the surrounding monitors while they worked, that sounds so badass I can’t believe I never thought of that. I wish I had multiple monitors
- “I made sure to keep all of his monitors rolling footage of fighting games, fight clips, anime / sakuga, k-pop videos, everything you’d see going while he was working.”
- But apparently post-Monty, that shit wouldn’t fly. “What are you doing?? Masturbating to anime girls?? Don’t give me that WTF look, you can’t possibly be working on anything important at this hour!”
“Monty’s behaviors are unacceptable”
- Ok so it may be that some of Monty’s work habits were unprofessional and possibly antisocial – unorthodox to say the least. But he was the creator of the show and well-loved/productive/successful enough that he was allowed to work the way he wanted.
Monty’s workflow
- Monty did not storyboard his fight scenes. He preferred to work on the fly, choosing & changing the camera angles while animating. It might seem like a bad idea to write a story and leave a blank spot for “Monty scene here” but it allowed him to be spontaneous and lively in the fight scenes, rather than having it feel “scripted”.
- Ok so apparently Poser was really essential to Monty’s workflow. A lot of people seem to get the impression that switching the production to a Maya pipeline automatically made the show worse, but I don’t get how that’s true. Shane describes a lot of tools like Monty’s facial rigging and parenting script, and mocap, but all that can still be done in Maya. You just have to learn how. It’s a steep learning curve and will be less efficient that more familiar methods while you are adapting, but once you have it down, you can do so much more with Maya. I honestly don’t believe Monty would have opposed the switch if given the chance to see what could be done with Maya.
- (Blender is probably the future. You need to get on this shit.)
Dillon Gu was an animator but not working at RT at the time. Though he was making a Monty Tribute animation.
“Keep moving forward” – what Monty used to say, but isn’t that also in Meet the Robinsons??
Shane’s main issue – RT has an obligation to honor Monty’s memory and keep his ideas in a show that he created
- RT has no legal obligation to honor anything, it’s their IP
- But yes, RT is morally expected to honor Monty’s wishes, which they attempted to do!
- Is it disrespectful to a dead man to go against his wishes?
Some RT fans are dogmatically devoted enough to be called a cult (As with any fandom.)
Music was an important part of the workflow, they animated to music. (Of course that’s the best way!)
Pipeline Troubles
- Switching to Maya was the right choice. Switching to a pipeline was the right choice. In the long run, these choices would allow RWBY to grow in size, scope, and efficiency.
- However, Shane faced immense inefficiencies and technical problems as a result of these changes. Why is that?
  - First of all, it takes time to learn any new process, during which time you won’t be as good or efficient at doing things as when you were using familiar processes.
  - On top of that, it seems RT did not have the experience or resources to adequately implement or manage the pipeline.
  - From how Shane tells it, a lot of the extra shit he had to do should have been given to TDs who handle the more technical aspects while artists could focus on the art. But they didn’t have TDs. The animators were their own TDs, as they usually are at smaller studios.
  - But why implement a big-studio practice like a network-based pipeline without the manpower/computing power to support it?

Tropes with Real-Life Impact/Social Commentary

Faunus & The White Fang
- Representing… oppressed minorities in general?
- Accomplice by Inaction – The White Fang views all humans as complicit in the oppression of the Faunus, either directly or by their indifference
The Schnee Dust Company
- A big company with questionable business practices and associates
- IRONIC, ISN’T IT???

Presentation

Setting the Stage – Cultural Context

During the 80s and 90s, anime started coming into the United States. Shows like Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, and Naruto were really popular amongst children who would grow up using the internet, and inspired many of them to make their own animated creations.

Home-made animations soon became popular in the late 90s and 2000s with the creation of sites like Newgrounds and YouTube. Individually made content exploded online, featuring both original and fan-made animations which exhibited the geek and otaku culture of comic books, video games, and anime. A community of fans, artists, and game developers grew and spread over the internet until it was a part of pop culture.

Meanwhile, Rooster Teeth started out as a bunch of drunk gamers making a podcast. They moved their content to YouTube, started an animation studio, and expanded into machinima – animation made by moving a character in a video game and recording the screen. With this technique, Rooster Teeth started the web series Red Vs. Blue (RvB) in 2003 – an absurdist and actiony show based on the game Halo which is currently on its 18^th season. With the help of Monty Oum, they produced RWBY in 2012, the first American anime to be distributed in Japan.

The Rise of Monty Oum

Monty Oum was an American animator of mixed-Asian descent. He was born in Rhode Island but later moved to Austin, Texas. In his early days as an animator, Monty actually dropped out of high school and started doing animations of dynamic fights and dances for the web. (Haloid, Gee)

As a self-taught artist relying on his background in martial arts, dance, and film, he was hired as a combat designer for Bandai Namco and Afro Samurai. Eventually he started working as an animator at Rooster Teeth on seasons 8-10 of RvB and he created his original series, RWBY.

RWBY is a show centered around four girls – Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. The young girls train to become “huntresses” and protect the world from monsters called Grimm. The show has a lot of combat, comedy, and it perfectly appeals to those who grew up around the internet and otaku culture.

RWBY’s initial success was due to the appeal of its characters and fight scenes. Some hallmarks of Monty’s animation were rhythmic timing and strong poses, all while developing a story through his characters’ motivations and personalities. As he was working in 3D, his detailed character designs could be handled by the computer while he focused on the motion and telling the story.

But despite his storytelling skills, Monty didn’t really care about the writing of RWBY, which was left largely (but not entirely) to Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross. In fact, the scripts and storyboards would often have holes reading “insert Monty Action Sequence here” where Monty would develop the fight scenes on his own while they the rest of the show was worked on separately. This resulted in some problems with continuity and character development in which the fight scenes were connected in a way that didn’t always make sense.

Then, as RWBY was in the middle of production for its third season, Monty suffered a severe allergic reaction to a routine allergy shot, which left him in a coma. About a week later, on February 1, 2015, he died at 33 years old.

Monty Oum’s Legacy

Monty happened to have a lot of prior knowledge of otaku culture having grown up as a dancer, martial artist, and fan of anime. This is important because art does not exist in a vacuum. The most convincing and human stories you can tell are the ones that you yourself have some experience of. The writers for RWBY did not have a background in anime, and although they did research by watching some of the more famous shows, what they seemed to take from it was an amalgamation of tropes and aesthetics that “felt like anime” without a deep understanding of the medium.

“We’re in a huge fan culture at the moment, where everything has spawned off of something. If you look at something and intend to use it, you have to emulate it, which means you have to understand it.”
– Monty Oum

To Monty, the vast amount of effort he put into his work was worth it, because he had a specific vision built on years of experience and it was executed well. In the seasons after Monty’s death, Rooster Teeth faced a lot criticism for both their animation quality and writing. It became clear that his talent was mainly responsible for the appeal of RvB and RWBY, and without him, many fans expressed their disappointment in the shows.

However, this would pale in comparison to criticism of the Rooster Teeth for its poor work conditions in its animation studio.

Monty was famously devoted to his work and inspired many artists to follow in his footsteps. In the description of one of his dance music videos, he says he wishes he could have done a creative intro for it, but he has episodes to make. He become known far having an incredibly focused work ethic. Sleepless nights, long hours of working without a break, and to him it was all worth it.

“It’s easy to forget to sleep when you’re working on something cool, so you just work as hard as you can, and still there’s never enough time. So the thing you’ve got to learn is to essentially let go.”
– Monty Oum

And watching his animation, you can tell he loves what he’s doing. The effort and passion put into his work comes out in the character design, animation, and cinematography. Unfortunately, he may have also indirectly perpetuated a culture of obsessive work at Rooster Teeth.

Crunch Culture – Prioritizing Hard Work over Creativity

Crunch culture is largely used in the videogame industry to describe a toxic labor practice in which developers and artists work long hours without pay for an extended period. This issue of worker exploitation is prevalent in every line of work to a varying degree, but it has gained a lot of attention in the entertainment industry in particular. The fact that the artists who create thousands of hours of content may be overworked and mistreated strikes a chord with a lot of people, especially online.

“Working hard should be a matter of course. Our line of work is filled with people who work hard but are no good as human beings. Placing value on the act of working hard is an incredible mistake.”
– Hayao Miyazaki

We do expect artists to be passionate about their work – it’s considered one of the marks of a great artist. We and praise the exceptional devotion of artistic geniuses like Hayao Miyazaki, who sees hard work and sleepless nights as simply part of the animation process. On the other hand, he warns against overvaluing hard work alone. It’s not enough to work hard, you have to have vision and intelligence. This is an important piece of advice but it could be argued that it still normalizes overwork and social sacrifice as an inevitable part of the animation industry.

Animation studios under economic pressure hold up examples like Monty Oum, Hayao Miyzaki and others to perpetuate crunch culture and an “Olympics of Suffering” amongst their workers. There’s this harmful attitude in video games and animation where workers feel like they’re validated by their suffering, and if they’re not working hard enough to the point where they’re making great sacrifices, then there are others ready to replace them.

In recent years, studios all over the world have come under fire for mistreating, not paying, and overworking their animators. Luckily, not all studios suffer from this problem and the ones that do, are usually called out and make promises for change. In 2019, the CEO and co-founder of Rooster Teeth, Matt Hullum, released a statement apologizing to those affected by their crunch culture and assuring that steps had been taken to improve.

Conclusion

Monty Oum was a talented and dedicated animator whose death has illuminated problems within Rooster Teeth and the animation industry in general.

Passion in art is definitely important, but professional artists should not be pressured to sacrifice their wellbeing for their work. While putting in exceptional amounts of effort in one’s work is admirable and often necessary, allowing a healthy work-life balance will enable artists to be more productive and creative. If the best stories come from real experiences, live a meaningful life you have good stories to tell.

Opinions

This presentation is very near and dear to my heart, not least of all because I’m a Texan. I grew up in the web animation boom of the 2000s, and have been perpetually online all my life. That and anime are the main reasons why I got interested in becoming an animator. I was a part of various niche online communities which focused on art, gaming, and writing.

Obviously, I put a lot of my own opinions into analyzing Monty Oum, Rooster Teeth, and crunch culture. While I tried to research them to the best of my ability, it’s entirely possible that my conclusions are flawed. Maybe there’s some mystic virtue in working your heart out and crunch culture is just a way to find the cream of the crop.

There’s a lot more I would have liked to talk about, like how Rooster Teeth is owned by AT&T now (as of 2018), the people they’ve fired because of sexual harassment…

The discourse about RWBY, much of which is just angsty teenagers who like yelling about anime girls, but there is some quality critique and analysis out there.

The perceived lack of creativity amongst larger, more corporate animation studios like Disney… The impending monopoly on entertainment that they’re threatening to acquire…

I would like to say that prioritizing quality over quantity is the more profitable path for animation, but box office numbers tell a different story. As long as an animated feature is entertaining and marketable, it will sell. Spectacle will always be more consumable and easier to produce than substance. Honestly, we can’t stop the ubiquity of polished cash-grabs – they make too much money. And at the end of the day, who are we to silence some meaningless, but ultimately harmless fun if it makes people happy? I hate Minions as much as the next person, but if I had a kid who absolutely loved those yellow tic-tacs, I’m not going to kill that for them. We can only strive to put out more meaningful stories and support the ones that are already out there. Oh, and not treat artists like shit.

Works Cited

Cote, Amanda C., and Brandon C. Harris. “‘Weekends Became Something Other People Did’: Understanding and Intervening in the Habitus of Video Game Crunch.” Convergence, Mar. 2020, doi:10.1177/1354856520913865. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354856520913865

Draper, Joshua Michael. The Cool Japan Project and the Globalization of Anime and Manga in the United States. Diss. Appalachian State University, 2015.
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/listing.aspx?id=18361

Koike, Aki (2011/01/01). Working conditions of animators: The real face of the Japanese animation industry. Creative Industries Journal, 3, 261-271. doi: 10.1386/cij.3.3.261_1
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/cij.3.3.261_1

Sausage Party Pay Dispute
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/canadian-union-prevails-sausage-party-animators-pay-dispute-1196832

Rooster Teeth Apology
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/rooster-teeth-ceo-apologizes-for-poor-work-conditions-at-dallas-animation-studio-175948.html

Rooster Teeth Work Condition Complaints
https://www.popdust.com/rooster-teeth-crunch-2638895587.html

Hayao Miyazaki on the Overvaluing of Hard Work
https://soranews24.com/2019/07/10/hayao-miyazaki-talks-on-how-working-hard-isnt-something-to-be-proud-of-not-forgiving-yourself/

RWBY Is Disappointing, and Here’s Why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81fdKWOHrdE

Why It Works: Red vs Blue’s Animation by Monty Oum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKchH5pjcM8

RWBY Just isn’t the same: The pillars of Monty Oum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxP3lBW7wm4

Animation Analysis – RWBY: Character
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm8faI5_TTM

Watch the 4-hour documentary that unravels Hayao Miyazaki’s obsessions
https://www.polygon.com/animation-cartoons/2020/5/29/21274485/10-years-with-hayao-miyazaki-documentary-streaming-studio-ghibli-nhk

10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10yearshayaomiyazaki/

YouTube animation on the rise
https://www.thedailystar.net/shout/the-internet/news/youtube-animation-the-rise-1675993

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Oum