Monty Oum

Monyreak "Monty" Oum (oʊm ; June 22, 1981 – February 1, 2015) 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 married Sheena Duquette on May 10, 2014. 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 GameTrailers. 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 (this time Tecmo's Dead or Alive/Ninja Gaiden vs. Square Enix's Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts). 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 from a severe allergic reaction during a medical procedure and fell into a coma on January 22, 2015. He died on February 1, 2015.