Greater Dreams and Open Letters: Part 2
Greater Dreams and Open Letters: Part 1
A full year has passed since Shane Newville’s Open Letter to All Who Treasured Monty Oum. Many people want to forget this letter existed, and I don’t blame them. The amount of turmoil and conflict this letter brought forth was severe, traumatizing, even. People took multiple sides by supporting Shane, Rooster Teeth, or opting to wait out the storm. It was not a good few weeks to be in any fandom related to Rooster Teeth.
Ultimately, nothing happened. Rooster Teeth never acknowledged the letter’s existence. Total silence. People gradually forgot about the letter and standard fandom operations resumed.
Why bring it back now after so much strife? Good question.
In my previous post (linked at the top) I was quite clearly on Shane Newville’s side, and I still am. Time has passed since then, and I’m still searching for closure.
According to Wikipedia, Rooster Teeth was acquired by Fullscreen in early November of 2014, for an undisclosed amount under the guise of “gaining the resources and tools needed to compete against other producers”. When was the last time you heard of a company buy-out another for an “undisclosed amount”, especially from a company that prides itself with being open to its community? This lack of disclosure becomes an alarming trend, especially when Shane’s Open Letter gets involved.
February 2, 2015. People were told Monty Oum died from an allergic reaction during a simple medical procedure. It took 15 months to find out the “allergic reaction” was from a maintenance allergy shot. Why keep this information from the public? For the longest time, many people believed the reaction was caused by anesthesia, which would have made sense. But a maintenance allergy shot? Inside of a hospital? Where these procedures are performed on a regular basis?
He [Monty] had only gone in for a maintenance allergy shot— this sort of thing doesn’t happen. -Page 15, At the Hospital
Shane suspected something wasn’t right.
Rarely, a serious systemic reaction called anaphylaxis (pronounced an-a-fi-LAK-sis) can develop. Symptoms include swelling in the throat, wheezing, a feeling of tightness in the chest, nausea or dizziness. Most serious systemic reactions develop within 30 minutes of allergy shots. This is why it is strongly recommended you wait in your doctor’s office for 30 minutes after your injections. Your allergist is trained to watch for reactions, and his or her staff is trained and equipped with the proper medications to identify and treat them. -Source in reblog
I have to ask why this detail was omitted from Rooster Teeth’s original announcement of Monty’s death. When Satoru Iwata died later that year, the details surrounding his death were made fully available to the public. So, why not for Monty? Why omit so much? Did the full story make the circumstances surrounding his death suspicious? Was the vague report just a trap to stop people from looking into things further?
I was suspicious from the very start. Whenever someone neglects to tell the full truth, my trust in them drops significantly, and this was the second instance of omitting the truth in three months.
There are three major points in the Open Letter that I want to draw attention to:
In fact, throughout Volume 2 and up to his death, Monty was trying to figure out a way to take RWBY offsite to his own studio (likely somewhere in LA), with his own team (myself, Sheena, Kristina Haku Nguyen, Max Song, Ein Lee, maybe a few more animators, etc.) so we could craft it the way he intended it to be from the start.
[…]
Of course that was not exactly a realistic situation… at least not yet. But he wanted to do things his way. He did not like what was happening and where production was taking things as it continued to grow bigger and less efficient. -Page 13, A Small Team
After much discussion over coffee he came up with an awesome tool for Poser he called the “Pivot Tool”, where we could easily animate the change of weapon parenting from its holster, from one hand to the other, or both, etc. It would let us change between world and local rotation, and it had a builtin blur tool for weapon spinning. It was something we had been hoping to make for years and it was finally ready to go. However, for Volume 3 they decided we weren’t allowed to use this awesome tool because it “breaks” the new pipeline they implemented.
Monty also developed a facial rig to make all the new animators happy. Everyone else on the team came from the professional industry where they are used to using Maya and standard face rigs with little objects off to the side representing the eyes, brows, mouth, etc. Monty’s tool simulated those facial rigs that Maya animators were used to using because they kept complaining about how much easier it was to do in Maya. Unfortunately, no one got to use it because it was later decided not to be important enough, or something. So this tool went to waste. -Page 12, New Tools
Monty liked to create characters based on people that he knew. Winter Schnee was created in Sheena’s likeness, and it was his intention that she would also be doing her voice. Sheena is a great concept artist and had already crafted her design. This had been approved by Monty for Volume 3 back in December of 2013. Not only did Rooster Teeth take away any possibility of Sheena playing the part, the design was scrapped and recreated as what we eventually saw in Volume 3. -Page 18-19, Winter Schnee
These three points are some of the most important parts of Shane’s Open Letter.
The first point: Monty taking RWBY offsite with a small team, including his wife, Sheena Duquette. Ideally, Monty should never have considered taking production offsite if his current studio at Rooster Teeth wholly supported his workflow. The simple fact that he wanted to should speak volumes about what he thought of standardization. Not to mention that Rooster Teeth saw fit to ignore Monty’s workflow, which had worked for the company for years, in order to conform to industry standards.
The second point: New tools for Poser. I’m no animator, but I can understand how useful the tools Shane described could be when it comes to animating. The facial animation tool could be seen as an olive branch toward the standardization Rooster Teeth was undergoing. Many of the animators worked with Maya, which came with tools for facial animation, tools that Monty did his best to emulate. Unfortunately for Rooster Teeth, that meant sticking with Poser instead of converting to Maya, lest they invoke Monty’s wrath. Monty’s popularity meant that Rooster Teeth couldn’t say no in order to keep him from turning his fanbase against the company. How strange for Monty to fall into a coma less than a month after developing these new tools.
The third point: Winter Schnee and Sheena Duquette. For some unknown excuse, Rooster Teeth despises Sheena.
It was at some point in March that we finally had our first pre-pre-production meeting to start talking about how to move forward with the show. Right away, one of the producers made a strong statement that I did not like.
“Just so you know, Sheena has absolutely no business, whatsoever, with any part of RWBY.”
It was clearly aimed at me, the only one in the room who actually spent time with Sheena and Monty discussing RWBY. -Page 16, March
These people singled out Sheena, announced her alienation as their first order of business in their first meeting, and no one has any idea as to why. Monty approved of Sheena’s design of Winter Schnee back in December of 2013, and even wanted her to voice the character. Why would Rooster Teeth spend the resources to fully scrap a Monty Oum approved character design and defy his wishes? Why is Sheena portrayed as such a threat to them?
These points feel more like a motive than anything else.
Rooster Teeth wanted to standardize their work environment and alienate Sheena, for some excuse. Monty got in the way just by doing what he loved for the fans. How does a corporation deal with someone like this?
The thing is, Rooster Teeth might not have had a choice. It is completely possible that Fullscreen was the one to make the decision in the end.
RWBY was gaining popularity at an astounding rate. Fullscreen wanted to profit from its success, so they offered to buy Rooster Teeth and provide the “resources and tools” that would undoubtedly interfere with Monty’s workflow and original vision. Rooster Teeth couldn’t say no, but Monty would have rejected those “resources and tools” vehemently. As soon as Monty and Shane develop their own animation tools that likely emulated those provided by Fullscreen, Monty suddenly falls into a coma and dies ten days later.
Instead of having to deal with the crippling aftermath of Monty taking RWBY development off-site, he dies, Rooster Teeth and by extension Fullscreen get to enjoy a massive wave of monetary support on the deceased image of a Hero, and no one ever thinks to suspect foul play.
Coincidences don’t line up like this by mistake. Something rotten occurred at Rooster Teeth, and I would love to hire a private investigator to find out exactly what happened.
