Rooster Teeth is the media and entertainment company who runs some of the most well-known online series such as Red vs. Blue, and the anime-style RWBY (I’m a Yang fan myself, still emotional about that last season, and FYI: RWBY is the first western anime series to be distributed in Japan), who commands a subscriber base of 45 million on YouTube, and over 5 million unique visitors to their site. But not only awesome and well-accomplished, RT is looking to bolster future animators.
The studio has created a $2.5M development fund to work with animation creators and bring them into the fold of their digital network and help them monetize their content. This development pipeline may help new animators become more successful and get a break, and help get their work distributed.
Combined with this development fund, Rooster Teeth is recruiting animators to help get revenue through subscription, ad sales, live events, and merchandising. Currently, YouTube is a difficult place for animators, and Evan Bregman, Director of Programming at Rooster Teeth feels like this model can help extend the revenue infrastructure to other creators.
Matt Hullum, Co-Founder and CEO, is hoping to find creators who create consistently, and described the partnerships as “modular deals that involve some combination of a library content license for the Rooster Teeth app, development of new projects, merch sales in the Rooster Teeth store, podcast ad sales, brand integration sales, and more.”
This fund has already had a winner – with the announcement of Motor Knight (see the preview here). Animation is Rooster Teeth’s largest content category, and this development fund will only continue to help future animators grow rather than be forced to find their own path and beg for YT viewers. #shortcut
So TL;DR: If you are an animator with a library of content you want to share and you have a lot of ambition, get in touch with this Austin-based Rooster Teeth and get connected. This development fund can help all animation entrepreneurs.
Best of luck – we hope your career goes off with a Yang, err, bang!
Kam has a Master's degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and is an HR professional. Obsessed with food, but writing about virtually anything, he has a passion for LGBT issues, business, technology, and cats.
