Amid the man exciting announcements out of RTX Austin, one eye-catching development was Rooster Teeth’s plan to help online animation creators monetize their content, bringing them into its digital network and grow its own 250,000+ member SVOD business in the process, with the help of a $2.5 million toon-targeted development fund.
The creators of hit anime-style series RWBY, the pioneering Red vs. Blue and upcoming sci-fi adventure gen:LOCK (starring Michael B. Jordan), Rooster Teeth will use the fund to work with animators publishing on YouTube and other platforms to develop new video projects. It will also support those that join its network with help in advertising, subscriptions, merchandising and other revenue streams.
“We’re looking for like-minded creators who have a good track record of producing consistently. It definitely helps if they have an archive of past material our audience can watch to get up to speed immediately, but overall, we’re looking for folks who are ambitious.”
— Matt Hullum, co-founder & CEO of Rooster Teeth.
“YouTube is a tough place for an animation creator today — animation is our biggest content category by far and we feel that. But through our diversified revenue model, we’ve created an infrastructure that allows us to better monetize the day-to-day life of being a creator. We want to extend that to other creators.”
— Evan Bregman, director of programming for Rooster Teeth.
[Source: DigiDay]
