Rooster Teeth Animation Rooster Teeth Animation was a division of Rooster Teeth that was founded in 2014, with
Gray Haddock as the head of the department. On December 13, 2019, it was announced that Joe Clary and Sean Hinz were promoted to co-heads of the department to replace Haddock.
Red vs. Blue In a parody of science-fiction films and games, and of military life,
Red vs. Blue tells the story of two groups of soldiers fighting a
civil war in a
desolate and isolated box canyon. Initially, Rooster Teeth expected the series to consist of only six to eight episodes. However, the series quickly became very popular, receiving 20,000 downloads in a single day, which contributed to bringing Rooster Teeth to fame. Accordingly, Burns conceived an extension of the plot.
RWBY RWBY (pronounced "Ruby") is an
anime-styled CG-
animated web series that was created and directed by animator
Monty Oum, and written by Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross. The first episode of
RWBY premiered on July 5, 2013, at
RTX 2013 and was released on the Rooster Teeth site on July 18, 2013. The story takes place in the world of Remnant, which is filled with supernatural forces and shadowy creatures known as the "Creatures of Grimm". Prior to the events of the series, mankind waged a battle of survival against the Grimm before discovering the power of a mysterious element called Dust, which allowed them to fight back against the monsters. On February 1, 2015, Oum died due to a severe
allergic reaction during a medical procedure, but the series he created continues. The success of
RWBY also resulted in a secondary series by Rooster Teeth,
RWBY Chibi, which features the show's main characters in
chibi form, with a focus on comedic elements and humor. In July 2024, the
RWBY franchise was purchased by
Viz Media, who stated their intentions to continue the main web series along with
RWBY showrunner and former Rooster Teeth employee Kerry Shawcross. They also stated their intentions to produce
RWBY merchandise and search for ways to widely distribute the series via streaming platforms and home video releases. On October 8, 2014, Rooster Teeth debuted ''Let's Play Minimations''. It features highlights from
Achievement Hunter's Let's Plays, initially using 3D animation that resembles the sandbox game,
Minecraft and later machinimated using
Grand Theft Auto V.
Camp Camp '' On April 1, 2016, Rooster Teeth announced
Camp Camp with a trailer that aired on their website and YouTube. The series premiered on June 10, 2016, as part of Rooster Teeth's
Summer of Animation promotion. It focuses on a young boy named Max, voiced by
Michael Jones, who is forced to go to summer camp but makes two friends there who help him constantly torment their camp counselor, David, voiced by Miles Luna. It airs on Fridays for Rooster Teeth First members and Saturdays for site members. The show was created by Jordan Cwierz and Miles Luna. The first season was extended by two episodes due to positive reception, for a total of 12 episodes in its first season.
Camp Camp composer was Benjamin Zecker, with Miles Luna writing the outlines for "The Camp Camp Theme Song Song" and "Better Than You." The DVD/
Blu-ray combo pack of the first two seasons were released on May 22, 2018, with its third season premiered on May 25. Its fourth season announced on May 20, 2019, and premiered on the Rooster Teeth site on June 1, 2019. On July 7, 2023, at Rooster Teeth's annual convention
RTX, it was announced that Camp Camp would return with new episodes on March 1, 2024.
gen:LOCK At RTX Austin 2017, Rooster Teeth Animation announced that they would be making a new series called
gen:LOCK that is a
mecha action drama series by
RWBY producer, Gray G. Haddock. It was teased at
New York Comic Con and RTX London. It was originally set for a late 2018 release, but was pushed back to January 2019. On May 21, 2018, it was revealed that the main character, Julian Chase, is voiced by
Michael B. Jordan. Jordan co-produced the series through his production company, Outlier Society Productions. The series premiered on January 26, 2019. The first season concluded on March 9, 2019. On October 24, 2019, the series was renewed for a second season, which premiered first on
HBO Max on November 4, 2021, and concluded on December 23.
Others In May 2004, at the
E3 gaming convention, Rooster Teeth was introduced to
The Sims 2 and realized that the game would be suitable for a series that parodied
reality television. The game's publisher
Electronic Arts allowed them to continue with the project. The result was
The Strangerhood, a comedy series that centers on eight strangers who awake one day unaware of where they are or how they arrived there. Its first season of 17 episodes completed on April 27, 2006. In 2005, the group collaborated with
Paul Marino on
Strangerhood Studios, a
spin-off commissioned by the
Independent Film Channel. This spin-off was the first machinima series to be commissioned for broadcast The second season premiered on September 29, 2015, after the stretch goal was reached for
Lazer Teams
Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. In 2006, Rooster Teeth partnered with Maybeck Productions to create
PANICS, a short series filmed on
F.E.A.R. that chronicles the misadventures of Bravo Team, a group of soldiers sent to investigate a
paranormal disturbance. and a prequel was released with ''F.E.A.R. – Director's Edition''. The mini-series won an award for Best Writing at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival. cosplaying as X-Ray and Vav At RTX 2014, a new animated show called '''' was announced, starring Ray Narvaez Jr. as X-Ray and
Gavin Free as Vav. The show is directed by
Lindsay Jones (who also voices Hilda) and Jordan Cwierz, with art direction by Patrick Rodriguez. The first episode was released on November 27, 2014. The second season premiered on July 19, 2015. Narvaez and Free reprised their roles as the show's titular heroes, with the addition of
Michael Jones as the anti-hero Mogar,
Jessica DiCicco as news reporter Ash Samaya, and Ryan Haywood as The Mad King. When asked by a fan if he would return for a third season if asked, Narvaez stated, "Not interested. I am happy with how Season 2 ended, plus as fun as voice acting was I have no interest in doing it anymore." A new 2D animation show was released on Rooster Teeth First on March 16, 2018. Created by Georden Whitman,
Nomad of Nowhere is a western-fantasy hybrid focused on a mute wanderer hunted for being capable of using magic to give life to inanimate objects. On February 15, 2019, it was announced Rooster Teeth would partner with
Hasbro for a 2020 animated
Netflix series based on the
Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy toyline.
Live-action production Rooster Teeth Shorts Rooster Teeth first ventured into
live action in 2009 with
Captain Dynamic, a mini-series to promote the online game
City of Heroes. The series tells the story of a team of writers hired to use the new in-game content creation tools to promote the title character, Captain Dynamic, the 'worst superhero in the world'. Directed by
Matt Hullum and written by
Burnie Burns, the series starred
Ed Robertson of the
Barenaked Ladies, who is a long time friend and fan of Rooster Teeth. A number of Rooster Teeth employees were present throughout the series, notably
Joel Heyman as Captain Dynamic's primary writer. Actor
Shannon McCormick appears as the series' antagonist, Great Face. The series also led to the release of an
iPhone app called the
Awesome Button. Following the positive reception of
Captain Dynamic, Rooster Teeth began producing another live-action series,
Rooster Teeth Shorts, a
sketch comedy which parodies life at their offices in a similar fashion to the webcomic. The series features the staff of Rooster Teeth, who all play caricatures of themselves, as well as occasional appearances from voice actors from some of their machinima series. The first season ran for twenty episodes, which along with
Captain Dynamic has been released on DVD. The second season of
RT Shorts debuted on April 23, 2010, with new episodes released weekly via the Rooster Teeth website until a hiatus during late July 2010, during which the team focused all their efforts towards
Red vs. Blue episodes. With production on
Red vs. Blue complete, weekly
RT Shorts episodes began again on August 28, 2010, until the second season's conclusion with its twenty-fourth episode and DVD release in early December. Shortly before season two's conclusion, Rooster Teeth collaborated with the team behind
Mega64, a video game-centered comedy series. Together they produced four
Rooster Teeth Shorts episodes, which were released on the Rooster Teeth website as the beginning of season three. Halfway through season four, Burns announced the cancellation of
Rooster Teeth Shorts for several new series. However, on April 1, 2013, Rooster Teeth announced
Rooster Teeth Shorts would return with a fifth season, on the same day, the season premiere episode
Reunion was released and marked the tenth anniversary of the company. On August 22, 2013, Rooster Teeth released six 6-second mini-episodes exclusively through the video sharing service
Vine. Six more were published on September 13, 2013. The third set was released on October 11, 2013, followed by a fourth set on November 8, 2013.
Immersion Immersion is a series in which
Burnie Burns and Gus Sorola (
Griffon Ramsey in the first season) test the concepts of video games in real life, such as whether the
heckling that sometimes occurs in
multiplayer video games would negatively affect the performance of real soldiers. Burns joked in the Rooster Teeth podcast that the series started as an "elaborate way for [them] to do fun stuff and get paid for it."
Geoff Ramsey and Gus Sorola were the
test subjects throughout the first season.
Gavin Free and
Michael Jones served as the test subjects from the second season onwards. Various other Rooster Teeth employees have served as test subjects in certain episodes including Miles Luna, Kerry Shawcross, Blaine Gibson and Chris Demarais. During
PAX East in late March 2010, Rooster Teeth released a
teaser trailer for a series with a
pilot episode that tested how easy it would be to drive a car from a
third-person perspective. Nothing was mentioned of
Immersion until October 2010, when
Burnie Burns stated during the company's podcast,
The Rooster Teeth Podcast, that production had begun on further episodes. Soon after, on November 23, 2010, the company released pictures on
Reddit of a door in their office turned into a safe-room door from the video game
Left 4 Dead to build hype for the series' debut the following day. The post became the most popular post of the day on Reddit. Rooster Teeth re-released a tweaked pilot episode the following day to begin the weekly series, which concluded with its seventh episode on January 5, 2011. A new episode of
Immersion premiered on June 17, 2011, after five months on hiatus. The episode's filming took place on May 29, 2011, during Rooster Teeth's convention, RTX, as well as 400 participants dressed as zombies. The episode shows Geoff Ramsey and Gus Sorola defending themselves from a horde of zombies. On June 17, Burns said during a panel at Supanova Sydney, that they would be producing a second season, and they were developing concepts. They also confirmed that Gavin Free and Michael Jones of Achievement Hunter would be joining the cast in the second season, replacing Sorola and Ramsey as the test subjects. In the Rooster Teeth Podcast, it was confirmed that the second season began production in 2013. Burns stated in an episode of the
Rooster Teeth Podcast that several television stations were interested in picking up the series for its second season. During RTX 2015, Burns announced that there would be a third season of
Immersion. The third season premiered in November 2015. Airing on August 3, 2019, Burns, Free, and Jones did an episode of
Immersion for Discovery channel's
Shark Week. Along with being shown a demonstration of mechanical shark jaws, it involved them riding a mechanical shark, surfing on the back of a shark-like boat, and ultimately ended with both of them diving with sharks with shark expert Luke Tipple. The episode is available to watch on the Discovery website.
The Slow Mo Guys 2013 pelting
The Slow Mo Guys hosts with water balloons for a slow motion video
The Slow Mo Guys is a science and technology entertainment web series from Thame, England, United Kingdom created by Gavin Free, starring himself and Daniel Gruchy. The series consists of a wide variety of things filmed in extreme
slow motion using a range of
Vision Research Phantom high-speed cameras, capable of shooting over 1,500,000
frames per second. The series premiered on October 15, 2010. On February 20, 2013, Free confirmed that the series had been picked up by Rooster Teeth and that further episodes of the series would be released on Rooster Teeth's website, as well as the series' existing YouTube channel. A best of compilation episode was released by Rooster Teeth Productions for home video on September 10, 2013.
Day 5 2012 At RTX 2012, 1,800 fans were used as extras for a scene in post-apocalypse short series called
Day 5, which initially followed a man fighting to stay awake after a virus spreads that causes anyone who falls asleep to die. The trailer premiered at RTX 2014. While the premise was kept the same, the overall story and characters were later changed drastically. In March 2016, the cast was announced, with filming starting that same month. The first episode premiered on June 19, 2016, on both Rooster Teeth's website and YouTube, though the rest of the series was released exclusively on Rooster Teeth's website for FIRST members, making it the company's first premium exclusive show. Its first season concluded on July 31, 2016. Showrunner Josh Flanagan held a Reddit AMA the following day, answering many fan questions about the show. In February 2017, a second season of the show was announced, along with a second season of
Camp Camp.
Million Dollars, But ... Million Dollars, But ... is an ongoing series in which three Rooster Teeth employees or a special guest each come up with a typically difficult scenario—which the cast comically re-enact—as a condition for which they will be given a million dollars; for example, the person has to date
Adolf Hitler for a year. The early episodes usually featured
Burnie Burns,
Gavin Free, and
Barbara Dunkelman, but as time went on, the cast became more varied. The pilot episode premiered on May 21, 2015, with the series continuing on July 9, 2015. The series now features special episodes devoted to specific themes, such as animation, with all the scenarios revolving around animation.
Million Dollars, But ... has developed a card game that had a very successful Kickstarter, reaching their goal of US$10,000 within 2 minutes and later surpassing $1 million. The card game was released in mid-June 2016.
On the Spot On the Spot is the name of the Rooster Teeth game show that involves members of the Rooster Teeth cast and crew, split into two teams of two people, playing various improvisational games to gain points awarded by the host Jon Risinger. The winning team is awarded a golden trophy that resembles Gustavo Sorola, affectionately called "The Golden Gus". Although promised to the winner, after being broken several times, the trophy now does not leave Risinger's desk. A frequent theme of the show is the chaotic humor; contestants will frequently attempt to annoy and antagonize Risinger, and to mock his show. The points are assigned arbitrarily and inconsistently based on the random whim of the host, as well as being assigned by the broadcast team that is running the show. In an effort to bring variety to the show, the next few seasons have been themed, with the first themed season being "On the Spot goes to Hell!", where Jon, his show, and his contestants go to hell because his show was too bad. The second themed season is "On the Spot: Lost in Time" with each episode being set in a different time period due to a break in the space-time continuum caused by Chris Demarais. The third themed season involves a "family friendly" version of the show titled "On the Spot: The Happy Room", where each episode has a learning subject such as weather or family which the game prompts are based on. The latest themed season, "On the Spot and Chill", has a TV show theme.
Commercial and external partners In 2014, a bi-weekly series premiered called
Happy Hour. The series chronicles the drunken adventures of Geoff Ramsey, Gavin Free, and Griffon Ramsey. The series ended on September 24, 2017. Created to test elaborate social experiments,
Social Disorder follows Chris Demarais and Aaron Marquis as they compete for points as a game show. The first episode, The Body Bag Experiment, debuted on September 15, 2014, in which Demarais and Marquis had to drag each other around in a body bag trying to get bystanders to help them out. Points were awarded for making up reasons as to what was in the bag or why they were dragging the bag in the first place.
Crunch Time was a web series that initially aired in September 2016. The original trailer was featured on
The Nerdist's announcement article, and depicted university students creating a machine to allow them to enter other people's dreams. The show stars
Samm Levine, known for
Freaks and Geeks and
Inglourious Basterds, as well as Good Neighbor's
Nick Rutherford; it also starred
Jessy Hodges and Kirk C. Johnson, who starred in Rooster Teeth's first feature film,
Lazer Team. Supporting the main cast is comedian
Brent Morin and
True Detective's
Michael Hyatt as agents Hobbs and Mullins, respectively. On Halloween 2012, a partnership between Rooster Teeth and
Blip was announced, with the premiere of their new 10-episode, reality game competition series sponsored by
GEICO.
The Gauntlet followed gamers from around the United States competing in contests of skills, concentration, agility and stamina, inspired by reality competitions
Wipeout and
The Voice. The first season was hosted by Ali Baker and Burnie Burns. Season two was hosted by Burns and Joel Heyman and began on September 7, 2013. Starting in 2014, Rooster Teeth employees Miles Luna and Kyle Taylor started playing video games and recording the gameplay and facial camera footage to create a show originally called
Sponsor Play. The show was featured as part of the Sponsor Cut portion of the RT website as an incentive to become a sponsor for their production. This series was renamed to
Backwardz Compatible in November 2016 along with the change of sponsorship format. The series included gameplay of the
original Fatal Frame,
Resident Evil 7,
Sonic Adventure 2,
Alien: Isolation,
Dark Souls III, and others. On September 27, 2015, a sketch comedy show
RT-ES, or
Rooster Teeth Entertainment System, premiered for Rooster Teeth First members on roosterteeth.com. The show was produced in Los Angeles, California and was hosted and created by
Colton Dunn. The show consisted of Dunn giving interviews, talking about relevant topics, and showing many sketches throughout. It featured comedy, music, and games. In a Sponsor-Only video, Burnie Burns said that
RT-ES would be put on hiatus. Burns began by saying "occasionally we make some missteps," referring to
RT-ES. He elaborated by saying Rooster Teeth would review audience feedback and apply it to the show in the future.
Commercial work commissioned from Rooster Teeth In mid-2006, Electronic Arts commissioned Rooster Teeth to direct commercials for their
EA Sports brand of games, including
Madden NFL 07 and
NCAA Football 07, for broadcast on television. Rooster Teeth released some of this work on their website. In late November 2006, controversy arose over a
Madden NFL 07 commercial, when
Indianapolis Colts tight end Dallas Clark complained about his depiction in the commercial. Hit and tackled multiple times in the advertisement by
Philadelphia Eagles players, Clark stated, "I haven't seen the commercial, but I'm upset about it. It makes me look like a punk." They have also made a trailer for a free to play PC game called
Loadout, developed by Austin-based
Edge of Reality.
Film projects In February 2014, Burns confirmed that the company was going to launch a
crowdfunding campaign for a feature film, as a way to offer more support options while gaining publicity. In June 2014, an
Indiegogo campaign for
Lazer Team was launched. The fundraiser hit its $650,000 target within 11 hours and reached over $1.6 million two days later. The film was due for release in 2015. , Lazer Team is the second-most-funded film project on Indiegogo, raising just under $2.5 million. Production for Lazer Team began on October 9, 2014. On February 21, 2015, the first official teaser trailer was released, and on March 16, 2015, the full trailer was released. The film premiered at
Fantastic Fest on September 24, 2015, where it received a generally positive reception. It was released in theaters on January 27, 2016. On August 5, 2016, Burns and Free announced that
Lazer Team 2 had been green-lit by Rooster Teeth in partnership with YouTube Red (now
YouTube Premium), who financed the film, and that pre-production had begun. In December 2016, Matt Hullum confirmed Rooster Teeth would film
Lazer Team 2 in Texas during the late spring of 2017 and planned to release it later that year. Daniel Fabelo co-directed the sequel with Hullum.
Nichole Bloom and
Victoria Pratt also joined the cast. Filming for the sequel concluded in April 2017. At
RTX Austin 2017, Rooster Teeth announced
Blood Fest, a horror-comedy film directed by Owen Egerton, and starring
Seychelle Gabriel,
Robbie Kay and
Jacob Batalon. Other cast members include
Zachary Levi,
Barbara Dunkelman,
Nick Rutherford, and
Tate Donovan.
Video game development Rooster Teeth vs. Zombiens Rooster Teeth vs. Zombiens is a game made by Team Chaos that features some of the main Rooster Teeth personnel in their fight against zombies in the Rooster Teeth office and parking lot. It was made for
iOS,
Android and
Steam platforms. It has since been taken down from IOS and Android platforms.
RWBY: Grimm Eclipse At
RTX 2014, Rooster Teeth announced during the
RWBY panel on July 4 that a
RWBY video game was in development, under the working title
RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, making this the first video game ever created by the company. An early demo of the game was available for consumers to play at the event. Rooster Teeth CEO
Matt Hullum stated, "
RWBY is a natural choice for us to focus on for our first in-house produced video game. Fans can expect that we will bring the same level of originality in action, comedy and design to the video game that has made the
RWBY animated series such a hit."
RWBY: Grimm Eclipse was initially developed as a
fangame by Jordan Scott over the course of five months. A demo version was released on April 1, 2014, to celebrate Rooster Teeth's 11th anniversary, but the demo is no longer available for download. Scott said at the time that it was not an ongoing project, and he had no plans for any future updates. He described it as a "survival-based action RPG" set in the world of
RWBY. On December 1, 2015, the game was released as an
Early Access title on
Steam after rapidly being approved through Steam's
Greenlight feature.
Vicious Circle Vicious Circle was first announced on episode 526 of the
Rooster Teeth Podcast by
Burnie Burns and
Gus Sorola. It is an uncooperative multiplayer shooter and Rooster Teeth's first original IP game. It was released on August 13, 2019, on Steam. == Subsidiary channels ==