Monty Oum Quotes

• “If you are not a complete prisoner of yourself, you are not my kind of busy.”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “Since I was a child I’d watch shows and play games with the hope of one day creating something like them someday. Then I reached the point in my life with the opportunity to create something.”
  — Monty Oum, FEATURE: Making RWBY- An Interview with Monty Oum

• “Workaholic? Please. That’s sounds like something lazy people would say.”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “Guys…Life…it’s pretty awesome. Just keep at it. And I’ll keep going, too.”
  — Monty Oum
• “As soon as I was able to afford collecting figures I started buying them. These pieces of art which litter my desk and work areas are a constant inspiration for me.”
  — Monty Oum, FEATURE: Making RWBY- An Interview with Monty Oum
• “No joke, in a perverse level of dedication I planned to be working while my mother was on her deathbed. Was this my way of not dealing with it?”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “The answer to why I came? To find out something I kind of already knew. To confirm it further.”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “I only started doing it [animation] seriously when I was twenty-two or so, when I realized it was something I could potentially be doing with my life. I kept at it and trying and trying, which led me somewhere.”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine

• “A lifetime of kung-fu movies, as well as being a dancer myself, lets me pull from many influences; from Hong Kong action movies, to over-the-top anime sequences, to dancing.”
  — Monty Oum, FEATURE: Making RWBY- An Interview with Monty Oum
• “I’ve been interested in animation as far back as I remember. I used to draw little flip books as far back as age seven, maybe five. I was supposed to be reading books, but instead I was drawing in books and making little fight sequences in them.”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine
• “I have actually tried to cram a human skeleton into our bear and wolf models, because I wanted to be able to motion capture it. But then the hands do weird things where the wolf model has arms twice as long as human arms and they just don’t look good when I go on the ground and do this.”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine
• “We are never fighting alone. Get up, get going, I’ll meet you there.”
  — Monty Oum
• “I went to school like any normal kid, until I decided to drop out.”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine
• “Early in my life, I was only concerned with creating, without destination or purpose, creating was the purpose itself. And as reality set in, and the need to survive came with the need to have an identity, I’ve tried many things in discovering who I am and all of them eventually became useful.”
  — Monty Oum, FEATURE: Making RWBY- An Interview with Monty Oum

• “In my lifetime of watching anime, I’ve watched plenty of high school anime and it’s just a row of plaid skirts and high school uniforms and stuff. They only change the hairstyles. The scope of anime facial structures are pretty universal, like generic, literally based off that technical limitation.”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine
• “And so it’s a slow process, but the easiest answer, the fastest answer, although there’s still a lot of work behind it is, you should just do it honestly! And if you have an idea you always want to put on screen, look at someone who’s already doing it and just do what they do.”
  — Monty Oum, Interview with Monty Oum, the man behind Dead Fantasy and the upcoming RWBY- Nerd Reactor
• “The goal isn’t to live on forever; it’s to make something that does.”
  — Monty Oum
• “They told me how despite having help in the house she would get up every day to cook and clean and work. And that it was impossible to stop her despite her organs failing one after another. Up until her body stopped working she didn’t. I started to realize I of all people understood her the most. Work isn’t a choice, not when it comes to surviving.”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “It’s a lifelong dream. Imagine me as a ten-year-old saying I want to make 3D animation and then I’m in a store with my immigrant parents, we grew up in poverty, and I point at this $800 box. How does he even fathom what 3D animation is as it’s a new genre in the 1990s and that I’ll be able to do it in a genre I loved watching. ”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine
• “I believe that the human spirit is indomitable. If you endeavor to achieve, it will happen given enough resolve. It may not be immediate, and often your greater dreams is something you will not achieve within your own lifetime. The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death.”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “33 years ago my parents dragged our family here from the war on their own two feet, it was a matter of survival. We came to this country with no money, and not being able to speak the language. My mother pregnant with my older brother, and then myself a year after, found a job, learned the language, and provided for our family. My father who had suffered from post war syndrome was little help. So all I can remember of my mother in those early years was the she was never around. She was never around because she was busy fighting, she fought for our family to survive, because she had no choice. That’s why you work, because the alternative is unthinkable.”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “Getting away from my work pretty much equates to paralysis, I simply don’t know what to do with myself when I am away. I hope the same for others, because I’ve always said the world looks very different, when you’re pushing yourself every second you’ve got. Have I succeeded? I’ve succeeded in being more than I was. Only to understand it all looks no different from yesterday, just a little bit clearer.”
  — Monty Oum, Passing
• “Well, I guess animation is the thing that I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always had an interest in how still images become moving images. I mean I’ve been doing flip books for as long as I can remember, and then that transitioned into the day I got computers. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, here’s a thing where I don’t have to constantly waste paper or pencils and I can constantly reiterate.’”
  — Monty Oum, Interview with Monty Oum, the man behind Dead Fantasy and the upcoming RWBY- Nerd Reactor
• “RWBY the main character is younger than the rest, because in some ways she is a prodigy and was admitted to the school because she proved herself in combat. She wields a giant…for one of the original pitches of the show I went to our CEO and I went, ‘Hey I got an idea for a show: Little Red Riding Hood-like girl fights with a giant scythe and it’s also a sniper rifle. When she pulls out the scythe on a monster and fires the gun, this giant fifty-caliber rifle that kills.’ He said that sounds great. For me, to combine holistic weapons with guns is for me a vehicle for coolness and fun.”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine
• “For fight scenes, I got in and craft very methodically. Very often I’ll have a kick here or a punch there, a block here, and I’ll just put them together. It’s been several years since I’ve done motion capture where I want to mo-cap a fight scene completely new. I’ll go in and do the combos and then I’ll turn around and do the blocks and stuff. Very often you’ll see me fighting myself.”
  — Monty Oum, Toon-In-Talk Episode 05: Interview with Monty Oum | FanboyNation Magazine
• “The biggest motivation for [RWBY] is the need to tell a story much like those I needed when I was growing up. The stories about not giving up that pushed me along, and the people I’d meet along the way. Knowing how much all the shows and games I’d played all my life has influenced me, it is a great honor to be able to bring something of my own to a generation of people who are also looking for something to believe in.”
  — Monty Oum, FEATURE: Making RWBY- An Interview with Monty Oum