Hence, we asked this dapper member of the Halo red team if it was OK to take a picture (looks good holding the Ars business card).
Credit:
Nathan Mattise
Hence, we asked this dapper member of the Halo red team if it was OK to take a picture (looks good holding the Ars business card).
Credit:
Nathan Mattise
Is that the Halo guy? Must be in the right place.
Nathan Mattise
Immediately upon entry, RTX had festivalgoer safety at the top of its priorities…
Nathan Mattise
Immediately upon entry, RTX had festivalgoer safety at the top of its priorities…
Nathan Mattise
RTX Austin, if you’re reading this, please just allow us to embed with the Weapons Inspection Table for a day next year. We’re ready to make a short documentary. (This caped crusader had a giant, futuristic-looking sickle.)
Nathan Mattise
RTX Austin, if you’re reading this, please just allow us to embed with the Weapons Inspection Table for a day next year. We’re ready to make a short documentary. (This caped crusader had a giant, futuristic-looking sickle.)
Nathan Mattise
Immediately upon entry, RTX had festivalgoer safety at the top of its priorities…
Nathan Mattise
RTX Austin, if you’re reading this, please just allow us to embed with the Weapons Inspection Table for a day next year. We’re ready to make a short documentary. (This caped crusader had a giant, futuristic-looking sickle.)
Nathan Mattise
In addition to the weapons notice, RTX Austin made festivalgoer comfort equally important…
Nathan Mattise
Hence, we asked this dapper member of the Halo red team if it was OK to take a picture (looks good holding the Ars business card).
Our main impetus to head to the festival was panels like this, on writing and directing for animation (to the far right is a team from Titmouse, makers of Venture Bros.. Second from the far left is the guy behind the “How It Should Have Ended” YouTube film channel.)
Nathan Mattise
Titmouse founder Chris Prynoski was kind enough to sneak into an empty conference room to chat with us about cartoons for 10 minutes (look for more on Ars later this week… need to watch the Venture Bros. S7 premiere, first)
Nathan Mattise
Outside the festival, RTX Austin carried on the city’s fine tradition of branded-pedicabs (Disenchanted > Roseanne any day, sorry SXSW).
Wait a second, what’s Link doing this far away from Hyrule?
Nathan Mattise
In what Kingdom Hearts level do you pick up Captain America’s shield? Clearly we were missing something… To the exhibitors’ floor!
Nathan Mattise
Surefire way to feel old: go to a convention, discover all the cosplay characters you can’t recognize. (That’s Piggsy from Manhunt, right? Also saw a lot of this guy, a character named David I had to look up from a show called Camp Camp.)
Nathan Mattise
Aww, found it! Get yourself a Link shield and a Kingdom Hearts’ key.
The most neon green display, naturally, belonged to the hardware folks over at Razer.
Nathan Mattise
Not everything had to be digital: Red Bull had a Rubik’s Cube challenge table (the fastest time we saw was ~44 seconds, not 0.38 seconds).
Nathan Mattise
How many festivals exist where the headlining band is a Rock Band cover band? (Titmouse, by the way, did the animation for the game after Harmonix saw their work on Metalocalypse)
Nathan Mattise
Easily the biggest crowd on the exhibitor floor gathered around this… the Houston Outlaws, one of the 12 founding teams for the Overwatch League.
Nathan Mattise
The recent Overwatch finals in NYC had higher ticket value in the secondary market than a Bruno Mars concert at the same venue. The crowds gathered to watch a middle-of-the-road Overwatch League team beat up on volunteering challengers echoes that popularity.
Nathan Mattise
Not the Houston Outlaws’ pros, so these are some volunteer RTX attendees getting pwned by some professional gamers. (The line to participate was long.)
Nathan Mattise
Link, have you been lifting since we last saw you?
Nathan Mattise
AUSTIN, Texas—I’ll admit it: I’d never heard of Rooster Teeth before moving to Austin. But the Texas-based animation/podcasting/game streaming media company has been around for 15 years now, and it boasts some of the longest-running Web series around (including the Halo-inspired machinima series Red v. Blue).
I’m an odd case if judging by the crowds at the 2018 RTX Austin festival last weekend. The event started in 2011, and by year two, the festival had 4,000 attendees enjoying perks like the exclusive hands-on premiere of Halo 4. In contrast, 62,000 descended upon the Austin Convention Center in 2017, and the costumed crowds certainly felt as big this go-round. Accordingly, animation studios from Titmouse (Venture Bros. and Big Mouth, among others) to Netflix (here premiering Brickleberry) hung out, one of the 12 inaugural Overwatch League squads took over the exhibition hall (by inviting folks to volunteer and get pwned), and non-stop panels helped interested con-goers find advice on writing for animation or learn what’s happening behind the scenes on their favorite Web series (perhaps like popular Rooster Teeth anime, RWBY).
All of this will only get bigger from here. Rooster Teeth now has its own streaming service, called First, in addition to all the stuff it already has living on the Internet. And as part of that offering, it recently announced a very high-profile partnership: with one Michael B. Jordan. The Black Pantheractor has his own production studio and wanted to partner with Rooster Teeth on a new anime series called gen:Lock. As Varietydescribed the sci-fi project this spring, “Earth’s last free society is on the losing side of a global war… Lead character Julian Chase joins the fight as the first pilot for the next generation of mecha: a class of giant, weaponized robots controlled by humans.” Naturally, Jordan himself will voice the lead role.
The surprise partnership caused Texas Monthly to declare the future of Texas film will be animated, something that would certainly bode well for Rooster Teeth. And if the company’s profile is only expected to grow from here, it may need a bigger convention center for the next edition of the biggest annual gaming and Internet conference I’d never heard of.
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