I love how the RvB fandom took Gray saying 'Locus' love of magical girl shows' from a 10 minute interview and turned it into a cornerstone of his character
Calxiyn’s Rooster Teeth production leaks reveal secrets of Gray Haddock’s time as RT Head of Animation
RWBY Youtuber Calxiyn has today put up a Google Doc (and accompanying video) detailing several anonymous complaints from within Rooster Teeth regarding the now-former Head of Animation Gray Haddock and also-now-former Supervising Producer Koen Wooten and the difficult production cycle they administered. Some of the accusations paint a rather harsh view of Haddock’s management style and point to accusations of potential embezzling, a heightened ego and usage of his position as Head of Animation to strike fear in his staff and keep complaints on the down low. I’m gonna do my best to share this around and take screenshots of the more important claims in case of the worst, but please share at the sources when possible.
Calxiyn makes great pains to stress that all of these accusations are allegations at best but also stresses that everyone they talked to did work or currently work at Rooster Teeth.
“Gray was shitty & fired people in mass. Was a bit shocked. Genlock’s production caused a lot of the current issues. And Gray had stepped down for a hike after everything came to light before RTX. Things were so bad that most of animation now refuse to work on Genlock”
Gray cared about Gray. He locked himself in his office the whole time or was out galavanting in japan having fun. He'd hold company meetings weekly to brag about the fun stuff he did until he, miles and kerry got in trouble from higher up because so many people complained about it. Probably one of the worst bosses I’ve had. I didn't work on genlock thank god. I was super worried about it as Gray was in charge sounds like all my fears were merited too from what ive heard
C: The anonymous poster also mentioned Keon Wooten but I don’t know anything about them. Like the post basically said he enabled Gray but idk who the dude is so do you know anything about that? Also thank you for responding to me : )
S3: Wooten is an asshole. Koen is the one right below Gray. head producer. He's a hollywood producer (worked for michael bay for 7 years). he gets people to do work by promising them what they want then making excuses or blaming them for not delivering
C: Other sources are talking about how Gray prevented people from having creative control. Did you hear anything about that from any of the shows? Nomad, RWBY etc
Like that the plan was to do x, but Gray came and forced them to do y instead which was far from what they wanted to do
S3: Well the guy who created Nomad had it basically taken from him
C: How did that go down?
S3: Sadly I wasn't in 2D so i only heard it off-hand
Source 3 goes on to say that Miles and Kerry were fine to work with (”super nice people”) and seemed oblivious as to Gray and Koen’s actions behind their backs.
C: 2) In the anonymous post from yesterday they discuss gen:LOCK going super over budget. Did things need to be cut or rushed because they were blowing gen:LOCK money?
S2: Gray supposedly took some of 2Ds money to dip into his own project THAT HE HAD FULL CONTROL ON. Some other shows were rushed.
S2: Grays personality is either he's completely clueless or knew exactly what he was doing and is a sociopath, it's hard to say, either way not leadership material in my opinion and never took responsibility for ANYTHING.
S2: I think Gen:lock was something he pushed through himself and because he was the head he could make the final call to show it to burnie and Matt on his own and push it over the other 3D pitches. Gray was already using company money to make concept art and work for it, without it being greenlit. The whole thing was sketchy.
S2: People were afraid of Gray because he was “Gray was judge, jury, and executioner”.
Cal then goes on to say that Gray’s position as Head of Animation made workers hesitant to go to the HR department due to fears that they would be fired. Eventually someone went to Matt Hullum directly to tell him about the working conditions, after which Hullum stormed into the animation department and crammed everyone into a room. This seems to be where the choice was made to let Gray go.
Calxiyn’s final source talks more about how Nomad of Nowhere suffered during this timeframe:
S4: gen:Lock and Nomad were greenlit around the same time, but Gray put more time, budget, and resources for preproduction on gen:Lock. Nomad as a result was pushed up in the schedule, only had two months of preproduction before animation had to start. The creator of Nomad wasn’t offered a lead position and was barely consulted on the story or art. That’s all I’m willing to say about that. This is something that almost anyone in the animation department can tell you. I don’t want to talk about Nomad as everything that went into that is way more complicated and there’s no way I have the full story as it feels like all the incompetency that led to the 2D department having to crunch back to back that year goes further and further up.
S4: There’s actually an episode of Off Topic where Geoff jokingly likens Gray to a slave driver when talking about the animation department. Little did he know how apt that comparison actually was.
While the fact remains that at their core these are anonymous accusations and ones that may very well be false, I have a gut feeling that these are legitimate compared to some of the other accounts from supposed “RT insiders.” If even half or just a quarter of the accusations are true it’s a damning picture of Haddock’s management, to say nothing of how taking funds and putting them into Genlock concept art before the show was greenlit and then taking funds from Nomad for Genlock can potentially open Gray up to accusations of embezzling. Which for those who need a reminder:
I’d like to thank Calxiyn for putting all this together. Hopefully now that the worst elements in the higher ups have been removed between Gray and Koen and the supposed managerial improvements being overseen by Margaret M. Dean, RT Animation can solve the issues that seem to have been plaguing it for the past year or so.
gen:LOCK which first aired on the Rooster Teeth website earlier this year has now been officially renewed for S2, the twist however is that it will stream on HBO Max exclusively for 90 days before being available on Rooster Teeth’s website and for their own subscription: ‘FIRST’
You wanna know why I adore the FUCK outta Roosterteeth?
They are everything about Nerd, videogame, anime, and badass geek culture that I love while also being PROGRESSIVE and RESPECTFUL. They have some dark humor, their content can say or have some edgy stuff, but it NEVER crosses into homophobia, transphobia, patriarchal sexism, or ANY of the political ideologies MOST people in these fields do constantly 24/7. Hell, I am pretty sure Val/entina is the first semi-mainstream genderfluid character EVER, and they made sure to do it right by casting a gender-nonconforming actor!!!
They CARE, they have EMPATHY, but they are GOOFY-ass people who love badass shit with a heart of GOLD.
I love Roosterteeth, they are everything I wish this sect of the pop-culture world could be like!
