Hundreds of fans turn out to compete in cosplay competition

11,000 fans from all over Australia converged on the Australian Technology Park over the weekend

They started as five mates getting drunk and reviewing video games in Austin, Texas.

Thirteen years later, Rooster Teeth have become an internet phenomenon and poster children for entertainment production, with more than 125 employees, over 25 million subscribers on YouTube and their own US convention series, RTX, which in 2015 reeled in over 45,000 fans.

Now they're bringing their juggernaut to Australia, one of their biggest English-speaking fan bases and one of the largest consumers of their content.

Scroll down for video

Fans from the RTX AU convention cosplaying characters from Rooster Teeth's popular animated web series RWBY

Many of the fans in attendance over the weekend competed in the RTX cosplay competion

Australian television presenter Stephanie "Hex" Bendixsen gave the opening keynote at the RTX AU convention over the weekend

The first international convention was held in Sydney at the weekend at the Australian Technology Park, with over 11,000 fans attending.

ROOSTER TEETH BY THE NUMBERS 4.1 billion views on their Rooster Teeth channel

25 million subscribers across their YouTube channels

38 million views per week

4 million monthly podcast downloads

US$2.48 million raised on IndieGoGo for their live-action film Lazer Team

45,000 attendees at RTX 2015 in Austin

11,000 attendees at their first international RTX in Australia Advertisement

Burnie Burns, one of Rooster Teeth’s founding members and CCO for the company said he was blown away by the response from Aussie fans.

‘Everyone is so welcoming here, everyone is so appreciative. And depending on how far out you go the people just get more and more appreciative.

‘One of my favourite things that someone said to me was when we went to Perth and a guy said ‘Thank you for coming to our terrible city’.

‘You know, they’re just so far out and so remote they’re not used to people coming out and they’re so appreciative when you make the effort.’

The company is one of the strongest brands in digital media, with a YouTube network including channels like Achievement Hunter, The Slow Mo Guys and Funhaus.

They also hugely popular shows including acclaimed web series Red vs Blue, RWBY and the award-winning Rooster Teeth Podcast.

Although various members of Rooster Teeth have been to Australia for conventions like Supanova and PAX Australia, this weekend was the first time Rooster Teeth hosted their convention overseas.

One of Rooster Teeth’s founding members and CCO of the company Burnie Burns said he was blown away by the response from Aussie fans

‘We started coming down to Australia for one-off events and from the moment we set foot here we could tell that everyone here was enthusiastic,’ said Burns.

‘It was just that great, engaged culture of everyone being enthusiastic about the stuff that they love. We really respond to that.’

11,000 fans flocked to Rooster Teeth's first international RTX convention in Australia over the weekend

He credits the internet and ease of global communication in 2016 for the success of Rooster Teeth content Down Under.

‘I just think it’s a global environment now. The internet has provided so much access that if I was younger and I wanted to launch content from Australia or the UK, I would do that – I could do that.

‘When I was younger that technology just didn’t exist. Now it does and people think nothing now of having friends all over the world that they’ve never actually met in person that they talk with every day.

‘Me, growing up as a kid, the only people I had exposure to were the people in my high school and some of the other kids from surrounding schools... That was it, there was no other way to meet someone a state over unless they were a pen pal or something.’

Hundreds of Rooster Teeth fans from across Australia volunteered to be 'Guardians' to assist in the organisation of the event

Due to Rooster Teeth's heavy involvement with the Halo franchise, many fans cosplayed as Spartan's from the popular video game series

And he’s not the only one who values communication.

With an active global community and dedicated audience, Rooster Teeth’s fans are as important to the company as the content itself.

‘What’s most surprising is that our biggest fan base per capita is Australia,” said Rooster Teeth Community Manager Barbara Dunkelman.

‘This is why I do what I do: to get to come to these kind of events or any sort of convention and see the kind of impact Rooster Teeth has on people.

‘I saw a tweet from someone that was like ‘I’ve never met anyone from the Rooster Teeth community and now I’m out to dinner with 11 new friends’. That… that’s what I do this for.’

A big part of the RTX AU convention was cosplay, with hundreds of fans competing against each other in competitions judged by Kotaku Australia's cosplay reporter Hayley Williams, prop maker extraordinaire Matt Spader from the Eden Armoury and Australian cosplay veteran Feisty Cuffs.

Rooster Teeth’s resident cosplayer Meg Turney and Australian celebrity cosplayer Eve Beauregard were also in attendance at the convention

Hundreds of fans competed in the RTX cosplay competition that took place over the weekend

Despite Rooster Teeth’s current demographic being 18-34 year old males, there is still a large number of female fans - many of which cosplay at their events.

‘I think a lot of people that see the kind of content that Rooster Teeth makes with brash sort of humour and assume that we only have a male fan base,” said Turney, highlighting the significance of their women’s network.

‘But then you come to an event like this and you see that our female fan base is out in full force and is very comfortable and very strong.

‘It’s very, very cool and one of my favourite things about Rooster Teeth is that the women are treated as equals and they’re allowed to be brash and ridiculous and just as dirty and rough and tumble as the guys, and I love that.’

Two fans cosplayed as a female Vault Dweller from the popular Fallout series and Master Chief from the Halo franchise

One Sydneysider joined Master Chief as Ryu from the popular fighting video series Street Fighter

Rooster Teeth isn’t all video games either, with the company recently moving into live-action film with their crowd-funded movie Lazer Team.

Lazer Team was crowd sourced via IndieGoGo and was the sites biggest ever campaign, hitting their goal of US$650,000 in ten hours and raising US$2.48 million from 37,493 backers in just one month.

One Australian fan even donated $10,000 towards the project, which saw him credited as an executive producer.

Australia was chosen as the location for Lazer Team’s world premiere on Friday night, which played to a sold-out crowd at Event Cinemas on George St.

Some of the founding members of Rooster Teeth and stars of Lazer Team made a surprise appearance at the Sydney premiere on Friday

Burnie Burns said that after a year of hard work the team were very relieved to have the film out there for the target audience.

‘There’s nothing quite like showing the movie to the people it’s made for.

‘They seemed to have a great time and people were laughing the whole way through. It was a big sigh of relief after a year of making the movie.’

With the success of their first Australian RTX and their ever-expanding juggernaut of an entertainment network, it’s safe to say that this is just the beginning for Rooster Teeth in Australia.

Co-founders Gus Sorola (Director of RTX) and Matt Hullum (CEO of Rooster Teeth) were also in attendance over the weekend

Freddie! These cosplayers rocked out as American filmmaker Freddie Wong and characters from Rooster Teeth's show X-Ray and Vav