Today, I am happy to share the story of an amazing animator that goes by the name @Jespone. We had the opportunity to ask him some questions about his career as a developer in Roblox. Jespone is the guy behind animations in games like Sparring Simulator , which currently has more than 75,000 visits, and a future project called Hoodlums which will hopefully be available to play soon. Here is the interview, I hope you all enjoy it!
How did you discover the Roblox platform?
When I was little I loved to play games, mostly MMORPGs. I knew at around 8 years old that I wanted to be a game developer in the future. Well, I still want to be a game developer and I’m looking forward to becoming a professional. When I discovered Roblox I thought, like everyone, that it was a kid’s platform, but I couldn’t go without giving it a try. I really liked some games and I was impressed by how much you could do at Roblox.
Why did you decided to become an animator?
One day I joined a dancing group since I love hip-hop dancing, so I joined @Mimi_Dev’s group, Focus Dance & Gymnastics. By that time, I had already discovered Roblox Studio too so I tried lots of times to start Scripting and most of the times I failed. Then summer came and I decided to start working hard to start my path to be a game developer, so I got into my computer, opened Roblox Studio and started messing around. Now- here comes why I mentioned Mimi_Dev’s group: I wanted to do animations to dance too but with my own moves, so I started animating, and I loved the concept of giving characters/objects life with animations. I started only doing dance animations and slowly started doing more kind of animations like weapons, characters, emotes… and since that, I have been scripting a bit and animating ‘till today.
Game development is usually a tough path to follow, it takes passion and a solid determination, in your case: Was your path to become an animator in Roblox complicated?
To be honest, it wasn’t an easy to be an animator. I used to watch some animated movies without focusing on their history, only to study how characters moved. It takes a lot of practice and polishing to do decent animations- there are animators on Roblox out there that I really admire for their great animations that take hours to get done- some of the animations can even take days. Did you know each scene in Pixar’s movies take up to 2-3 weeks or a month to do? Maybe more.
If you are thinking about becoming an animator or you are interested in animation and want to learn more about it, Jespone wrote an Animating guide where he explains the most important concepts and uses his experience to explain in the easiest possible way. You can find the article here in English and here in Spanish.
How do you expect your career as a developer to change in the future?
In the future, I would love to be in a studio making AAA games for Roblox. I’m going to study game development at college so I think it will help me a lot when making games here on Roblox and will open lots of opportunities for me. I expect my career here on Roblox to have lots of ups and downs like a rollercoaster: first failing, then learning from my mistakes and then doing things even better, and then repeat since I will never have enough with what I have already done.
Thank you Jespone for answering our questions and sharing your experiences with the Roblox community. I hope you continue creating articles and content that help the community learn the process and concepts of animation and I know your success in Roblox will continue. Good luck with all your future projects!
If you want to know more about Jespone and his future projects, you can follow him on Twitter and Roblox!
