Background

My name is Javier Rollon

I live in Madrid, Spain, and have been working for game industry for 21 years. In game companies or alone at home as freelance. As animator, texturer, and modeller.
But I have lived the start of the videogame culture since the beginning.

I started loving 3D when I was studying Physics science in the University. I leaved the studies and started japanese language learning in the language official school in Madrid. That is why I am called Japo32. The number comes because in the school as my surname start by "R" and we where 40 children, I always were the 32 in order when teacher called for class assistance.

I had an Intel 486, and I in that moment there where not so many 3D programs to use. I came from Commodore Amiga 500, where I played a little with some 3D programs. Very basic ones. There was one called 3DStudio 4.0, and I managed to make it work in my PC.

This time I would not only play with it, but would go several times to the library to read the book and memorize steps to make things, before buying the book some time later (it was faster to learn after all). This was in 1990 and I can show you the first animation I made in my history as 3D Artist.

As you can see, you can point two important things. I was really bad at this! and I loved space (ambulances) ships. So when someone come to me and say that he is not good enough, and show me his art, then I alwasy replay, keep it walking... you will reach a point. Always.
Because I left university, my parents where very worried about my future, so they spoke to me and asked me what I liked to do. I said,t that 3D was a nice job, but the problem was that the normal user people only could have programs as 3DStudio 4.0 or Lightwave. Pixar movies where done with Silicon Graphics work stations, and only one of those where 20,000$, plus the program Alias Power Animator that was even more expensive. I could not reach that level.
BUT, In Madrid there was a new private shool that was offering teaching with Alias Power Animator 7 in their O2 machines. It was very expensive, so I told my parents if they could help me and later I would return all the money.
I was six month or so, there, learning Nurbs and other stuff. Just to build and move cameras, plus some illumination stuff. I had 2 or 3 jobs with Alias Power Animator 8 and Maya 1.0 in some TV advertisements make companies. Of course all not payed (that is the way things are done here in Spain).
It was very funny, because Alias Power / Maya people where very prepotent with 3Dstudio 4.0 users... BUT, that year, appeared a new program called 3DStudio Max 1.0, and I felt very interested in it.
All that I learned in Alias, and Maya, was only used in a strong PC program called Rhino3D. But all my creations and future job, would be done with polygons instead of nurb modelling (modelling with curves). That 1997 year was very productive... and I made this video to look for a job. (There is some nudity in the video)

If you want to see the full short movies that are reflected here, you can checkout this youtuve videos. there are some nudity parts, and please forgive me the quality of it... but represents the real history of what I did, and I am very proud of the production of that year:

Space Shuttle Launch
Made with 3DStudio Max 1.0 only me.

Evolution
Final project of the School of Alias Power Animator. I was one of the participants, but the basic idea of the history of the movie was mine.

Macross
This was made in 3DStudio Max 1.0. I loved an Anime serie Called Macross (Robotech) so this was my personal tribute to it.

Fushi
As I said, I was studying japanese, so something would be represented in my 3D. Here there are some nudity. All made by myself in 3DStudio Max 1.0 This was my first build of an human character. The arms didn't go down because the rig was not done correcly

Dream
My last short movie. That year was amazing in production. I would never repeat that again. I didn't want to work in video games. I wanted to work in movie industry. This one was made in 3DStudio Max 1.0. This has explicit nudes of characters. I didn't model them. I had them from a program called poser, and they were nude in that program. Still didn't exist any cloth system simulation.

After that learning period, the first jobs came, and my first company hired me. It was a family small company founded by an Englishman in Madrid (like the song) and her Bulgarian wife. It was Silicon Artists, and as you can see they are still open, so they don't have to do so bad after all. There I didn't do big things. At that moment they where building webpages and flash animations for some external companies. One of the biggest contracts they had was to work for the Disney Orlando park, were we had to make several animations for their computer interactive programs they had inside of the park for visitors. Not a big project, but that "Disney" word in my curriculum was the one that opened the doors to several animation jobs in future game companies.
I was not good animating. I just knew some stuff, but I was very bad at it. Becasue my career was orientating in that speciality, I entered an cartoon animation school for 3 months, that gave me a better perspective of what was that of animation.
After that boring period in Silicon Artists, I joined Rebel Act Studios. A game company that was doing a great game, full of amazing mechanics.
I still wanted to work in film industry. My passion where the games, but as player, never as developer. But those 3-4 years in Rebel Act Studios making Blade the Edge of Darkness (or Severance in UK, Blade of Darkness in US) were the best in my life in a company.
We were very competitive young people, that our biggest mistake was not release something before. We all were joined in the same project, but as always while we wanted to make the best product possible, our producers wanted to have the more money possible... and here in Spain usually things are wanted for yesterday.

We released the game after several time delay with Codemasters, and planed to make the the sequel, but 2011 came and as the twin towers falled, the economic also did and our company supported by Friendware (a game distributor in Spain) was bankrupt, so I had to search other job.

I found it in Revistronic. Another company ruled by two Uruguay brothers, that had good ideas and great work but that the way of doing things was not always the best way of making things.
I continued there as animator, and I have to say that as in Rebel Act I worked mainly with motion capture animations, and some little ones made by hand, in Revistronic I did all by hand, and that, made me have a really improvement in my animation skills.
We made 2 games that almost no people knows, but they were very fun to make. Both of them about Fenimore Fillmore. A westerner cartoon character that imitated the old ways of doing games as Monkey Island, and all those adventure games developed by LucasArts.
I was twice in that company. Each time we finished with each game we were "fired" of the company, and once a new one was started then we went back again.
In the first time I was unemploy from that company I spent 8 months without any job. I didn't do anything special but look for a job. Meanwhile I was flying FS9, and other videogames or simulators.
Finally I had an oportunity and went to Germany in Coburg to work with Crytek. It was my first big company, that made the AAA FarCry and Crisis.
I was going to make animations for Crysis2, and all was good for 1 month, until they said me that their initial plans where to put me as animation coordinator in a parallel minor project they had, based in old FarCry engine.
I wanted to be in the big one, and that change, plus, me still not very confortable out of my people in a cold winter Germany, plus 2 work offers in Madrid made me decide to say good bye to Crytek.
I didn't want any money for the job done for that month, so it was something like a christmass holidays. Now I know I did well, as that parallel project never saw the light, and Crytek was near bankrupt also... but who knows.. maybe know I would be working for StarCitizen. (better not, because I don't want them to bankrupt XD)

In Madrid, I started to work in another small company. Silicon Garage. A small media company, that opened a game project by the young enthusiast son of the chief. These guys were nice, but they didn't have the experience to have success making a game. I saw this from first time and knew that the project was not going to be succeeded. Of course I tried to change somethings, but where ther is a boss, do not send a sailor.
So we finished our job, but the project didn't have any success looking for money to make it bigger. So I continue working in other media stuff of that company. This video is from that period of time. I like cartoon animation, more than real ones.

Revistronic was hiring again, and they were going up with new projects. Again I animated Fenimore Filmore with my old partner, and after that we went to Witches project. a medieval game that would show 3 whitches fighting with swords and magic, but in very sexy armor, where I made mostly textures of the game. Here it came that way of doing things that we some of us didn't like, and the company went bankrupt, again (several times did happen in the past), but this time to not return anymore to be alive.
From those two periods of beeing in Revistronic I made this promotional video:

I was very proud of the quality of the animations I made there.
During the last year of Revistronic adventure, I started to make work for Xplane. Of course I still was playing games, and flying FSX. I discovered XPlane8 and started to make some online flights with people (something I cannot do now with XP11. It was better before in that aspect!)
What I liked most, of course where the great sensations of flying (I was having a course of Gliders as pilot) and the great performance (something that has been lost with new versions).
I made a flight with some people in the Texan, and I loved it! But that plane didn't have any 3DCockpit. Only 2D. And I came from FS9 and FSX where everything had 3DCockpits. So I asked people in forums if someone could make a 3D cockpit for that incredible Texan, someone called Bobo, made for free.
I was amazed that there was lot of information and free stuff for Xplane, so because noone decided to made that cockpit, I said to myself, "why not you?" and I started this amazing project that opened me the doors of Xplane development.
So I made the 3D:

And later I understood how to integrate it in Xplane. The gauges where 2D and still didn't understand lost of things, so because the job didn't take so much time, and because the main plane that was based of, was free, I decided to put in the x-plane.org community for free download, and in my page. You can download it still in my page, but remember that yes, it can be loaded in XP11.26, but it is a model from 2008 not modified.

After that summer of 2008 I was searching for a plane to build. That was the Javelin. All information about the Javelin is in the product page in this website. Still is able to be loaded in XPlane11 but with lots of bugs.
After that came the start of the building of the CRJ200. I asked for a time reduction in Revistronic, and they allowed me to, so I had the time to build it. Again, all information is in the CRJ200 page.

Time has passed. I was in and out from Laminar. As many companies it has things that I loved, and things that I hated. That is normal. Each one has its rules and each one makes mistakes.
Still I am here in XPlane community. Now I depend totally in the sellings of my planes to continue working in this, so all depends on people if they do like or not me to be here in future.
As you can see there has been an improvement. So when you feel bad because your results are not good enough, don't worry, time will come.