Animal: Welcome! First question is what do you do on Roblox?
Dark: Used to LMaD/invest. Nowadays I’m known for retexturing and my Twitter account.
Animal: How many retextures that you made got published?
Dark: At the moment, 20.
Animal: What retexture are you most proud of?
Dark: Ghosdeeri. Worked hard to get the first Dusekkar retexture published, after multiple ad campaigns, and a lot of hard work, managed to get it released as a 2014 Halloween Gift. Couldn’t have done it without the fans (and Brighteyes!)
Animal: I remember that coming out. I forget, how many years did it take for it to be published?
Dark: A little over a year.
Animal: How long does it usually take your retextures to get published?
Dark: Completely random. Usually, retextures are published during holidays, and it all depends on whether or not they’re
- good enough for publishing
- creative (and original) enough to be released
- acceptable enough quality that Brighteyes takes it
Animal: One thing I was always wondering was, when your retexture is published do you get a copy for free?
Dark: You always get 1000 ROBUX. If the hat is not limited, you additionally get a copy for free. If it is limited, you do not.
Animal: And it’s randomly decided limited or not?
Dark: Up to the admins.
Animal: When did you start retexturing?
Dark: October 2011
Animal: What was your very first published retexture?
Dark: Humbug Tie.
Animal: About how many retetxures in total, counting non-published ones, do you have?
Dark: Too many to count. I have 687 models, roughly estimating 150ish aren’t retextures, probably 500?
Animal: Do you only retexture items on Roblox?
Dark: No. I make retextures for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Project M.
Animal: In Roblox or the actual games?
Dark: Actual games.
Animal: That’s cool. I sometimes play Project M and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Do you think you’ll continue helping them?
Dark: I don’t actually release any of the retextures I make for PM or Melee (and I don’t work for PMDT or Nintendo, though either would be a dream come true).
Animal: So it’s basically something like fan based?
Dark: Yes.
Animal: That seems cool. How’s retexturing doing for a living on Roblox?
Dark: It’s not really a living, I did retexturing as a side hobby originally when I did LMaD as my “ROBLOX living”. However, as I started to drift from LMaD, retexturing became something I did more often. Nowadays I don’t do as much retexturing but I’ve been meaning to do more.
Animal: From my first question, you answered that you’re also known for your Twitter account?
Dark: I originally created my Twitter to send retextures to Brighteyes. Eventually, I started tweeting more and apparently people liked what I posted. I still don’t know how I’m at roughly 6500 followers. Not really much compared to real world standards but for some nerd who’s known for ROBLOX that’s pretty good.
Animal: I know Merely has a lot of followers too. But then again he and Seranok were mentioned on a lot of real life articles of game development.
Dark: They also have popular games and/or notoriety on ROBLOX, and interned there. I actually knew Merely before he was famous on LMaD, when he was still trying to collect all the limiteds. Most people on Twitter with a lot of followers (at least known from ROBLOX) are usually known for having popular games. For someone (me) who doesn’t have one, I’m doing pretty well (at least I think).
Animal: But you always have those type of people that get all these famous people (From Roblox) who follow you from doing something like interviewing them. I got Merely to follow me which was really surprising. But I only have 90 followers. I guess there are lots of ways to get more followers than just being known for a game.
Dark: Yeah. The thing about followers though is that if you’re trying to obtain followers, you’re not going to succeed. I couldn’t actually care less about my follower amount: it’s a platform where you speak to your audience. I’d rather have an audience of people who I can actually relate to and tweet relevantly to than a bunch of people who don’t understand anything I’m saying. If you’re just trying to increase your follower amount for the bigger number, you’re not getting people, you’re getting statistics.
Animal: Also sometimes you can have less followers which understand more of what you’re saying than someone with 2x the followers. What has retexturing taught you?
Dark: Graphic design, and how to communicate with people.
Animal: Would you be able to do what you do now without Roblox?
Dark: Absolutely not. Without ROBLOX, I wouldn’t have ever even approached graphic design. It’s because of ROBLOX and my time retexturing on the site that I have skills with digital image manipulation.
Animal: Do you have anything else you’d like to say? Or have any encouraging sentences to anyone wishing to become a retexture artist?
Dark: Sometimes, it’s more about the idea than the hat’s look. It’s always good to have Photoshop skills, but that’s only 20% of creation. The other 80% is coming up with things to make. If you can think of new, creative hat ideas that nobody has ever seen before, you’re already there.
Animal: Nice quote. Well, I think we went through everything. Thank you for your time.
Dark: My pleasure, thank you.
This has been an interview with DarkGenex by The ROBLOX Archives!
