ROBERT
THOMSON

robertthomsondev@gmail.com

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| 2D & 3D Animator | UI/UX Design | Concept Art | Rigging | Character Design | 3D Modeller

| 2D & 3D Animator | UI/UX Design | Concept Art | Rigging | Character Design | 3D Modeller

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| Game Designer | Programmer | Technical Artist

| 2D & 3D Animator | UI/UX Design | Concept Art | Rigging | Character Design | 3D Modeller

| 2D & 3D Animator | UI/UX Design | Concept Art | Rigging | Character Design | 3D Modeller

| 2D & 3D Animator | UI/UX Design | Concept Art | Rigging | Character Design | 3D Modeller

| 2D & 3D Animator | UI/UX Design | Concept Art | Rigging | Character Design | 3D Modeller

I love making cool games from start to finish (and making them look and feel great.)

Banana of Doom is a party game where you combine and battle words in quickfire 1v1 tournaments. You are given a contest like "Most likely to secretly be an alien" and you must draw and rearrange word cards to come up with an answer to win that contest. I created the idea and worked as the Game Director and Lead Developer on this title. I was responsible for a large part of the codebase including networking, game states, UI animation and more. I was also responsible for all the character design and animation you see in game. The game was made in Unity using PlayroomKit for networking.

Game Design & Direction

Coding and networking

Animation & Rigging

Character Design

I worked as the Game Director on this title. From concept to launch, I oversaw development on all fronts, as well as creating the 3D art and animation for the game. Death by AI is a free to play Jackbox-like party game for up to 10 players. Players are given a life or death scenario and are tasked with coming up with a survival strategy. The AI then narrates what happens and decides who lives and who dies, almost always resulting in surprising and funny outcomes! Death by AI has been played over 10,000,000 times in its first weeks on Discord.

Game Design & Direction

Animation & Rigging

Character Design

Bug Testing & QA

I was the Director and primary developer of this party game for iOS and Android - It has a 4.8/4.9 star rating on both stores in all English speaking countries (4.6 worldwide), and recently hit 400k downloads in total.
In Gogogo! there is a new challenge every round, all of which are designed to create a level playing field by challenging players to test skills that they have naturally but wouldn't necessarily train, so that no matter your age or ability, you won't feel out of your depth.

Game Design & Code

Bug Testing & QA

I briefly worked on the wonderfully British and proudly northern indie hit Thank Goodness You're Here! by Coal Supper. My work was in both 2D Animation and Technical Animation.

If you don't know what Thank Goodness You're Here is, I suggest you check it out.

It's reyt good.

Thatgame.exe

ThatGame.exe is a cryptic puzzle game that I made in 7 days. It was made as part of a challenge in collaboration with Logitech. In thatgame.exe you play as a struggling indie game developer who's code is so bad that he is sucked into it. The bad code is displayed in mid air, giving you a clue as to how to solve each puzzle.

Game Design & Code

Animation & Rigging

Character Design

Level & Puzzle Design

You can see the making of this game here:

Platwormer

Platwormer is a 3D platforming game I made a few years back as a result of asking my YouTube audience for videogame ideas using a generic male character I had designed.

In the game you play as a man-worm climbing a man-mountain, sticking to surfaces of any angle.

The game features online speedrunning leaderboards and became popular among Korean streamers for a while.

The game was made in less than a week, and while not the most polished (I was still learning), holds a special place in my heart as one of my first games to go viral.

MASSIVE LEGEND

Massive Legend is my latest ambitious project, a game where you roam the land slaying ancient beasts of legend in order to become King of the World and save your people - 'The Younger Race', from their tragic fates.

The game will incorporate elements of 3D platforming and climbing akin to Shadow of the Colossus, albeit with snappier movement.

The creation of the climbing controller took some considerable effort, but once these systems are complete I'm hoping game design will become quite straightforward.

The controller is very performant, running at 300 fps on a mesh with over 10k triangles

Character Controller Design

Animation & Rigging

Editor Tool Design

You can see the making of the climbing controller here:

This is a 3D character controller that I developed in Unity, inspired by platformers like Mario Odyssey. My goal was to create satisfying, tight movement that would appeal to speedrunners. This was my first real attempt at combining my love of animation and game design to their maximum potential.

Character Controller Code

Animation & Rigging

Interactable Prop Code

MORE ABOUT ME

I'm an Annie Award Nominated Animator and independent game developer / game development YouTuber. After working as a professional animator in the UK for more than 10 years, I realised that my passion was in games. I spent several years educating myself on how coding and have been working in game design ever since.

I work primarily in Unity for game development, but in animation I am accustomed to almost any piece of art production software you can name.

I still love animation but I like having more control over the end product and helping to steer the ship, so I have been working for the past few years in roles such as:

Game Director (deathbyai.gg)
Solo game developer (Gogogo!)
Technical Artist
Technical Animator
Game Designer
UI/UX Designer
‍

In my previous career as an animator I wore many hats. A few of those hats include:

Animation Director
Creative Director
Creative Developer
Lead Animator (2D & 3D)
Storyboard Artist
Lead Character Designer
Background Artist
Concept Artist
Scriptwriter
3D Rigger
2D Puppet Animator
Editor

A few of the hats I would like to wear in future jobs are

Game Director
Game Designer
Technical Artist
Technical Animator
Puzzle Designer*
Creating Character Controllers**
‍

*I have a big love of puzzle games and have made a few myself for game jams including thatgame.exe. So if you have a job fitting this description I would love to know, especially if it involves working hands-on in the game-engine too.

I have an equally strong interest in character controllers and anything in a game that needs code to move** as it all ties directly to my experience in animation. Strong animation is just as dependent on the programmer as it is on the animator, I feel it is crucial to have someone whose knowledge straddles these two disciplines if you wish to make your game look and feel great.

Here are a few last tasty bits for your eyeballs:

Get in touch!

ROBERTTHOMSONDEV@GMAIL.COM