Toby Gard
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
computer game character designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...
and consultant
Consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
, notably creating female British archaeologist Lara Croft
Lara Croft
Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Square Enix video game series Tomb Raider. She is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and athletic British archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins around the world...
. Lara Croft was awarded a Guinness World Record
Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...
recognizing her as the "most successful human video game heroine."
History
Originally employed at Core DesignCore Design
Core Design was a British video game studio best known today for creating the popular Tomb Raider series.-History:Based in the city of Derby, England, Core Design was set up in 1988 by Chris Shrigley, Andy Green, Rob Toone, Terry Lloyd, Simon Phipps, Dave Pridmore, Jeremy Heath-Smith and Greg Holmes...
, he designed the original Tomb Raider video game in 1995 along with the character Lara Croft
Lara Croft
Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Square Enix video game series Tomb Raider. She is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and athletic British archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins around the world...
. His work on the game included building and animating most of the game's characters (including Lara), animating the in-game cutscenes, storyboarding the FMVs
Full motion video
Full motion video based games are video games that rely upon pre-recorded TV-quality movie or animation rather than sprites, vectors, or 3D models to display action in the game. In the early 1990s a diverse set of games utilized this format...
, and managing the level designers. Core gave Gard creative control over the game, although it was clear they wanted to market Lara's sex appeal, even asking Gard to implement a nude code into the game which he refused to do. His vision for Lara was "a female character who was a heroine, you know, cool, collected, in control, that sort of thing" and that "it was never the intention to create some kind of 'page 3' girl to star in Tomb Raider".
Gard left Core Design in 1997. With Tomb Raider already an established hit, Core was no longer giving Gard the creative freedom he originally had. In the end he was given the choice of making a Tomb Raider port for the Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...
, or working on Core's vision for Tomb Raider II
Tomb Raider II
Tomb Raider II is an action-adventure video game in the Tomb Raider series and is the sequel to the 1996 video game Tomb Raider. Developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive, the game was originally released for PlayStation, Windows 95 in November 1997, Macintosh in 1998 and on the...
. Neither option appealed to him, so he left the company.
In late 1997, he formed the company Confounding Factor
Confounding Factor (games company)
Confounding Factor was a British video games company founded in 1997 by Toby Gard and Paul Douglas, both of Core Design, and based in Bristol, UK. The company only released a single title during its lifetime, called Galleon, which went on sale in 2004 for the Microsoft Xbox console...
along with co-developer Paul Douglas, who had worked with Gard on Tomb Raider. Galleon
Galleon (video game)
Galleon is a video game developed by Toby Gard and Confounding Factor. Famously announced in Edge magazine in 1997, the game went through various incarnations and publishers before eventually being published by SCi in 2004 to fairly muted critical response...
was announced soon after, and released nearly 7 years later on Microsoft's
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
in 2004.
After Galleon, Gard was hired by Eidos
Eidos Interactive
Eidos Interactive Ltd. is a British video game publisher and is a label of Square Enix Europe. As an independent company Eidos plc was headquartered in the Wimbledon Bridge House in Wimbledon, London Borough of Merton....
(publisher
Video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
and copyright holder of the Tomb Raider series
Tomb Raider series
Tomb Raider is a media franchise consisting of video games, comic books, novels, theme park rides and movies, centring around the adventures of the fictional British archaeologist Lara Croft...
) to work with Crystal Dynamics
Crystal Dynamics
Crystal Dynamics is an American video game developer based in the San Francisco Bay Area and founded in 1992 by Judy Lang, Madaline Canepa and Dave Morris...
on a reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, beginning with Tomb Raider: Legend. While initially hired as a creative consultant
Creative consultant
Creative consultant is a credit that has - particularly in the past - been given to screenwriters who have “doctored” a movie screenplay. It is often given by producers in lieu of official credit. Those given this credit in the television field work closely with an Executive Producer, Head...
, his work became "hands on" during the production and eventually included Lara's visual redesign, overseeing character design and creation, co-writing the story, designing and implementing parts of the character movement system, and directing the cinematics.
The next game in the series, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, was a re-imagining of the original Tomb Raider. It was co-developed by Crystal Dynamics and Buzz Monkey Software
Buzz Monkey Software
Buzz Monkey Software is a United States video game developer based in Eugene, Oregon. Buzz Monkey was formed in late 2001 by four former Dynamix employees: senior producer Randy Thompson, senior engineers Jon Milnes and Steve Cordon, and lead artist Barry Drew....
. Gard's role on Anniversary was limited to "story consultant", while also adding his voice to the audio commentary included in the game.
For Tomb Raider: Underworld
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Tomb Raider: Underworld is the eighth instalment of the Tomb Raider series. The story continues from the events in Tomb Raider: Legend as a direct sequel, but also addresses unexplained plot elements by association with Tomb Raider: Anniversary; the 2007 remake of the original Tomb Raider...
, Gard's work included co-writing the story, directing the cinematics, voice direction, motion capture direction (along with camera setup and managing the animators and lighters), and directing the European TV advert for the game. Gard and Eric Lindstrom received a nomination for "Best Writing in a Video Game" by the WGA
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
for their work on Underworld.
In January 2009, Toby Gard revealed that he is leading a design group on an unannounced project. Soonafter, however, he left the design group for this project and is now working as a computer game consultant at Focal Point Games LLC.
He currently makes a webcomic called Otherworld.
External links
- Focal Point Games (Toby Gard's game consultancy business)
- tobygard.com - Personal website
- Toby Gard at LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3292/interview_with_toby_gard.php, Toby Gard, Game Developer, June 20, 2000 at GamasutraGamasutraGamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
- Interview with Toby Gard of Confounding Factor, David JenkinsDavid JenkinsDavid Jenkins may refer to:*David Jenkins , former Bishop of Durham*David J. Jenkins, professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto*David P...
, October 23, 1998 at GamasutraGamasutraGamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer... - Toby Gard at MobyGamesMobyGames-Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...