ANIMATED DISCUSSION

Sumo Digital's THOMAS CROFTS on the craft and importance of animation in games

- Luke Kemp

After studying computer science at Sheffield Hallam university, Thomas Crofts knew he wanted to work in games, but not precisely how . He ended up doing a Master’s degree in videogame animation (“[It] seemed like the fun one,” he says), which helped when he and some friends entered the Dare to be Digital contest in 2010.

Crofts, with three others from Sheffield Hallam, made a game for the competition in two months. Called Grr! it was, “A family friendly RTS like a simple Dota. We’d spent a lot of time integrating the Wiimote.” Grr! missed out on the main prize, but won the Adult Swim award (“which as the animator of the team, I was quite chuffed with”) for innovation and creativity; and Crofts and his team featured in the Channel 4 documentary on that year’s event.

After leaving university, and honing his skills on a fan project Duke Nukem remake and by making entries for the 11 Second Club competition— where each month animators are challenged to provide an animation to match an 11 second audio clip—he landed his first job with TT Games… making a TV show.