You know, there’s something about numbers that doesn’t seem to mix too well with artists. I’m no great artist but when I was young I loved drawing while maths left me cold. However hard people tried to convince me that mastering numbers would be for my own good, I refused to apply myself to learning them.

I didn’t want to learn maths, I wanted to learn magic. Not the pulling rabbits out of hats kind, but the real thing with the beard and the staff and the robe and hat.

As a wee boy reading fantasy novels, I always wondered about the people who didn’t learn magic. I mean, if magic worked and it let you do whatever you liked, what kind of idiot wouldn’t want to learn that? Disregarding the fantasy worlds where only a special few have the ’talent’ for magic, there are plenty of fantasy worlds where magic is just a secret knowledge that only the select few know. It’s the guys in those worlds who still use tools to plow fields instead of by snapping their fingers that I don’t get.

Seriously, if you saw someone doing real magic, you’d make some effort to work out how, right? I know I would. In fact, I’d drop everything for the chance to learn a few god-like powers. You’d be mad not to!

It was only when I was much older that I realised that this world does have a kind of magic and I didn’t want to learn it because I thought it was the root of all evil; money.

The people adept at wielding the real magic wear suits not robes. They work in towers looming over the centers of our cities like modern day Saurons. The bankers and financiers don’t make anything. They deal purely in money, applying their arcane knowledge to grow enormous pools of that green magic. With it, they can have whatever they want.

If I had really understood it in those terms when I was younger I may have listened better in maths class. I still think that greedily going after money for money’s sake is an empty pursuit, but on the other hand, not learning magic when it exists does seem pretty foolish.

(By the way, hope you like the new posting format. I’ll try to upload a new comic every week. Fingers crossed.)

Tags: finances, Website

I have been busy these last two months incorporating a new company for my consultancy business.

Today it is finally all systems go!

The website can be found at www.focalpointgames.com. It is aimed primarily at game developers, both old and new. I have been working on some pretty in-depth game design articles, two of which are available right now, both dealing with action adventure level design. I hope to make the site a goto place for game designers to get a slightly different perspective on game design.

Meanwhile this place will now be the place that I will be putting the things I want to talk about that have less concrete value i.e. my opinions.

Thank you for checking out my sites.

Toby

Tags: consultancy, Website, Articles

The goal of this website was for it to be more than a place to market my service, and more than a place where I could be a damn pundit. The idea was that I would make a place where people who were aspiring to enter the games industry might come to find some useful information.

Things have been busy over the last couple of months, but I have put together the first of several planned articles and opened a new section up on the site menu; Articles.

For now there is only one article, it is a selection of sketches that drove some of the marketing imagery for Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary.

I hope you enjoy them.

Tags: Website, Art, Marketing, Articles

I could no longer stand looking at the iWeb design I built last week. I put this new design together in Rapid Weaver. I still have a lot I need to add to the site to make it useful for people, but I will continue making improvements until it's good.

Oh, and check out the showreel in the About section.

Tags: Website, showreel