Robert Thornley

Robert Thornley was an art teacher at the secondary school London Borough of Lewisham between September 1993 and May 1999, teaching national curriculum art and design upto A Level and GNVQ. Between 1998 and 199 he worked as an artist at Vivendi where he did modelling, texturing and character animation for Ultimate Soccer Manager 2000. He was also responsible for story boarding and Concept Art and producing and delivering pitches for the studios proposed IP. In 1999 he joined FireFly Studios as a senior/lead artist when the studio was still small. Initially there were only 3 artists, so he did concept and promotional art, storyboarding, box covers and modelling of both high and low polygon assets, particle effects, directed mocap, character animation, cinematics and even interface design. He later became lead artist and was responsible for growing the team, scheduling tasks, undertaking effective monitoring and tracking of output to maintain visual style and quality, and mentoring less experienced team members. He stayed with the company for ten years, until February 2009.

In July 2009 he became a senior/lead character artist at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.He began as a freelance character modeller making costumes for the Eyepet game before being brought in house as a senior character artist. He was made an ambassador for Wonderbook throughout its early pre-production and lead of the art team on Book of Spells before being asked to lead Eyepet Adventures. He was also the sole in-house artist on Eyepet Adventures and was responsible for concepting, modelling all the hero assets and liaising daily with the external development team. Most recently he has been working on Sony’s Internal Concept Group primarily as the senior character modeller/concept artist, where he helps to originate and shape new IP. He has also delivered lectures on character art on behalf of Sony at Universities and mentor junior staff in character modelling and concept art.