We often mention our team in terms of "Amplidudes and Amplidudettes", but we decided we should give you folks an idea of who we mean. You've guessed it, it's time for another instalment of our (semi-)regular feature, Meet the Team! If you want to know more about us, or your nephew wants to learn more about the career path of a game developer, or if you're just curious, read on.
He is our office Jack Bauer and deadly with a Wacom tablet, meet Thomas, aka Tomatto!
Who are you and what do you do at Amplitude?
Hi! I’m Thomas, 27 years old, and I've been concept artist for Amplitude for 3 years. I started on Endless Legend with all the concepts for the Biomes, the Anomalies, some illustrations and a lot of tooltips and weapons.
I’m now working on everything related to the visuals of Endless Space 2, which means a lot of various stuff.
What were you doing before you joined Amplitude?
Starting with the beginning, I went through an electrician formation, where I got the revelation of what I wanted not to do with my life.
Meanwhile, I was taking some afternoon drawing classes (eleven hours of coursework per day, yay !), it was 10 years ago.
Then I got to art school, first Académie Charpentier, then ENSAAMA (« Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Arts », also called Olivier de Serres, god that’s long anyway) where I got a Graphic Design degree.
I stopped here because that’s the moment when I found what I wanted to do and I ended up at Amplitude.
When did you join the studio?
Back in February 2013. When I was seeking a job, I told Mathieu and Romain that I could do an art test to show what I was capable of. So they sent me the description of a nomadic faction on a Friday evening. Monday morning they were receiving a bunch of sketches of people on giant beetles.
It was so weird that they decided to hire me and keep that idea for the game I guess.
What feature have you worked on that you're super proud of?
A lot of things I’m proud of are in Endless Space 2, which is useful since you cannot check them out.
But I’m pretty satisfied having created the Roving Clans while I wasn't yet at Amplitude.
What are you currently working on?
As I said, Endless space 2. Now that we've passed the research phase, where we decided the look of the characters and ships of the different factions, we are now doing a lot of ingame illustrations for the quests and heroes.
What's your favorite game of all time?
I must admit that I’m not a great gamer, but one that definitely struck me was Zelda Majora’s Mask (and all the Zelda games in general). The world, characters and musics are so strange and well-crafted at the same time. I miss that type of "small-scale" open world where you really get to know the map like your pocket. It feels like an adventure at the beginning and like home at the end.
Is there anywhere on the Internet where I can see more of your stuff?
I’ve uploaded some of my work on Artstation if you want to take a look: https://www.artstation.com/artist/thomasducrest
What's your favorite faction or character in our games?
I like the Vaulters because they are the only faction to explore the fact that Endless Legend is on the edge between Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction and to reflect it in their look.
Is there a funny story that happened to you at Amplitude?
It's not particularly funny but there was this time when I spilled my glass of water on my desk and I was like "whoops, let's hope no one notice". Then all the computers of the artists' area shut down and I was like "oh, nevermind".
I was also part of the pushup crew who got stuck at the studio on a Friday night, but I don’t want to talk about it.
What's the most played song in your music library?
I always work with music and listen to a lot of different stuff so it's a very good question. Let me ask Spotify...
In 2015, the nominees are :
Future Islands - Spirit
Jungle - Julia
Dead Man’s Bones - Lose Your Soul (that’s Ryan Gosling's band, it blew my mind when I found out)
Funkadelic - Can You Get to That
Dire Straits - Money for Nothing
Sur la planche - la Femme
And I listen to 1295 hours of music from 1518 different artists, take that Bec0mm !
Well... I never pretended to have good taste but that's ok I guess.
That's it for Thomas! We hope you found this interesting. Comments or additional questions, feel free to comment!
If there's a question you would like us to ask the interviewees, let us know!
