Toby Gard created a multi million pound franchise when he designed Lara Croft and her first adventure, Tomb Raider, in 1996. He has received two awards for outstanding contribution to the games industry from BAFTA in 1999 and ELSPA in 2003. Over the past fifteen years he has worked as a design consultant, a publishing designer and a studio director. He has worked on many aspects of the action adventure genre, from character, game and level design, through technical design of animation systems, story writing, cinematic direction and marketing. The Writers Guild of America nominated his work co-writing Tomb Raider Underworld for best writing in a video game in 2008 and his work directing Lara Croft's performance in the same game was nominated in the outstanding character performance category by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science at the DICE summit 2008. Toby Gard's consultancy website can be found at www.focalpointgames.com and his personal website can be found at www.tobygard.com