Thomas Ridgewell

Thomas Ridgewell is a British director, producer, and YouTube personality. He is best known by his username and alias, "TomSka" and for his online work including sketch comedy and animations.

CakeBomb
In 2006, alongside his friends and associates, Thomas founded "CakeBomb", an online company and collective of creatives. The group consisted of Thomas, Edward Gould, Christopher 'Bing' Bingham, Rosie Ball, Abi Hunt, Ruth Noakes, and Mina Lavender. During their studies at The University of Lincoln, Thomas and Christopher became acquainted with the latest and last member of CakeBomb, Tom Brown, who was invited to the group shortly before its disbandment in late 2010.

asdfmovie
In 2008, Thomas released the first in the asdfmovie series, based on his own series of three panel comics. The video shortly became a viral hit, earning Thomas a marked increase in subscribers. In 2010 a sequel, asdfmovie2, was released and became an immediate success. The series has since produced a further three installments, a song based on the recurring joke "I like trains", and asdfmovie5 was released on 11 May 2012.

2011 onwards
In late 2010 it was announced that CakeBomb had officially disbanded, with each member pursuing their own creative career independently. Thomas has since continued to produce his own work for his channel, as well as collaborating with a number of other prominent YouTube personalities and companies. He also remains an integral member of the Eddsworld crew, reprising his roles as a producer, writer and voice actor. In 2011 Thomas received media attention after a series of "banned" advertisements for his former University. The last in the series of three was featured on the British television series Rude Tube. . In late 2011 he was also invited onto BBC's The One Show for a feature about the rising popularity of youtube creators. In the feature he also helped create two promo videos for The One Show featuring reporter Lucy Siegle

Personal life
Thomas Ridgewell was born 27 June 1990. In 2002 he noticed Edd Gould's animations on the StickSuicide forums, now Explosm.net. Intially looking up to Edd and pestering him about his work, Ridgewell soon after befriended him and began to critique each other's work, eventually becoming partners with Edd and co-owner of the Eddsworld series. He graduated from the University of Lincoln in 2011 with a degree in Media Production.

Ridgewell moved to London in early 2011 to work on Eddsworld more intensely with Edd Gould. His parents are said to be Jehovah's Witnesses, who raised Ridgewell in the religion. Ridgewell often jokes in many videos about the fact that because he is a Jehovah's Witness, he doesn't celebrate Christmas. More recently, when questioned on the subject of religion in a webshow, Ridgewell indicated a shift in his personal religious beliefs, stating "i think i believe in something, it's religion that i have a problem with"

He also has a personal 'Vlogging' channel, called DarkSquidge on YouTube.

Role in Eddsworld
Ridgewell is also a crew and cast member in friend Edd Gould's animated series Eddsworld, which follows the misadventures of Edd, Tom, Matt, and formerly Tord, fictionalized versions of the members who voice their respective characters. Tom's character, a fictionalized version of himself, has been called the most popular character on the show, and is physically known for a lack of eyes, spikey hair, and blue hoodie. Not only is Ridgewell a voice actor in the series, he is also a writer in many of the episodes, and often works on the sound editing of episodes for Eddsworld, while Edd worked on the animation side. Ridgewell is also known as the first official member of the Eddsworld crew, officiated by Edd in a journal on DeviantART. He and Matt both announced Edd's death from leukemia on 25 March 2012.

Ridgewell later announced that Edd had asked him to take over Eddsworld in the event of his death. He agreed to this, and will be continuing the series with a new animator and voice actor, taking Edd's role in the production of the show.

Reception
Ridgewell's work has been acknowledged by many YouTube personalities for his production quality and popularity, even being featured on an episode of Kids React (a popular YouTube series), where clips from the asdfmovie series were shown. Episodes typically receive between one and three million views on Youtube, with the exception the asdfmovie series. Being his most popular videos, they receive between 20 to 30 million views. His YouTube channel currently has over 710,000 subscribers, with his videos being viewed a total of over 200,000,000 times. This currently makes his YouTube channel the sixth most subscribed in the director category in the United Kingdom and the 10th most subscribed in all of the United Kingdom.