Toby Gard

Toby Gard (born 1972 in Chelmsford, Essex) is an English video game character designer and consultant. He was part of the team that created fictional female British archaeologist Lara Croft.[2] Lara Croft was awarded a Guinness World Record recognizing her as the "most successful human video game heroine."[3]

Toby Gard
Toby Gard at the E3 2005
Born (1972-06-08) 8 June 1972[1]
Chelmsford, Essex, England
NationalityEnglish
OccupationVideo game designer, writer
Years active1994–present
Notable work
Tomb Raider series

Biography

1990s: from Tomb Raider to Confounding

Originally employed at Core Design, he was part of the team who designed the original Tomb Raider video game in 1995 along with the character Lara Croft. His work on the game included building and animating most of the game's characters (including Lara), animating the in-game cutscenes, storyboarding the FMVs, and managing the level designers.[4] Core gave Gard creative control over the game, although it was clear they wanted to market Lara's sex appeal, even asking Gard to implement a nude code into the game, which he refused to do.[5] His vision for Lara was "a female character who was a heroine, you know, cool, collected, in control, that sort of thing" and that "it was never the intention to create some kind of 'Page 3' girl to star in Tomb Raider".[6]

Gard left Core Design in 1997. With Tomb Raider already an established hit, Core was no longer giving Gard the creative freedom he originally had. In the end he was given the choice of making a Tomb Raider port for the Nintendo 64, or working on Core's vision for Tomb Raider II. Neither option appealed to him, so he left the company.[5] Gard had been headhunted by other software companies including Interplay and Shiny Entertainment (which prematurely announced that it had hired Gard[7]) but did not take up their offers of employment.[8]

In late 1997, he formed the company Confounding Factor along with co-developer Paul Douglas, who had worked with Gard on Tomb Raider. Galleon was announced soon after.

2000s: return on Tomb Raider

Galleon released nearly 7 years later on Microsoft's Xbox, in 2004,[8] then Gard was hired by Eidos (publisher and copyright holder of the Tomb Raider series) to work with Crystal Dynamics on a reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, beginning with Tomb Raider: Legend. While initially hired as a creative consultant, his work became "hands on" during the production and eventually included Lara's visual redesign, overseeing character design and creation, co-writing the story, designing and implementing parts of the character movement system, and directing the cinematics.[4]

The next game in the series, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, was a re-imagining of the original Tomb Raider. It was co-developed by Crystal Dynamics and Buzz Monkey Software. Gard's role on Anniversary was limited to "story consultant", while also adding his voice to the audio commentary included in the game.[9]

For Tomb Raider: Underworld, Gard's work included co-writing the story, directing the cinematics, voice direction, motion capture direction (along with camera setup and managing the animators and lighters), and directing the European TV advert for the game.[4] Gard and Eric Lindstrom received a nomination for "Best Writing in a Video Game" by the Writers Guild of America for their work on Underworld.[10]

2010s: Otherworld, Ninja Gaiden Z and a new studio

From 2010 to 2012, he worked on a webcomic called Otherworld.[11] From 2012 to 2014 Gard was the game director for Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z at Spark Unlimited.[4] In 2014 Gard founded a new studio called Tangentlemen.[12]

Gard has been the owner of Cathuria Games since 2019.[13]

gollark: My server logs only show OIR connections once they *close*.
gollark: * they may not actually be doing this, I have no way to tell
gollark: Actually, they're listening to osmarks internet radio™ and you can too*!
gollark: bee queue
gollark: Precisely.

References
  1. "Deviantart Mechabadger About Page".
  2. "GI Icon: Lara Croft". Geek Illustrated. 29 October 2007. Archived from the original on 21 July 2008.
  3. Guy Cocker (7 April 2006). "Lara Croft earns Guinness World Record". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 30 August 2007.
  4. "Toby Gard". LinkedIn. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  5. Simon Carless (1997–1998). "Cofounding Factor Interview". GameGeek Peeks. Archived from the original on 25 March 2006.CS1 maint: date format (link)
  6. "Interview with Toby Gard". Gamasutra. 23 October 1998. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  7. Campbell, Colin (June 1997). "Two Raiders". Next Generation. No. 30. p. 30.
  8. Yin-Poole, Wesley (30 October 2016). "20 years on, the Tomb Raider story told by the people who were there". Eurogamer. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  9. https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/tomb-raider-anniversary-day-three/4/
  10. "2009 Videogame Writing Award Nominees Announced". Writers Guild of America, East. 12 January 2009. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  11. "Otherworld Comic". otherworldcomic.com. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  12. "Tomb Raider, Call of Duty vets form new studio". gamesindustry.biz. 18 March 2014. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  13. https://www.linkedin.com/in/toby-gard-5520b67
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