Tomb Raider: The Anniversary Commemoration

My
review blogging about Tomb Raider
Anniversary yesterday left one question unanswered: precisely what is
Eidos/Square Enix doing for Tomb Raider‘s
15th Anniversary?  The answer is they’re celebrating it with a
month-long feature presenting commemoration artwork for Lara, in which
eight different artists are contributing one piece of art. Each is being posted
every Monday and Friday of this month. Today is October 12th, which means three
have been revealed thus far.

The first piece is
from Andy Park (also shown to the left), who’s contributed heavily to the
video game, comic, and movie industries. Most importantly, he contributed to
the Tomb Raider comics from Top Cow Productions that started in the late 90s. The second comes
from Camilla D’Errico, who’s done a lot of work for the comic industry. The third (and by
far the most suggestive) piece is from Long Vo, who previously worked on
artwork for plenty of mediums. Prior to his current stint as co-founder and
Chief Product officer at Hiptic.com (which just
happens to be where the site is hosted), he worked for Udon Entertainment,
where he contributed art from and for various Capcom games. You saw his work if
you played Super
Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix or Final Fight: Double Impact. Be sure to visit the site to see more
detailed descriptions of their accomplishments.

Also
noteworthy is the origin of all three artworks thus far. The art from all three
comes from the new Tomb Raider reboot, which is peculiar considering this art
exists to commemorate Lara’s adventures from the past. That’s not a bad decision, but its secondary intention is to assist
in marketing the new game to maintain its awareness. It’s still a while off,
with a release date of fall 2012.

Also, I’m sincerely
hoping Andy Park saw a later portion of the game than the public has seen,
since his art makes Lara look as strong as her older version. Lara’s plight in the E3 2011 demo was
creepy for all the wrong reasons, and hopefully Eidos and Square Enix heard the
criticism about it.

Anyway,
these are only three of the eight contributions coming for the 15th Anniversary
this month. Tomb Raider and Lara Croft creator Toby Gard will be contributing
the final one on the 31st, but the other four artists will remain shrouded in
mystery until their piece is revealed. If you like what you’ve seen thus far,
you can keep up with all the developments on the official page for it — which
also contains wallpaper for each piece in varying sizes. Maybe you’ll see
someone else you’re incredibly familiar with!