Virtual Lara's Thoughts

Official Render or No?

10/5/2023

This blog post will try to delve into the history and the origins of the below image, providing pros and cons for whether this image is an official render, and allow you to make your own decision on it. We'd also like to state that we have not found this image on any 'official' TR page, nor have we found it to belong to a certain person or to have a certain name attached to it; we simply want to talk through our thought process on what we make of it.

Now that you've had the chance to see the image, let us begin with how we came across it.

Many years back, whilst going through old fansites, we once came across an image of Lara that we had never seen before. This was back when we hadn't seen the official Style Guide or the official wallpapers that were given out. This was also back when we were younger fans who saved everything that was Lara Croft (we must add that as we have gotten older, we decided to keep mainly anything official and the odd fan thing that we liked). Then sometime later, we had found this it again, and this time, we took the weblink of the fansite that we had seen it on.

This render shows Lara happily in a state of undress. It is a rather risqué type of image, and obviously brings Lara's feminine features to the forefront. Images like this weren't too uncommon in the marketing side of Tomb Raider, where they would show Lara wearing little whilst she was still covered or hidden in the important places. We have seen two versions of the same posing: one on a green background where Lara has a plait over her left shoulder, and one on a white background where Lara is either wearing her hair in a bun or the plait is hidden out of sight. We're not sure which image came first; they both are seen on websites that date to around 1999. We think maybe the green background version came first as the Lara on the white background seems to have a greenish glow on her left side. If this is true, then someone must've altered Lara's hair and added in the skin over her arm and shoulder. Looking at these places, it looks really well done - no sudden colour difference, no obvious repainted marks, the shape of the arm looks good, and the hair fits the orientation of the head well too. Maybe this could mean that both versions were real. The version with the white background has a noticeable mark that doesn't appear on the green background image, which can be seen on the lower right portion of her hair, around by her jaw; a white line that could've been added in when the person added this section of hair.

We personally think that it is official as the quality of the model used is really good, and we believe that some old fansites back the theory (See Link 0 and Link 4 below), however we don't have a reason as to why it would've disappeared like it had. Maybe it was too suggestive and that it conflicted with the cease and desists of 'Nude Raider' content that Eidos was handing out to fansites promoting nude Laras; Eidos couldn't be seen as being contradictory to their lawsuits, so it was removed. Maybe, the speed in which it disappeared is also why there are few instances of this render being shown and why it isn't available in normal sizes at the time. We also wonder if this image was repurposed into other Lara renders as she poses very similar in other renders.

Here are some fors and againsts that we've been mulling over as we tried to work out the legitimacy of the image.

For:

We know that the developer/publisher made 'nude' models of Lara for various other renders, so one more wouldn't make a difference. These are just some official examples.

A fansite that we have found it on: (LINK 0), collected wallpapers, purposely separating the official wallpapers from the fan made. This render can be seen listed on one of the official wallpapers pages. The website also mentions how a lot of fans didn't like it when it "came out, just like with the scandal wallpaper".
A few other fansites also have the render; some list it alongside fan made renders ( LINK 1 | LINK 2 | LINK 3 ). However, the most noteworthy of these other fansites is 'Unofficial Tomb Raider Gallery' (LINK 4), which said that "it is simply a collection of wallpapers from the Tomb Raider Archives". We'd like to point out that when they say "Tomb Raider Archives", we believe that they are referring to the 'archives' buttons that were found on the wallpaper pages of official Tomb Raider websites (Lara's World & TR4). Looking at the gallery page, you'll see only official wallpapers.
There is a wallpaper listed on the official 'Lara's World' wallpaper archive page whose download had gone missing entirely. (LINK 5) This image, called '8bitv3.zip.zip' (available in the size 640x480 only, Group 3) cannot be found anywhere on those official pages and the file doesn't exist in the Archive.org URLs. Could this be that missing image, that was taken down due to its risqué nature and possible fan backlash.
The Croft Times and PlanetLara, two of the biggest fansites of the time, had this image. These websites were pretty much 'Nude Raider' free, so the only suggestive artwork that would feature on these websites would be official images. Also, when The Croft Times uploaded images, they'd put their watermark on it. Fan art on their site would have the Croft Times logo as well as the artist name. This image on their site only has the Croft Times logo - no artist name.
The fact that this image wasn't given out on the official style guide isn't enough reason to believe that it is fake as you can find many official renders that weren't available through those disks.
The logical reason why there are two versions of the render would be that one is official and one is fan-altered - or maybe not, as the blue background render below has two versions, both of which are official.
The model used in the render looks really well made. Remembering back to fan made imagery at the time, we can't recall any that used a model/lighting that looked this official. This Lara is a TR3 render style model. If it had been photoshopped anywhere, you couldn't tell; the way the head fits the neck, the finger tips, joints, lighting in general, all looks pretty smooth. The face of Lara is pretty spot on to other renders of the time, and her expression has similarities to several others. The body shape and positioning too is similar other renders. We've put a few examples below.

Head shape, eye brow placement very similar...

Similarities: Placement of her right arm, body shape- if you rotated this image anti-clockwise, her pose is similar.

Against:

The most obvious point is that it cannot be found on the official websites through the Web Archive. Either it didn't exist, as in it wasn't official, or it had been replaced (same link but different images).
Not many fansites had or have it, though this could mean nothing as not many old or current fansites write about the Times Exclusive story or official Flash games such as the AoD platforming game or the "Challenge Lara" Lucozade game.
It can be seen on some fansites as a little GIF that promotes that it is a 'Nude Raider free' fansite. This would imply that this image could've been found on the nude raider website. When the GIF was made, it used an image from the NR site to say that you won't find that sort of material on certain sites.

These are just a handful of points that we've come up with. It would be fantastic to be able to find the original source or the original artist so that we can know for sure, but somehow, I don't think either will be possible. With the current rediscoveries in the past month or so, who knows, this could be another.

Sources

'Down Among the Dead' Renders

15/4/2023

So it turns out that there were 8 renders specifically created for the 1999 story that was released to supplement The Times Exclusive level.

There was always that one render, of Lara stood in a library looking through a book, that has been synonymous with the Times level, but since we bought the newspaper that featured episode #7 of the 'Down Among the Dead' story, we had this theory that some others were made for it too. We had touched upon this in a post we made on our Virtual Lara Tumblr back in February 2021. The said issue then confirmed that the image of Lara stuck in a spider web in an Egyptian setting depicted the story being told. For many years before, people, including us, assumed that the render was created for TR4 and somehow represented the game. No one knew who the man in it was but we could only loosely guess that it was Werner Von Croy, somehow, even though you could see that it wasn't. However when you read the 'Down Among the Dead' story, you'll learn that it is in fact a character called Alvin Blackmore.

Our theory was also based on the fact that in the Tomb Raider Style Guide, the set of renders that are numbered TR5001-TR5009 (although we aren't sure where render #TR5007 comes in) were labelled under the Tomb Raider Chronicles set of renders, even though they thematically don't belong to Chronicles. When we acquired the physical Style Guide, we could seen the dates of the renders on the disks; they all date to November-December 1999 - around the time when the story was printed, and what's more, they pre-date Chronicles. When building our website, this was enough proof for us to create a Renders page with these images on, even though we had only seen 2 episodes.

This theory was proved correct when UroshUchiha accessed the Times digital archive and found out the remaining episodes. From this, fans can now understand what the renders are showing, and we can now see where and in which order the other renders were used. For us, this is another Tomb Raider mystery solved!