1990s: From Tomb Raider to Confounding Factor Toby Gard was born on 8 June 1972 in
Chelmsford,
Essex, England. He began his career in videogames in 1994 when he was hired by
Core Design to work on the game
BC Racers. From late 1994 he was part of the team who designed and developed the original
Tomb Raider video game 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. 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. 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". 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.) but did not take up their offers of employment. In 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. The game had a protracted development period and was released in 2004 on
Microsoft's
Xbox. 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.
2010s: Otherworld, Ninja Gaiden Z, and a new studio From 2010 to 2012, he worked on a webcomic called
Otherworld. From 2012 to 2014 Gard was the game director for
Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z at Spark Unlimited. where he would work as director on
PlayStation VR title
Here They Lie. He has been the owner of Cathuria Games since 2019, where he worked on indie game
Dream Cycle. ==Inspiration==