Toby Gard

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

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. 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. Gard had been headhunted by other software companies including Interplay and Shiny Entertainment but did not take up their offers of employment.

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, and released nearly 7 years later on Microsoft's Xbox in 2004.

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