Paul Kwon Celebrates The Mystical With New Box Art Design [Tomb Raider III]

[April 5th 2021] As part of their continuing celebrations for Tomb Raider's twenty-fifth year, Crystal Dynamics have recently published a newly redesigned box art cover, this time celebrating Lara's third adventure. For the piece, the studio teamed up with Paul Kwon, a Digital Artist whose previous work includes the League of Legends franchise.

Paul has been working in the games industry for over fifteen years, original working at Blizzard Entertainment before moving to Riot Games, where he worked as a Senior Concept Artist on League of Legends for the past decade. Though he describes himself as a "mostly self-taught artist", he also refined his skills at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (California, USA).

For his latest piece, he worked with Crystal Dynamics to imagine the Tomb Raider III box art in his own style. There are a few different variations of the original box art, although the most common features Lara posing with duel pistols in her classic outfit with London's St Paul's Cathedral in the background. For his take, Paul took inspiration from the Nevada levels with Lara's camouflage outfit. The background represents the game's more mystical qualities and features the four meteorite artifacts distributed across the globe which Lara attempts to track down.

Speaking about this latest work, Paul states"Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series has become one of the most iconic characters in the video game industry. For my reimagining of Lara, I revisited her outfit from Tomb Raider III and gave it a modernized twist to the design while still capturing the original essence.

"The pose is quite simple with the dual pistol that we are all familiar with. Yet, I wanted to depict her caught in the moment of stillness surrounded by digital fragments of artifacts amidst the holographic desert setting. The style of the background and the abbreviated title are heavily leaning towards the simple, technical and graphical designs to give that modernized look for the whole illustration.

"In terms of the style and execution, I went with the flow of what I’m most familiar with and tried to reminisce the character with some design sensibilities in mind."

You can download the full piece on the Tomb Raider 25 website!