Earlier this year I had the pleasure to work with a few talented people on a short animation in which Lara tells the story of Baba Yaga. I was inspired by the then-upcoming DLC for the Rise of the Tomb Raider (Baba Yaga – Temple of the Witch) and as someone who grew up with my grandma telling me Russian fairy tales I wanted to tell the myth from my own perspective.
I approached Shelley Blond, the original voice actress for Lara in Tomb Raider (1996) with this idea and she kindly agreed to voice Lara once again. She already voiced Lara for me in my E3 video and to be fair I just couldn’t imagine anyone else as Lara’s voice for this project.
I then asked Inna to draw me a few sketches and she gladly did so (see above).
Jonathon, who wrote the music for my E3 video, agreed to compose the music for this project. He perfectly captured the Slavic motifs.
And so after a few sleepless nights and many pages of handwritten text I’ve put together this animation in After Effects.
A few Tomb Raider fansite admins and fans offered their help with translating this video:
- Bulgarian Subtitles by Tomb Raider Passion
- Croatian Subtitles by Ana Schindler
- German Subtitles by Lara’s Generation
- Russian Subtitles by Laracroft.ru
- French Subtitles by Brice Jeunieaux
Lastly, the video featured on the official Tomb Raider Blog, Twitter and Facebook.
I’m very grateful to everyone who was involved in this! Here’s the result of our work: