Ostercy is an awesome fanfiction writer who has not only created several stories featuring Lara Croft but also a parallel series focusing on Natla. Ost is also running the Sixth Village of Tokakeriby competition, so if you like writing about Lara's adventures I highly recommend entering.
deviantArt (commonly abbreviated as dA) is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork, and wherever there’s a chance to strut your stuff, there you’ll find Tomb Raider fans.
First - some statistics (which I hope are at least roughly accurate).
At the time of writing there are more than 30,000 works related to Tomb Raider, of which approximately 800 show up under Nude Raider (which is less than 3%, showing that Tomb Raider fan-art has moved firmly away from its fanboy roots.) Her Royal Highness Jacqueline Natla is featured in nearly 1000 works, that well known bottle blonde Amanda Evert stars in about 800 and pretty boy Kurtis Trent glams it up in about 700. One of the larger TR fan groups is called “#Art-of-TombRaider” and was founded in 2010 by KissBite (a.k.a Keyth Sayers, a member of dA since 2005), whilst professional Lara artists who post their work at dA include Adam Hughes and Andy Parks (TR Comics). Finally there’s a chunk of TR fanfiction consisting of about 200 stories. (Or story chapters. Or poems).
Phew!
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| Lara faces off against her Doppelganger. Illustration by Agnes Heyer from 2000 for Ostercy's story "Olympus Mons |
The beauty of dA is that there is little to no moderation, there’s no canon of obscure rules to protect the “power” of the site administrators and you don’t have to be in hock to any particular clique to get noticed. This means, of course, that TR Deviant Art can range from the moderately artistic to the utterly dreadful – hurrah! You can get Lara as Otherkin, Lara inflated like a balloon, Japanese manga Lara … there is no indignity to which(One of my particular bete-noirs is the recent flood of ugly pictures made with “art” software XNA Lara – all awkwardly angled limbs and boggle-eyed faces – which make Lara about as attractive as Lady Penelope from "Thunderbirds") “Lady Croft” has not been subjected. However, balancing these visions of the unbalanced (which are in the minority) you'll also find “real” artwork, originating with a pencil and paper (probably). There are a number of TR comics, at least one of which has a plot, and several cartoonists, at least one of whom is funny. There’s roughly 3000 photos posted by various brave cosplayers (I have to namedrop one of my personal favourites, misslarisacroft, who appears to have no qualms about standing in a freezing Ukrainian pond in a bikini to get that memorable shot), as well as the works of many gifted graphic artists (who manage to create great Lara pictures without tracing Top Cow comics or re-colouring Eidos marketing ”goodness”.)
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| One of misslarisacroft's photos inspired by Tomb Raider 2 |
So if you are an "artiste", and whether your “canvas” is literal, conceptual or personal, try out dA. It contains a living, breathing Tomb Raider community which has room for everybody (however deranged).
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