First papercraft release of 2020! Free Tomb Raider PlayStation 2 The Angel of Darkness Save icon Lara.

...and the first papercraft release of 2020 is a fact! 😀

This was fun to make, because well, it's a new Tomb Raider vignette and those are really turning into a nice series 😉 but also because I think it's a Lara that not all people get to see, since she only lives on the PlayStation 2 Memory Card of people that played the PS2 version of The Angel of Darkness.

That's also why I kept this vignette quite minimalistic, with just Lara and a PlayStation 2 style base. The next papercraft Tomb Raider vignettes that I have planned are a bit more elaborate again, but they'll have to wait a while, because I want to do other papercrafts as well of course... But for now, I hope you enjoy my first papercraft of the New Year, have fun building!

Download free Tomb Raider AoD Save icon Lara papercraft:

https://ninjatoes.wordpress.com/category/tomb-raider/

Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness Save icon Lara test build

Even in the Year of the Rat, I will continue making papercrafts of course! 😇

First I will have to finish my Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness Save icon Lara vignette and I've been doing a test build of her as you can see.

There are some small things that I want to fix a bit (like straightening her legs a bit for instance) but all in all, this will be a very minimalistic vignette anyway so it's just Lara, and I think she will fit right in. 😊

The thing about making papercrafts from extracted video game characters...

The thing about making papercrafts from actual in-game 3D character models from a video game (..or in this case from a PlayStation 2 Memory Card save file 😉) is that they almost never make a good papercraft models... And I don't just mean that characters from modern games are so detailed that they are better off being "simplified" a bit first before being turned into a papercraft model with Pepakura Designer...

A Twilight Princess Puppet Zelda head based on the in-game model, but a bit simplified for papercraft

The in-game models from the classic Tomb Raider games are already pretty low-poly though, so they don't really need simplifying. They do need some attention as well of course, mainly because of "collisions". Collisions are when for example on the in-game model the shoulder moves into the body when the arm is moved, or when the lower leg moves into the upper leg at the knee when Lara is running.

With the technology for the time, this looked okay on the computer screen when playing the game, but with papercraft this is physically impossible of course. The solution is nothing special though, it's just a matter of removing the problem parts and connecting the pieces back together so that it looks okay (and you really don't have to be a professional 3D animator or anything to do this! 😉)

Polygons can go through polygons, but paper can't go through paper.

And then there are Save icon Lara's hands and ponytail. Like I said when I started this papercraft, I chose this save icon version particularly because this low-poly version fits in so nicely with the other classic papercraft Tomb Raider vignettes I made.

However, the hands on the classic Lara's are literally just rectangular blocks, while the ones on Save icon Lara are just a bit more triangulated. The ponytail on the other hand is a bit more detailed on the classic Lara versopm. Oh, and Save icon Lara doesn't have any weapons (but as we know, Angel of Darkness Lara could do some hand-to-hand combat too when needed... 😉)

Save icon Angel of Darkness Lara has some small peculiarities compared to the "real" classic Lara.

I decided to leave Save icon Lara as she is though, because this papercraft vignette will be very minimalistic and these small differences make her special I think. Stay tuned!

Designing an Angel of Darkness Playstation 2 save icon Lara papercraft vignette stand

Normally I try to recreate a little scene from the game for my papercraft Tomb Raider vignettes, but in the case of The Angel of Darkness' save icon Lara, she doesn't actually appear in-game of course! 😇

So I want to keep the vignette very minimalistic to resemble how Save icon Lara only appears just by herself, and I decided to make the stand as a reference to the PlayStation 2 console.

Obviously, the square box won't be a direct 1:1 recreation with all the little details (although... the "fat" model version of the PlayStation 2 model version I have myself does look pretty squarish! 😋) but I made some very simple allusions to the design that I think strike a nice balance between being very simple and still recognizable, so that it doesn't detract from the actual paper Lara, like the dark color tones with the horizontal lines and of course the blue PS2 logo on top, and I even made a special backside to the stand with ventilation grille to allude to the PlayStation 2 console.

I'm pretty happy with how the design for the stand turned out, so now I'll start working on the actual 3D model of Save icon Lara. Stay tuned!

How to get a Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness Playstation 2 Lara save icon file as a base model for a new papercraft Tomb Raider vignette

Did you know that the Japanese title for Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness ("トゥームレイダー美しき逃亡者") translates to "The Beautiful Fugitive"? Which is a much more fitting description of course. 😉

This sixth installment of Lara's adventures was created as the first 'next-gen' Tomb Raider game, with much more detailed graphics and character models, including Lara. It was however the last Tomb Raider game made by Core Design, the developer that created the classic ones too that make such nice little papercraft vignettes.

I played The Angel of Darkness on the Playstation 2, and maybe not a lot of people know this, but there's actually a cute little Lara that strolls about on your Memory Card when you save the game:

It's a much simpler character model than the in-game one of course, which makes that she'd fit perfectly with the simple style of the my other Core Design vignettes!

So I used the PS2 Save Builder 0.8x (running as Administrator in Windows XP Service Pack 2 compatibility mode on my 64-bit Windows 10 system) to extract the save icon from a Code Breaker *.cbs save file (simply click the "static.ico" and choose "Extract"). Then you can use the PS2 Icon Importer/Exporter 0.8 plugin by Vector to open the save icon model in Milkshape 3D 1.8.2 and save it to a more common 3D file format (changing the file extension to *.icn or choosing "all files" when trying to import it).

Tools used:
 - PS2 Save Builder 0.8x: https://www.ps2savetools.com/download/ps2-save-builder/
 - PS2 Icon Importer/Exporter 0.8 plugin for Milkshape 3D: https://www.ps2savetools.com/download/milkshape-ps2-icon-importer-exporter/
 - Milkshape 3D 1.8.2: http://www.milkshape3d.com/

And now I have a nice little low-poly Angel of Darkness Lara as a base model for a new papercraft Tomb Raider vignette! And of course I'll make a fitting stand for her too. 😉 Stay tuned!

(although in this case there are not a lot of steps, I still combined them into one image to make it easier to save)