Beck Williams, a 2D animator and illustrator from Stoke-on-Trent, England, has been captivated by Tomb Raider since childhood. Growing up watching her older brother play the original game in the 90s sparked a lifelong passion that eventually led Beck to start creating tribute animations for the classic series in 2018. 

Q: Your Tomb Raider tribute animations showcase remarkable creativity, particularly in your use of morphing transitions to shift between scenes. Can you share the creative process behind each video and highlight the biggest challenges you faced? 

Tomb Raider III Tribute Animation 

Thank you so much, it means a lot to hear that!  My first Tomb Raider animation was actually for a Video Game Parody/Tribute competition. I started with just writing down ideas and doing research. Picking some music out and doing a storyboard came after to plan out the length and all the different beats I needed to hit. I did a few style sheets of some of the scenes so I could figure out the look I wanted. Then I scanned the storyboard and made an animatic with the music and that acted as a guide for me to animate over and keep the timings correct. Sometimes there were changes in the final animation but the animatic is still pretty much the same when you watch them side by side. It was just a matter of cracking on with it then. I didn’t use music from the game as it was a rule of the competition to use Kevin MacLeod music, but I did rip SFX (sound effects) from the pc disk. It was a fun evening listening through it all and finding suitable sounds for all the movements. There’s as much nostalgia from the SFX for me as the visuals, it really brought the animation alive. 

I think the biggest challenge with this one was because it was for a competition, there was a deadline and there were some rules to follow. I wanted to do well for it but do the game justice too, so I definitely did some overthinking at the planning stage. Also choosing what to put in there was hard, there were so many artefacts and parts of levels I wanted to show but I couldn’t just draw out the entire game, that would have been unrealistic. In the end I prioritised showing just a few locations, a few enemies, bosses and the meteorite crystal from each continent section of the game, then the morphing and transition ideas dictated the flow of it. 

In the end I was really proud of how it came out and I know I must’ve done a decent job as I did come first in the competition too! I still get lovely comments on YouTube to this day that make me smile. 

Tomb Raider Chronicles Tribute Animation 

The first one was so fun, so I wanted to do one for my second favourite Tomb Raider game but not have the time constraints or pressure of a competition behind it.  

The process was exactly the same as the first one. I still found it hard to cherry pick what I wanted to put in there. In the beginning I was actually set on just doing the whole tribute dedicated to the Rome section. I love those levels so much - the Ancient Rome theme, the symbol artefacts for the Philosopher's Gate - so it was difficult to set that idea aside! I’m glad I did though, doing it about the whole game felt right in the end. 

The most challenging part was the credits. I rotoscoped the game menu where the camera flies through the cemetery. That whole sequence took days, but it was worth it when it was finished. I said I’d never do that again, but I did end up doing a similar sort of thing for a TimeSplitters 2 tribute. So if I felt like an animation needed it, I’d probably do it again! 

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness Tribute Animation 

By this one, I decided I was just gonna do one for all the classic games. Angel of Darkness was the next on my list. I was excited to do this one because it has such a dark tone to it, so different to the others. I had a chance to change up the style and choose some different music that reflected it more than the Kevin MacLeod track’s I’ve used before too.  

I’d just finished my Chronicles one before my new job started so any projects after that one, I could only work on it on evenings and weekends. That really stretched out the time on projects compared to before so that was something that was challenging. 

I started this project full of creativity and ideas but after I began animating it, my mental health started really suffering. We’d lost our pet dog of 14 years at the start of 2023, stuff was happening in my life, I was just so drained and unmotivated, very burnt out at home and work; I draw and animate for my job too, so it was just too much, I think. I had to take long breaks between updates and I worried that I was letting people down who watched my channel and socials, but the Tomb Raider community was so lovely and understanding - they always have been and I’m very grateful. I had to take a proper break and thankfully I took steps to sort my head out and I was happy to pick it up again when my motivation returned. I was so proud of how it came out, I felt it was my best yet and I was relieved I got it done just in time for new year! 

Q: Is there a specific transition that you’re especially proud of? 

There’s this one in the Tomb Raider III one where the underground train turns into the Eye of Isis that I’m quite proud of. I do want to do another Tomb Raider III animation, my skills and style have changed so much since then that I think it’ll deserve an update by the time I’m done with the other games. There are some things I’d probably change but that’s one of the morphs I’d definitely keep in there and polish up. 

Q: What inspired you to create tribute videos for Tomb Raider? 

In uni I started entering animation competitions run by Animation Career Review to get my portfolio filled up. I did a Kill Bill one for a Film Tribute/Parody competition that did really well so when they ran the Video Game one in 2018/2019, straight away I wanted to do Tomb Raider III because it’s my favourite. 

Outside of the contest it was a joy to make. When I finished at University and was unable to find a creative job, doing tribute animations just became a hobby and it kept my skills sharp. Even after finding a creative job, I still do it in my free time and the Tomb Raider ones are my favourite to do which is why I keep making more. The games are full of characters, scenery and objects that always give me loads of ideas and get me excited to create something. 

Q: Your videos have a distinct artistic identity. How did you choose your animation style? 

My tutor in uni recommended watching some animation tutorials by an Australian animator named Alex Grigg. He did tutorials on animating in Photoshop and I really liked that I could do frame by frame with brushes; I was never really a huge fan of using vector art or flash animation during college when I tried, it didn’t feel as natural for me. I love drawing and sketching and for it to look a little more rough and alive.  

BUT because frame by frame is so time consuming, I work at 12 frames per second instead of 24. It works stylistically for me but honestly it was just to make my life easier and it's stuck with me. I do this thing where even if it’s a still image, I draw it 3 times so it always has some movement there - something I didn’t do for my Angel of Darkness animation backgrounds though. One: because it didn’t suit it when I tried it and two: it was so jam packed with detail anyway, I wanted to just save some time. 

The morphing and transitions, I can’t actually remember how that started. I think I did a bit of it on a project and I liked it, so I did it more. I do prefer it over a jump cut both in terms of making animations and watching them. Turning something into something else in a creative way is like problem solving, it’s very satisfying when you figure out a cool way of doing it. 

Q: What influences or experiences have shaped the way you animate today? 

God, so many influences. Tomb Raider for sure but there’s so much more. Films by John Carpenter, Quentin Tarantino, The Warriors. Manga and anime like Bleach and Black Lagoon. Loads of cartoons influenced me growing up; Avatar: The Last Airbender, Adventure Time, Regular show, Pucca. I was watching Salad Fingers and Madness Combat on Newgrounds pre-YouTube. Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette animations were a huge inspiration.  

It’s the shorter stuff too though; studio logos for films, adverts, tv and movie intros. They have to put across a bit of information in a creative way in a super short amount of time, so they have to make it memorable. There’s this little animation for Scott Free Productions that’s gorgeous and it’s less than 20 seconds long. I have quite a few playlists of cool stuff like that saved for inspiration.  

The biggest thing I’ve learned over the years is to just focus on creating things that I want to make, not what I think other people want to see, so the fact that other people enjoy watching my animations is amazing to me. I’m grateful for all the likes and lovely comments people leave on my stuff but even if I didn’t get the engagement, I’d still be making them because I love the whole process from start to finish. 

Q: Are you excited for the upcoming Tomb Raider IV-VI Remasters? If so, how do you think these remasters might inspire your future animation projects? 

So excited! I actually only decided a couple of weeks before the announcement came that after finishing my latest project, I wanted to do Tomb Raider IV next. The visuals of the game and the Egypt theme are already so beautiful so it’s gonna look incredible when remastered. I can’t wait, I’m not gonna be short of ideas.  

You can follow Beck’s work here: 

• YouTube 

• Instagram  

• X (Twitter) 

• Website 

Community

Community Spotlight

Community Creations