Over the year, we’ve posted industry profiles of the newest chaps to join Crystal Dynamics, the Redwood-based Tomb Raider dev team. Today we put those profiles on a round-up and offer you the five new faces that can potentially change Tomb Raider forever.

Tomb Raider BIZ can confirm that the tease spread in last issue’s Game Informer — yep, the one that’s stirred Tomb Raider fandom into a dizzying frenzy — is in fact created and owned by Square Enix, Lara’s new adoptive ‘rents after Eidos PLC. Raid through for the deets.

Ryan Maesan translates idiomatic personification to 3D wowza

Think Toy Story. Objects — supposedly inanimate ones — literally moving and behaving convincingly like human beings. Ryan Maesan, newly-hired Character Animator at Crystal D, achieves the same with his 2010 animation reel.

Maesan previously worked on animation for Namco Bandai title Splatterhouse. Currently, he’s busy with dev duties for “a new XBOX 360 / PS3 game” at Redwood HQ, and somehow, whatever it is, we’re willing to bet Lara’s not in it.

Although just to be sure, we’ll check the end credits of Tomb Raider Ascension (!) after our playthrough in 20XX.

Team Lara has a new guy on board, and the globe is his for the taking.

Tomb Raider: Ascension, it’s to be called. Or so says the industry profile of a Motion Editor involved in development of the next major Lara Croft outing. System Link reports.

How Square Enix is announcing the next Tomb Raider

Karl Stewart, Team Lara brand manager, on the announcement of Tomb Raider 9 in a July 2010 interview with Eurogamer. Bets are in what “time period” Karl speaks of; duly, we’ve also placed ours. Yours?

More than a year after details of a Tomb Raider reboot wildfired through the interwebs, gaming magazine PC Gamer via its The Spy column rumor-mongers anew as to Lara’s next big adventure.

A September 8 posting of a creative director opening at Redwood HQ has us scratching our heads more than we should. Crystal D’s looking for an experienced chap to head dev duties on a “new AAA action adventure title.”

Wait, what?

Lara Croft should look like this. That is, according to one “bored” Tomb Raider fan. In form of digital illustration, JVJV of the forums shares what he thinks Lara Croft “should/could look like” in the next pillar release. Younger-looking, it seems, with broader shoulders, thicker eyebrows, and sexy, just-got-out-of-panther-trouble hair. And of course, with more realistic skin detail.

Over past releases, JVJV has shared various interpretations of the ideal Lara Croft — one a variation of the Tomb Raider Underworld model with which he underlines the “importance of a pair of proper brows,” and another a variation of a Tomb Raider II character render.

But JVJV’s not alone in pushing for his own ideal Lady Croft.

Unless it’s a simple title mix-up with Tomb Raider: Legend, we’re counting on IGN to have some explaining to do on a…thing they’ve nonchalantly dubbed as Tomb Raider: Legacy. Could it be the title of the next pillar release? Hit the jump to get the deets.