being a series about a post-pandemic apocalypse you kind of expect the last of us to have a ton
of visual effects and you'd be right but some of those effects were probably not quite those you'd
have imagined now obviously digital map paintings were necessary to extend or replace backgrounds to
create this post-apocalyptic world and Rhodes had to be made to look poorly maintained and overrun
by Nature infrastructure had to look tired and weather worn buildings had to look abandoned and
corroded and plants had to look like they were reclaiming what was once theirs and of course
modern day items had to be removed as well signs had to be removed or made to look damaged Bridges
had to look unusable in short decomposition and abandonment had to be woven into almost every shot
and up to here it's all fairly run-of-the-mill but it turns out that even though through the use
of practical effects Prosthetics and clever location selection the filmmakers attempted
to do everything practically due to Aesthetics technicalities and just plain bad luck they still
had to use digital effects to shoot the scene where Joel finds his brother Tommy in a village
filled with survivors they wanted it to be covered in snow so they picked Canmore in Alberta Canada a
place known for its prolific snowfall but when the team arrived at the location there was very little
snow this was especially devastating because they couldn't use fake snow paper or Dolomite because
it would affect the natural environment so the production team had to collect real snow which
had built up in drifts around the town and move it in 350 dump trucks to cover 10 city blocks
then all this real snow had to be spread about dressed and blown everywhere but even though they
tried to use real snow wherever possible it just wasn't enough so for Joel and Ellie's journey to
Colorado additional CG snow and digital dirt and debris had to be added to the existing snow in
addition to the color grading to give the shots a colder feel to recreate the iconic giraffe scene
they actually used a real giraffe but for the establishing shot in order to allow them to be
able to direct the action the giraffes had to be CG and even when they were using the real giraffe
they still had to set up a blue screen wall at the zoo where the giraffe was in order to
control how far it could move its head because of this the giraffe's body and neck had to be
recreated later digitally this was also true for the scene where Ellie shoots the horse even though
they built a practical horse to accomplish the stunt in order to have it fall and get its legs
to move convincingly it had to be replaced with a digital one but perhaps the most unexpected
use of VFX was for the infected themselves Barry Gower and his team at bgfx worked to create the
infected characters starting with Concept artwork from the original game they made prosthetics for
each stage of infected characters and a full body suit for the bloater the bulk of this work was for
the cul-de-sac scene where over eight days they had 60 characters in prosthetic makeup plus the
bloater because the Prosthetics were all made out of silicone every single day they needed
to be removed and destroyed with mineral oil the following day a brand new duplicate
set of Prosthetics were applied and painted to match exactly those of the day before but once
again even though they did as much as possible practically they still had to use digital effects
the Practical bloater suit was hyper realistic but it was also cumbersome and heavy too so not
only did it bounce and wobble in an unconvincing manner but it also impeded the actor from moving
in a convincing way so the bloated suit had to be scanned and then recreated digitally using
the actor's mocap performance to Aid animation the clicker Prosthetics were designed to fit over the
actor's head but they couldn't look like a helmet while they achieved this for the adult clickers
due to proportions the child clicker which was played by nine-year-old gymnast Skye Newton just
looked like she was wearing a helmet so she also had to be a digital Recreation initially
they were only going to do a head replacement but they soon realized that it was difficult
to tell whether she was a child or just a small adult so in order to sell the fact that she was
indeed just a child they replaced the whole body adjusted her proportions and added the pigtail
the actors playing the clickers that erupted from the hole may have been close to 60 but they still
weren't enough to create the horde effect that they were looking for so they scanned
one and built a digital asset that they could make different variations of all based on a real thing
they used motion capture for the crowd motion but the horde of infected ended up being a mixture
of live action animation keyframing motion editing and simulation from wetter's crowd
simulation tool massive series that are based on well-known franchises books or video games
are generally made in order to cash in on their already existent fan base but series like the last
of us are successful not because they are made for the fans but because they are made by fans
who aren't afraid to adjust or modify whatever they have to in order to better tell the story