Our Work on The Last of Us
A heart-wrenching post-apocalyptic tale of hardened veteran Joel and 14 year-old Ellie, making their way across North America in search of the Fireflies – humanity’s last hope.
Wētā FX was tasked with creature work for the various stages of fungal deterioration of the infected hosts, augmenting and complementing the practical effects and prosthetics used on set.
In the case of the Bloater — the ultimate bad-ass boss-level Infected — the Wētā art department worked closely with the studio and show runners to subtly elevate the practical suit and create a larger, more athletic and ultimately fully CG creature that could believeably perform its story arc, ripping heads off bodies and sending Fedra officers and resistance fighters flying.
The Wētā team also created several hero environments, including The Bostonian Museum with its Clicker population, a crashed jetliner on a hilltop, and the Bethany Clare Field baseball diamond in Salt Lake City, complete with a wayward herd of giraffes, including one that gets up close with Joel and Ellie. For this we created a digi double that the team blended with a real giraffe from a shoot at a zoo in Calgary to fit into the digital set we’d created around it.
Other creatures our team created include a troop of macaques and a deer.
