Michael Knowland

Infected FemaleClicker

Joel

Robert

For the Bloater my work was for the sculpt of his head, body and fungus, texture painting (color, spec, gloss, normal, transparency), creating the low poly topology and UV layouts.  He was layered with multiple fungus chunks that served as armor, and we organized these so that they could be destroyed one by one during gameplay.


Henry

James

Tommyand Young Tommy

My work for him was for the head, hair, beard, starting outfit, backpack, winter outfit and final level outfit (the one in the grey shirt).  This meant sculpting the default face and bodies, texture painting (color, spec, gloss, normal, transparency), creating the low poly topology, creating UV layouts, making the facial wrinklemaps and cinematic variations, such as moments where he is was covered in blood sprays, cuts, mud and snow textures.


I also worked on the marketing portrait image for him shown above; helping to set up the camera angle, pose adjustments, final composition and final detail painting in photoshop.  These were sourced from high resolution in-game screenshots with in-game cinematic resolution lighting. 


Infected Bloater

My work for Tommy was for the head, hair, beard and outfit.  This meant sculpting the default face and body, texture painting (color, spec, gloss, normal, transparency), creating the low poly topology, creating UV layouts and making the facial wrinklemaps.  I worked on both an older version and a younger version of him.  His shoes are Joel's were quickly duplicated from Joel's and used a different color texture in-game.. 

My work for him was for the head, hair and outfit (not including his backpack).  This meant sculpting the final face and body, texture painting (color, spec, gloss, normal, transparency), creating the low poly topology, creating UV layouts, making the facial wrinklemaps and cinematic variations, such as moments where he was covered in mud, dirt and blood. 



My work for her was for the head, hair, starting outfit and winter outfit.  This included sculpting the final face and body, texture painting (color, spec, gloss, normal, transparency), creating the low poly topology, UV layouts,  facial wrinklemaps and cinematic variations, such as moments where she was covered in blood sprays, crying tears and dirt or snow texture effects.


I also worked on the marketing portrait image for her shown above; helping to set up the camera angle, pose adjustments, final composition and final detail painting in photoshop.  These were sourced from high resolution in-game screenshots with in-game cinematic resolution lighting. 


There were also two final versions that I worked on for her, as we had to change the direction - they are shown above.







My work for Robert was for the head, hair and beard.  This meant sculpting the final face, texture painting (color, spec, gloss, normal, transparency), creating the low poly topology, UV layouts and facial wrinklemaps, as well as his cinematic variation where he is covered in blood on his face.  His clothing was made by Adam Scott. 


MICHAEL KNOWLAND

Ellie

James had a cameo role in the cinematics, and was not featured in the playable parts of the game.  He was made without a concept, and was somewhat based off his voice actor.  He was made in  approximately 2 days by starting out with Tommy's finalized head sculpt and textures, and then using existing hunter NPC clothing for his outfit.  My work for him was sculpting and texturing his face and hair, and then assembling his outfit.  (For anyone who's played the game, there's another character that gets tortured by Joel in Lakeside who is tied into a chair - I used the  same process for making that characters head and hair as James.)


THE LAST OF US

Young Joel and Sarah

Sculptor

My work for these two was on the head, hair and outfits.  This meant sculpting the final face and body, texture painting (color, spec, gloss, normal, transparency), creating the low poly topology, creating UV layouts, making the facial wrinklemaps and cinematic variations, such as moments where they were covered in blood and crying.  In addition I made them wrinklemap sculpts and textures for their t-shirts. 








​​​​​​​​

​

Working in-house with Naughty Dog on The Last of Us was an amazing experience.  I was the Lead Character Artist on the game, but came into it much later (after 2 years of it already being developed).  I started out building secondary character Henry before my work was favored by Creative Director Neil Druckmann, at which point I took over to rework the main characters Ellie and Joel based on his vision (workly largely from photo reference, but staying faithful to the concept art).  A team effort had already been in place to build their prototypes, and outsource constructed the boots and watch of Joel, and shoes and backpack of Ellie.  The overall face proportions and rig for Joel, as well as Ellie's rig were already very well established by Judd Simantov.


This was the first ever infected made for public release.  My work for this character was to recreate the fungus based on a new concept and to set the benchmark for how the fungus would look artistically.  We wanted it to really feel like it was exploding out of the head with a realistic sense of volume and flow based on real world fungus reference.  In addition, I re-worked minor areas of the body and lower face in order to integrate it with the new design.  The body and lower face were initially worked on by Darcy Korch.  Again, a team effort.


Below is a screenshot of the first time the infected was seen up-close in a cinematic.  Later on we propagated it into multiple in-game variations.