Behind the Scenes: Last of Us Illustration (Patreon)

One of my most anticipated TV shows this year was definitely the Last of Us series. It's my favorite story-driven game of all time. And not because it's that much original. The way you get emotionally invested with the characters is the thing, that makes it stand out.

When the first episode launched last week, I was thrilled and watched it as soon as I could and I have to say, they did amazing job with capturing the game story and atmosphere.

And I was thrilled again, because I didn't have to think about my next design for the week :). Anytime some good piece of pop-culture content releases, I'm all over it. Don't get me wrong, I love to think about unique ideas, but I love capturing my favorite content as well. And of course, I could make something like this anytime (and sometimes I do, like the last week with Tomb Raider), but the fact that it's a hot topic helps with the audience reach. 

If you're sometimes hesitant about joining on the hype, because it feels cheap and low-hanging fruit, just think about whether you like the thing and you would enjoy making it without the hype too. If the answer is yes, then it's just sweetened deal.

Visit the full Pinboard here

First I needed to gather all the references I could find online. Luckily with games, there is always enough screenshots and fan-art to follow. I'm mostly using Pinterest for this and collect all the Pins and Google images results I come across.

Then I take the best, or those that capture some important detail and bring them over to PureRef to organize. It's a great piece of software and allows for easy cropping and resizing, so I like to duplicate some references and crop on the different details I don't want to forget to include. I end up basically with two boards. One for a larger overview and mood and lighting board and the other one is a list of details to include.

Lately, I have a one more step in the process and that's leveraging the power of AI to get even wider range of inspiration. You can read about it here. Basically I use some of the selected references as image prompts along with some word descriptions to get the result I'm going for. Of course, the AI shoots wide and the details are a mess, but it's a great tool to break from your standard patterns of thought and find some new directions to go.

After that I take my notebook and start sketching. I sometimes get the question, whether it's important to sketch with the traditional pencil and if you need to know how to draw if you're learning 3d. The answer is no for both questions, but with an asterisk.

It doesn't matter if you sketch with a pencil, iPad or a piece of charcoal in the cave. The important part of this process is to get your thoughts organized while trying to sketch some basic layout. It doesn't have to be perfect or even nice. It's just a tool to help you include all the different ideas and try different concepts before you commit to modeling.

My average sketch time is around one or two hours. If I compare it to around 10 hours of modeling time, it's really worth trying to get the composition sketch before launching Blender.

You can watch the process video on Youtube