To find the Infected’s appearance in The Last of Us, Craig Mazzini — along with series co-showrunner Neil Druckman — didn’t look far. Already, in his previous series Chernobyl, he found the perfect person to represent the horrors of radiation on the human body. This man is Barry Gower, a prosthetics expert.
He wanted the most realistic result to depict the victims of the Cordyceps epidemic, a fungus that turns people into mutated and deadly creatures. BGFX, Barrie and Sarah Gower’s make-up effects company, created the different looks of the radiation victims at Chernobyl, which earned Barrie Gower an Emmy nomination.
But the expert’s successes go back even further. He has already won four Emmy Awards for Game of Thrones and Stranger Things. He comes back for it Entertainment Weekly on his creation.
As we told you during Stranger Things season 4, creating Vecna (played by Jamie Campbell Bower) was a real challenge for Barry Gower and his team. They manage to make the Hawkins gang (as well as the onlookers) a terrifying monster, while not losing sight of the fact that this is basically a man who has been trapped upside down for years and who has metamorphosed after prolonged exposure. hostile environment.
Barry Gower also worked on David Lowry’s The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel. Beneath the Green Knight’s armor and prosthetics is an actor: Ralph Ineson. Like Vecna, Gower considers the creation of the knight “A really extreme makeup process“.”Some of this makeup was several centimeters thick and on top of the armor was also very heavyGower says of its design.
We also owe him the Night King from Game of Thrones. To do this, his team worked with concept artist Howard Swindell and sculptor Tristan Versluys to create the look of the Night’s King around actor Richard Brake, who was later replaced by Vladimir Furdick, one of the series’ main stuntmen.
Barry Gower continues to marvel at the impact the Night King has on thrones. “It’s one of those things that you do and you never imagine that it will be accepted as it is and become part of pop culture.“, he says. Also for Entertainment Weekly , he returns to designing the Infected in The Last of Us.
The last of us – infected
There are different types of infected in the world of The Last of Us. As in the game, the series offers a whole bestiary that creates a nuance between the level of infection. Thus, we find runner which are newly infected and roughly correspond to the standard zombie. For them, Gower and his team came up with the idea.raised veinsVisualize how the parasite will travel through the bite mark into the victim’s brain.
“We had to show some path in the network of veins that go up through the body“, he explains.We have studied many different organic forms of veins. We studied things like worm larvae under the skin.
We studied jellyfish, the scarabs found in these random organic samples, and we also studied the small insects that are sometimes seen on leaves and plants. It’s a parasite, a termite, that burrows under the skin of the leaf and creates all these swirls.“
After the runners we have Clicks. The longer a victim suffers from a Cordyceps infection, the more the fungus mutates in the body. Clickers are infected who have gone blind because a fungus has opened up their skulls, causing these mushrooms to bloom instead of their eyes.
Gower’s team wanted to give the Clackers their own distinctive features. “There was a benchmark – the orange, yellow and gray that we had in the game – but in the first season we would be in a lot of different environments.Gower explains.
“Perhaps as the franchise progresses, we may find some changes in the weather. Places will change. For example, in the case of heat, are you in a dry or humid environment. It can also be a change of season. So we just said, “Could this have any effect on the color, finish, and texture of the infected?”“.
If Clicker has more colors”alive and richGower says it means he comes from a green and lush environment. The more dehydrated a Clicker looks, the harsher its native environment.
Proof that no detail is left out and that his work contributes greatly to the success of the series!
Source: Allocine
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
