I was tasked to design and pose the collector's edition statue. The general broadstroke was to maintain a consistent tone to match the art direction of the project, and to truly represent the essence of the story, which is why we didn't even consider action / heroic poses from the very start.

 

Joel had an alternate version with a revolver, like in the 2011 debut teaser trailer, however, we ended up sticking with the original plan, the shotgun.The first diorama pose I pitched was accepted. Initially, I had Ellie sit lower (on a bus bench) and lean on her right leg instead, which ended up having her left arm rest on it and block the image on her shirt. As a result, we ended up with the pose you see above. This allowed us to get the final design relatively quickly to the vendor. 

 

Joel and Ellie's stances and expressions are more so compelling and resonating once you complete the game.I also designed the layout of the base itself (modeled the block mesh). Although I did not model the assets the base is comprised of, I came up with the character's placement in conjunction with their poses, the distance from one object to another, how the base looks and feels in relation to the characters (such as the type of foliage, color of road / sidewalk, etc'

 

I was involved, to a great degree, with the vendor's process of getting our blueprint fully realized (together with the Creative Director, the Character Lead and Marketing). Often times, I was the go to for the process.

 

I am very proud to have pushed forward on this task, even though we were under extremely tight schedule and despite it being an additional weight on an already grand scope The Last Of Us was.

 

-Tal Peleg