BUSINESS DOG WORKSHOP: 1/6 Custom Figure : Bill ("The Last Of Us", PS3)

One of my more later custom figures and one of my most expensive. This time a character from Naughty Dog's latest PS3 title: "The Last Of Us".

To sum it up; basically it's an Action Adventure/Survival Horror game set 20 years into a zombie apocalypse. Bill is one of the more...colorful characters you meet along the way. Personally, I think he is one of the best supporting characters ever written for a game. His "story", even though it was just a snippet, really had a bit of an effect on me. So I had to make this!

Official character design concept art.

I was fortunate enough to come across a talented sculptor living in the UK who creates 1:6 scale heads on commission. His prices are very reasonable, but more importantly, I really fell in love with his style. It's not as clean-cut as some of those professional resin head sculpts, but it has a lovely roughness to it that has a certain charm. I think it's great for these kinds of characters.

Unfinished game model render.

I came across some rendered 3D character concept art used for the game to show my sculptor the specific details of the characters face. I think he knocked it out of the park! Especially the grumpy expression lol.

3D Face Model

Final unpainted head sculpt.

Now all that was left was to create the outfit. Not overly hard, but some parts were tricky in finding the right fitting clothes. Even though I had a collection of concept art pictures to reference from, I still wanted to keep it true to his final in-game model.

I also needed to keep in mind his body shape. I ended up padding the nude body with wraps of cotton fabric strips to bulk him out even more.

(Left) Unpainted vest and T-shirt. (Right) Final painted vest and bandolier.

The vest was originally a khaki WWII US marine vest which I cut shorter along the bottom and painted blue. After it dried, I weathered it (and the jacket underneath) with some brown paint to add to the grittiness. These people have been living in this apocalypse for 20 years now. I also created the bandolier from scratch with this weird, vinyl stuff I found randomly one day.