1. The Last of Us.
Vivian Ding - Lead Lighting artist. Leandro Amaral - Lighting Artist
There’s a whole team of artists
who perfect the lighting within
the game. Every time you
seen a torch being used by
the Joel or the other
characters, the light has to
interact with the surroundings
as you’d expect from the real
world.
In the documentary about
Naughty Dog, we see a
lighting artist talking about
how he would go out and
take photos of the day with
his phone so that he could
get an accurate
representation of the mellow
light in the early morning. By
doing this, you build up a
picture of how the colours of
the shadows and the light
changes across the day.
With the game being set in a post-
apocalyptic world, we see a lot of ambient
light being used throughout the game. The
insides of the buildings during the day still
need to be lit, but they’re shadowy and
dingy. Shadows are also crucial to making
the game look as realistic as possible. The
lighting artists made sure that when
characters are walking down corridors, they
still have shadows that follow them through
the hallways. The main artists work separately
and their work is sent to the lighting artists.
Everything is worked on by specific teams.