So much for Jackson, Wyoming being a safe haven in “The Last of Us” Season 2. In Episode 2’s surprise attack, hordes of infected emerge from stasis under the snow after being buried by an avalanche, and are soon joined by a new Bloater, the king of the Cordyceps-infected victims. Only this one is bigger and badder than the first one from Episode 5’s nighttime attack in Kansas City.
“So, the showrunners [Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann] wanted to make sure that the Bloater for this season in Jackson was not the same as the one in Kansas City,” Emmy-winning production VFX supervisor Alex Wang told IndieWire. “He is the highest level of [fungus Cordyceps] infection, and it’s really hard for an infected to survive and develop into a Bloater. But once they do, they’re just a brute force. So we definitely wanted that in our new design, which we augmented and modified, making him taller, leaner, and slightly more athletic, and giving him a new crown. But it’s always important to have a really strong silhouette.”
Emmy-winning Wētā FX returned to handle the breathtaking VFX for the hordes of infected and imposing Bloater (led by VFX supervisor Nick Epstein and animation supervisor and returning animation supervisor Dennis Yoo). Every member of the nearly 400 infected crowd was built to hero level to allow for close-ups and interaction with stunt performers, and each infected had their own FACS-based facial motion shapes and fully simulated hair and clothing.
As for the Bloater (which starts with mo-cap), art director Gino Acevedo started with the look of the first Bloater, which was greatly influenced by the iconic creature from the Naughty Dog game: a body comprised of fungi and slime mixed together with an incredibly shrunken head. He then designed a new Bloater from scratch, complete with snow and frost layers. The big difference, though, was that this Bloater wasn’t hidden by darkness.
“It needed to be like, ‘Holy shit,’ there’s a Bloater, and he’s even bigger than in Season 1,” Epstein told IndieWire. “And the way that he was gonna be revealed was different. Obviously, we knew that the conditions were, from our point of view, less forgiving: broad daylight, diffused lighting. And we didn’t have those same tricks, so this Bloater was gonna be seen from every angle and very close to the camera, full body. Which meant we had to build him for more intensive simulation because he was fairly rigid.”
The showrunners wanted the Bloater to resemble a wrestler. He’s not fat or overly muscular. But he’s powerful. He’s like animals in nature that appear slow, yet once they gain speed and have their eyes targeted on their prey, they’re capable of running fast.
In terms of the Bloater’s monstrous look, there’s actually an organic beauty to the fungi design. “Basically, you had these fungal plates, which were very solid and grew in clusters,” Yoo told IndieWire. “They had their own language where they grew. And then there was the added crown detailing and shoulder cauldrons. And we built those off of real worlds of mushrooms that we actually photographed and scanned.
“He also had a full muscle simulation rig, and I’d say an unhealthy amount of time maybe was dedicated to a particular appendage of his that we talked about and whether that needed to be simulated,” Yoo added. “So there are a couple of shots where you see him full body.”
The highlight of the Bloater action occurs when he encounters Tommy (Gabriel Luna) in an alley with nowhere for the hero to hide. Fortunately, Tommy has a flamethrower, which is like Kryptonite to the Bloater. Unfortunately for Wētā, they were unavailable to work on the Bloater being torched because they were fully immersed in completing the infected hordes.
As a result, Wētā’s Bloater asset and animation examples were provided to Important Looking Pirates to handle setting the Bloater on fire. “This was one of the moments where you read the script and you kind of do a silent cheer,” Wang said, “because, as a fan of the game, you understand the power of the flamethrower and Tommy is the perfect hero.”
It began with research into how mushrooms and other vegetables burn when being torched at high temperatures. “At the end of the day, we wanted it to be grounded,” Wang continued. “He might be a big thing, but he’s still made of organic material, right? He used to be human and just infected. So what does it look like once his skin is charred and it starts to flake off? Does it start to contract?
“What was important to Craig was that we show the gradual progression of the Bloater getting more and more burnt to the point where he just could not survive. The pain has gotten to his heart, and he falls dead, and we believe it.”
