For the ‘Last Of Us’ commercial the objective was to seamlessly morph a real person into the game character of Joel from The Last Of Us.

To achieve this we created a seamless detailed morph from live action to game play animation.

For each scene the actor was filmed with tracking markers on his face. Additional make-up was then applied, before being enhanced in post production to match the appearance of the game character in the final sequence of the film.

To achieve this we created high-poly 3D scans of the actors head. From the high-poly scans we created lower resolution models of the actors head, allowing us to 3D match-move to replicate the live action facial expressions and movement.

In parallel to this we enhanced the details of the game character to sync with the live action footage and 3D scans.

We mapped the real face of the actor onto the 3D geometry to begin the morphing process.

We generated various lengths of beard growth combined with the real beard and the CG beard of the game character, to create a natural evolution. Before morphing the real actor to the game character.

In the game ‘The Last of Us’, you have to confront challenges of such emotional magnitude that they will leave a permanent effect. We decided to bring this to life by showing a gamer seamlessly morph into the main protagonist from the game, Joel, as he makes certain decisions in the game.

To achieve this, we created a seamless morph across the entire film, with subtle but powerful transitions evident in each scene.

The actor was filmed with tracking markers on his face. Make-up, hair colour, facial hair, scars, eye colour, clothing and other finer details were then applied, before being enhanced in post.

We achieved this by creating high-poly 3D scans of the actor’s head, allowing us to 3D match-move to replicate the live action facial expressions and movement.

In parallel to this we enhanced the details of the game character to sync with the live action footage.

We mapped the real face of the actor onto the 3D geometry, and then morphed all of the subtle details along with game animation to bring the composite to life.

We also morphed clothing from the game character to the actor, and generated various lengths of beard and hair growth to create a natural evolution.

All of this was to challenge the viewer, to see if they had what it takes to be ‘The Last of Us’, and to use visual effects to really bring to life the harsh realities of playing ‘The Last of Us’.

PS4 launched in November 2013 and by the end of December PlayStation had sold 4.2 million units, making it the fastest selling console ever.

As a result of the launch campaign, purchase intent rose 4% higher than Xbox’s, and intention to buy in 2014 was 2 to 1 vs Xbox.

The Players Monument specifically amassed 1,273,260 visits, with over 50,000 unique pledges within the first two weeks of launch from players in 223 countries, including Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and Christmas Island. In social media, PS4 was discussed 40% more than Xbox One, and comments were three times as positive.