The Bloater which first appeared in the fifth episode of Last of Us, was created from a 6’6″ stunt performer wearing an 80-pound outfit.
If you are familiar with the Bloaters from The Last of Us, you are aware of how challenging it is to defeat them. In the HBO television series The Last of Us, the fourth and most advanced stage of the infected specimen made its formal debut, and it was nothing short of magnificent.
The creature made a terrifying appearance in The Last of Us episode five after emerging from an underground tunnel. Barrie Gower, a four-time Emmy-winning prosthetics designer, now tells how he made it come to life.
Barrie Gower, the guy behind the full-body prosthetics for Vecna from Stranger Things and many other horrifying creatures that earned him four Emmys throughout his career, provided a thorough description of how this variant of the Bloater came to be during a recent interview with Variety.
The stuntman Adam Basil, who is 6’6″ and from Britain, was chosen to carry this incredible 40-kilogram costume (88 pounds). With another 15 stunt performers costumed as Clickers and another 50 or more playing infected, this presented a big challenge for all those involved. It is said that it took five hours to get the horde scene camera-ready by the team of 65 prosthetic artists who were prepping the outlooks.
The data support their success, proving that their efforts weren’t in vain. With 7.5 million US viewers tuned in, Last of Us episode four set a new record for viewership. That shows a continuance of the trend in addition to being a 17% increase from the previous week.
To avoid clashing with Super Bowl Sunday and its numerous advertising, the fifth episode only recently went on television. It will be interesting to see if it can continue to increase its audience. Interest in the original game and its follow-up has increased as a result of the popularity of the TV show. Sadly, a few weeks have passed since the PC reproduction of the original source material.