As you may already know as a Naughty Dog fan, this Saturday, September 26 is “Outbreak Day” where we usually see a host of limited edition art, delicious looking merch, and specialTLOUPS4 themes. For the past seven years, the makers ofThe Last of Us Part 2has held this special event to mark when the Cordyceps Brain Infection reached critical mass that started the game off. However, due to COVID-19, Naughty Dog felt that it wasn’t a suitable name and insteadrenamed the dayto “The Last of Us Day” which is, of course, a lot more empathetic to the current crisis we globally face. Staying onThe Last of Usbandwagon, some images of Dina fromPart 2has cropped up showcasing what she looked like in the early stages of development.
Alexandria Neonakis, a character concept artist at Naughty Dog, tweeted out some early illustrations of what Dina looked like before her final makeover forThe Last of Us Part 2. As you’re able to see from the images at the top of the picture, these drawings were prior to Cascina Caradonna being cast as a face model for Dina. When asked if she was just given a rough description of the type of face they were looking for until they found Cascina, Alexandria stated that “Early on was fairly rough, we had like some general direction though. In the veeery early days it was just do whatever you want but I wasn’t working on her yet then”. Later on, as you can tell from the image at the bottom, we can see Cascina’s face start to take form and develop into who we know as Dina today.
Alexandria who is originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, moved to Los Angeles to work with Naughty Dog in games such asUncharted Lost Legacy, Uncharted 4, The Last of Us, its DLCLeft Behindand of course,The Last of Us Part 2. Being a multitalented artist, Alexandria also does illustrations for children’s books that includeSweetest Kulu,written by Celina Kalluk, andThis is MY Room!written by Jennifer Jacobson. You can check out all of Alexandria’s artwork over on herofficial websitethat includes some incredible pieces fromThe Last of Us Part 2, Drake’s journal fromUncharted 4, personal illustrations and digital also. She’s a fantastic artist who I’ve personally followed over the years so I hope you can appreciate her work as much as I have. You can also follow Alexandria over onTwitterandInstagram.
As we await for “The Last of Us Day”, I’m hopeful that we get some information on themultiplayer mode, Factions. In August, we saw some rumored multiplayergameplay footage that had leakedbut whether the footage is genuine or not, we will hopefully get to see if that’s the case when Naughty Dog decides to announce when we can get our hands on it or at the very least, a trailer.The Last of Us Part 2is available now exclusively on PS4 (andsoon to be PS5). The game was one of DualShockers’ favorites of 2020; make sure to check out theofficial DualShockers (generally spoiler-free) review. Also, feel free to grab the gamephysically on Amazonto help support the site.
