My “The Art of The Last of Us” Review on Amazon

Wow. There’s so much good stuff in this book, it’s hard to figure out where to begin.When I bought it, I hadn’t played the game. I knew of it, and the art that had trickled out to the public had caught my eye – especially the broken overpass shot included with this review. So, I ponied up and bought the book, diving into the world of The Last Of Us without knowing much more than that about it.

What I found was inspiring.

Amazingly rendered environmental art (I’m so tempted to dock a point for the middle of the book, where they take a handful of great pieces and squish them down into thumbnail form… but I won’t), character designs that show you the *people* inhabiting this world … and the monsters. Man, the cordyceps monstrosities would be the stuff of nightmares on their own, but they’re so grounded in real world science that it’s not the disgusting renderings that scares you, but the absolute potential for this stuff to come true.

And that’s another thing that works so well with this book – the work they put into detailing the rationales behind the artwork. It really lets you see how it came together. As a screenwriter and illustrator, this is at the heart of the reason I buy these books – they help me find my own inspiration and method in creating my own worlds and their people, places and things.

I still haven’t played the game, but having read through the book, both the words and the pictures, I feel like I know the world. It’s a scary one, lovingly rendered, and I find myself hoping that it eventually does get made into a movie. But even till then… does the book work? Absolutely. It tells a story. Every picture tells one. Sometimes a scary one, sometimes a sad one.

When you view and read about the characters, they feel like people, both visually and in the prose. The places feel real, and they’re absolutely generous in explaining to you how they got there with it.

When you’re buying books like this, you can’t get any better than that.