How to Re-Imagine The Walking Dead's Clementine in The Last of Us World

Introduction

Hello Everyone, my name is Mehul Soni, and I'm a 3D Character Artist from India. I've been a gamer since childhood, and I was always fascinated not just by playing games but by wondering how these worlds and characters were actually made. That curiosity slowly turned into a dream of being part of the game industry someday.

I began learning 3D on my own from various online sources, experimenting with different tools, and picking up skills wherever I could. Over time, that self-learning path turned into real opportunities, and I eventually worked as a 3D Artist on live game projects, including contributing to Supercell's Squad Buster during my studio experience.

To further solidify my artistic foundation, I joined the Character Mentorship at Zombie Art School, led by Ankit Garg, where I focused heavily on sculpting appeal, realism, form, and polished presentation. This mentorship was a turning point for me, it helped me move beyond just "knowing software" to actually creating characters with personality, intention, and strong design choices.

Today, I'm focused on growing as an artist, exploring different approaches to realism, and building characters that tell stories while staying true to the kind of games that inspired me in the first place.

Clementine Project

The Clementine project began from my long-time love for the zombie and post-apocalyptic genre. I grew up playing games like The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series, and Clementine has always been one of the most impactful characters for me.

Over the years, I often wondered how she might look if she existed in a more grounded, realistic universe like The Last of Us. That "What if?" question became the main spark behind this project.

My goal was not just to recreate her, but to reinterpret her. To imagine her in a world with heavier grit, stronger realism, and deeper emotional storytelling. I wanted the character to feel like she has survived years of hardship, while still carrying traces of who she once was.

With this project, I specifically challenged myself to improve three key areas:

• Clothing realism: creating believable fabric layers, stitching, and wear.
• Texturing depth: pushing subtle storytelling through dirt, damage, and material history.
• Narrative presence: designing a character who instantly communicates her journey through her posture, expression, and overall presentation.

It was important for me to not only make a detailed model but to build a character that feels like she belongs in a living, breathing world, one that reflects fear, hope, survival, and memory.

Body & Face

For the modeling process, I followed a clean and structured workflow to keep everything efficient and consistent. For the base, I started with a MetaHuman model, which I then customized inside Maya to match the proportions and personality I was aiming for.

After establishing the foundation, I moved into ZBrush to refine the forms, focusing first on clean primary and secondary shapes. The goal was to capture a realistic sense of anatomy while still keeping her recognizable as Clementine.

Before adding details, I created a full blockout of the face, clothing, and accessories. This step is extremely important because it helps me visualize the whole character early and adjust the overall direction before committing to polish.

For the hair, I began with a sculpted blockout in ZBrush to establish the main mass and flow. Then I used a modified CurveTube brush, adjusting the thickness and taper to create stylized strands that acted as a guide for XGen.

This approach helped me maintain strong silhouette control while speeding up the grooming process, since the blockout already communicated the flow and rhythm of the hair.

I first created the blockout for the clothing and backpack directly in ZBrush. Having a blockout before Marvelous Designer made a huge difference because it gave me a clear shape language and allowed me to simulate more accurately inside MD.

After the simulation was done, I took everything back into ZBrush for refinement, enhancing the silhouette, adding secondary wrinkles, tension folds, seam compression, and smaller narrative details.

The outfit was one of the areas I specifically wanted to improve in this project, so I spent extra time shaping folds with purpose and weight to support the story of a character who has survived rough conditions.

Time-Saving Workflow Tips

To keep things efficient:

• Blockouts for face, hair, outfit, and props let me catch issues early.
• A reusable CurveTube Brush setup made hair sculpting faster and more consistent.
• Working in stages (blockout → simulation → refinement) kept the sculpt flexible and manageable.

This layered workflow allowed me to push realism while staying efficient and intentional with each part of the model.

Topology & UVs

I handled the retopology workflow inside Maya. I began by lowering the high-poly model to a workable subdivision level and used that as a foundation to guide the final topology.

From there, I manually retopologized the character, focusing on clean edge flow around the face, joints, and major deformation areas. My goal was to create a mesh that would hold up well in animation while keeping the silhouette faithful to the sculpt.

For the UVs, I used the traditional unwrapping tools in Maya. I kept the layout clean and organized, separating the character into logical material groups. During the unwrapping process, I did regular bake tests to check for stretching, projection issues, and Normal Map accuracy.

This iterative testing helped ensure that the topology and UVs were working well together before moving further into texturing. This approach allowed me to maintain clean shading, predictable texture behavior, and consistent detail density across all parts of the model.

Texturing

For the texturing process, I worked primarily in Substance 3D Painter. Javad Rajabzade was a huge source of inspiration and also served as a great starting point for some materials.

I started with broad color and material breakup, focusing on subtle variations that make fabrics feel alive. For the wear and storytelling elements, I used a combination of:

• Curvature-based generators for natural edge wear.
• Anchor points for controlled layering.
• Hand-painted roughness variation.
• Dirt and dust pass to show travel and survival.
• Localized color shifts to create age and fabric fatigue.

My goal was to keep the outfit functional, believable, and consistent with a character who has lived through a harsh world. Every stain, tear, and roughness change had a narrative reason behind it.

The weapon textures followed a similar logic. Starting with clean base materials, then gradually introducing imperfections, scratches, dirt accumulation, and roughness breakup to make it feel handled, used, and weathered.

For the hair, I used the MetaHuman hair shader in Unreal Engine, which gave me strong control over anisotropy, specular response, and strand definition. Instead of hand-painting a complex shader, I customized the MetaHuman material parameters to match the style and flow established in my sculpted hair guides. This helped create a clean, realistic final result that integrated well with the lighting and rendering of the scene.

Most Challenging Layer

The most challenging part of texturing was achieving believable wear and tear on the clothing, not too much, not too little. I wanted the dirt patterns, fabric breakdown, and material age to feel organic, not procedural. Balancing hand-painted detail with generator-driven layers took the most time, but it was also the part that added the strongest storytelling to the character.

Lighting & Rendering

For the presentation and final renders, I used Unreal Engine 5 for the entire lookdev process. I chose UE5 because it allows real-time iteration with high visual fidelity, which made it easier to refine materials, lighting, and atmosphere together.

For lighting, I started with the MetaHuman lighting setup, which provides a strong baseline for realistic skin shading and balanced illumination. From there, I customized the lights to better match the tone I wanted for Clementine:

• Added a slight warm contrast for depth.
• Adjusted rim lighting to separate her silhouette from the background.
• Tuned the intensity and softness to keep the mood natural and grounded.

The goal was to achieve a cinematic yet subtle lighting that supports storytelling without overpowering the character.

The environment was built using assets from the Megascans library. The overall mood and composition were inspired by a specific moment from The Last of Us Part II — Epilogue: Ellie Returns to the Farm.

That scene carries a very emotional, reflective tone, and I felt it fit perfectly with the mature interpretation of Clementine I wanted to portray. Placing her in a similar atmosphere helped reinforce the "What if Clementine existed in The Last of Us world?" concept, both visually and narratively.

For post-processing inside Unreal:

• I used color grading to unify the tones and enhance the emotional mood.
• Added subtle sharpening to bring out material detail.
• Kept the effects minimal to maintain a realistic, grounded look.

This helped tie the render together and give the final images the dramatic but natural finish I was aiming for.

Conclusion

The biggest challenge in this project wasn't just the technical work. It was staying consistent and pushing myself all the way to the finish with the quality I had envisioned. Keeping Clementine recognizable while reimagining her in a realistic universe required a lot of careful decision-making.

Balancing realism with storytelling was another challenge, because every detail had to support who she is and what she has lived through. Through the process, I learned to look at forms and realism with a deeper level of intention.

My understanding of character appeal, subtle shapes, and visual storytelling improved significantly. This project also taught me patience and the importance of iteration, revisiting forms, refining decisions, and not settling until the character felt right.

I'm extremely grateful to my mentor Ankit Garg and Zombie Art School. This character was created during my mentorship there, and the guidance and structured feedback pushed me much further than I expected. This project wouldn't have reached this level without that mentorship and the structured feedback that helped me grow as an artist.

For beginners, my advice is simple: Motivation is good, but discipline and consistency are the real keys to improving in 3D art. Show up every day, even if it's just a little. Progress comes from steady effort, not waiting to feel inspired.

Mehul Soni, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine