Season 1 of The Last of Us recently aired its incredibly emotional finale, leaving a clicker-shaped gap in our Sunday nights. The final episode of the first season saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) forced to make a dark decision. When the Fireflies conclude that the best way to research Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) immunity and formulate a cure is to cut open her brain and kill her, then Joel has no other choice than to destroy them all in order to save her. Before that climactic turning point happens though, we spend a few quiet moments with Joel and Ellie as they finally acknowledge how far their relationship has come.

When they arrive in Salt Lake City, they come upon a herd of giraffes living in a baseball field. It's a beautiful moment of levity in the often dark series, and it's the first time Joel sees Ellie laugh after losing Sam and Henry and after what happened to her while he was sick. It was recently revealed that The Last of Us worked with a real giraffe to bring this significant moment from the games to life, but when Collider's own Samantha Coley sat down with the show's VFX supervisors, we learned that the finished product is actually a stunning combination of the real thing and seamless CGI work.

Animation Supervisor Dennis Yoo and VFX Supervisor Simon Jung told Collider that they had to completely recreate the real-life giraffe, Nabo, from the Calgary Zoo in order to create the final scene. "Initially, they shot Joel and Ellie at a zoo in a blue screen environment feeding a giraffe," Jung explained.

"In those cases where there were some more close-up moments of Ellie feeding, for example, where you just see the top of the head, that was all real photography, and we only replaced the backgrounds with a CG environment and stayed true to that. And then there are other closeups of the giraffe feeding though, where it's an all-CG giraffe. It's completely replaced...The key was in order to make those shots cut back to back, we had to match the sculpt."

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The Last of Us' VFX Team on Recreating Nabo's Unique Mannerisms

Giraffes are incredibly unique creatures with their own features and behavioral patterns, so to make sure that every shot in this scene lined up perfectly, Yoo and his team did a character study on Nabo to make sure that every frame lined up perfectly. Jung told Collider, "Giraffes in general have very unique features. We noticed that when we went to our Zoo here too, they all look very different and have very different features. And Nabo had these nobby hair bits on her head, for example." He continued: "Dennis and his team even did a take where we matched one of the plate scenes where we didn't even have to replace her just to get the behavior exactly right, just as a study, which is a lot of work actually, and kudos to him for doing that because that taught us so much about the giraffe."

Yoo explained some of the extensive work that went into overlapping the CG animal with the real thing comparing it to the Pepsi challenge. "We did do a little bit of Frankenstein with that plate too, just for some of the highlights," he said. Using CGI to ground the scene allowed The Last of Us to work with a real giraffe for authenticity and enhance that performance without frightening the animal. "The lighting wasn't great with the actual plate, because of the fact that it was enclosure and everything's blue, which light spills blue everywhere. When you comp that out, you're going to be missing parts of that giraffe. So Simon and his comp team edged out our CG giraffe and we kind of match-moved that into place. And so [the result] is like this blend that it's really hard to tell." Yoo pointed out that having people not being able to tell" what's real and what's VFX "is really rewarding."

Season 1 of The Last of Us is currently available to stream on HBO Max, and you can get it on Digital and Blu-ray this summer. Check out our full interview with Yoo and Jung when it goes live. In the meantime, you can check out our recent chat with Pascal on when Season 2 starts filming down below.