One of the most iconic moments of 2013's The Last of Us was the first time players booted up the game and were treated to John Sweeney's beautiful start screen. Just the simple serenity of the window somehow captured so much of the game's essence, even without showing anything. Now, a fan made start screen for The Last of Us: Part 2 has surfaced online, and it's every bit as beautiful as the first one.

Although former Ubisoft artist Vin Hill's work won't be present in the upcoming sequel, the quality of the piece uploaded to ArtStation is certainly worthy of being added to The Last of Us: Part 2. After completing the image, Hill added the UI overlay to make his work seem indistinguishable from an official start screen.

last-of-us-title-screen

The focus of the piece is on Ellie's guitar from the game's reveal trailer, and the series' abundance of plant life is also clearly present. Hill also made another version of the start screen for display after players have completed the game. The second piece is almost identical to the first, but features Ellie's knife standing beside the guitar.

The images were made in Autodesk Maya where the artist began to 3D model the chair and instrument. After that, Hill took over two-hundred pictures to overlay for textures, before painting the rest of the image. While he worked, the ex-Ubisoft employee claimed to have listened to The Last of Us' soundtrack for about ten hours.

With almost nothing revealed for The Last of Us: Part 2 so far, we're already starting to see some amazing fan-art begin to surface all over the internet. With a following as large as this series has, we're sure to see an explosion of work appear once the game has officially released, though there's still no official word as to when this might be.

Naughty Dog has stressed that the game is still early in development, but E3 2017 seems as good of a time as any for the title to make its official debut. Even if it's just to tease some gameplay and story bits, The Last of Us 2 is almost a given for this year's Sony Press Conference.

The Last of Us: Part 2 is in development for PlayStation 4.

Source: ArtStation