The video game developer Naughty Dog releases official concept art offering a closer look at The Last of Us: Part 2's protagonist Ellie and her tattoo.

Ever since The Last of Us: Part 2 was revealed at PlayStation Experience 2016 with a trailer, fans of Naughty Dog's forthcoming sequel to what is arguably one of the best games of the last generation have been hungry for any and all information that they can stomach about the title. Thankfully, the developer recently released even more materials related to The Last of Us: Part 2 that fans can feast on, offering up some new concept art that provides a closer look at Ellie and her tattoo.

Naughty Dog took to its Twitter to share the stills seen below, with the first image giving fans a better idea of how Ellie will appear when in a standing position, as opposed to her sitting down to play the guitar in The Last of Us: Part 2's first official trailer. The second picture depicts a more complete notion of what the tattoo on the arm of the game's main character looks like, with the artwork showing a moth and two separate strands of foliage.

According to The Last of Us: Part 2's director Neil Druckmann, the tattoo artist Natalie Hall's artistic skills were behind the design for Ellie's forearm ink. Apparently, Hall had her hands scanned for the game's announcement trailer as the models for the close-up shots of Ellie playing guitar. Druckmann went on to reveal that Naughty Dog used a "brand-new hand-scanning process" for the sequence. Furthermore, before the studio's artists finally put the tattoo into the game, they did a test using a Sharpie on the arm of UI artist/designer Alexandria Neonakis to make sure it would appear as natural as possible.

With Naughty Dog obviously taking great care to get The Last of Us: Part 2's visuals right, fans ought to rest easy in presuming that the story aspects of the game will also be handled delicately as well. However, some ardent followers of the first title voiced concerns that the sequel with Joel and Ellie won't live up to the original. This led to Neil Druckmann to ask fans to "put faith" in Naughty Dog and "trust" that it will do the series justice with a followup.

Naturally, with The Last of Us: Part 2 having just recently been announced as being in production, there's not a lot of concrete information to go on as to how the game's story will progress from the first entry. Of course, that won't stop fans' speculation, as there are some folks who believe they have already solved the title’s biggest mystery with a theory about Joel's role in the game.

With postulation about The Last of Us: Part 2 already in full swing, it's safe to say that fans will also begin looking more deeply into the meanings behind Ellie's tattoo. For instance, they could look to the fact that the moth shares many symbolic properties with the butterfly in that transformation is a major component of its existence, but the former is ensconced in darkness, as opposed to the latter's ability to thrive in daylight. Plus, with the separate branches of leaves on her arm being both black and white, the greenery could represent Ellie and Joel, respectively. If that's the case, though, it remains to be seen which character could be a personification of the darkness, and which could signify the light.

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