The Huntsman Case was added on the 1st of May, 2014, along with the Bank Collection.
Aside from the spectrum, it’s the one case that can drop huntsman knives.
And it’s fair to say that it’s the most controversial of cases ever released.
I’m going to start with the HOWL skin, no longer part of this collection but it’s
very important to cover.
The picture originally came from Canisalbus’s Instagram page.
Auzzii stole it from her and claimed that he had made it, inspired by his own dog or
something.
He and Sic worked together on the Howl skin, which was accepted into the Huntsman case.
It was discovered to have been stolen, Valve replaced the art with one that they made themselves,
the Howl was given its own category in CS:GO as ‘Contraband’ and can no longer be bought,
only traded, making insanely rare and expensive.
Auzzii and Sic have not been online on their Steam profiles for a long time.
Although its seems like Auzzii was certainly in the wrong, Sic may not have known about
the stolen artwork at the time.
Indeed, before making the Howl, Auzzii collaborated with another skin maker on a scout skin, also
featuring the stolen artwork.
That seems to be his contribution to collaborations.
This Scout skin was never released and he moved on to working with Sic on the M4 design
instead.
Unfortunately for Sic, since he was still involved with the Howl, any contributions
he has had a part in have been removed, which also includes other skins within the huntsman.
Valve have replaced these with other skins of same class and weapon type.
Apart from the dual elites.
Quite a few of the replacements were made by people who had worked with Sic on the removed
entries, so if I had to guess then I’d say that Valve did this deliberately to try to
reimburse the innocent people involved with this whole mess.
But it doesn’t explain some of the changes.
This whole thing is almost worth a video of its own.
I’ll leave it for another time.
But I had to explain this mess to you so that you understand the rest of the video.
It’s because of all this that the Huntsman is the largest of all the skin collections,
with 21 skins in total, though only 15 are still unboxable.
The other 6 can still be traded on the marketplace and with the exception of the Howl, can be
obtained through trade-up contracts.
I’ll make it obvious which ones are no longer a thing as the video progresses.
The Galil Kami by Thurnip, much like the fiveseven of the same pattern, uses randomised patterns
to make every skin look unique.
The same texture has its scale changed, offset, rotated and colours varied to produce something
different every time.
Thurnip created a manga comic from scratch to include as part of this design, using the
Japanese he knew to add text that he knew was not offensive.
Halftones and swatches are used to create different shades and materials and the name,
although supposed to mean paper, ultimately means God in CS:GO.
The SSG08 Slashed was an early design by .red and Emkay.
Red started with Left 4 Dead skins before moving to CS:GO.
He followed tutorials on how to create a chrome pattern and after a lot of experimentation
this slashed design was made.
Slashed was the product of watching tutorials on Youtube and was submitted to the workshop
in early 2014.
Back then he had no idea how big skins would become and only made it for fun.
He thinks it was included in the huntsman only because it fits the style of the case.
The Dual Berettas Retribution are by sic, so unfortunately there’s not a lot to say
about this skin.
The workshop page shows a lot of contributing authors, and still hosts a number of links
to other works of Sic’s, though the links are dead.
CZ75 Poison Dart by Dirp goes full circle with the name.
Much like the Ruby Poison Dart skin of his, he was inspired by a picture of a frog with
beautiful skin patterns.
He couldn’t remember the name of it, so named this design ‘Nitrogen’ because it
looked like a chemical reaction or something.
He’s happy that whoever selected the skin at Valve knew more about frogs than he did
and named it Poison Dart.
Dirp didn’t know that this was the name of a frog so was confused until he googled
it, at which point he was happy again, as he says he’s never able to think up good
names himself.
P90 Desert Warfare by sic – oh, it’s sic again.
Sorry.
I’ll go by what it says on the workshop page here: its original name was ‘Scorpius
Reborn’, with the scorpion itself done in paint style and with the Shemagh done in 3D.
The Tec9 Isaac by Coridium is related to the Asiimov series.
His plan was to have 3 different colour palettes.
The Tec9 was the first design, which he wanted to be recognisable as the collection with
its futuristic style, but also very different.
He designed it in the same way but added more variation and detail to the line work, which
he says is best demonstrated with the bizon example on the workshop.
It was Valve’s decision to change the name to Isaac, which Coridium loves because he
feels it makes more sense.
It shows that it’s still associated with the Asimov, but at the same time also has
its own unique identifier.
The CZ75 Twist by Pla-Studio is his first anodized multicoloured finish, and was inspired
by spirals and spinning shapes.
It’s part of a collection of 5 different skins under the ‘Gyrate’ collection name,
but hasn’t been updated since mid 2014 now.
The P2000 Pulse by Thurnip is a pistol version of the Pulse design.
Every weapon class has a unique colour scheme and pattern.
You may know him for his purple SG Pulse, which I’ve covered previously.
The design is intended to look as though the weapon is shattering, from the virtual world,
into the real world.
So it's being dissolved into reality.
He likes the contrast between intense colours and the black background.
Algis made the P90 Module because he really wanted to make a Hexagon-themed skin.
At first he made it white and red, but he inverted it to make it black and blue instead.
He added small details to it and published it to the workshop under the name ‘Royal
Bleed’, though Valve changed the name to Module.
He would like to note that although the appearance is always the same, it has the potential to
be random and that it was once again Valve’s decision to keep it the same every time.
PPBizon Antique by Ancient is the successor to the Nova Antique.
It was only with this second skin that he started to consider it becoming a recurring
collection.
As it’s worn, parts of the design rub off to reveal a bright shiny metal surface beneath.
Its most valuable condition is Battlescarred, which is rarely dropped and looks very different
from the Factory New edition.
The XM1014 Heaven Guard by ukrScorpion was influenced by various anime and he says that
getting it accepted changed his life and everyone he knew.
He also provided me with a high resolution Heaven Guards backdrop, which could be used
for a desktop or something similar.
The AUG Torque by RaekenTheRock was the first of this design to be accepted, followed later
by the Mil-spec USP-S Torque.
This one, however is Restricted and sports a high contrast black-yellow-white custom
paint job finish.
He stresses that he made a custom scope for it as well, but that the workshop pictures
don’t show it for some reason.
Irecon told me about the Mac10 Tatter and how he reached that stage.
He said that workshop designs were incredibly challenging, and although he loved art he
knew nothing about digital art or how to get it onto a weapon.
He spent months practicing until he could produce something professional.
He worked on many projects with his friend Klint, with this being one of them!
After this he joined a group called Antpire.
It was during this time that he made the Mac10 Curse, which also got accepted into the Huntsman
case.
He got inspiration from magazines, digital art online and horror movies, from which he
sketched out an idea and decided that it would fit well on a mac10.
He says that this was the most difficult stage.
He finds sci-fi and modern designs hard due to the limited space that most weapons have.
The mac10 curse on the other hand was done in a few days, and achieved far more success
than his older Tatter design did.
He found out about his skins being accepted mid-way through a game of Mirage on CS:GO!
Seeing people use his skin is very rewarding and puts a smile on his face every time.
The Scar20 Cyrex by NextgenZ was the first of 4 skins of this design to be accepted.
Unfortunately there’s not a lot of information about this design; it uses the custom paint
job and is available in all wear conditions, though battle scarred is the least common
drop.
The M4A1-S Atomic Alloy is in FACEIT’s workshop page, but was designed by Hinata and had several
big names involved with it, including Coridium, Red, Zaphk and Thurnip.
Money raised from this skin will be committed to the prize money of upcoming tournaments.
80% goes towards this, and 20% for the artists involved.
USP-S Orion by Renegade was his first accepted skin.
He was so happy when it made it into the case!
But sadly a few months after the Howl incident it was removed from any revenue, as though
he didn’t even make it.
He still sees it in game from time to time and is disappointed that all of this happened,
but luckily Renegade got later success with the Hyper Beast design which made up for it
a bit.
The USP-S Caiman by Zaphk, much like her other accepted submissions, is a hand-drawn design.
This is the third of 4 that she has had included so far.
A Caiman is an alligatorid crocodilian.
But I think it’s more alligator.
But it’s close!
Obviously its eye can be seen on this design.
The M4A4 Desert Strike by NextgenZ is part of a series of skins intended for the likes
of Dust, Mirage and…
Overpass.
It’s the first of 2 from this collection to be accepted.
The second was the negev that came out soon after in the Breakout collection, though strangely
this one was only Mil-spec, in direct contrast with the covert nature of the M4.
The AK47 Vulcan by jim is the end result of a lot of experimentation, ideas and merging
to find something that the community would enjoy.
He showed me pictures of it during various stages of development.
Early on he had it as a hunting rifle with wooden handles bolted onto a metal frame.
It wasn’t too well received.
But he liked the pattern and began experimenting with different materials.
First plastic and carbon, then micarta, then finally he merged it with
ANOTHER skin of his, a basketball P90 because he liked the idea of a grippy rubber coat.
In fact he started to focus more on what would feel good rather than what would look good.
Once he had chosen rubber it came together very quickly.
He tried a dark design but the workshop wasn’t too keen on it:
but the light design was well received straight away.
He then spent time fiddling with the details and fighting with the UVs.
He wanted this skin to be absolutely seamless, which he says makes it pretty much impossible
to apply this same style to some weapon models, such as the Desert Eagle or Elites.
But he’s been slowly expanding the Vulcan collection to all of the weapons that it would
suit well.
He even experimented with different ways in which the wear could be distributed.
So, thank you to Jim for such a detailed breakdown of the making of his gun.
He even came back to me later with some delightful 4K renderings.
He knows me so well.
His favourite weapon is the knife and one day hopes for a knife workshop.
Valve, please listen!