The Chroma case was released in January of 2015 in the same update as the one that reduced
P250 ammo and buffed the CZ slightly again following the huge nerf the month before.
The case requires the special Chroma Case Key to open and features 6 exclusive community
created knife finishes; Damascus Steel, Doppler, Marble Fade, Tiger Tooth, Rust Coat and Ultraviolet,
which can only be found in the 3 different Chroma cases.
XM1014 Quicksilver by Algis is one of 12 weapons from the collection and the only one to currently
be accepted.
It has the patina finish, which allows for metallic reflections, but limits what can
be customised on the gun.
This weapon isn’t his only accepted entry; he also made the Sandstorm skins!
Among others.
Including this Scar-20 Grotto as well.
That’s right, Algis has got a total of 9 skins accepted into this game, and this one
has a bit of a backstory to it.
Much like his sandstorms, the Grotto achieved similar notoriety within the Polish community
after a streamer named Izak repeatedly opened this design.
Indeed it’s become a bit of a tradition for people to spam Algis’s profile about
this.
He closed the discussion down for a while, but then reopened it again… as he doesn’t
mind too much.
The M249 System Lock by NextgenZ is part of his Sci-fi collection and also doubles up
as an answer to ‘what’s black white and red all over’.
It was originally made back in September of 2014, then received an update in December
just before it was accepted in January.
It uses the Custom Paint Style which gives a lot of freedom with the colours used and
was the 6th of the 10 skins that Nextgen has got accepted to the workshop so far.
The MP9 Deadly Poison by .red was one of the first things he made using Illustrator.
Before then he had only used it to make banners in school, never for shapes and vector graphics.
So what you’re seeing here is a result of trial and error.
The spider design was an accident which he then built upon, adding black and green scratches
to complete the design.
He’s also very pleased with the description that Valve gave it: ‘It's not the first
bite that kills you, it's the 29 that come after’.
The Glock Catacombs by SA_22 was super quick to make, as he had already made the skulls
in Zbrush for previous designs.
For this weapon he tweaked and rendered them in different ways, carving his name into one,
giving another a day of the dead pattern, making 2 of them rams, 1 a butterfly and 1
crying.
This design also makes an appearance on his tattoo sleeve.
He was contacted by Valve about making another version of the skin for the Chinese market.
Since skulls are frowned upon he changed them to gas masks.
The Urban Shock Dual Berettas by RaekenTheRock are still called ‘Urban Storm’ on the
workshop page.
They are 1 of 5 accepted designs from him, from a total of just 36 workshop items, with
these being the only dual beretta design.
They’re part of the Urban collection, from which the Five-seven and MP7 Urban Hazards
have also been accepted so far.
These Elites are called Urban Storm though, since he felt it fitted the colours better.
Sawed Off Serenity by Seri was originally called Fides, and was inspired by the likes
of Zaphk and Onilolz, whose work Seri considers to be very artistic.
Seri doesn’t like futuristic designs and prefers to work on hand-drawn pictures and
so far has gotten two shotguns accepted, the other being the XM1014 Tranquility.
There are some very low-res images that show the making of this design.
Though like I said, they’re very low-res.
Watch in 4K for the best results.
Mac10 Malachite by Nannou has a tiled random pattern, part of a collection of 13 skins
of numerous colours, but all of which typically contain black to add to the contrast.
Other skins in the collection are named after fish and camouflage, but this one is named
after the crystal Malachite.
Probably because it uses the same colours, and depending on how it’s cut, the same
pattern.
I spoke extensively to Gaunt, who made The Desert Eagle Naga.
He didn’t have much to say about individual skins, but took great pride in the technical
aspect of how they were made.
He found engraved designs a challenge as he was only able to change the colour map and
fettling with specular exponents.
This means that as the lighting changes direction then it can reveal that it’s just a flat
surface.
This deagle was done using the Patina style, which has a nice metallic finish but limits
what you can do with it.
Although he now favours the newer Gunsmith style, Gaunt also said that limitations with
the styles can help as you have to plan around them and to demonstrate a real understanding
of the process to achieve good results.
P250 Muertos by Olofmister (No not that one) was originally called the Mandala, part of
a series that is based around circular patterns.
His first workshop entry was a blue five-seven of a similar design and for his second he
made this, adding a red skull to the centre of the pattern.
This was first made for a media studies project in school, but was then applied to the gun
after a friend of his suggested it.
For the upcoming Chinese release of CS:GO, he had to create a ‘Low violence’ version
of the skin where he replaced the skull in the original with the luchador design that’s
currently onscreen.
This was just the second workshop submission of his, though he now has a total of 19.
Oh, and Olofmister is a joke of his, he’s actually known as Marios.
The AK47 Cartel is found in Anders’ workshop page.
Yup, that Anders, from Room on Fire.
But the skin itself was actually made by Coyote37 and Hanzo, who have achieved success elsewhere
on the workshop as well.
The cartels were designed to be full of details but also "simple" at the same time.
They joked about these being a ‘brown laminate’ design since that’s what the low resolution
models of these looked like!
They just wish that the Gunsmith finish had been around at the time, which would have
given them more freedom with how it was created.
Apparently, there is a hidden message on each cartel weapon from the collection, even those
not yet included in the game.
And not all of them have been found just yet!
The M4A4 Dragon King by L’grand was originally named "Ancestral".
It was inspired by Japanese art from the mid 1800's.
She originally designed this pattern for the SSG08, but didn’t like how it was applied
to the weapon at which point she looked around for other designs to apply it to, with the
M4A4 being the best fit.
She even provided me with some behind the scenes artwork which detailed the work that
went into the original dragon design!
She said she experimented with numerous different designs before settling on the dragon that
we all know it for today.
The Galil Chatterbox by EGO DEATH is well known for looking like it has a moving mouth
when it’s fired.
It was originally meant to be a crying baby but he couldn’t get it to look right so
made it into a skull instead.
There’s also another easter-egg: on the right-hand side of the gun it says ‘feed
me’.
You can make it out if you look very carefully during the inspect animation.
He likes to embrace the wear system, and has indeed designed both this and the negev design
to look better with a bit of wear to them, making this one only available in battlescarred,
well worn and field-tested.
The last of which is intentionally made to be rare.
And lastly is the AWP Man ‘O’ War by Arbitron.
This weapon series was inspired by the over-embellished designs of antique firearms and cannons but
he also wanted to give them a slightly exotic twist.
The design has developed with every skin he has worked on.
His earliest proper design for this series was the Negev, but adjusted the wear for later
ones.
With this AWP he tried adding gold highlights to make it appear as though the edges were
raised above the surface.
He uses the anodized multicoloured finish for all of these designs and finds that tweaking
the gloss and wear masks yields better results than the normal map.
So far he is most proud of his AK from this collection.