I feel a little bit sorry for these skins, having come out when everybody’s so busy
with a new gamemode and it all being FREE. But now it’s the Danger Zone Case’s time
to shine. Starting with the lowest, military spec skins,
the M4A4 Magnesium, originally called Roadhog Ghost, is a skin made by Ego Death. The carbon
fiber and grip patterns were made by the man formerly known as AKTrashheap who says they
weren’t necessary for this design to succeed and that the flames and style are EGO DEATH’s
speciality. The original design was intended to be red and yellow, and this accepted silver
variant was actually just this before colour had been added to the gradient maps. Ego Death
thought this looked pretty cool. And Valve seemed to agree. Ego Death would like to also
thank Emu who wasn’t part of this case, but who was valuable with this design for
telling him the things he didn’t want to hear!
XAKI was strongly inspired by EGO Death’s art style when he created the Wood Fired Nova.
He was also inspired from designs taken from real life. He combined all of this together
and this skin was the result, which he then polished up to suit CS:GO’s style. He says
he was surprised when this design was picked, as he has made others for the weapon that
he believes are better, like the Nova Duck Hunt, which you can see here.
The Sawed-Off Blacksand by MGBazz and Mals1 is the third skin from the series to be accepted.
Black Sand was his first design for CS:GO, intended to be a simple, camouflaged military
skin with lots of details. He made a dozen new skins for the collection earlier in the
year, though more recently has experimented with other styles, like the Biome-inspired
‘Ghost Insects’ and ‘Dual Birds’, inspired from Subzero. And he has more planned
soon! He says these skins are a lot of work but the devs have rewarded him today with
his addition to the Danger Zone Case. He thanks them and the community for supporting his
work. The SG 553 Danger Close is by MultiH and dC^,
who first started working together in late 2016 as their skills complemented each other’s
nicely. They became good friends and started making skins for Team Fortress 2, Unturned…
and of course, CS:GO. They racked up a number of successes and failures together and have
had multiple skins accepted across all 3 games. The Danger Close started life as a weird experiment
when they couldn’t think of what else to do. They liked the Blaze collection and decided
to create their own, dabbling with a ‘melted steel’ look, giving the weapon a hot appearance
along the barrel while being cooler towards the stock. They didn’t make these skins
in the hope that they would be accepted, but they’ve had 2 featured in the Danger Zone
Case and they’re beyond shocked and can’t thank Valve enough.
The Glock Oxide Blaze is the third of this series, made by Hollandje, to be accepted.
The Glock skin is heavily based on the deagle from the same collection, being a layer of
rust coated with white paint. Hollandje’s been busy with work and home renovations,
but really wants to get back to making skins again as he misses it!
The Tec9 Fubar by the artist formerly known as AKTrashheap was his 4th attempt at the
design. He didn’t think the original artwork was good enough for official inclusion and
set about reworking it several times until he was happy with it. He says he feels lucky
that his skins are still being accepted as he has moved onto other things- he’s currently
creating what he claims is the most advanced aim training system for CS:GO, which he’ll
be revealing in the not-too-distant future. One day, he would like for his five-seven
medic design to be included because it’s still his favourite of the collection. Here’s
how the original FUBAR looked, before his multiple reworks.
The MP9 Colony by Nozza… is part of the Colony01 collection, which uses the gunsmith
finish to give a bold, metallic appearance. If it looks familiar then that’s because
the AK from the collection has already been accepted, and although renamed to ‘Orbit
Mk01’, it did at least retain the numbering. This MP9 was designed 3 different colours:
blue, orange and yellowish-green.
Moving onto the RESTRICTED grade of skins now.
The Galil Signal by Meddy was a skin with a purpose. He wanted to find a way of hiding
the problematic seaming effect that’s inherent with the Hydrographic finish. Having seen
how the Slipstream pattern did such a good job of disguising it, he used areas of smokey
black on his design to hide it, with a base pattern comprising of large hexagons with
radiating waves moving outward from the centre. He wanted this to be a design that becomes
more noticeable the further away you get from it. He originally used yellow/olive colours,
but Valve changed this to red/blue, which results in parts with blue hexagons. He thinks
this is an improvement over his original colour-scheme! He’s happy they kept the ‘Signal’ name,
though, as he thinks it describes the skin nicely and he’s flattered that they think
it looks good enough to be a restricted grade of skin. It turns out that Meddy has been
following this video series of mine for a while- he says the way Hollandje described
the disbelief and adrenaline from hearing his design had been accepted is exactly how
it felt for him, too. And he’d like to thank his friends for the inspiration they’ve
given him along the way. The G3SG1 Scavenger by Dasdas and Des (!) is
the second of the apocalyptic style to be accepted, the other being the Nova ‘Wild
Six’. The idea was that garbage was used to build a weapon. The stock for the gun is
from a road-sign and a scope is made from a used can, which can easily be replaced,
increasing your chances of survival in a war-torn, desolate world!
The Mac10 Pipedown is… incredible! It looks 3D. When recording this, I genuinely had to
check the Mac10 to make sure there weren’t pipes on the original design. It’s all drawn
on, using clever perspective to give the illusion of 3D. According to its maker, Depuiseau,
it was not an easy design to work on and what ended up being its greatest strength was a
huge problem for him early on! He was actually ANNOYED by the rounded pieces on the sides
of the weapon, thinking that it would mess up his design. But he found a way of incorporating
it into the skin which you can see in this early sketch here. It was while drawing this
that he realised the weapon’s stock could also look like pipes! He originally had the
frame appear more ‘open’, as though you could see right through it, but this didn’t
look good. So he modelled it in 3D and used an ‘unorthodox technique’ to project the
result onto the 2D textures for the design. He’s shocked by how well it worked, and
it seems as though everybody who sees it has the same reaction! I even posted it over on
Reddit, where it reached the top of Global Offensive for a while. It seems that he’s
stumbled upon something great with this design- over on his workshop you can see that he’s
also experimenting with a Bizon in the same collection.
Mara_der and his girlfriend, Chrisart developed the P250 Nevermore. It uses an anodized airbrushed
finish and features a mono-composition with 5 ravens, choosing not to use different colours
and abrupt transitions for this design. The skull, ragged style and the ravens themselves
were all inspired by a song called called f… ffff…. This.
The USP-S Flashback by Superior Weapons shares a similar design to the already-accepted,
also-restricted and also-suppressed M4A1-S skin. It was originally for a collection called
the ‘defacement series’ but it looked too similar to the Guardian design, plus he
really wanted to do a war themed skin so he changed it into how it is today. He wants
it to be recognisable as a Vietnam-themed skin, but to still have references to the
game itself.
Now the Classifieds! The UMP45 Momentum is another design from
MultiH and dC^. They wanted to make something motivational. The phrase ‘always move forward’
was the inspiration, so the arrows all point forwards, and to do so, one needs ‘momentum’.
Hence the name. Although he has previously had success elsewhere, this UMP and the SG553
from earlier are the first 2 skins they’ve worked together on in CS:GO to be accepted.
And for MultiH, this is his second UMP45 skin to find its way into the official game, with
the first being the Labyrinth. MultiH says that the idea of moving forward has motivated
them to continue making skins, regardless of what new CS:GO updates may hold. He says
another reason for making them is so that they can hear me talk about them in videos
such as these! The MP5 Phosphor by SA_22 was intended to
be a simple, blue-themed skin. He was a bit shocked that this was the design that they
chose, especially for such a high grade of skin, as he had another 30 or so designs to
choose from, for all kinds of grades and rarities. The chosen design was originally called ‘Industrial
Wear MP5 Festival’ but he thinks they nailed it by calling it ‘Phosphor’ as it was
the look he was going for when creating it. The Deagle Mecha by Coyote 37 and Hanzo is
the third of this design to be accepted. It took several months of planning to come up
with a futuristic design that wasn’t like the Asiimov, so they came up with a fictional
company that, rather than going full sci-fi, instead simply upgrades existing in-game weapons.
He’s pleased that it’s been accepted into the same case as an asiimov design for once-
just so people can see that the Mecha isn’t THAT similar to it!
Now the 2 Covert quality skins. The AK47 Asiimov by Coridium needs no introduction.
It’s an asiimov, a name chosen by Valve and a tribute to the famous sci-fi writer.
This is the 5th of the design to be accepted, the others being the P90, AWP, M4A4 and P250.
Initially planned to be 3 different colour palettes, this distinctive white, black and
orange theme has become the clear favourite. The AWP Neo-Noir was a collaboration between
Donschi and Blazer. This started as just a way of throwing ideas around but they have
since worked on pretty much every skin together, as having somebody to work with helps prevent
you from getting stuck on details. Plus a second opinion is always helpful.
This AWP is part of a 3-weapon collection. There is also a USP and M4A4 design, but the
AWP was the most important for them to get right, and was very different to work with
than the other weapons. They had to find the right spots to place details so they wouldn’t
get lost in the bolts and crevices of the AWP’s design.
Most of the look was defined during the illustration stage, using Photoshop. Developing a skin
in this way lets them get the proportions and positioning of the details right, and
it’s quick and easy to make adjustments this early on. Despite this he says this stage
can take a long time as they are very picky about their work. Once happy, they project
it onto a 3D gun and finish it up in 3D to add details and stuff for the other perspectives.
The placement of text and icons on the top view can be quite tricky to get just right.
Donschi provided me with these EXCLUSIVE WIP’s! The woman in this design appears calm and
patient, as a sniper should be. They went full sci-fi / cyberpunk with this design paying
tribute to the likes of Ghost in the Shell, Akira and Cowboy Bebop! Donschi wanted viewers
to interpret whether she’s a human, cyborg or robot of some kind and thinks a bit of
mystery always helps to keep it interesting. They are both very proud of how this design
turned out and think it sits up there as the rightful and timeless crownpiece of the collection.
The hard work has paid off and they say it’s always crazy to meet fans who use the skins
themselves and to see their skins being used by pros in tournaments.
They have plans to expand the collection further. A UMP design is already on the workshop. But
they also hope to start some new styles. They say that skin design is a competitive, saturated
environment that’s full of talent, but they’ll continue to work hard. And who knows… maybe
they’ll find the next big thing.