Just as the new Genesis Collection dropped, CS.MONEY Blog reached out to Strenson, a renown skin creator currently with six accepted designs in the game, including the legendary M4A4 Spider Lily, Glock-18 Clear Polymer, AWP Chrome Cannon and others.
Here, Strenson talks about:
- New AK-47 Oligarch and people comparing it to a Valorant skin
- Valve’s new approach to accepting skins for the Terminal
- Inspirations, skinmaker’s path, and future
- Yet-to-be accepted skins from his Workshop
- And more!
Strenson’s first steps of skin creation
Strenson, the myth, the legend. Six skins already in CS! Congrats again — and how do you feel right now? Were you surprised by this AK accept or… it doesn’t hit that hard after so many successes?
Strenson: Greetings and thanks for inviting me to this interview! This accept for sure was quite a pleasant surprise. However, I knew in advance that skin will be accepted because this time Valve wrote to me to acquire skin directly. Valve wrote to everyone they accepted in this case because they bought the rights to skins, just like with souvenir collections. So there was no real *hit* but still I’m happy with the outcome.
Before you were known for your skins, what was your relationship with Counter-Strike? Any particular memories or moments that made you want to leave your mark on the game?
Strenson: I liked modding from the beginning. One of the first things I did, I installed some mods for CS 1.6. Then I’ve been playing Source, but all the time was coming back to 1.6 to play on custom servers. In particular, I liked zombie maps. The mods were sometimes a bit extreme but it got its own vibe. Then CS:GO came out, and I was not that interested in it at all during the first year. Later my friend gave me the key to try it out and I liked the updated graphics and physics, and grenades finally behaved as grenades. In CS:GO I was grinding the competitive, however I’m not that good of a player, so my max rank was the big star [probably referring to Distinguished Master Guardin – edit.]. I witnessed first cases being added and eventually I got into it, started trying to learn Photoshop and understanding the basics. In 2014 I published my first skin: not that creative, inspired by graphical skins. Basically, that’s how it all started.
First accepted skin is a big deal for any artist. Nova Polymer, right? Can you walk us through your feelings when you saw it in-game for the first time — excitement, disbelief, or something else?
Strenson: In the beginning, I’ve been making skins for almost six years until eventually I developed interesting techniques and improved the quality of my design overall. That helped to design my first skin with transparent effect, which was AK-47 Chernobog. During that skin development I found a couple of interesting references and decided to try as experiment to make the first skin fully based on the polymer idea. And that is how I made Glock 18 Clear Polymer. After a really good reception, my whole design view shifted and I made a complete collection of polymer skins. First the Nova was accepted, then the Glock. I can’t express enough how crucial the first accepts were to me.
New AK-47 Oligarch and the Terminal terms
Now, to the protagonist. AK-47 Puffer Oligarch. Tell us about it. How was the design born? And yeah, I saw on your Steam Workshop that you have it in green, red, black… but not white as it is in the game. Last-minute changes? We know it happens sometimes as per developers’ request, so was it like that?
Strenson: After AUG Puffer [Lux Trim – edit.] was accepted, I decided to carry this design on other weapons. But after some production improvements I wanted to push the design quality as far as I could. So I started the initial design phase where I was sketching and gametesting graphic designs before I started the 3D part. It took me a couple of weeks to refine the initial design, and when I was satisfied enough, I posted a small teaser on my X and started 3D modeling. It was very time consuming due to sheer detailing and the complexity of the process. Apart from leather simulation, I’ve been working a lot on metal parts surfacing in order to achieve very particular metallic gloss so when you inspect the skin in-game, the reflections and blooms are more dynamic, interesting and refined. As for the color changes, I plan in advance to make multiple color variants due to high labor and time consumption per skin I have. While some people can post a couple skins a week, I spend around a month in order to finish the design. I prefer quality over quantity. The most interesting thing is that Valve themself like to change my skins to their liking, this happened with AWP Chrome Cannon and now with AK-47 Oligarch.
And all the comparisons to Valorant’s Aristocrat skin. What do you think about it?
Strenson: That is nothing new, the CS community is very diverse and of course there are grifters that don’t like anything new or different. I got exactly the same reaction when my AWP was accepted. Better support people who enjoy it, because anyway most of those grifters will just get used to the design and many of them will even start to appreciate it. Therefore there is no point in arguing with them.
Btw, what do you think about the new … case? Genesis collection and the Arms Dealer Terminal thing. Something new, right? You think Valve will add more like this or is it a one-timer? Did you know, when you got the letter of acceptance, that it’s gonna be this? Or you thought it was just for another case?
Strenson: Honestly I have mixed feelings. I hope that there still will be classic cases because I spent a lot of time and effort to make this skin. However if my skins are going to be accepted as one-time payments, it won’t be that reasonable to make such detailed skins. Because I’m heavily relying on royalty revenues since it is a stable and good income that can support me for a long time. Since the intervals between cases are quite large, around 4 months, and there is absolutely no guarantee that I will be accepted, it can be years between accepts. However, if the Terminal is going to be a new type of case apart from the regular one, it’s quite good. More content per year for the community and more chances to be accepted.
“Skin creation is basically my full time job, but I’m also working on a game. It is in the very early stages, so I don’t want to promise anything in advance. And of course due to my love of FPS games, it is going to be one.”
Spider Lily and others designs
What can you say about your other skins? Spider Lily is simply gorgeous and it… kinda doesn’t fit into your style, I think. Or the AWP Chrome Cannon… So cool! Was it hard to create something like this?
Strenson: I made an art for Spider Lily and the reason why it doesn’t fit in my style is because I don’t develop this side of my designs that much. I try to be competitive and create unique designs that others cannot, but still from time to time, purely by passion, I can publish art-based skins like Spider Lily, which was more like an experiment for me. Or the new Aquarelle series with CZ, or even something super experimental like the Bionic Collection. Therefore I’m looking for balance in my submissions: I don’t want to be a slave to one successful idea but I also don’t want to try every possible idea in this world. So in the future you are going to see more Polymer skins as respect to my older design and some new and partially experimental ones.
Which skins of yours would you like to make it to the game as well? I mean the Bionic collection is just sick! And Kintsugi too. Can you tell about them? These two stand out just as Spider Lily, not being militaristic/futuristic.
Strenson: These are my experimental skins, in which I tend to experiment with style, design, production methods, etc. Sure some designs I can abandon with time since it can be not that successful or there is not that much demand for it from the developer’s side. Like for example the Kintsugi series. I wanted to make it before CS2 released, especially before AK-47 Inheritance. But since CS2, despite the popularity, Valve didn’t find these designs interesting or maybe something in my execution didn’t satisfy them. Sadly that is the relationship that we have. If a skin was not accepted, there could be a million reasons why, so it is better to find something new or even revise something old.
On creativity and ideas
Finally, let’s talk about creativity. Where do your ideas come from? Is it music, movies, nature, or maybe late-night snacks?
Strenson: I’m trying to be as open-minded as possible but usually best ideas occur naturally when you least expect. Like I was just walking around thinking about buying a winter coat and saw some puffers in the shop and got inspired. That is literally the name of the collection. Or I just like cars and wanted to make something with shapes, so I got AWP Chrome Cannon. And so on.
