This author works at his own Dragonlore, managed to work on the skin with the former captain of Natus Vincere, Daniil Zeus Teslenko, and created his first skin in Rust. Read in our interview the amazing story of Hexeth, a skin maker from Belarus, who almost learned the secret of how to get his skin into the game. You just need …
CS.MONEY presents a series of interviews with the best skin creators! And we start with the artists whose works were recently included in the Fracture Case.
– Hi! Tell us a little about yourself.
– Hi! I am from Belarus and now I’m very much focused on the events taking place in my country, but I will try to switch to answering your questions.
– Galil AR Connexion was officially added to the game, congratulations! Did you create this skin together with VLEK? Whose idea was that? Did you enjoy working together?
– Thanks a lot! I’ve been admiring the works by Vlad VLEK for a very long time. I can say that green marks started to appear in my workshop thanks to him. He taught me to make more efforts to earn recognition in this field. Each little detail of the design must be executed with the highest level of attention, which can be compared with the work of a watchmaker. He convinced me that creating skins I need to work as hard as possible. And he was 1000% right!
We worked together on this series of skins. First we generated the idea and then each of us took several weapons to create skins for them. I made skins for M249, Sawed-Off and MAC-10, and VLEK took Galil AR and Tec-9. And our strategy worked.
Galil AR Connexion was Vlad’s work. He wanted to make a weapon that would resemble the Heavy Phoenix. Perhaps one of my skins from this collection will also be accepted in the future. I keep my fingers crossed for Sawed-Off, I really like it.
– How did you start creating skins?
– A friend of mine invited me to the workshop and we started to create skins together. After about three years we didn’t notice much progress, Valve didn’t accept anything from our works. That was very disappointing and my friend decided to quit. I didn’t want to have all my efforts and experience wasted, so I decided to go on. In parallel, I created skins for Rust and this is where my first skin was accepted. And a week later, CS:GO accepted my Nova | Toy Soldier 😀
– Does one need professional skills to create skins?
– Absolutely! Moreover, you will also need some talent too. Don’t forget that it’s a tender where several thousands of artists and designers take part, and Valve accepts only about 17 skins per case. So you have to be strong enough to be able to compete with all those people, many of whom are worldwide recognized illustrators with a huge experience.
– How do you come up with ideas for skins and how does the creation process begin?
– It comes absolutely spontaneous. If you are a naturally curious person, you will see ideas at every step. When I realize one idea I already have three other ones in the background. Sometimes I have to give up some ideas as I simply don’t have enough time for them.
– Do you remember your first skin? How long did it take you to create it?
– My first skin was AWP Tiger Trap. It took me about 2 weeks to create it. At that time I had no idea how to do it and what I should start with. I just wanted to do something cooler than Dragon Lore 😀 Later I removed this skin from my workshop, as I don’t feel proud of it anymore, but many people keep thinking that Tiger Trap was a pretty cool skin 😀 Perhaps one day I will get back to it to rework, but this day hasn’t come yet. Actually, you can still find this skin on the Internet, just google for Tiger Trap.
– How do you like the Fracture Case in general? Are there any interesting works besides Connexion?
– see the Fracture Case as a continuation of the CS20 Case. At first glance it looks quite chaotic and even incomprehensible, but it has some very interesting skins. The coolest thing about the Fracture Case is that it is very diverse, and every player can find here skin to his taste. As for me, Legion of Anubis is simply divine! Actually, it was MO3H who started to push this idea, but the developers liked Apel’s work more.
– Tell us about Nova | Toy Soldier. This is an amazing skin and it is really outstanding. How did you come up with the idea for this design?
– One day I freaked out! I was so angry that Valve did not pay attention to my skins and I decided to create something weird 😀 By the way, the same situation was later with MAC-10 Disco Tech 😀
– And if we consider all the CS:GO skins, what are your favorite ones?
– AK-47 Fuel Injector, MAC-10 Pipe Down, CZ-75 Imprint, AK-47 Rat Rod, USP-S Kill Confirmed, Dual Berettas Elite 1.6 … Hey, there are a lot of them! Each skin has its own cool feature. For example, if you put the CS On The Mind sticker on MP9 Capillary, it will become a completely different skin. The same will happen if this sticker is put on M4A4 Hellfire. Many skins have unique compatibility with different stickers!
– If you could change Dragon Lore, what exactly would you change in it?
– That’s exactly what I’m working on! Of course, I want to make my own version of Dragon Lore, and it’s a very interesting project for me! Now I can afford to make fewer skins and focus on making them more interesting and unique. Subscribe to my workshop to follow all my experiments!
– Where do you draw inspiration?
– The world around us is a huge source of inspiration! You can find new ideas literally everywhere! You just need to look more closely.
– Any easter eggs in your skins?
– Almost everywhere!
– Do you play CS? What is your favorite weapon?
– I really love AK-47, it is Our Everything! I’m also a fan of SSG 08, I have one with more than three thousand kills on the StatTrack. I usually play on community servers, I think it’s more fun than MM, but if there is a strong stack, I’m up to play with my eagle friends.
– Do you play with your skins?
– Of course! How else? My skins are the best and coolest in the world and I always play with them! If I use some type of weapon, which doesn’t yet have my skins officially added to the game, then I have to choose something else. My taste in skins is rather unpopular. I love something military, rusty, or simple and stylish (yeah, these are the words of the creator of the most acid MAC-10!).
– Any favorite maps?
– Dust-2 rules! Inferno and Mirage are also cool. Shame that Austria was removed, I liked it a lot, but it did not receive any support. It had to be reworked, but it wasn’t, so the map just became irrelevant and disappeared. It had all chances to be as good as Dust-2 or Mirage though. I’m looking forward to seeing Aztec reworked. As for Cashe, I don’t like the way it has been reworked, it is now visually overloaded and I just hope that the devs won’t spoil Mirage and Cobblestone in the same way.
– Do you follow CS:GO tournaments? What are your favorite teams?
– Sure! I really enjoy watching majors! Favorite teams … Well, I’m not a huge fan of some particular team. There are teams, which I like more than others. I really liked Quantum Bellator Fire, it’s a shame that they were disbanded. I’m also happy for BoombI4, he’s a great guy, who could make his dream come true. Cool!
– Tell us about your future plans.
– I will continue creating skins and developing my skills! I enjoy it so much. I work flex-time but I can never get tired of this work 😀
– What advice can you give to those who also want to start creating skins?
– This is a very hard and difficult job, no matter how simple it may seem at first glance! To become professional you should be ready to sacrifice your personal life and comfort. And it takes a lot of time too. One needs to spend thousands of hours playing CS:GO to break through to the pro scene. The same situation is with creating skins, and sometimes even being professional is not enough as you should be lucky enough to get your skin accepted to the game. I mean it!
