One day, you just Photoshop study grades too well to escape your mother’s wrath, and then you end up making it into CS:GO history with one of the most style-wise unusual skins. SCAR-20 Fragments is reminiscent of several things at once: its futuristic design recalls the Deus Ex game series, has cubic forms of modern architecture and looks like neoteric weapons.
Welcome UAD6, the creator of SCAR-20 Fragments! In the newest episode of CS.MONEY Blog’s interview series dedicated to Revolution Case skinmakers, UAD6 talks about how skinmaking saved him from a boring and sad job at the factory, the inspirations behind SCAR-20 Fragments, the future of CS:GO and its skins, weapon finishes from the recent case and much more!
Creating SCAR-20 Fragments
Congratulations on getting into the Revolution Case! This is your second time, right?
Yes, that’s right. The first happened together with Hexeth. You can say that after the first green tick, you will get used to it, but no, it still excites you a lot. Especially when you wake up not even from messages on social networks but from SMS.
It was Valentine’s Day recently, and I made Rose Stone, a skin for Rust. They didn’t accept it in the evening as I already saw all the skins that got in. I forgot about it and went to bed. And then I wake up because people start congratulating me for some reason, too much for a simple Rust skin. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on, and I see the SCAR, the one I really wanted to be released in CS:GO. I don’t know how Valve guessed…
Did you make this skin entirely on your own?
Basically, yes. But I’m a huge procrastinator! I have a lot of unusual skins currently in the works. But it’s complicated. For example, I start working on one idea, but since CS:GO is an old game with outdated models, you can sometimes come up with something incredibly cool, but the properties of its 3D model engine may not allow you to realise this idea. SCAR was that very problem model. I started with one idea, understood that the resolution won’t fit well, and in-game, it would be too pixeled. And it clicks in my head as I recall one building in my home city, Yekaterinburg. It’s the office of RMK, whose architect was the great and unique Norman Foster. And I got dragged into the Polygonal parametric architectural style. We don’t have this in CS:GO, so I decided to do skins in this style.
I made the original model back in September 2021. I started texturing it, but suddenly some autumn blues came, you know? And only by the next summer, when I was expecting to have surgery with a long recovery period, I decided that this one must be finished asap. So I completed a couple of SCARs, a couple of Sawed-Offs and then disappeared from the Workshop. I did not even hope that they might notice me. I was surprised, of course, very strongly.
Why did you decide to make skins for SCAR, a pretty unpopular gun?
It’s not popular, but I really like it as an artist. It has peculiar geometry. At the same time, it has a low resolution but a lot of details: wheels, bars, and magazines. Low resolution is a problem with older models. For example, R8 Revolver was released not so long ago, so it has better textures.
When I first saw your skin, I thought: wow, Deus Ex!
Yes! I was inspired by the poster with the protagonist standing still…
I first made this skin in gold, and then I decided to make a couple of other editions: colourful and metallic. Once, we played CS:GO with Puchara, who created Sawed-Off Zander and MP9 Mount Fuji, and he said: “Why won’t you do this SCAR in total black?” And I thought, why, really? I changed the gradient to black, but it looked like something was missing. So, maybe some Deus Ex vibes came, and I decided to add some gold and copper on the chamfers. Five minutes later, I was totally delighted with the skin.
UAD6, Factory New
How did you get into skinmaking?
It’s a very absurd story! In general, I have no specific design or art education. I graduated from a musical school, and played the accordion … At the same time, I had the makings of drawing, but I did not strengthen them in any way. At school, I had homework to draw my favourite character. I drew Dunno.
He’s not too complicated, but my drawing turned out almost like the original. The teacher did not believe me and tore it apart! And these days, I have few arts on my skins. If I need an art for something, I come to my wife and ask her; she’s a true artist.
How did I end up making skins? In general, I entered the university as an engine design engineer. I studied poorly, played a lot of CS:GO, and almost got expelled in my second year (but I reached Global, meanwhile!). My mom started pressing me, demanding my record book with current grades to show her my studying progress. They were horrifying, so I decided to learn Photoshop so my mother would not be upset. I copy-pasted some stuff, and it looked perfect. Mom was pleased.
Once, while playing CS:GO, I thought, “Who makes these skins anyway?” I started googling how to make skins, and found a video made by Estavos, the creator of MP7 Mischief and, one might say, the founder of the Russian Steam Workshop Community. In the description to the video, I saw a link to this skinmaker community page, and this is where I met people and started producing skins.
There was this one guy who had the same profile picture as me. He grew up very quickly, started making amazing skins. I often wrote to him lots of compliments, saying that he’s a god of skins. One day, RavN, a famous skinmakers, adds me to a group chat. “Guys, welcome this dude, he makes some dope skins.” And I only had two terrible skins made at that time. I said that I do not make skins, and it turned out that they wanted to add another person. But they didn’t kick me. This chat included decent skinmakers, such as G-99 Factory, the creator of AWP Exoskeleton, Oxid Blaze series, and others. And I slowly began to communicate, ask questions, and learn.
Many thanks to RavN, who helped a lot. And also to Hexeth, as he was the first person who talked to me about skins. Hexeth told a lot of things, and he taught me that each and every skin should have an Idea. If a skin doesn’t rely on any idea, it’s a meaningless skin.
This is how I started making skins. I wasn’t trying to get into CS:GO, because the community seemed very closed. So I went to make skins for Rust, and learned all the basics there. Another interesting thing about Rust is that skins are accepted every week. This allows you to feel what people need. You make a cool skin, it sells very poorly for you, and you start to figure out why. You look at areas of attention of people. You look at the angles of skin inspection and how it’s presented in the store. You understand that you need to concentrate your idea on specific spots. This is way more difficult in CS: GO because Valve rarely accepts stuff. It’s interesting to know how they choose the selection. No one knows; there’s no information. How do they assemble a case?
Anticipation of Source 2 & Skins Evolution
What do you think about the possible engine update and the associated risks for skinmakers?
See, CS:GO nowadays has a colour map, a normal map, which Valve added about three years ago. But there are also Metallic and Roughness maps. Add these two to the game, and all the skins would be very transformed, and people could do anything. At the same time, Valve doesn’t do that because they understand that people have different hardware. They are trying to make the game more modern, for example, the Agents now look very up-to-date. But everything else remains the same, which is cool because the game is pretty accessible. People with weak old PCs can play it.
People are now waiting for Source 2, and a new Operation … I have a feeling that Valve are behind their schedule as they did not have time to do things. Some people ask about a new case every Tuesday and Friday, others follow game client updates and dataminers… It seems to me that Valve thought about it and decided to release the case along with stickers and music just for the community, so the players would remain calm and let the devs work. I guess Valve will drop something big soon, and everyone will be happy. Just wait for another six months…
Revolution Case & The AWP Situation
What do you think about the AWP change in the Revolution Case?
Madara said some people are dissatisfied with the new AWP, but on the contrary, I personally like it. No offence to Jimmba, I don’t like overloaded work when you look at art, as it turns into a blur for me. In his defence, he redrew the art, but he did not take into account that this is still someone’s character. Jimmba could still change the details. The only thing he screwed up is that there really are two fangs, two ears, two furs. It turned out that he only changed the character’s pose.
Now players are mad, I think, because of the fact that something was taken away. You got this AWP, rejoiced, and then it disappeared. This is the main reason. Well, and also, probably, people thought that their AWP would remain in the game and become of the Contraband rarity, making it very expensive. But it would undoubtedly break the Marketplace. And Valve would have also needed to contact the original creator of the character to pay him something—too many unnecessary questions.
But, I hope this new AWP will be loved in the end. At the same time, I thought that Doodle Lore would be replaced with another work, the Dragon Tale. Nevertheless, congratulations to Madara. He has a wonderful creation with a decent idea.
In general, Revolution Case is excellent; it has a lot of exciting skins and a lot of skinmakers-rookies.
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SCAR-20 Fragments, like other skins from the Revolution Case, are available for purchase on our CS.MONEY Market. We also have a vast selection of skins, low commissions and cash withdrawals!
