Vlad «hexeth» Vasiliev belongs among the most recognizable skinmakers in CS:GO. He has over thirty thousand people subscribed to his Steam Workshop page. The number of stickers and skins he has created runs into the hundreds, and six of them, created by him alone or in collaboration with other designers, have been added to the game. He recently gave an interview in which he talked about his approach to his work and the intricacies of Valve 's approach to skin selection. Below you will find the most interesting moments from this conversation.
The Glock-18 Winterized skin created by hexeth has recently appeared in-game as part of RecoilCase. Skinmaker noted that, although this coloring may seem minimalistic, it is the kind of work that requires a lot of time, as you need to solve the problem without overloading the design and using a small number of colors.
How the skin was created
The co-author of hexeth in the work on Glock-18 Winterized was the designer UAD6, who was mainly engaged in creating skins for Rust. He created a highly polygonal version of «glock», which hexeth took as a base. At the time, he developed several versions of the skin, and then, a few years later, began to remake and improve them, deciding to turn them into a reference to «snowguy» - that was the name of one of the player models in CS 1.6.
Interestingly, Valve eventually chose to add an older version to the case, rather than one of the latest versions. The name for the skin was also added by the developers. Hexeth mentions that this is the case in most cases – only two of his skins have their own names left, AUGPlague и NOVAToySoldierand the other four were renamed when added to the official version of the game.
When working on a skin design, hexeth first presents a three-dimensional image of the item, thinks out all the details, and only then transfers it to a three-dimensional model. Because of this, the whole process can take a lot of time – For example, AWPSpender, which was made in collaboration with CiDDi, was thought out for about half a year, and its design with a lot of references and small details was drawn for several weeks.
At the same time, sometimes the game gets items that were made without such careful work. For example, the attention to Valvek G3SG1 Digital Grid was a surprise for hexeth, as the skin was originally designed just for practicing the use of some effects.
Collaboration
Hexeth also said that he is increasingly working in collaboration. That said, he's usually in charge of adapting materials to the game and assembling the final design, while the art creation is assigned to someone else. Hexeth is actively involved in the community and involves in his projects those artists whose work he considers worthy, but to whom Valve has not yet paid attention.
He notes that working together significantly increases the chances of success. Cases where skinmakers work hard alone year after year until some item of theirs catches Valve's attention do happen, but extremely rarely. For him it is important not only the income that skins bring, but also the positive emotions that he feels when he sees his works on other players – and professionals, and those with whom he accidentally crosses paths in the game.