Version 5e - further colour changes/ ICC profile conversion adjustments (note to self - relative colourmetric retains overall saturation[iMac>>MBP]), added more triangle fragments and dots.
Version 5b - Update 22.03.2015 : Minor changes: further bits of detail to increase the layering effect, plus 1-2 tiling corrections.
Version 5 - Update 03-08.03.2015 : ICC profile adjust to pattern, worked in extra bits of detail to the composition, also adjusted and added some further colours to increase the variance, exponent variable tweaks.
Version 4b - Update 08.01.2015 : Tile error correction, plus more tweaks.
Version 4 - Update 01.01.2015 : Some additional detail tweaks to a few small areas of the pattern.
Version 3 of the Ziggy skins.
I took it down whilst I updated it due to the logistics of creating all the presentation images, and also because I thought it would be very different to when people originally voted for it. In the end after many many hours spent making pattern alterations and minor colour tweaks plus more concentrated details in specific areas - it looked pretty similar to earlier incarnations, just more busy and with more silver, brown and orange! Ah well - I’m still happy with it!

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I was playing ‘workout’ in casual looking for some background music to listen to after getting tired of hearing the Spanish guitar from my music kit for the hundredth time. Loaded up youtube and on a whim typed in ‘Suffragette City’ by David Bowie. I was enjoying it so much I played the entire album entitled rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust - what an amazing album! I'd never listened to it before.

Then I was struck by inspiration; I saw the Aladdin sane thumbnail in the other videos, and whilst looking at my AUG Hotrod I thought wouldn't this look awesome with a red and blue lighting bolt on it. That was the germ of the seed that would become the Ziggy pattern.

I developed the idea further through analysing different threads of thought, which I'll go through below:


My favourite skin in the game is Case hardened; it has huge variation - every skin is unique, and hence two guns of the same wear can vary in value according to individual taste. I've grown a personal attachment to my AK47, it has a pale blue tip and nice golden tones on the body, I recognise it when others are carrying it. I wanted to emulate this personal connection by creating a skin that creates additional value from its uniqueness - in opposition to a positionally-static duplication, which to me is far less interesting.




Back in college I always thought of abstract expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollack as lazy chancers, but in practice creating randomness is extremely difficult to achieve without looking contrived. Although the lightning bolt was the spark of inspiration, I transformed the idea through development to fill a canvas with random-jagged geometric noise. Flat coloured polygon shapes have the bonus of having a clean and fresh aesthetic that really pop out when applied with a bold palette. Rather than being a homogeneous mess, each area of the canvas is built up like an individual habitat - there's an orange/grey area, a yellow/blue stripey area, a few lighting bolts of varying colours -- I wasn't fond of Bowies' bolt shape as the middle section doesn't have a bar, it's sliced -- so I opted for a more conventional shape. Going further I added more micro-landmarks: triangular fragments, warped-stripey waves, circle motifs and radial halftones. All these sections and details combine to form a composition with a decent amount of internal variance.


The arrived at style looks like a meld of pop art and abstract expressionism. It’s bold, and extremely kitsch in a Japanese pop-culture manner thanks to the bold lush colours. The sharp fragmented shapes and geometry pull it more toward modern day illustration over retro pastiche. I was concerned that the colours would be ‘too much’ -- overall its on par with the ‘death by kitty’ and ‘boom’ textures. I really wanted to sell colour with this texture, in much the same way as a Paul Smith Scarf or those mid 80s Benetton Formula 1 car liveries.

Red and Blue have massive contrast when juxtapose - at their most saturated they cause eye strain, I made the red slightly pinkish and switched the blue to cyan to reduce the contrast; the warm hues of pink, orange and yellow compliment the red, whilst the mid grey acts as a contrast in a similar role to the cyan.

The colours didn’t test well with all of the weapons: such as weapons where the texture gets applied to all weapon parts, the P90 for example looks incredible from the sides but I felt it a tad too distracting in first person view without solid coloured areas. Also weapons that feature surfaces with 90 degree extrusions like the Negev and UMP disrupt the pattern in an unsightly way.

I settled on a Patina skin style -- factory new is extremely vibrant whereas the more worn exteriors get dark and gritty and more subdued, a small amount of wear gives it a pleasant satin finish. I also spent a couple of days testing an RGB channel version for an anodized-mutlicolour application to the end of making a skin with solid components to counterbalance the pattern. Although I achieved close approximate colours through mixing the paints with a bit of knoweldge and trial and error - I felt the skin was continuously vibrant no matter the wear, whereas a Patina fades as it ages - a better option.


I’m an efficiency nut; I prefer to do a lot of work up front so the following processes are easier. I’m also very frugal; bearing in mind that each successful weapon skin takes up a chunk of precious memory I designed this skin with the intention of having it applied across multiple weapons with only changes in the text variables - not in the texture itself. The core principal is one texture, with huge variance in application, across many weapons. As such I’ve spent a lot of time composing the texture whilst testing it applied to different weapons, the best of which were the AUG, AWP, Sawed-off, MP9, Five-Seven, TEC-9, Nova, XM1014.

The pattern is fully tileable on both axis; I’ve limited the angle rotational-variance to a range of 115 degrees after generating many versions in the workbench and observing what angles suit the pattern best.

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There you have it. Thanks for reading all that drivel, if you like what I’ve made please rate and feel free to join my steam group SWAGCORP. Also if the intro paragraph inspires you to check out Bowie’s back catalogue then make sure to listen to the albums ‘Low’ and ‘Station to station’, the latter is only 6 tracks, but its killer and I’ve had it on repeat since starting this skin!