En kraftig majoritet av alla som spelar Counter-Strike: Global Offensive har någonsin hört talas om Asiimov-serien, eller i varje fall något av de vitorange-färgade skins som skapats under namnet. Men vad vet vi egentligen om skinseriens källa? Det har Fragbite fått nöjet att ta reda på lite mer, när vi lyckades få tag i Chris Brown, men mer känd som Coridium, från Skottland.

I intervjun får vi reda på, bland mycket annat, att skaparen ligger bakom populära skapelser i Dota 2, att han varit en del av spelindustrin i ett decennium och även att hans framtidsvision är att utveckla ett eget spel. Givetvis finns även frågor om Asiimov-serien, pengarna som omsätts och mycket mer i intervjun som följer.

Would you mind introducing yourself, who you are and what your background is?

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to Fragbite, its readers and the CS community in general for giving me this opportunity it really is very flattering to be contacted!

My name is Chris Brown but I am probably best known as Coridium from the Steam platform where I have created various skins and stickers for CS:GO, I have also created 2 HUD's (Furnace and Surge) and 2 Character Sets for Dota (Natures Prophet - Woodland Outcast and Outworld Devourer - Dragon Forged) I studied product design at Uni and I have worked in the games industry for 10 years or so (in various positions within the environment art field) but it is only recently that I started to get involved with the amazing CS and DOTA Workshop communities it has been wonderful experience and something that I am super proud to be part of!

(For anyone interested my various CS and Dota items can be viewed here... LINK)

You are the creator of the most popular skin series in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Asiimov. Have you created any other skin that people may know about?

People might also have seen the Rank Collection (Famas - Sergeant / UMP45 - Corporal). I created these skins in an attempt to design something that more naturally fits into the CS:GO aesthetic, they where inspired by military ranks and used more muted palette's which was in direct contrast to the Asiimov collection. I have also been very fortunate to work with some companies like Faceit (P90 - Trigon, USP-S Equalizer and the MP7 - Progression) and more recently Team Fnatic (M4A4 - Adrenaline). I always try to do something different from my last design when I start a new item or collection, the most recent has been the Apache collection which attempts to fuse Desert military aesthetic with Navaho war paint, however probably my most successful new design has been the Contour collection (Famas - Contour and P250 - Contour).

When you made the M4A4 Asiimov, the first one, what was your inspiration for the colour scheme and design?

The Asiimov collection was a tribute to Sci-Fi Books, Films and Games. I have always liked all kinds of art from fantasy to Sci-fi, traditional paintings to modern art but I think that sci-fi has always had a special place in my heart. I love seeing people's visions of what the future might hold and the countless films, books and games made around the subject have always left me feeling inspired and excited about what it might be like. The colour palette I chose is synonymous with Sci-fi and variations of it have been used in numerous products, I think it can even be traced all the way back to classic sci-fi designers like Syd Mead and Chris Foss right through to much more modern creations like Homeworld, Mass Effect, Starwars, District 9, Prometheus and even more recently I noticed similar themes in Titanfall, Call of Duty:Advance Warfare and the Halo 5 Beta. Since my goal was to try and invoke a feeling of sci-fi it seemed developing a palette with such a long history was a good place to start and of course the name is inspired by the legendary writer Isacc Asimov.

Did you expect the skin to become so popular?

No not at all! The response was a massive surprise and something that I will never forget! When I start a new design I normally try to create something different from what I have done previously trying to avoid what is popular/common on the workshop but most of all I create something that interests me in the hope that it might interest others. This approach means that even if the design is not something that the community is interested in I still had fun making it and really that has always been my goal when creating art, to do something I enjoy as it's my hobby.

Later on, AWP Asiimov became even more appreciated than the previous skin, and on top of that, a third skin, P90 Asiimov, came out. What is it that makes your skin so popular, you think?

I think that timing is important in anything you do and when I released the first few Asiimov designs on the workshop there was almost no other weapons with a similar "future" aesthetic, I felt it was something that as a player I would have like to see and I was just lucky that other people felt the same way about it. I appreciate that some members of the community will dislike the design but that's what I love about the workshop it opens the opportunity for everyone to find a design that they love and can be pleased to own and use.

As you've had quite a lot of popular skins in the game, do you make a living off of these skins, or do you do have a job on the side?

I have for many many years wanted to create my own small videogame and had been saving as much as I could from my daily job to build up a buffer that would give me the opportunity to start my dream project. The money that I have made from the steam workshop will go toward funding my first videogame creation venture, it would have taken me a lot longer to get to a position where I was able to consider a project like this, so I can say with all honesty the steam workshop has genuinely changed my life and I am so grateful to Valve for giving outside artists an opportunity to contribute towards their games, to me it feels like the next step in videogame evolution and I am very proud to be part of it!

Approximately how much time do you spend on creating every skin?

I have always been a believer in quality over quantity, so I generally take my time with the skins and try to create something unique. The most time consuming part is getting a unique design idea that is balanced on the weapon and works well with the theme that you have set out to create, sometimes this process can be quite fast when a design seems to "fall into place" but other times it can take a lot longer.

For example the SawedOff - Black Gold took several iterations, I designed and redesigned the main graphic a couple of times and the first 3D model I made did not translate well into a skin so I had to create another. Also as I was working on this for random amounts of time each day its difficult to say how long it took exactly but I think it could have been as much as 1 and 1/2 weeks (maybe more). On the other hand some designs can be quick and only take a couple of days to complete when everything just seems to go "right". Once a design is complete, another day or so is spent on creating marketing material to help promote the design (icons, promotional images, etc). Once you have a design, its usually pretty quick to create different weapon variations of that design, since you have defined all the design rules that you need to create the weapon variation and the marketing backgrounds have already been created, so as you can imagine these variations are generally a lot quicker and its often the reason that you see people release the same design for several different weapon models.

Which Asiimov skin would you say is your favourite?

This is a hard one, I am generally guilty of disliking most of the work that I create ... Actually if we can ignore the skin designs for a second and talk about the actual base weapons (i.e. guns with no skins) I really like the M4A4 as a gun, it has a nice rugged look and proportionally is nicely balanced, this is probably why I have created more skins for this gun than any of the others. :-) So I am tempted to say the M4A4 - Asiimov. However taking the "sci-fi" theme into account, the P90 is probably the most futuristic looking weapon so I will go with the P90 - Asiimov. It's funny even though the base gun looks pretty modern in design style the P90 is actually pretty old designed at end of 1980 i think, but tbh there was some great sci-fi in the 1980's so that's OK. :-D

You recently released the M4A1-S Asiimov as well, do you know if this skin will be available in an upcoming weapon cases?

Thanks for asking but I really don't expect it to be added, Valve have already accepted more Asimov designs than I could have ever hoped for (something I am incredibly proud of) and I think that there are a lot of very good designs on the workshop that deserve their chance in a case so my guess would be no.
As I mentioned in the description of the M4A1-S Asiimov, I honestly created the skin because I had received a lot of request from people asking how I create skins and thought that creating something that people know and recognise would help people understand the process involved and a nice way to say thanks to everyone for all there support.

Here is a link to the tutorials for anyone interested (I will be adding more soon)...

Apart from your own skins, which skin is your favourite in CS:GO?

This is a very tough question, I am constantly impressed with work that is added to all the workshops! There really is some amazingly talented people on there and trying to pick one from 74'000 designs is almost impossible, however here is 4 that have caught my eye for one reason or another and are not already in-game...

Cartel AK47 — Designed by Coyote37 and Hanzo

I have created a weapon of a similar style and know its really hard to get right and I think they really nailed it with this one!

TEC9 - PYTHON — Designed by Renegade

I always liked this one, it makes clever use of a interesting graphic, even though you can only really see an eye and the scales it still sells the idea of a snake. Also I think that the palette is bright but balanced not over powering the weapon.

CZ75 - Bukavac — Designed by Gaunt

I like the subtle nature of this design, nice contrast in base colours and the graphic is distinctive. My only issue is that the head/mouth of the creature is very close to the end of the weapon possibly bring it back a little leaving a bit of space might help make it more readable to the player, nice design though!

M4A4 - Orion — Designed by Renegade

Again another great skin by Renegade love the use of negative space, I personally prefer this to the alternative blue version as I think the removal of some design elements makes the design cleaner and stronger.

If you got to design a knife, would you make it an Asiimov knife or would it be something different? If so, what would it look like?

I think that all CS workshop contributors would love the opportunity to design a knife, they are obviously very sought-after by the community and generally offer a nice surface area/shape to work with. If I was ever given the opportunity to design my own knife I would probably do quite a few, I doubt I would start with an Asiimov I would want to start with a completely new idea but I am sure overtime my curiosity would get the better of me and at some point I would end up creating one even if it was just for me to see what it could potentially look like.

Thank you for your time, I really appreciate it. The last word is yours if you want it!

As I mentioned before Steam workshop has genuinely changed my life, working in the games industry is amazing but often you work for many years on a project without much input from the public, a demo can often take a long time to create and even when your demo is released it can be difficult to get feedback on specific areas as people are normally referring to the game in general rather than specific things. The steam workshop changes all that, as a creator you are able to design something put it on the workshop and get instant feedback from the people that play and love the games.

So I would like to take this opportunity to thank Valve and all the people that continue to spend hours of their free time rating, commenting and favouring workshop items, without you the workshop would not exist and I would not get the pleasure of creating items for it. So thank you to each and everyone of you that has voted on workshop items, I am very proud to be part of this community and with your continued support, opinions and suggestion we can all continue to grow this community from strength to strength!

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