CS:GO | Plunderthunder | M249

This was another challenging one that I restarted several times. I originally wanted to go very Substance Painter-realistic with it, but was unsatisfied with the way the baked lighting worked with the simulated materials (especially the gold), without having any real control of the spec values and color.

That then transitioned into a semi-realistic hand-painted style which looked amazing in Photoshop, but blurry beyond belief in game thanks to the low resolution of some pretty large areas.

Eventually I went to my tried-and-true "cel-shaded" illustration style that I like to do with patterns, and I think that ended up working best for something this silly!

Steam Workshop link:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783743908