"We end up pushing ourselves to discover new looks": Riot opens up about cosmetic design in Valorant

In a recently concluded AMA ("ask me anything"), a number of members from Valorant's content team discussed weapon skins, gun buddies, player cards, inspirations and their future.

Valorant recently announced on Twitter that its Premium Content team would be conducting an AMA on the Valorant subreddit.

AMAs are a fun way for members of the development team to engage with the community and hear from players about their experience. The Valorant Narrative Team had previously also held an AMA on the lore and agent backstory. David Nottingham and Joe Killeen participated in the session to answer questions.

---

In recently concluded Valorant AMA, Premium Content Team answers questions on skins, sprays, and more

The Reddit post invited players to drop in with their questions regarding in-game cosmetic content that Riot Games has been steadily providing to players since launch. The team also stated that they are already working on premium content for Episode 4 and beyond:

"A few of us from the Premium Content team on VALORANT (we make/made the base weapons, skins lines, Battlepass content, and Agent contracts) are here to answer your questions about past and future cosmetic content in the game. Ask us about skins, where spray ideas come from, our favorite Finishers, which skins give aimbot, roast us for Guardian skins, and all VALORANT goods."

The AMA was attended by members including Preeti Khanolkar, Hayley Chen-O'Neill, Courtney Chan, Sammi Wilkins and Sean Bigham. They replied to a huge number of comments that ranged from appreciation of the community towards the content to jokes about the wide Killjoy card and Omen's knitting.

One of the questions that saw the highest engagement was:

"Whats the most challenging part about working on a new skin collection?"

Having seen the plethora of premier Valorant skin bundles that Riot has put out this year alone, players were very interested in knowing how it all works behind the scenes. The question was responded to by a number of members from the team.

Sean Bigham, Concept Artist, going by u/Gutterworks101, was among those who replied, stating that coming up with amazing ideas is the easy part, as the team-members one-up each other with pitches. The actual difficulty, he said, lies in fitting all of them into a schedule so that they can become a reality.

Sean Marino, Associate Art Director, talked about their attempt to always ensure that what they are producing for the players is unique and not similar to creative ideas of other games. Pierre-Luc Jacques, a VFX artist, further added that:

"The most challenging yet rewarding part of the process is working in tandem with the other artists on the skinline. It requires a lot of communication between the concept artist, modeler , animator and me to make sure that my VFX feels whole with all the different parts."

Sammi Wilkins answered the question at length, talking about how ideas and concepts don't always pan out or look good. Sometimes, there are small changes to be made, something that looks out of proportion or they have to re-design the concept altogether:

"There is quite a bit of artistic problem solving we have do to, but that's also what makes creating new skins really fun :) We end up pushing ourselves to discover new looks that we hope players enjoy as much as we do."

The team has confirmed that there will be Ultra Edition (UE) skins available in the future. The first UE skin in line was the Elderflame collection released a while back. The back-and-forth conversation also included some good-humoured ribbing, wider player cards, more guardian skins, a cheeky request for Oni 2.0 and wondering if KAY/O is a descendant of submarines!

The post on the subreddit (Image via Valorant subreddit)

These AMAs are testament to the large number of players who actively play Valorant and enjoy the cosmetic content that Riot Games develops for it. The lively nature of the discussion, peppered with both serious questions and fun jibes, was a breath of fresh air away from the usual competitiveness.