All the more reason to get the battle pass.
Valorant’s Act 2 Episode 5 battle pass was filled with memes, cute weapon buddies inspired by mythical lore animals, and one of the most elaborate skinlines we’ve seen in one battle pass to date.
The Piedra del Sol (which translates to Stone of the Sun) skin bundle is inspired by the art of the Aztec civilization, bringing to life one of the most powerful empires of the ancient world.
Riot Games weapons artist Raquel Garcia penned a new developer blog post that dove into the inspiration behind the collection, detailing the design story behind each individual weapon.
The Piedra del Sol skin bundle is inspired by Aztec mythology
The Piedra del Sol Collection includes skins for the Ghost, Judge, Bucky, Ghost, and Melee. The Ghost was influenced by the Aztec god Xolotl, commonly depicted as a human skeleton with the head of a canine. He guided the dead through the Aztec underworld known as Mictlan.
“I wanted to capture an artistic feel for this gun that would represent him well and also fit into today’s modern gaming world,” Garcia said. “After revisiting the initial concept, I felt the face had more of a feline direction. I wanted it to look more like a dog as the deity is depicted.
Garcia rounded the cheeks, squared the nose, and added rounder eyes, retaining Xolotl’s canine attributes while staying true to the original concept.
The rest of the canons also correspond to an Aztec god. The Ghost represents Quetzalcoatl (Creation), the Bucky is Huitzilopochtli (Sun and War) and the Judge is Tezcatlipoca (Night Sky).
The face of each god sits on the back of each weapon, gleefully ogling the player.
“We worked closely with our Latin America office to decide on the faces for each weapon and to find unique color palettes that best represent the divinity of each weapon,” said Sammi Pedregon, art supervisor. outsourced to Valorant.
Finally, the melee skin was based on the Aztec Sunstone and a Macuahuitl, a historical Aztec wooden club with inlaid obsidian stones like blades.
The team encountered several challenges in transforming the initial concept into a 3D model. “In our early batches of weapons, the faces, in particular, would look really lopsided, small, or uneven compared to the rest of the weapon details,” Pedregon said.
This meant that they had to rework and adjust different sections of each weapon to match the same beautiful and intricate gemstones seen in Aztec culture.
This isn’t the first time Riot has taken inspiration from ancient myths and lore to design a weapon skin. The Sarmad skin bundle is inspired by Egyptian mythology, with each weapon similarly modeled after a different deity.
You can read the full blog here.
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