Pairing up the characteristics of animals with weapons is a bit of a game: the weasel was a good fit for the glock because it's so small and feeble and I shift about with it like a madman. When it came to an autosniper, I took a different approach...


I researched into both woodpeckers and Scar20’s in the game. The most recognised woodpecker is the pileated probably because of the red tuft of head feathers as seen on ‘woody woodpecker’. The problem with this species is there exists a Cyrex and bloodsport, both black white and red - making another Scar20 in this scheme a tad redundant, so I went with the green woodpecker! (Yes there are also two forest green scar 20s, but no saturated-lime, so I thought I’d give it a shot.)

Next decision was should it be graphical (featuring logos, and outlines of birds) or be more traditionally illustrative. I concluded there weren't any illustrative Scars so I thought that would be more valuable.

I made a developments slide above which shows a few stages of the process. A lot of it (that is not shown) is lounging about avoiding drawing - a process I despise and typically plagued with procrastination -- I like to get to the vector stage and adapt things on screen, or more often these days I paint crudely on the weapon to work out positioning of elements then flesh it out, which is a much more practical method as I can see the work in context.

Initially I was leaning towards pink and flowery backgrounds - until I had the idea of tree bark as a backdrop, which was infinitely more relevant to the bird itself which nests in trees, and furthermore the bark could chip away as the wear state progresses... I had to go with it. I kept the bark effect simplistic as when I made it realistic with texture it didn’t gel with the vector art.

I was tempted to submit a 2nd version without bird poo on the stock, but I kinda like it. Maybe it will bring me luck!

Let me know what you think below.