The Prinstream series of skins for CS:GO is one of the most popular skins in the game. In July, its creator Juthapat «Non» Lmmpattanakule, also known as JTPNZ, was interviewed about coming up with ideas for new skins and working to bring them to life.
JTPNZ grew up and was born in Thailand, completed his undergraduate studies at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington, and is now practicing as a 3D artist in his home country. He notes that he's younger than most of the skin writers he talks to. Nevertheless, it is his work that has already made CS:GO history.
Non started creating skins back in 2016: he says that back then he was studying mathematics and exact sciences, but he already realized that his interests lay in another field and was looking for opportunities to distract himself. He gave up working on skins for a while as going to college was time-consuming, but soon returned to it again.
Initially he did not plan to turn Printstream into a series and created a skin for AK-47 as an experiment (So far it is not selected for the official version and is only available in the Workshop). However, the community liked this design, and Non decided to make some more skins for CS:GO in this style. He thinks it's funny that the Desert Eagle Prinstream, which he himself likes the least, was the first to be included in the official version. Now in the game, apart from it, two more skins from this series are available – M4A1-S Prinstream and USP-S Printstream.
The design of the skins, which is based on a combination of white, black and pearlescent, appeared in a sense by happy accident: Non thought that the shimmering effect would be applied only to some elements of the weapon, but after loading the model in Steam Workshop it turned out that it was applied to all white surfaces. It was this version of the skin that gained popularity.
When creating the Printstream design, Non oriented himself on what he saw around – quotes, lines of code, text fragments. For example, the heart symbol, which can be seen on the body of M4A1-S Flow of Information – is a reference to the song Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana, and the inscription «B42» - to one of the commands for buying weapons, which was back in CS 1.6. And to decorate the skin with XX symbols the author was inspired by reflective stickers, which he stuck on his computer case.
Perhaps this is the secret of Printstream's popularity – . These are the designs, behind which there are whole stories, a real person who creates them. By the way, the name of the series itself is not an accident either – Non took it from the Java programming language, where it is a command to output information.