I wanted to make an illustrative CZ75 as there arguably isn't one. Originally I planned to have a single snake coil around the whole weapon and front mag, but the best place for the head in this arrangement was the grip area which is only visible when inspecting the weapon, and in turn leaving only non-focal points on display in standard viewing. I really didn’t like this option so I had a further play and placed the snake head on the upper part of the weapon. In this area the head had to be very small to fit, so I decided to place many snake heads - which lead me to do some research.

In chinese mythology the Xiangliu was a nine headed snake that brought about desolation and flooding in its wake, it was later slain by Yu the Great. This is great subject material although I didn’t want the design to be too culturally specific so I have not merged the snake bodies or used chinese ideograms to keep the actual piece ambiguous; I’ve placed 4 heads on each side, with one kooky looking one on the spine facing the player -- the triangular sights reminded me of cartoon snake eyes so I went with the novelty option -- it’s an element of interest in POV view anyhow!

The flooding I’ve abstractly represented with the linework on the lower handle, the magazines have abstract numbers incorporated into the linework:‘1’ on the loaded mag, ‘2’ on the reserve. I’ve also placed a few snakes on the grip, I turned an obstacle into an opportunity with the screw head by making it a snake-eye! I also did this twice on the reverse side of the slide.





I worked up the purple/brown/tan fade version first, then painstakingly recoloured the elements for a lime/green/brown option. I’m really happy with both options. With the colours used I couldn't get much transition at all in workbench, so have made the wear mainly affect the magazine area, with the pistol itself just getting more dirty. The difference between permanently on, gradually fading away, and being removed completely was less than 2% variance in the alpha channel so my options were limited!