Creator of 18 TF2 items. God's strongest wokeslopper
Port/Hex my items if you want.
Any friend invites without a comment will be ignored.
Icon by @NumsNam on twitter!

All items I've made are featured in the first page of my inventory!

You may also know me from: The Gnarliest Garb, The G.I. Jaw, Grunt of the Litter, or the Merry Merchant on the workshop. Yes, I'm responsible. No, I won't be taking down any of my submissions.

Constructive criticism is seen, but criticism that only identifies 'problems' without proposing solutions isn't helpful, and criticism that seeks to tear down rather than build up will be ignored.

Twitter: @ikesCG
Reddit: user/YungIkeSly



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RE: TF2's style and my design philosophy:

There isn't really a clear and concrete definition of what "tf2's style" is even based on valve's own words and actions. But I have a few general rules of thumb;

I think if the item's base unpainted palette doesn't break the typical TF2 character palette, maintains important color delineations (boundaries of color regions) on the class (or more importantly doesn't dilute team color where it normally is; adding more team color over neutral regions is seldom an issue), maintains silhouette (hard not to do since silhouette is heavily based on class posture which is highly distinct regardless of cosmetics, though it's still very possible to go overboard with this), and is textured in a way that's not excessively detailed (this is subjective but I would look to work by users like Sparkwire as an example of the boundary for this, anything beyond his work's level of detail might be excessive), an item can be considered "in-style".

Paint regions should avoid covering much or any base team coloring (this is flexible depending on the class, e.g. demo's collar is not an important team color region), but beyond that I don't see any responsibility for creators to diminish their paint regions purely as a matter of taste. Valve made the mistake of adding a few problematic paints, but those shouldn't sacrifice the dozens of paint colors that CAN and DO look really good on large regions. You shouldn't be designing for the tackiest player, you should be designing for the (IMO more common) player whose taste aligns with the game's palette and more appropriate paints.

The best person you can look to for stylistic pointers is probably Rob Laro (larolaro, creator of the shogun stuff, and the item set the black box is part of), though I think it's fine to go over the edge with cosmetics since TF2 doesn't actually have a concrete style guide for most types of materials; the base class models are mostly flat colors with AO and were clearly made that way to save time in production (many classes' texture work is clearly rushed) and so "finishing that work" via your interpretation of the style markers is fine

I'm a bit of a radical when it comes to setting since TF2's setting is not just 60s americana and spy thrillers but a melting pot of myriad influences and is only vaguely set in the late 60s/early 70s. Robin Walker pointed to the Shogun stuff (by rob laro) as some of the items he thinks fit the style the best, and those items "break" character AND setting pretty heavily (medic is not a geisha girl and has no business being a geisha girl if we're judging purely by his character, and the samurai armor is a few centuries out of chic)



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RE: My alt workshop account

I want to clear up a quick thing I've heard people accuse me of for my alt workshop account (currently named ":)" ). There's no way to increase the revenue you gain by adding more contributors to an item that are linked to your own bank; the split of revenue for an item is a fixed value, and every contributor on the item gets a cut of that split. So if, say, an item makes 10 cents per case key sale, the revenue splits on that will divide from those 10 cents no matter how many users are on it.

My workshop account was made to address an issue valve told me I could not change on this account; I started making TF2 items when I was 14, before I had my own bank account. When I got my first item in at 16, the bank info connected to the account was my father's. We had assumed that we could change this down the line, but as it turned out, if you get an item accepted to TF2 there is no way to change the name associated with the bank account on file (in this case my father) except in the case of a legal name change (which would only apply if the bank attached was your own account to begin with!).

As a result, the alt account was made to allow me to get revenue directed to my bank account. I add a 1% split on my main account so that I can get the self-made on main, but all the revenue I get goes through the alt account; except for that 1%, which means I'm technically losing a margin of money by doing this.

I just wanted to make this clear in case anyone had any confusion; users in the past have spammed my item comments sections with accusations of fraudulent behavior by doing this, and I felt like it needed to be clarified. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I also use it as an alt account if I ever want one for gaming, so that's why it might appear to be online and gaming periodically.