Riot details the influence behind VALORANT’s Piedra del Sol skin line

The weapon artists behind the concept of VALORANT Episode Five, Act Two’s Piedra del Sol skin line, which includes skins for the Ghost, Bucky, Judge, Phantom, and Melee, have gone into Aztec history and picked an Aztec god to be represented in each skin.

Each gun in the Piedra del Sol collection corresponds to an Aztec god. The Ghost was influenced by Xolotl, who guided the dead through the underworld, according to Raquel Garcia, the weapon artist who created the skin. The Melee, on the other hand, was based on the Aztec sun stone and Macuahuitl, a “historical Aztec wooden club with obsidian stones embedded as blades,” according to VALORANT‘s art outsource supervisor Sammi Pedregon.

“The Phantom represents Quetzalcoatl (Creation), Bucky is Huitzilopochtli (Sun and War), and the Judge is Tezcatlipoca (Night Sky),” Pedregon said. “We worked closely with our Latin American office to decide on the faces for each gun and to find unique color palettes that best represent each weapon’s deity.”

The most taxing part in bringing Piedra del Sol to VALORANT was transforming the concept into a 3D model and making the weapon look “its best,” according to Pedregon. Riot wanted to ensure that the skin line kept the historical authenticity of the Aztec gods.

The process of bringing the faces of the gods to the game was particularly challenging since the artists had difficulties in the first batches of the weapons. The faces looked “lopsided, small, or uneven” compared to the rest of the details, according to Pedregon. But then, the artists reworked and made adjustments to different sections of each weapon to make it look authentic.

“We went through many iterations of these ancient weapons in order for them to look their best in our modern game,” Pedregon said. “I’m very thankful to our partnered vendor for executing these weapons beautifully, and for Raquel for giving the Ghost the same attention to detail to match the Piedra del Sol skinline beautifully.”

You can get the Piedra del Sol skins as part of the VALORANT Episode Five, Act Two battle pass rewards.