Skin Makeover Project #1: M4A4 | Temukau
CS has plenty of popular skins with fun craft ideas and distinctive artwork. Players can build some great combinations around each skin’s visual theme. The anime-style M4A4 | Temukau is especially popular: it shows an SAS operator throwing smoke to force back the terrorists. So in this issue, let’s take a look at some of the best Sticker combinations for the M4A4 | Temukau~
Pokémon
I choose you! This combo is probably the most popular craft for this skin. The character’s throwing pose lines up perfectly with the setup—whoever came up with it must be a genius. So how do you build it? If you want the original Poké Ball look, you’ll need one red Katowice 2019 round Sticker, one white shield (Krakow 2017), one DreamHack Cluj-Napoca 2015 player autograph stickers with the small team logo — Team EnVyUs is used here — and two Sticker for covering; this example uses Cloud9 (Holo) | Rio 2022.
As shown in the image, first lock in the placement—usually just above the magazine. Start with a red circular Sticker, then place the white shield. Above the white shield, apply the 15DH Sticker with the logo; flipping it will hide the signature. Then use two Rio Cloud9 Stickers to cover the white shield. And that’s the craft done~
For Stickers you want to use to cover wear, go with blue ones that are close to the background, like Rio Cloud9, KOI | Copenhagen 2024, or Noble Squad. The KOI series is the most budget-friendly, and Noble Squad also looks great:
Noble Squad (Holo):
Likewise, you can swap out the parts in this craft and make a Poké Ball in whatever shape and color you like. For Katowice 2019, you can pick Sticker options in red, blue, green, orange, pink, silver, gold, and more. The shield can also be done in colorways like blue, green, gold, or silver, while the small logo can use older Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team EnVyUs, G2 Esports, Cloud9, Natus Vincere, and so on... mix and match however you want! For example, the blue Ninjas in Pyjamas Poké Ball shown here:
Fortune-Telling Magic Ball 🔮
This is also one of the player community’s favorite craft ideas. With the character’s outstretched hand, this Sticker makes it look like she’s holding a magic ball for fortune-telling. On this Lenticular Sticker, you can also see A site or B site displayed inside. You only need one Tactical Magic Ball to make this work, so it’s a very simple combo.
hit A or go B... Such a hard call. Whatever, rush into apps / jump into the second-floor position!
Crown
Wield the crown of power and fire off fireballs and lightning! You’ll need Ground Zero, Trajectory, Detonation, and Blitzkrieg. The shockwave in the Ground Zero Sticker Easter egg looks just like a crown.
As shown, just place the Sticker and adjust the rotation angle. It's a pretty simple craft.
You can make one the same way....
Broken Fang Collection - Temukau
Just changing the color makes it look seriously badass! This skin looks like it’s been affected by the black mist leaked from the Dreams & Nightmares Case, turning it into a Ruined Legion-style craft, paired with the classic cyan crown and elemental Sticker ability effects. Ground Zero, Detonation, and Trajectory all have green shiny versions, so just adjust the placement to work with the wear / float.
You can also pair it with other elemental Stickers to change the “skill effect”:
Cute StatTrak™
How much is your cuteness by the pound? I’ll take it all! I want to spend my whole life chasing cute things. Use Stickers to build a craft and dress up the character! You’ll need one StatTrak™, one Kawaii Killer CT, one Kawaii Killer T, one other Sticker — here we’re using Kawaii Killer CT — and one Ribbon. Since StatTrak™ is a Lenticular Sticker, when you shift the angle or inspect the skin, the needle moves left and right, pointing at the cutest character. Super fun!
To avoid placement-order issues, apply Kawaii Killer CT first, then place Kawaii Killer CT and Kawaii Killer T, and finally add the StatTrak™. The Ribbon is just there to decorate the character on the skin and doesn’t interact with the Sticker setup, so you can place it at any step. The pointer keeps spinning because it can’t point to the cutest you~
starry-eyed
Some players are especially into the starry-eyed look, and this Japanese-style skin is perfect for that kind of craft. It’s super simple: just use two FlipSid3 Tactics AK-47 craft Stickers, flipped, and the combo is done. The AK Easter egg on this Sticker also blends right into the dark part of the character’s body armor, making the starry-eyed detail pull even more attention.
There are two other Stickers in the game that can be scraped to reveal a star and used for this craft. One is Little Friend, but the eyes are too close together, so it does not really work here. The other is the Glitter version of Icing on the Cake. This Sticker is the Glitter version, with a reflective metallic effect, and the scraped Easter egg is very clean: just a single star. The star is quite small, though. The result is shown below:
You can also swap out what the character is holding for other elements, like Sparkling Blue Heart:
Blue skin... heart 💙... so why not just craft one big heart?
Blue Water Heart
You’ll need two Flow stickers and two Wave stickers. Apply them at the positions and angles shown to build one large heart with matching colors. You can also place a Blue Heart 💙 in the character’s left hand:
A big heart for you.
About wear / float:
A lot of players love this skin, but it has one trait: it seriously wears badly / is very float-sensitive. Because of its custom hand-drawn look, once the wear / float gets a bit higher, the artwork starts getting scraped off and exposes the plain black base underneath. That creates a big price gap between floats, which is pretty painful for players on a tighter budget who are also perfectionists. The example shown is a 0.20 Field-Tested Temukau. It only has about 20% wear / float, but you can already see the magazine has been scraped down to a black edge, which looks pretty rough. So let’s manually touch up this skin with Stickers!
A common community craft idea is to edge it out with blue Stickers, like KOI | Copenhagen 2024 or other blue Stickers. Here, you can take it a step further by covering the magazine while also using the Stickers to tie the craft together. Pick two cool-toned Stickers and two cute character Stickers so you get both better visual balance and coverage for the wear / float:
Mix and Match Rio 2022 Glitter stickers Colors However You Like
Some Stickers that work especially well here are Rio 2022 Glitter stickers. Pick two Cloud9 player autograph stickers in the closest matching colors, plus one kawaii character Sticker and one signature Sticker. Place the character and autograph diagonally opposite each other, and on the magazine you can use a Rainbow Trail to help cover the model texture that shows wear / float easily:
Blue is the closest match, but you can also go with other color themes, like purple or green:
About Charms:
This skin works well with white and blue Charms, like Pop Art, Drip, or Diamond Dog, but you can also try some different craft ideas:
Monocle
Missing Link Charms have a metal ring, while Small Arms Charms do not. So pick a Charm from the Missing Link Charms collection and place it slightly above and to the right of the eye, as shown in the image. When you inspect the weapon, the Monocle will even sway from side to side. (This combo is more of a fun gimmick and will block part of the front artwork.)
Because the character is nearsighted, she needs glasses to aim properly and toss that utility straight into your heart.
If you’ve got a better craft idea, feel free to share it with the Player Showcase community!
Related Skins:
https://buff.market/market/goods/cs2/M4A4%20%7C%20Temukau%20%28Field-Tested%29