A LOOK INTO THE MAKING OF A SYMBOL - THE ZOTAC CUP MASTERS TROPHY

The ZOTAC CUP MASTERS esports tournament are grand events where the best of the best PC gaming professionals gather to compete for two very important things. One of them is of course the prize pool which is important and well-earned but ultimately a material object that allows the team to continue on in their profession where they’ve trained for an uncollectable amount of mins for. The second is the title of Champion. A title only achieved if you are the best of the best and intangible in form. Well, sort of. With the Title of Champion, you get a trophy to symbolize it in all its glory. A fully tangible object that can be placed on full display for any and every one to see.

ZOTAC has two ZOTAC CUP MASTERS under their belts with DOTA 2 and STARCRAFT Remastered but the third installment of the ZOTAC CUP MASTERS is the largest and the grandest. Why? Previous events were all global but now there will be Regional Finals in Asia, Europe, and Americas with the Grand Finals happening in Hong Kong. It’s also been equipped with the largest prize pool in the ZOTAC CUP MASTERS history. A grand $300,000 USD. Now, it needs a Grand trophy to match.

The requirement for the trophy was that it needed to be eye catching, unique, memorable, and grand. We went to our in-house designers and they sketched up a few designs and after a few rounds of back and forth and fine tuning, we had the design. Next was to get it into a 3D design environment to get it wire-framed, mapped, and detailed in all its pixel-filled visual glory. (a perfect task for the all new ZOTAC ZBOX Q SERIES with NVIDIA Quadro Mini PCs - https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/zbox-q-series)

The team went to work and the prototyping kicked off. Yes, even trophies undergo prototyping. ZOTAC is a manufacturer of Mini PCs, Graphics Cards, Desktop Gaming PCs, External Thunderbolt Boxes, and much more. ZOTAC also designs all their products in house. It made sense to apply similar processes to the trophy too. New to the process is the clay mold process. You may have seen or heard of it as it’s a widely used standard practice in the auto industry. Starting from the base and moving our way upwards, the trophy slowly takes shape. 

Starting with the foundation and base.

Topping the design off with the top-head portion.

Now to flush out the design and details

With the clay mold design complete with details, into the baking oven it goes

Fresh out the oven with that lovely baked clay aroma filling the room

On goes the paint and coating for an almost final finish.

The ZOTAC CUP MASTERS trophy will make its live debut at the ZOTAC CUP MASTERS CS:GO Asia Regional Finals happening June 5-9 2018 at Computex Taipei, Taiwan and we can’t wait to find out where its new home will be. Watch the live stream and learn all about the event.

Livestream – twitch.tv/zotac_cup
Other languages – https://www.zotac.com/zotac-cup-masters
Event Landing Page - https://www.zotac.com/page/asia-zotac-cup-masters-csgo