Art Archive For @57PaperCranes

   Alter Ego is a social deduction game for 5-12 players where the forces of good and evil go head to head to either conceal or reveal their identities, and save the city or burn it down. It was inspired by the popular party game mafia, iterating on its premise and reimagining it in a superhero setting. Each player is dealt a role with specific rules which they then enact secretly every round in the “night time” portion of the game—however, when day rolls around, everyone appears as a mild mannered civilian. It’s the civilians’ and heroes’ jobs to root out who the villains are without revealing too much about their own alter egos (so they don’t become a target next round), and it’s the villains’ job to kill as many good guys and wreak as much havoc as possible before the end of the game. The fate of the city rests in your hands. Will you let the villains win?

         Each of the character cards in Alter Egos was hand painted in order to capture the unique spirit each role embodies. I used expressive brushwork as well as strong lighting and intentional limited color pallets to emphasize each role’s personality and how the teams are connected. All three of the villains have very dramatic bright green lighting which starkly sets them apart from the rest of the roles. The Hero, Sidekick, and Traitor cards all heavily feature red and blue, and their backgrounds feed into each other, demonstrating their connection, but each role is differentiated in how these colors are treated. The Sidekick card features bright, optimistic, almost naive pinks and periwinkle blue shades, while the Hero card features a deeper blue and more standard cadmium red, attempting to convey the concept of an archetypal Hero. The Traitor card, on the other hand, is darker and moodier, keeping that bright cadmium red, but trading the blues for blacks and adding in some of the villainous green to symbolize how this role appears to be a part of the hero team, but is actually on the villain team. The final six cards all use the same limited palette of dioxazine violet, orange oxide, crimson oxide, azo green, and titanium white, with a few cards featuring red gold and ultramarine blue. While the Detective and the Granny are named cards, they are still classified as civilians, so they share this same color identity.