Play4Equality - Mobile Game
Play4Equality is a narrative mobile game where the player takes part in a short story behind a simulated smartphone interface, through video calling, texting and social media. You play the role of a character in a group of high school friends who want to go to a beach house on vacation.
The challenge given by The Portuguese Red Cross was to make an educational game that connected with their teen audiences, showing complex social issues in an engaging way, such as gender equality, violence in relationships and human trafficking.
The game was developed by FunPunch Games and I had the honor to be part of this project as the main artist, I helped giving life to the characters and worked with talented people to tell this story the best way it could. I have a passion for character design but specially for creating groups of friends, I love thinking about the them as whole and not just individually, their dynamics and giving as much life as possible, so you can say this project was a match made in heaven.
Promotional art for the game
Other 2 versions of the promotional art.
We wanted to be as inclusive as possible, so you have 3 choices for the character you play as, you also can give any name regardless of gender. These are the pictures you have as your phone wallpaper depending on which character you choose.
I started off making the main cast exploration, I had physical descriptions and some idea of their personalities, I like to start with the faces to warm up and get a better idea of the character I’m creating.
After that I thought about how would they express themselves? Which brands of clothes would they wear? I didn’t explore much of their body types because we had a very specific description.
At this stage the story wasn’t ready but we had a pretty good idea of how they would look like (waiting the approval of the client) so I started sketching and exploring their group dynamic (at this point, the playable character wasn’t yet resolved.)
We also didn’t knew exactly what key moments of the story to illustrate yet, so I took inspiration of my own high school days, it was very nostalgic in a sense.
Ana and Marta
Sketch of Ana’s bag, I think you can tell a lot about a person based on their bag, phone case etc. This was me trying to get to know them better
Ricardo was supposed to be someone who never stopped moving, so figuring out how to tell that is what I like the most about these types of drawings, bitten pens are a classic for adhd kids, right? Or was it just me?
These were the final designs sent for the client to choose from. Ricardo, Marta, Ana and Antonio.
A sketch showing their final versions and colors
A key element of the game was the video calls. We stablished a main color for each character and explored different locations and angles. Ana is a more extroverted and open person, so we used warm tones and purple for the more timid Marta.
We wanted to show as much as possible about each character (Ricardo is a gamer for example, and Antonio being obsessed with music.)
Ana’s final expressions for the Face call, these were later animated and we were able to add voices as well. It was bizarre seeing my drawings talking back at me for the first time (in the best way possible).
The final animations were vertical (since it’s a phone video call) but it was important to have a lot of room both on the bottom so you could read what was being said, and on the sides for any kind of edit.
I was careful to not make the same exact expressions on every character, Marta is a shy person so her expressions aren’t as explosive as Ana’s or Ricardo’s. She also hides behind her hand a lot.
At this point the story was almost ready, I started doing exploration for family members and any character that could appear more. Antonio’s brother was definitely my favorite, I had a lot of fun thinking about different scenarios for the socialmedia pics
A few iterations: the “gamer”, the “skater”, the ”I wanna be just like my big bro”, the “Beto” and the “soccer obsessed”. All very real portuguese kids.
Ana’s brother exploration, a surfer and pretty chill dude.
Ana’s family exploration, she’s half Brazilian and we wanted to make that clear for players, only her Dad ended up showing up.
Marta’s boyfriend exploration
*spoilers* I wanted them to be cute, but alas…
Antonio’s girlfriend exploration.
At this point I was already drawing some of the social media pictures, I usually tried 4 different versions of a prompt to see what worked best.
In the beginning we were thinking of having 2 options for the playable characters and you would only choose your physical appearance and name (no gender), so we developed those first. Sketches for social media pictures.
I absolutely love drawings girls and dressing them up, so I did 4 different body types and 4 different versions for each. Some were too similar with our already existing characters so we picked the most interesting one.
Tried some different outfits on our chosen one, but ended up with the original, just changed the color so we could color block them as we did with the previous characters.
For the boy we already knew the body shape, so I tried a few different approaches and outfits. The color was decided to be red so I already had that in mind when figuring out the final outfits.
A quick lineup to check on everybody’s silhouettes, we were trying to have a large variety of body shapes and have at least one character that you could connect with or see yourself represented.
We later were told to add a non-binary option, so I started exploring again.
After figuring out the base shape I went with a few iterations, always having in mind the characters we had already.
Final 4 contestants sent for the client.
Illustration I did for when we launched the game to share on my social media, it had been a while since I drew the gang, it was very nostalgic to say the least. I reused one of my favorite (and very first) sketches.
The game is currently only available in portuguese, but you can download it in both android and apple devices!