Sibling Showdown
A Fast Paced Family Card Game
Sibling Showdown is a brand new, fast paced card game for family and friends where players fight to collect items, complete tasks, and earn points to become the best “sibling” in the family. It’s an action packed experience that includes bluffing, stealing cards, playing attack and defense cards, and completing chore cards!
This game is currently in its first official launch phase, and physical copies will be available and online in stores in the near future.
This project challenged me to create a new custom character design style outside my normal illustration style, illustrate many conventional (and not so conventional) items, and create scenes and character interactions. I also created and pitched branding concepts for the game, developed the packaging, arrange the layout of the cards, and created a cast of eight unique siblings each with different special powers in collaboration with the game’s developer.
Phase 1: Meeting and Making the Family!
Before any other work was done, my first task was to create the visual style for the set of characters we would be playing as in the game, along with the designs for the characters themselves. I went through several phases of designs, concept work, and revisions before we settled on the final designs for this competitive set of siblings. Here’s a brief look at all the phases that I went through while crafting these characters!
The rudimentary concept art for the two youngest siblings above is a style I experimented with derived from these reference images the client provided. While adorable, concerns were raised about how to convey vast differences of ages with a style this simplified, and didn’t align with the client’s additional desires for the game to have a more bold, line-art based, comic book style illustration approach for the other visual elements of the game.
Alongside the style that the client had initially asked for, I provided a second illustration style pitch that combined elements of my own art style with a much more cartoon-based look that could be better utilized for a wide range of ages and body types. This style that I pitched was what the client decided to move forward with, and I began developing concepts for the rest of the cast of characters.
Below is the initial set of black and white illustrations for the entire family - From left to right, we meet the eldest brother, middle brother, oldest sister, middle sister, the youngest sister and brother, the step brother, and step sister. However, these renders didn’t exactly match the style I had conceptualized for the youngest two siblings, and I worked through several rounds of renders to create a more harmonious style for this cast that still showcased the diversity of heights, ages, and demeanors.
Another element we wanted to bring to the characters was showcasing personality through attire and accessories. We wanted to showcase a sporty siblings, a smart, scholarly sibling, a spunky young sibling, an adorable angel sibling, the moody teenage sibling, the arty sibling, etc. We quickly established roles for the siblings in this phase that remained across all future renders and into the final character designs.
After finalizing the character designs, I experiments with several color palettes provided by the client, and we eventually blended several of these color palettes together, creating our final color scheme for all of the illustrations within the game from characters, to cards, to logos and branding.
The Finished Family!
The oldest siblings are intended to be young adults either still in college or freshly graduated. While typically portrayed in the game as calmer and more neutral than the other siblings, everyone gets annoyed by their brothers and sisters every once in a while…
These are the middle siblings! They’re both shyer siblings, and will often be illustrated as the victims in situations where they’re competing with or failing to do a task with another sibling. The middle sister is a high school freshman, and the middle brother is in middle school!
The youngest siblings are the OGs! These two are usually drawn together and are both extremely adorable and troublesome, both having their own ways to get what they want. The youngest sister is so cute she gets away with everything, while the youngest brother is great at talking his way out of any situation. They’re anywhere between the ages of eight to ten
The step siblings are very competitive and distinct characters, with the step brother fulfilling the edgy, moody teenager role, and the step sister fulfilling the hardcore, tomboyish, sporty sibling who enjoys nothing more than winning.
Phase 2: The Cards!
With the characters finished, the next step was to begin creating the illustrations for all of the cards, ranging from the items that players can collect to complete chores, to the chore cards themselves, action cards, role cards, and bonus cards. The following gallery shows the finalized illustrations for various cards I’ve created for the current version of the game. The client and I worked collaboratively together to develop the layout for the cards with the client’s provided body text and chosen font preferences. These illustrations are fully rendered scenes and interactions, and took the bulk of my time spent working on this project!
Role Cards
Chore and Mini Chore Cards - (Ways to get points!)
Advantage and Disadvantage Cards - (Sabotage!)
Item Cards + Collector’s Item Cards
Card Backs! - The illustration is actually a repurposed box cover design concept!
Additional Note: The logo shown below is the final logo created by the client - I provided several logo concepts and renders, and ultimately the client took what I designed, simplified it way down, and provided the final logo for me to use for the final design. I do not claim credit for the design of the final logo, only previous logo drafts you will see in following images
Here’s some renders of the cards as an actual deck!
Phase 3: Branding / Packaging
The creation of the branding and the packaging was the most collaborative part of the project between myself and the client, with me providing lots of concepts and temporary logos we utilized until the client created the final assets and provided the necessary body and information needed for the packaging. The following images are several concepts we played with for box concepts before reaching our first official version of the game.
As of April of 2026, this is the most recent version of the box and the branding for the game, but there are plans for more cards to be added to the deck, gameplay adjustments to be made, and much more!
More to come!
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