Bird in the Hand Cards

The Brief
Create a deck of playing cards for a hypothetical board game company. Pitch a theme and style, then design 54 cards (4 suits of 13 cards, plus 2 jokers) and the deck box.
The Solution
I am a huge, unashamed nerd about birds, so naturally I took the opportunity to base a whole design and illustration project around them. The cards feature parrots as Kings, water birds as Queens, and Fairy-wrens and robins (aka small round birds, a very scientifically sound category) as Jacks - all hand-drawn in fineliner, scanned and digitised. 
I love creating and working with tight colour palettes, so the artwork was primarily black and white, with each suit also having a feature colour - yellow for spades, red for hearts, pink for diamonds, and blue for clubs. The birds in each suit were chosen to match this feature colour.
It was important to me that the deck would be functional for a range of card games, so I maintained the standard red and black dichotomy for the numbers and icons and used the feature colours elsewhere in the designs. 
Software
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Procreate
Photograph of approximately 20 playing cards arranged in a neat vertical brick pattern. The King, Queen, Jack and Joker cards feature fineliner illustrations of birds native to Australasia, custom suit icons and the name of the featured bird. The cards are primarily black and white, with one feature colour highlighted on each bird based on the suit.
The Process
A collection of early development sketches and media trials, showing different potential approaches to the illustrations, including vector images, linoprint and fineliner-style digital artwork, as well as an extensive colour-coded page documenting the process of choosing the bird categories, feature colours and individual bird species that would appear on the cards.
First, research. 
Then a bunch of media trials, experimenting with different illustration styles, and many concepts that ultimately couldn't match how much I love a detailed fineliner drawing.
Next - the (frankly slightly ridiculous) process of deciding on colours, categories of birds, and individual species.
Scans of detailed, black and white fineliner drawings of a Prink Robin, an Australasian Shoveler and a Superb Fairy-wren.
A lot of time spent sketching, inking, burning through fineliners, scanning, digitising, editing and arranging.
And then custom iconography. A flowering gum pattern for the card backs, designed to be as close to identical from one card to another as possible given the available printing and trimming processes. And a tuck box to finish it off.
The Grand Finale
Two photos arranged side by side showing the front and back of the deck box on a wooden table. The front of the packaging features several of the bird illustrations, while the back features the Australian Magpie.
Photo of the deck box laying on top of the deck of cards. The front and right side of the box are visible in the image. The text on the right side of the box reads "Playing Cards - 54 Card Deck"
Photo of the four king cards laid out on a wooden table. The card illustrations depict an Australian Ringneck Parrot (Port Lincoln subspecies), a Gang-gang Cockatoo, a Galah, and a Pale-headed Rosella.
Photo of the four queen cards laid out on a wooden table. The card illustrations depict a Pied Heron, Australasian Swamphen, Australian Pelican and an Australasian Shoveler..
Photo of the four jack cards laid out on a wooden table. The card illustrations depict an Eastern Yellow Robin, A Red-backed Fairy-wren, a Pink Robin and a Superb Fairy-wren.
Two closeup photos of several cards arranged in a vertical brick pattern on a wooden table. The photos focus on the Jack of Spades, which features the Eastern Yellow Robin, and the Queen of Clubs, which depicts the Australasian Shoveler,
A photo of the the playing cards laid out on a wooden table, taken from directly overhead. The cards are arranged in a vertical brick pattern. SOme cards are face up, and others are face down, showing the repeating gum blossom pattern on the reverse.
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