5 ♦ Diamonds | Animation + Illustration

We teamed up with Playing Arts to create a card for their new Future Edition deck. Our 5 of diamonds won a spot to be printed and published in Chapter I.

The goal of this project was not to accurately predict the future but to illustrate (and animate) potential ideas for the future. If it can be imagined, who's to say it cannot be obtained at some point? At the current rate, a lot can happen in the next 100 years. And how do you imagine our future?

Inspired by what we were living at the beginning of the global pandemic in 2020, the idea was that perhaps in the future, masks will not only be used as an instrument to keep us safe, to protect ourselves and others, but they will evolve into a high-tech fashion accessory. Like our smartphones, or smartwatches today. Especially those last ones, that proved already on many occasions how a beautiful iconic piece of tech it's not only that, but it's also something that can prevent, detect, and saves many lives.

We took inspiration from futuristic fashion and thought that masks will become socially accepted in the future. An instrument that doesn't just scream "I'm contagious", but that will be seen as "fun", and "social". We imagined that it could work by tracking the movement of our mouth, in order to replicate it on the screen of the mask, which if swiped, shows different types of lips or filters. This way a futuristic mask will not just work to keep us safe, which will always be its primary function, but while doing that it will work also to make us smile. Literally.

The animation can be seen in augmented reality thanks to ARIA – the AR platform app, simply framing the card with the smartphone.