Parks and Recreation Playing Cards

This pack was inspired by the Parks and Recreation TV series, depicting the show's main characters.

Background Information & Inspiration

I'm an illustrator and I specialize in portraits and caricatures. My favorite medium is digital painting and my preferred style is painterly and fairly realistic. However I also create illustrations in other styles such as stylized, cartoony and vector avatars.

I watch a lot of TV shows and one day I noticed that Parks and Recreation has exactly 8 male and 4 female characters, making it the perfect subject for a deck of illustrated cards. So this was a personal project devised as a way to practice my illustration skills, do something different from my usual paintings and pay tribute to one of my favorite comedy shows.

The back of the cards features a Parks and Recreation banner as well as a logo made out of three corncobs - a reference to the Harvest festival in Pawnee. The figure cards feature the characters, portrayed as cartoony caricatures. I tried to capture the characters' personalities and quirks. Assigning them to Kings, Jacks and Queens was very easy and the process of creating the likenesses was stressful but fun.

I chose to limit the palette to two colors and a couple of secondary shades to mimic traditional decks. After a bit of fiddling it turned out to work quite well. Additionally, through an arrangement with NBC the cards have been made available to the cast and crew of the show.