Garena Free Fire Key Art
Free Fire reigns as one of the world’s biggest mobile battle royales. With over 1 billion downloads on Google Play alone, Free Fire regularly surpasses 100 million daily active users. Fast paced and wildly popular, players fight it out in quick fire matches,with character based gameplay and seasonal campaigns.
The Garena team, based out in Mexico, hit up Fluid to create Key Art for the Free Fire’s Day of the Dead event, kicking off a creative partnership which rolled on to projects including Winterlands, upcoming seasonal Easter events and work across the Licensing division.
Free Fire is known for its stylized characters and narrative driven aesthetic; vibrant, semi-realistic and quirky characters exist in high-contrast, colourful environments. The style and tone is high-contrast, with boldly painted imagery. With such a distinctive, ownable visual identity, crafting key art was a pleasure; the Garena team had a clear vision in mind for each composition across the three projects, and supplied assets and models for Fluid to bring those visions to life.
The collaboration kicked off with key art for Day of the Dead. Fluid’s brand team set to work blocking out compositions, then painting over the pre-supplied assets and models, retouching to give that signature Free Fire look - arcadey, vibrant, with mystical characters including the iconic La Catrina set within the campaign’s sombre world. The team painted in any elements which weren’t supplied, and the resulting imagery was approved first pass.
Following the success of the first project, Garena tasked the team with key art creation for Winterlands. Quirky, fun and festive, the key art is snowy and surreal, painted out by Fluid in cold whites and purples.
With screenshots as our guide, the team constructed the central igloo, created character outfits and posed and repainted the central Yeti. And yet again, the resulting keyart - fun, vibrant and surreal - sailed through approvals first time.
Our latest project - two Easter themed keyarts - continues our growing creative partnership. Lighthearted, adventurous and playful, we incorporated decorative elements including underwater creatures and seaweed, as our protagonist battles an aquatic monster close to the popular Nurek Dam location.
Ongoing creative partnerships are the heart of Fluid’s success, and we’re excited to see our work with Garena expanding across multiple projects and Fluid divisions - making the most of our full-service capabilities with projects also underway for Stacey’s licensing team.
