Royal Canadian Mint

The Cost

April 23rd, 2019 commemorates 50 years since Canada took the first steps towards decriminalizing homosexuality. To honour this, the Royal Canadian Mint has created the 'Equality Dollar'.

The starting point of this project is the ‘Equality Dollar’ artwork done by Canadian artist Joe Average. This design inspired our team to use a line motif as a way to connect the different scenes together to build a more powerful narrative. We created a story that animated in and out of different eras in Canadian history, representing the journey from persecution to acknowledgment. We played with characters, lines, and colours to push the style towards a more serious aesthetic to honour the important topic. The look and feel of the animation are meant to connect the viewer to a time in the past, but also our current reality.

Using hand-drawn, 2D and 3D animation techniques, we were able to show the trials and subsequent celebration of the characters. This brief was amazing for our team to tackle, as it offered such strong visual storytelling techniques to be utilized. Our illustration content was also later used throughout the website for banners and key graphic callouts.