SUPERHERO WEDDING

Engaged friends asked me to help out with the program for their wedding. With the groom being a huge fan of comic books, I was asked to create illustrations of the wedding party as superheroes. Also I included sketches of the church and the location of the reception, to add to the illustrated theme. Comic book illustration is an area in which I've never really explored. I always enjoy new challenges, so I did some research.


Aside from working in a new style, there was a lot of challenge in creating superhero identities for a wedding party full of people I didn't really know. I was sent a few pictures of each of the wedding party along with simple explanations of interests or personality traits. I really wanted each member of the party to be their own original character, rather than representing a character that is already part of the comic book world (..such as superman or spiderman..). But with there being practically millions of comic book superheroes already created, it was hard to completely avoid using superhero traits already explored by others. The only superhero identity completely taken from something else, was "THE PLEASER" (the guy with the smiley faces). That costume was designed by the bride of this wedding, for a performance of the play SPIRITS TO ENFORCE, written by Mickle Maher, and put on by Youngblood Theatre Company.
I don't know how dead on I got each character, but from what I heard everyone was happy with the end results.

To create each character, I started with sketches. Once I created a sketch for each character that I was satisfied with, I pulled out the tracing paper, and traced each of my sketches, refining and cleaning up all my lines. Once completed, I cut out all the characters so that I could move them around and find a composition I was happy with. Once in place, I traced those drawings on to one sheet of paper, in their final composition. After that, I scanned the drawing onto my computer. If I have the option, I wont use a computer until I really feel I have to, so everything was done by hand up until it was time to add color. Then I ran it through photoshop. Another reason for doing everything by hand, was that I felt the hand-drawn quality was important to the asthetic of the final product. All the non-illustrated parts for the program (such as text and location-sketch placement) was done by the groom. He had an original vision in his head of how he wanted it to look, so I provided him with the illustrations, and he put the final touches to give the program the look of a comic book.

It was a beautiful wedding, designed and decorated by both the bride and groom. Not only that, but the bride made her dress as well as a few others by people attending the wedding. It was very impressing. Congatulations to the newly weds!