CLIENT: Matt and Chris!
DELIVERABLES: B&W digitally illustrated canvas wrapped over aluminum, vellum printed assets, and magnets (see images below)
SCOPE: Matt and Chris, who had commissioned a family portrait the previous year, commissioned me to make an interactive illustration for their wedding. The idea was to have a piece that wedding guests could add to as a creative guestbook that they could keep as an heirloom after the wedding.
Matt really liked the scene in Steven Universe where there's a large hill in the middle of a fantastical plane (where Steven finds Lion). We collaboratively came up with the idea to have a large, leafless tree on a hill, with elements from their 2020 family portrait (floating fish, giraffes, minions, their cats), now with the Radish Spirit from Spirited Away, and an expansive sky that shows both the sun and moon in the same sky, representing the timelessness of Matt and Chris' relationship.
This project was unique because the piece had to be quite large to have large enough elements for writing messages. So, I printed the sketch to be the ideal final canvas size (see below), using post-its as stand-ins for the guestbook elements.
Once the canvas arrived, I started to play with which material we would print the guestbook elements on. We liked the idea of having them on vellum, so it would have a beautiful layered effect. However, we found out really quickly that the white vellum was too transparent for the details on the canvas:
Adding color vellum to the mix made the whole piece pop, so we moved forward with printing a variety of guestbook elements in multiple colors:
On the day of the wedding, I delivered the piece to the venue and we set the piece onto an easel. I provided markers, magnets, and signage explaining how to interact with the "guestbook" illustration:
By the end of the wedding, Matt and Chris had a piece that no longer had bare branches, but rather had a tree full of good intentions and well wishes for the couple. They sent me this picture of the piece in a frame:
FUN FACT: I loved this project so much that I pitched this type of interactive "mural" to Sustain Dane for their 2023 commission!
TOOLS: Wacom Cintiq Pro 24" tablet, Photoshop CC
GUESTBOOK ELEMENTS:
