So a number of you may have seen that in May of last year I got married!
First off, I have to say it was an incredible day, not only for what it meant to my wife and I as a couple, but also because of the amount of fun everyone had on the day.
As you can probably imagine, being an animator and cartoonist, and that being an intrinsic part of who I am, I wanted to do something that would reflect that part of me. I created a funny little video to entertain guests as we signed the register (which went down VERY well) and also posted a video about the rigging process used for the animation parts of the video.
This post is not about the animation.
This post is about the illustrations.
Specifically the illustrations of all of the guests.
As is typical of modern weddings, it seems that every guest invited to the meal and speeches need a ‘favour’ – a little gift or trinket for them to enjoy as they take their seat. Usually these are some form of name place or chocolate or something hand made. I decided I would create drawings of everyone. There was 73 of us.
The original thought was to create meeples (or board game pieces) of the guests. Adopting the visual style already laid out through the wedding invites, that would also flow into the wedding ceremony, I would tweak the faces to the likeness of each guest, The only problem was how minimal the features were in the visual style being used – simple black dot eyes, big smiles and hair, no noses or ears. not a lot to go with. See the invites below.
So here is a photo of the final product. All of the guests (and a Bride and Groom Cake Topper) produced as cardboard play pieces.
It was a tough challenge, finding reference images of each guest, figuring out how to make a likeness in the pre-set art style and colour match it all, but I was (and still am) proud of what I achieved.
Below is a gallery of a few of my favourite designs.
if you want to check out all of the individual faces, I have placed them below.
As I mentioned above, one of the reasons Kate and I had such a great day was because we saw all of our friends and family have a wonderful time. These little illustrations helped make it. The guests were allowed to keep their picture (I have a duplicate for myself), and have seen a number of people frame their pieces, place them as ornamental pieces. even change their social media profile pictures to these.
I myself have used mine as a new form of personal branding.
(HOPEFULLY I WILL GET ROUND TO ADDING A GALLERY OF THESE PIECES AS THEY WERE IN SITU ON THE DAY)
Anyway, I hope you like the work! thanks for reading!
Oz
Oz Durose 