180 - "A New Wedding Hope"

A file from August 10, 2007: "A New Wedding Hope".  This was a full-size poster I worked up for the wedding of my friends Sylvia and Earl.  I presented it to them three years ago today, although their anniversary is actually tomorrow.  

The poster is based on the very famous Star Wars promotional poster painted by Tim and Greg Hildebrandt.  In turn, they re-interpreted an existing Star Wars poster laid out by  Tom Jung.  While the Tom Jung poster recreates the look of the movie and characters more faithfully, the Hildebrandt version is more expressionistic and colourful.  Many people consider the Hildebrandt version to be the original definitive Star Wars poster, despite that there were some previous designs already published. 

The Brothers Hildebrandt painted their poster in thirty-six hours.  It helps speed up the process if the layout is already finalized!  I did my poster in about thirty hours, but I missed many of the details and skills that the Hildebrandts used in their work.  I even sampled their colour palette, which sped up my workflow considerably.  It can take a long time to choose the correct colours.  In this case, it makes Sylvia and Earl look orangey-yellow, but I figure that's part of the charm. 

Like the Hildebrandts, I did not have good photographs of the main characters to use as a visual reference, so I just had to wing it.  Luke and Leia don't look much like Mark Hamill or Carrie Fisher in the Star Wars poster, and Sylvia and Earl are similarly romanticized, I think.  A few hours before the poster was to go to the printers, I found out that Sylvia had broken her leg.  I quickly jiggered the artwork to give poor Sylvia a plaster leg cast.  She did walk down the aisle for the wedding, though, since Sylvia is as tough a lady as I have ever met.

This is one of the few pieces that I have actually signed, although even the signature is a bit of an homage to foolery.