Save the Date!

My sister-in-law Alicia and her fiancé Nick had this fun comic book-inspired idea for a "Save the Date" wedding invitation, and they asked me to help illustrate it. I drew up a rough sketch, depicting the two of them as superheroes trying to "save the date" from the evil villain, on my Note II using Sketchbook Pro:

Once I got approval to proceed as well as some notes on certain things they wanted to see in the final version (something like the Hancock Building and/or Sears Tower to identify the background as the Chicago skyline, and that the hero uniforms should be primarily navy and silver to match their wedding colors), I took the illustration into Photoshop and Illustrator and got to work. Something different I did this time around was to use adjustment layers and masks to block out shadows and highlights that gave the art a cel-shading look, and then go over top in another layer to paint in halftones. It saved a lot of time when it came to trying out different color schemes on the fly, and it proved to be pretty helpful.

I feel like I found a good flow, to the point where I lost track of time, finishing the illustration at almost 2 in the morning.  Sleeplessness aside, I'm happy with how it turned out overall, and I enjoyed working on it.