Original DA Upload Date: December 20, 2019
Yeah, Gilda ain’t gonna fall for that, Margo. Not after eleven years of living with abusive brothers that pranked her that same way.
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This is just a triple-panel comic I drew to celebrate the official start of Winter. Which is actually, technically tomorrow, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to be a day early. Especially considering my nostalgia for snow.
You see, I live in a part of the US, that pretty much only experiences Winter in name only. Jacksonville, FL does frequently see days in the 50s Fahrenheit this time of year, but that’s it. Below-freezing temperatures and especially snow are almost unheard of. New York, on the other hand, is on the other extreme. In New York, I’ve experienced Winter days with temperatures measured in the negative degrees Fahrenheit, and snow measured in feet. And of course, in the Grunvaliverse, the town of Grunvale, being an upstate New Pork town based on my own hometown of Guilderland, NY, would experience those freezing temperatures and high snows. Hell, where I am writing the web novel so far, a big blizzard is coming into town.
But enough about the goings on of the big snowstorm in the web novel, let’s talk about the goings on of the big snowstorm in this comic!
Snow is pretty easy to draw. I can see why Norm of the North and Arctic Dogs chose snowy settings for their movies, because at the beginner level (or in those movies’ cases, the idiot level), snow doesn’t take much effort at all to draw or render. However, I’m not a beginner. So I actually put some effort into giving the snow texture, more than just solid white. It’s mostly compact, with just a little bit of flakiness at its top. Just like actual snow. To give a feel of the flow of time throughout the comic, I made sure to have the clouds rolling in the background, and the snow interface randomized in each panel. Compare each panel; the clouds and snow are different in each. That’s attention to detail for ya.
As for the outfits the girls are wearing here, I actually drew concept art of Gilda’s winter clothes all the way back last year, but only now did I have an opportunity to draw it again. Unlike a lot of old Grunvale elements I’ve since scrapped, I found the outfit good enough to keep. It fits Gilda well. Margo’s outfit, on the other hand, is entirely new. The parka was inspired by that of Kenny McCormick, as well as Ronnie Anne Santiago, both her usual hoodie, and the parka we’ve seen her wear in official artwork. Also, as this is set in the cold, I decided to show Gilda and Margo getting frostnip, which is shown here by the pink of their cheeks, noses and ears (all of which are some of the most suspectible to frostbite).
A Twitter friend of mine, AnimatedAntic, had trouble reading Margo’s dialogue, due to the snowy interface obscuring the speech bubbles. I can understand the criticism, however, I do have an explanation as to why I did the speech bubbles the way I did. That being, I thought it would look awkward having Gilda and Margo standing behind the interface, but their speech bubbles appearing in front of it. I did experiment with the snow turning transparent over the speech bubble, but it just looked awkward to me, so I decided to just have all the snow be opaque instead. Probably not the best idea in practice, but I tend to think in terms of how things would actually appear. And the way I was thinking, if a speech bubble were to actually appear above Gilda and Margo, it would be obscured by the snow. For those having trouble reading the speech bubble, Margo’s saying:
“Hey, look, Gilda! Lemon snow! Don’t you wanna try it? I mean, you do like lemons, don’t ya?”
Anyways, that’ll be all for this piece. Happy Winter, everyone!
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Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 3: Now Available on DA!
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Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me.
All three panels of this artwork were made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1. However, they have been compressed to 1080p for this upload, to allow for easier loading.
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 