Original DA Upload Date: October 30, 2020
Kyle Broflovski: Remember when life used to be simple and cool?
Eric Cartman: Not really.
Maybe you don’t, but Grunvale never forgets.
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Halloween is not cancelled. Parties and trick-or-treating, maybe those aren’t good ideas right now. But Halloween is not cancelled. As long as there is a human race, or robots interested in human culture, Halloween will never be cancelled! You can’t cancel candy, or horror movies, or pumpkin carving, or dressing up in costumes! And you especially can’t cancel Halloween in the Grunvaliverse, where the United States properly and quickly conquered COVID-19, thanks in part to the GOP being far diminished in power by the time the story’s events take place, and Jill Stein being elected president in 2016.
…yeah, that’s the Grunvaliverse’s 2020. They’re not just ‘our world but anthropomorphic animals’, they’re even on a slightly different timeline than us. No Shortcuts was indeed inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, but since Grunvale is supposed to take place around 2017 on an aforementioned alternate timeline, it was imagined to be a different disease that was spreading throughout the town, and far more localized. More of a SARS than a COVID. Consider this a quasi-sequel to ‘No Shortcuts’ where the gang celebrates the end of the outbreak from that piece, as well as the fact that it’s Halloween.
Anyways, now to the piece.
I knew this piece would be huge in scope, at least for a single panel. 12 characters in all, most I’ve ever drawn for a single piece, at least when it comes to Grunvale. So I knew I had to use a 3:1 aspect ratio for this piece (that’s the ‘Tri-Square’ in the title; meaning it’s three times as wide as it is tall). 2.35:1 was never going to cut it, not for this piece. It’d look too squished. Anyways, the characters in this piece, and the costumes they’re wearing, are:
Gilda Grime: Pauline from the Super Mario games, specifically modeled after her appearance as the mayor of New Donk City in Super Mario Odyssey. Kind of ironic that I originally envisioned Gilda as a character who’d hate red lipstick and dangling earrings, and yet she’s wearing both here. This is supposed to be set when she and the rest of the Tetrad are 12, though, so maybe by this point, she’s okay with both. Besides, I’ve established already that Pauline is Gilda’s favorite of the four main Mario girls.
Margo Hynde: Gaz Membrane from Invader Zim. Her costume here is a fusion of her appearances in the original show and in Enter the Florpus. Also, yes, I know the skull is supposed to be a necklace, shut up. Gaz would totally wear a Misfits shirt if the show wasn’t held back by copyright, or the show was in live-action.
Wendy Wyler: The Wendy Thomas mascot of the Wendy’s fast food chain. Nothing much more to add, other than 12-year-old Wendy obscures her face less than her 11-year-old self. Hence the barrettes in All Hallows’ Eve Costume Vote III and her shorter bangs here.
April Lowry: Amity Blight from The Owl House. I guess here is where I have to announce it, since this is the only opportunity I have to do so; the Amity and Luz costumes for her and Jazz won with 71% of the vote on Twitter and 75% on DA. I thought you guys only gave it such a huge majority because the show is popular, but after drawing it, I have to say you guys made the right choice.
Randy Haggard: Jughead Jones from the Archie comics, specifically modeled after his appearance in Archie’s Weird Mysteries. Fitting, considering that Archie spinoff has a focus on B-movie style horror (blended with network TV-safe comedy, of course), and this is a Halloween-themed piece.
Paddy Hynde: A generic vampire. Not very familiar with Bunnicula, but the idea of a leporine vampire sounds hilarious and awesome to me, so I had to take inspiration from that.
Molly Hynde: A generic zombie, partially inspired by Rottytops from the Shantae games. She’s eating guacamole, because… well, that’s what I imagine zombies would like, if not brains. Also, don’t tell me to draw Molly in a full-out Rottytops cosplay. She’s 11 (12 in this image). Drawing a character of that age cosplaying as Rottytops would be WAY too inappropriate.
Scarlett Olivier: A generic werewolf, as an inversion of the idiom ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’. She’s an ovine in lupine’s clothing!
Nicole Wyler: Charlie Magne from Hazbin Hotel. Funny thing is, she kind of looks like what I imagine Charlie would look like as a sciurine.
August Lowry: Harvey Beaks from… well, Harvey Beaks. Since Margo is dressed as a character from a Nick show that was buried by the network, I thought it’d be fitting that I have her boyfriend also dressed as a character from a Nick show that was buried by the network. Also, Nick, shame on you for how you treated Harvey Beaks. This show was a beautiful poem, but you bastards couldn’t read it.
Jazz Daniels: Luz Noceda from The Owl House. Like with Nicole as Charlie, Jazz here looks like what I imagine Luz would look like as a tigrine. About the only thing giving it away that it’s Jazz, is the eye color and the freckles.
Abby Lowry: A homicidal maniac, because they look just like everyone else. The T-shirt she’s wearing bears one of Wednesday Addams’ quotes from the 1991 film adaptation of The Addams Family.
And, as you may have guessed from what Gilda’s saying, they’re all watching the 1987 Joel Schumacher classic, The Lost Boys, one of my personal favorite 80s movies. It’s been a while since I last saw it, but one scene that’s always stood out to me, is the scene where the vampires trick Michael, played by Jason Patric, into thinking the rice and noodles he’s eating, are maggots and worms. It’s easily one of the most iconic scenes in the film, along with the rail track scene and the climax. And I’ve long headcanoned it to be Wendy’s favorite movie, as a Peter Pan reference. Get it? Wendy and The Lost Boys?
Overall, this took around 20 hours total to finish, same as Don’t Dare Call It Jell-O. As for which piece was more work? Well, ‘Don’t Dare Call It Jell-O’ was worked on across three PSDs and has seven 2.35:1 panels, six completely unique. But I didn’t run into that many issues while making it, as it was carefully planned. This piece, on the other hand, is a single 3:1 panel, mostly worked on in one PSD, with a second used only to add the dialogue and my signature. But there’s also some lighting and layer effects, more complex than could be found in ‘Don’t Dare Call It Jell-O’. And those lighting effects, toward the end, caused ASP to crash multiple times. Which do you find more impressive? Because I think both are more impressive than each other in their own ways.
That’ll be all for this one. Happy Halloween, stay safe out there, and don’t support the GOP!
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Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you credit me as the creator of Grunvale.
The Lost Boys is owned by AT&T through WarnerMedia.
Super Mario Bros. is owned by Nintendo.
Invader Zim and Harvey Beaks are owned by ViacomCBS through Nickelodeon.
The Wendy’s mascot is owned by The Wendy’s Company.
The Owl House is owned by Disney.
The Archie franchise is owned by Archie Comics.
Hazbin Hotel is owned by… I honestly don’t know. But A24 picked up the rights to the show, so I guess them?
The Addams Family is owned by MGM, the 1991 film is owned by ViacomCBS through Paramount Pictures.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 6480×2160 (aspect ratio 3:1).
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 
