Original DA Upload Date: February 14, 2021
…and also Margo and August are madly in love with each other. Emphasis on the ‘mad’.
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On February 9, 2021, after long having blamed Nickelodeon’s Invader Zim for destroying my standing in Twitter’s animation community and believing that the fans would flip their shit at me over the slightest negative criticism against the show, I decided to finally give the show another chance when I saw that a marathon of the show would be airing on the Nicktoons network all day. And I’m glad I decided to put my bitterness aside, because I finally saw the light. Invader Zim makes nearly every show that has ever aired on Nickelodeon look like a Nick Jr. show, and I mean that in the best way possible. The mature tone, the subversive writing, the humor that strikes a perfect balance between goofy and dark, the animation that still holds up today (minus the 4:3 aspect ratio). There was no Nickelodeon show like it before, and there hasn’t been one like it since. Another marathon is airing this Tuesday (February 16, 2021), and if the quality of what I’ve seen from the batch that aired last Tuesday is the kind of quality I can expect from the whole show, then I’m looking forward to this marathon, and looking forward to watching Enter the Florpus again. Looking forward to watching Enter the Florpus again… I went from having a mental breakdown over the movie, to wanting to see it again. Talk about a 180!
So what does that have to do with this new Margust comic for Valentine’s Day 2021? Well, look at that last panel. I loved what I saw of Invader Zim so much, that I had a MIGHTY NEED!!! A mighty need, to take inspiration from the show to draw Margo’s and August’s expressions. And it worked out perfectly! Invader Zim provided that missing piece my art style needed all along. I needed Invader Zim inspiration to draw angry expressions, and I didn’t even realize it until drawing this comic.
Now to the rest of this piece!
Victory Rolls Sally is awesome. Just putting that out there, Sally Hynde with her hair in 1940s-style victory rolls is one of the individual best Grunvale-related things I’ve ever drawn. I can’t explain why, maybe it’s just because I’m a furry who loves mid-century aesthetics, but the hairstyle suits her so well and I need to draw more of her with her hair like this. Um… next time I have an opportunity to draw the Hyndes in semiformal attire. Good things are better when they’re that white unicorn pony with the purple mane.
Oh, and this comic took me double-digit hours to complete. There’s a lot going on here detail-wise; Charles and Richard Ketcham (Sally’s grandfather and father/Margo, Paddy, and Molly’s great-grandfather and paternal grandfather) making their debuts as portraits that themselves took about two hours of the drawing process, Carol Moss-Lowry (the Lowry matriarch) appearing physically for her debut, every individual grey hair of Harry’s, complicated lighting on both the shots of the Hyndes and the Lowrys, the work put into the final panel (which went through several redraws before I settled on that distorted Giygas-style spiral), and even the deceptively simple appearance of the shots of the door. Speaking of which, let’s talk about those door shots, because I even have a video to show of a shortcut I used to make them.
Since they’re on opposite sides of the same door, Margo’s and August’s panels have the same background. The separate assets and textures for each’s panel were split into two groups, one for Margo’s and one for August’s, that I was able to change on the fly whenever I needed to compare the two, and when it finally came time to export them. The dialogue was written after exporting both panels; I imported the PNGs back into ASP when it came time to add the text layer for the dialogue.
Anyways, I’ll end the description on this, to bring it full-circle. It started on something seemingly unrelated to the artwork, and I’m gonna end it that way too. Also, I don’t feel I’ve gushed about Animal Crossing: New Horizons enough in these descriptions, so I’ll take the opportunity to do so now. One of my favorite villagers, and a current villager on my own Elavnurg, is Drake, a lazy fuliguline who was the last of the original ten to come to my island. I didn’t have any crankies at the time, so when I first saw Drake on one of my island tours, I assumed him to be a cranky due to his angry-looking eyebrows. Much to my surprise, however, he was a lazy villager with the play hobby, just like Clyde (my favorite lazy) and Biskit (a former Elavnurgian who was on my island at the time).
For some weird reason, I find the villagers’ uncommon bouts of anger, like the lazies hating wind chimes and the peppies’ anger about DIY work, to be adorable, especially when they start stomping about. I never abuse my villagers to make it happen, however, because… well, that’s a total dick move. Also, contrary to popular belief, it does not make villagers any more likely to leave. I let the anger happen on its own. Drake’s angry expression is one of my favorites, not because of how pissed he looks, but more the fact that he looks more annoyed than angry when he… well, gets angry. It’s adorable; even Weber looks legitimately pissed when he gets angry, and yet Drake’s is more, ‘ugh, so annoying!’
Anyhoo, Margo’s angry/serious expression in the first panel of this comic, is based on Drake’s angry expression. I don’t care that Animal Crossing thinks personalities are gender-exclusive, I think that, if Margo were a villager, she’d be either a jock villager with the play hobby, or a lazy villager with the fitness hobby. Both are fitting to her canon personality in Grunvale, and the idea that females can’t be jocks or lazy is just silly.
Anyhoo, that’ll be all for this one. Hope y’all had a great Valentine’s Day!
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Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
All five panels of this artwork were made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1). However, the first four panels have been scaled down to 2538×1080, to avoid compression.
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 