Original DA Upload Date: September 21, 2021
Did you remember? It’s the 21st night of September. Again! Bah-de-yah!
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Last year, I made an artwork celebrating Earth, Wind, and Fire Day. It was one of what I’ve started to refer to as the ‘pre-Gadgetbarē’ works, that is, the artworks I drew before anime-style Grunvale and toking Gadget led to an inexplicable but very welcome skyrocketing in viewership in my artwork on DeviantArt. To this day, the original “Earth, Wind, and Fur” has less than 400 views, as opposed to the consistent thousands my artwork now racks up, even the Grunvale/OTOG stuff. But despite its low viewership by my 2021 DA standards, I’ve always wanted to make a sequel that either improved or expanded upon it. I decided to do the latter… by affectionately poking fun at the original music video for the song, and its use of black for the chroma key color. It causes weird transparencies in the original video, like in the shadows on the band members’ hair, and in this comic featuring the Tetrad, it causes Gilda’s nose to disappear. Not in a stylistic way like Big City Greens, a goofy if horrifying way reminiscent of this half-assed Photoshop job replacing eyes with mouths. Which is not something Gilda wants to happen, given she wants to improve upon the previous EWF Day celebration.
Now to the piece.
As you can see here, Roz and Maddie Wyler have been redesigned, to better fit their roles as a mad scientist and lab assistant respectively. Roz now has messy hair and deranged-looking eyes, and Maddie has moles, messy hair, and deformed eyes, with one permanently blackened, either by physical trauma or an accident. Probably both. And yes, this is a permanent change, the final big one needed (for now) to flesh Wendy and he sisters into actual characters. Wendy is an intelligent rocker, Dolly is a kind-hearted fashionista on the autism spectrum, Nicole is a nerdy tomboy on the autism spectrum, and Roz and Maddie are a mad scientist and lab assistant who like going around causing mischief. Now all that needs be done is to flesh out Donovan/Don-hoon and Judy, and the Wyler family is… mostly all set.
Every panel has some visual trickery and planning involved in it in one way or another, and it begins right on the first panel. The background of panel I is not solid black; it’s very slightly off-black with some very faint lighting applied. That, and I actually thought about how Wendy’s dye hair would look against a black screen; even with the recent color update making her hair ever so slightly lighter, it’s still darker than April’s fur. I only wanted Gilda’s nose to fall victim to the chroma key effect, so I decided she’d forgo her hair dye for her natural blonde hair for this artwork.
Panel II; the CRT background and the table. The background is essentially just a bunch of blurred blue 4:3 rectangles, but with a gaussian blur applied to make the effect look less obvious. It’s a basic cinematography detail; keeping the objects in focus not blurred, and everything not in focus blurred. I’ve actually done this as early as Wendy’s sisters’ first appearance in my artwork, but I’ve not really thought to do it again until recently, as I go through my final semester of college, and work to make my artwork look more professional. As for the table, I painted a bunch of brown circles on it to look like coffee stains, to mark repeated places where the twins have put their coffee mugs. Speaking of the coffee mugs, those aren’t drawn lines you’re seeing as steam, it’s a smudge effect.
Panel III; the shelf on which Roz’s computer mouse lies. Even a simple shot like this requires detail; in fact, especially a simple shot like this, because it’s a close-up. And as a close-up, details are magnified. In this case, the scratches on the wood from the mouse being dragged across it so many thousands of times. This was my first time doing such an effect; here, it’s a bunch of overlayed lines against the wooden shelf.
And finally, panel IV, the panel on which the chroma key effect from the original music video is paid homage to. It’s done the same way as in the first “Earth, Wind, and Fur”, this time taking into account that Gilda’s black nose, and the unlit part of the floor, would come out transparent if black were used as the chroma key. And because Margo is not very bright, she’s trying to make it look like she’s picking Gilda’s nose. She’s gonna be disappointed when she finds out the camera only recognizes two dimensions, and that her hand just went behind Gilda. The transparency was achieved with a thresholded image used as a mask, where all but Gilda’s nose and the very darkest wood panels were white. So how did the outlines not come out transparent? That’s easy; I used 1A1A1A as the hex value for it, instead of the usual 000000, or pure black.
Overall, another fun piece for celebrating the 21st night of September. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoyed this year’s EWF Day. Until next time, bah-de-yah!
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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 four panels of this artwork were made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 
