Original DA Upload Date: November 5, 2021
You know what kind of promotional materials I love? The author pictured with their characters. So I made one of myself and the Tetrad!
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Once again, this was done as a college assignment, where we had to do a self-portrait in a unique way. Namely, integrate several elements that make ourselves… well, ourselves. And this is what I came up with; a selfie I took with my iPad and modified in ArtStudio Pro. It’s a bit simplistic for what I usually do, but I still feel it represents me well. Let’s go over the process of making it, and all the little details present in this piece.
First of all, there’s me. Not only did I make the mistake of taking the selfie after I’d showered at night, but I also sat in front of my main light source, when it would’ve been easier to take it facing it. Especially given that there was about a dozen feet of open space behind me. I don’t care about the ‘sitting in front of the light’ part, though. In fact, as a fan of many artists known for implimenting backlighting into their visual style, including poster artist John Alvin and cinematographer Roger Deakins, I actually love backlighting in art. The issue was more with masking out the background; it was complicated during the threshold-masking portion, when it came to judging what was the background and what was my hair. And because hair is inherently hard to mask, the result came out… pretty spotty. Which may have actually worked out in my favor, for reasons I’ll get to later.
Standing behind me is the Tetrad, with Gilda Grime, my central character, placed front-and-center, and Margo, Wendy, and April peeking out from behind her. Full disclosure, this’ll probably be one of the few times Gilda is placed front-and-center in OTOG promotional material. One of the things I’ve studied for my Digital Media degree, is marketing. And after researching the way things are marketed, I know that rabbits/leporines are one of the most marketable kinds of anthropomorphic animal, if not the most marketable. Which means if I want to sell my work, I need to place Margo front-and-center. So where does Gilda go? To the left of Margo. And yes, there is an explanation for this too.
One of the things I like to bring up when it comes to marketing for media, is that, if one actor/character is more marketable than the main actor/character of the work, that more marketable actor/character is placed front-and-center, while the main actor/character is placed to the left. The specific example I bring up when it comes to this, is Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s 1990 masterpiece. Those who haven’t seen the movie and/or know nothing about it, might look at this poster and think Robert De Niro is the star of the film, and Ray Liotta is some secondary player. Those who actually watched the movie, though, would know it’s the other way around. After watching Goodfellas for myself, I came to admire the poster’s design. Even while following that not-so-well-known rule of film marketing, it still is effective in telling you what the characters are like. It works from a marketing standpoint since De Niro is indeed a more recognizable and more popular actor than Liotta, and it works in advertising the film since Henry Hill (Liotta’s character) works under Jimmy Conway (De Niro’s character).
By the way, if you haven’t seen Goodfellas, go see Goodfellas any way you can. It’s one of those films I think everyone should see at least once in their lives. If not for its quality, then at least because it’s considered one of the most culturally important films ever made.
Anyways, that rule of marketing is why I’ll be placing Margo front-and-center on most Grunvale promotional material. Because rabbits/leporines are indeed more marketable than raccoons/procyonines. Besides, Margo is basically written to have most of the funny moments in the stories, so she was bound to end up front-and-center, leporine or not.
And finally, there’s the background… a solid blue. Which seems pretty amateurish, especially given the detailed backgrounds you’ve seen me make before. Well, there’s a reason behind that, too. You see how there’s also a bunch of lines running through this artwork? Those are for the same reason as that blue background. And also my logo being a vibrant green. And the picture as a whole being slightly blurry. Did you catch on yet?
This whole picture is supposed to resemble an inactive VCR on its blue screen, as it would look on a CRT display. A nod to my love of retro culture and technology that has influenced the anthropomorphic animal world that I created. I was tasked to do this portrait in a 1:1 aspect ratio, and by the time I thought of this way of showing my love of retro stuff, most of the canvas was already taken up by myself and my characters. I initially thought of a vaporwave-inspired backdrop, but hardly any of it was visible. And in retrospect, it didn’t do that great in showing my love of retro stuff. Then I thought of the blue screen, one of the most nostalgic sights from my youth. And from there, I thought of the CRT filter, making my logo green, and then blurring the picture slightly. It’s a simple way of showing my love of retro stuff, but it’s effective. Plus, since a lot of chroma key effects from the era of VHS tapes are known to be… pretty laughable by today’s standards (just look at how cheap the chroma key effects in Ghost look compared to today!), I figured a VCR-inspired backdrop gave the selfie part of this portrait, an excuse to look somewhat cheap. Stylistic suck, as TV Tropes puts it.
Anyhoo, that’s all for this one. Until next time, take care.
DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StormyAdlerPoG
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phoenix_of_grunvale/
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/phoenixofgrunvale
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCO…
Discord: Contact me by my tag (Stormy Adler, P.o.G.#1752) for an invite to my server.
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 2000×2000 (aspect ratio 1:1).
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The Gallery of Stormy Adler 
