Original DA Upload Date: January 1, 2022
Thank you for the laughs, Betty.
Happy another year for us to immediately call terrible when a beloved celebrity dies! Let’s kick off 2022 the same way I kicked off last year… a timeskip artwork showing what life is like for my characters on the strict timeline!
It’s 2022, over half a decade after Gilda Grime met and befriended Margo Hynde, Wendy Wyler, and April Lowry (the story now begins in what’s imagined as fall of 2016), forming a group known as ‘the Oddball Tetrad’. The Tetrad, now sixteen, are old enough to drive, and have their own ways of getting around. Margo and Wendy have their own motorcycles, April drives the Lowry family car, and Gilda takes public transportation, including rides from her friends and acquaintances. During the summer, Wendy’s sister, Dolly Wyler-Voronov, gave birth to a daughter named Sonja, whose name was chosen for being a Romanization of the Koirean (Dolly’s ancestry) ‘Soon-ja’, that also ended up being a Walrussian (Dolly’s husband Gregory’s ancestry) name.
The Voronovs have decided to celebrate New Year’s at Marilyn Springsteen’s Retro Diner and Arcade, and the Tetrad have all been assigned to night shifts at the restaurant, thus making them unavailable to babysit Sonja. When April suggests her younger sister Abby for the gig, Dolly is initially hesitant, as the younger Lowry had bullied her into quitting babysitting years before, and to this day is intimidated by her due to her 6’6″ stature at a mere 13 years of age. But Greg, desperate for a babysitter on such short notice, has insisted upon her. No worries, though. At least Abby is getting paid, even if she’s gonna be missing out on the chance to party. Plus, the silence will help her get caught up on any homework she has to do, when Sonja’s not crying for her bottle.
Now to the artwork.
I brought up last time that I don’t feel I’m as good as I want to be with staging, especially when 3D space is involved. I still plan on outsourcing my covers, however, this time, I was more considerate of vanishing point. Most of the scenery here uses a one-point perspective, including the walls, floor texture, couch, and Sonja’s crib. For the crib, I used a bunch basic cubes and rectangular prisms, and built off of that. The crib’s frame is made of bamboo, and the mesh is made of vines. As for the couch, I just drew a bunch of blobular shapes and extruded them over perspective lines. It’s not a perfect go at perspective, but I feel that it’s effective at illustrating depth.
Sonja’s design is one I thought up on the spot. Since I imagine the Grunvaliverse operating by Pokemon rules of breeding (individuals can breed within their class [for example, Mammalia x Mammalia and Reptilia x Reptilia], but not with other classes [Arachnida x Insecta, Cephalopoda x Asteroidea, and whatever other combination one can think of don’t happen], and they will always come out as whatever the mother is [for instance, a lupine mother will always have a lupine child regardless of the father), Sonja is an Eastern grey sciurine like her mother. However, she has inherited the big black eyes, pink nose, and brown curly hair of her Siberian flying sciurine father. She’s also quite small, coming in at the bottom 30% of four-month-olds in terms of height, a trait inherited from the Wyler side of the family. (all of the Wyler sisters aside from Nicole also had bottom-30% height at four months). However, she’s also quite heavy for her age, which is a trait from both sides of the family (Dolly was obese when she was a child and Gregory has been overweight all his life).
Being an infant, Sonja wouldn’t have much of a personality. She mostly just stares at things and sleeps, and mostly only cries when she wants her bottle. Dolly believes that this is a sign that she may be on the spectrum, although, even during the main chronology (i.e. when the Tetrad is 11), she knows that she’d only start to know for sure once she turns six months. I imagine Dolly is actually hoping that Sonja end up diagnosed as being a speccy, as she feels that she, as a speccy herself, would be able to handle being a mother best if she is. I also imagine Nicole is expecting this outcome, as she (also a speccy) wants to introduce her niece to baseball early on, and feels it will be easier to get her hooked on it if she ends up on the spectrum.
Yeah, I know, the way I drew Abby holding Sonja is a bit of an oof. I realized that after the fact. At least I have cartoon physics to excuse it, even if Grunvale/OTOG isn’t supposed to be cartoony the same way something like Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry is. Also, since Sonja’s wrapped up in a blanket, I can still say that Sonja’s in the fetal position, and Abby’s pressing her wrist against her knees. Still though, next time I have to draw a character holding a baby, I’ll… come up with a pose better than this, less cartoonish than this. Don’t you go holding a baby like this, anyone reading this description. Especially if you’re a babysitter or aunt or uncle.
Oh! Speaking of being an uncle. This artwork was partially inspired by my own sister Audrie, who, as I write these words, is expecting her third child, a son. It runs in both my family and my brother-in-law’s family to have three kids; I’m one of three (including my sister, of course), my mother’s one of three, my father’s one of three, and my brother-in-law is one of three as well. Hm, come to think of it, that must’ve subliminally influenced my own work already. The Hyndes and the Lowrys are families with three kids as well! Anyhoo, I wish good luck to my sister, and my, as of me writing these words, yet-to-be-born nephew. And to my nephew, who, out of respect for his mother’s privacy at the beginning of 2022 I will not name here…
Nephew, if you’re reading these words years from now in a world that hasn’t been overwhelmed by climate change, thank you for playing a role in inspiring this artwork, and the development of your uncle’s most well-known work. Your mother actually read a portion of an early draft of “Cross Carpenters” during the summer of 2021, and praised the way I wrote April’s Scottish accent into her dialogue. That was a highlight of that summer for both of us.
Now back to the rest of my audience.
In addition to the new birth in my family, this artwork was also inspired by my post-graduation situation, where I now have to look for employment now that I have completed the requirements for a bachelor’s degree. Being an employed person, particularly one who works shifts, means occasionally missing things you’d rather see or go to. I already know that from being a grocery store maintainence worker who often missed Loud House premieres for work. And that downside to being a worker inspired this piece. Since I’m on a search for employment, I decided that, instead of drawing a party scene like last year, it’d be fitting to scale it back and draw a scenario of someone who had a miss a party for work. In this case, teenage Abby watching her former babysitter’s own baby. At least she gets to see the lasers form the Roman numerals for the new year!
Oh, and of course, pixelated versions of the New Year’s specials for 2020 and 2021 appear here, as photos hung on a wall. This decision was partly inspired by how I used Zigilda Zagrime and Wendirisu Wyler (80s AU) as a pixelated asset in This Shouldn’t Still Be a Rivalry, both of them being Pokemon/National Retro Day hybrids.
That’s pretty much it for the artwork itself. However, I still have a few more things I’d like to say. One, the next artwork will be a commission for KamenRiderLoud, a Twitter user who has had a DeviantArt account in the past, but from what I can tell, doesn’t use it anymore and I forgot what his DA account was called. Commissions are… pseudo-closed to the rest of you for now. I am doing this commission now, but they’re not officially open for everyone else yet. This is more a test run. However, when I do open commissions, they will cost $20 a panel, the price of the commission I’m doing right now. Also, this should go wihout saying, but any commissions for NSFW content involving minors, or content to be turned into an NFT, will be immediately rejected, and the client blacklisted.
Two, happy 20th to the one I consider my closest social media friend, jemibuni. If the rest of you have been following me for a while, you’d know the 2020 New Year’s special was actually a birthday gift for her. Jenna has since decided that her anthropomorphic self is a leporine, but I still look back with fond memories of drawing that artwork. Partly because it’s a memento of the pre-COVID world, but also because it marked my entry to the Cookie Run fandom, and the start of me interacting with her on a regular basis. Thank you for the joy you bring me and everyone else in our community, Jenna. This world needs more people like you.
Finally, to the rest of you, happy new year. Let’s make 2022 the best year it can be for being the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the West (fourth in the East). Until next time, take care, stay safe, GET VACCINATED, and have a good one.
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/OTOG is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
Cookie Run is owned by Devsisters.
Jenna’s likeness is her own, even though the sciurine version of her Grunvalified self has been disowned.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 