Welcome to an alternate universe of Grunvale dominated by super saiyans, magical transformations and epilepsy-triggering rodents!
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Nah, it’s just Gilda and Margo drawn in an art style inspired by 90s anime. Which one specifically? Uh, well, Slayers was an influence on the style, since Margo already looks like and has cosplayed as Lina. But I’ve also been playing a lot of Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom and Shining Force II lately on Sega Genesis Classics for the Switch. So I guess you could say my experiences playing both games were also an inspiration.
Oh, by the way, I do plan on eventually doing a blog series on my WordPress where I review every single Sega Genesis game (at least the NTSC and PAL-region ones), FrameRater/John Riggs style. So be on the lookout for that. The Sega Genesis is one of my favorite consoles ever, I feel like the console deserves the treatment of a whole series going into its games.
Now to the piece.
First of all, I would like to give thanks to JennALT-01angel for helping me translate “Grunvale” to Japanese. I came up with ‘グリーンバレー’ (Gurīnbarē) for the title, as it means ‘green valley’ in Japanese. And then I consulted her about whether it was correct. And long answer short, yes it was. Thanks, Jenna! Your help is always appreciated!
As for the logo, it’s just CGA colors overlayed over the Japanese ‘グリーンバレー’ portion of the logo, and then the English ‘Grunvale’ portion outlined in green Trajan font over the Japanese title. I’ve long chosen for Grunvale‘s logo to be written in Trajan, as it was one of the most commonly-used fonts in graphic design in the 1990s. But its use is even more appropriate here since, as I stated above, the main inspiration was 90s anime and JRPGs.
If you look closely, not only did I take 1990s inspiration with the design and style of the piece, but I also applied filters and gaussian blurring to it, similar to what I used last time. And I also gave the piece a retro-style background made with brushes meant to simulate gouache and acrylics. That’s Yonderpine they’re standing on, and Hatcher in the far background. Tried to include the town itself, but… yeah, backgrounds are not my specialty. Character design is.
Anyhoo, that’ll be all for this one. Stay tuned for more of my work!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me. This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
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!
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).
A little celebratory artwork for Earth, Wind & Fire Day (the 21st night of September). Ba-de-yah!
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The 1978 song by Earth, Wind & Fire, “September”, is one of the most recognizable of the entire disco genre, and for good reason. It has a catchy beat, funky instrumentation, and one of the most classic pieces of gibberish ever sung. Is it overplayed? Oh, definitely. But that doesn’t change its status as a fun party song, and one of the signature songs, not only of Earth, Wind & Fire, but of the entire disco genre. It’s right up there with “Dancing Queen”, “Love Train”, “YMCA” and… the entirety of the Bee Gees’ discography, as one of the first songs anyone thinks of when they think ‘disco’.
So of course, as a fan of 1970s music whose mascot character is a fan of 1970s music, I just had to draw something disco-themed to celebrate the 21st night of September of 2020. COVID may have cancelled a lot of things this year, but it will never cancel the public’s love for disco music! Although actually having a disco party right now is not a good idea, especially if your country is run by a gross orange moldy thing that’s killed over 200K of its own people with its negligence.
Now to the piece!
Someone on Twitter brought up that they like character designs where everyone in a group wears the same outfit, but in different colors to show their individualism. And the examples they brought up were the Powerpuff Girls, the Winx club, and the Mane Six. The latter one I found a bit of a stretch considering that they don’t normally wear clothes (except Applejack and her hat), but that did spark an idea in my head: that the Oddball Tetrad, on certain outings as a group, would often like to dress in outfits that matched in design but not in color. Like dancing at a party! As a group!
Initially, I combined all of the Tetrad into one layer. But then I realized that wouldn’t make sense from a three-dimensional perspective. So I used backup assets of them (I always make backup duplicates, just in case I screw up), overlaid a black solid over each individual asset, and then gave each of the Tetrad their own red glow. The real challenge, however, was the duplication effect, a reference to the original “September” music video. The music video used a chroma key effect to layer several frames on top of one another, creating a trippy effect that… I wish there were more videos using, honestly. The only other music video I can think of with a similar effect, is “WTF?” by OK Go.
Because the music video used black for its chroma key, I knew the background for this piece had to be black. I initially tried using a mask for the wooden floor, but my dumb brain forgot that masks create transparency, and thus would expose the floor duplicate underneath. So I just overlaid a black gradient that’d fade into the black background. The rest was just a matter of letting the homage to the original effect create the background. Each asset (everything not the black background or my signature was eventually combined into one) is 5% smaller than the one in front of it, to the point where the one furthest to the back is half the size of the original. I could’ve done more, but I didn’t want ASP to crash and erase my progress on the layers. So I kept it to ten.
Anyhoo, that’s all for this one. Happy 21st night of September!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me. This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
I may have decided to reboot Grunvale‘s novel counterpart, but the art will still go as long as I believe in these characters’ potential! And I will always believe in their potential!
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For those that missed the announcement on Twitter, I’ve decided to scrap the version of the Grunvale web novel I was working on. For a while, I felt that the story was going too slow to go anywhere. 200 pages should be well into the story by now, at the 200 page mark of the first version of the story, I barely got into anything. But the tipping point for me, was the recent fires in California, one of which was sparked by a gender reveal party. One of the big scenes that was planned for Grunvale, was the gender reveal party for Sally Hynde’s quints. Had I gotten to that point in the story, it would’ve been one of the big emotional setpieces of the story.
At the party, it would’ve been revealed that Sally had been having an affair with one of the bucks at the law firm at which she works, and thus the quintuplets are not Harry’s biological children. He and Sally would get into a fight in front of all the guests, that would end with Harry finally demanding a divorce, and the triplets worrying whether they’ll end up with their mother or their father.
However, in real life, after learning of the gender reveal party fire and the subsequent backlash against gender reveal parties, I realized my story would be dated right out of the gate. And after giving it some thought… yeah, gender reveal parties are all kinds of disgusting. Not to mention sexist and transphobic. Gender is a spectrum on which one’s place is discovered for themselves, not a binary based on plugs and sockets. And boys can like pink and girls can like blue. Hell, August and Margo are proof of that. In fact, the woman credited with inventing gender reveal parties actually regrets creating them due to all the chaos they caused, and the girl she threw a gender reveal party for, ended up a tomboy. So if the creator of gender reveal parties is begging the world to stop with them, we should really f***ing stop with them.
Anyhoo, due to that change in my worldview, I no longer support gender reveal parties, and no longer wish to have one as part of my story. Sally may be more conservative than most of my other characters, but she’s a female Hank Hill at the very most. She has respect for liberals (albeit not always agreeing with them) and the LGBTQIA community, and would be a supporter of… whatever the Grunvaliverse equivalent of Black Lives Matter would be. Insect Lives Matter, probably. I’ve always imagined insectoid bipedes as the ones that endured systemic racism and police brutality. But by no means would she support someone like George W. Bush, or especially that disgusting, moldy, orange puke stain masquerading as a sentient being. John McCain definitely, and Mitt Romney maybe, but Sally has standards. And among those standards is knowing that gender reveal parties are a stupid and sexist idea better left in the past!
…huh? What’s that? Oh. Right. You want to know about the piece. Okay, let’s talk about the piece.
For a while now, I’ve had an idea in my head, to make an artwork inspired by the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), released by IBM in 1981. CGA was the original color palette for personal computers, and the predecessor to EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adapter), VGA (Video Graphics Array) and… I don’t know, can HDMI be counted among those? I’m a total noob when it comes to this kind of stuff. Most of what I know about CGA is from this video. But even though the inner workings of computers isn’t my area of expertise, I know from an art perspective that #55FFFF/cyan and #FF55FF/magenta (the two colors most commonly associated with CGA) look aesthetically pleasing together. I mean, why else would the CTRNF version of Electron Avenue (my favorite stage in that game) so proudly show off this pallette?
Anyhoo, when I was drawing the lenses of Gilda’s RayBans (actually, they’re just a gradient I masked out from a duplicated asset of Gilda), I pretty much knew that I had to use a CGA-inspired pallette for this piece. So I did. But why not take it a step further, and draw Margo and her seldom-drawn sister Molly in 80s-inspired outfits?
Margo already has an 80s outfit, thanks to her 80s AU/ZP-51498-198ES counterpart ‘Tabs’. Margo’s 80s outfit/Tabs’ design was and is inspired by hair metal. She’d definitely be the kind of leporine who’d listen to hair metal if she were around in the 80s. I’ve previously drawn Tabs wearing a ‘Carrunchy!’ T-shirt and Margo’s usual navy tee, but here, Margo’s wearing a T-shirt bearing a logo for her grandfather Angus’ band, Myxoma (which is hard to see due to the extreme saturation of the RayBan lenses’ asset). They’re canonically a 1970s and 1980s band, so Gilda would approve of the shirt for the outfit. She is a Myxoma fan herself, after all.
Molly, on the other hand, I decided to draw in a much more over-the-top, stereotypical 80s outfit, inspired by Mabel Pines’ outfits in Double Dipper and Scary-oke. It was just as much fun to draw as it looks. I just wish the colors of her outfit (mostly a dark yellow and light green) were more easy to discern here.
…which is also why I made a black-and-white version of this image. In fact, I actually prefer the black-and-white version of the image, and plan to give it its own separate upload. I feel that it’s so different and has so much to be said about it, that it deserves its own little essay about it. I’ll link to it here when it’s uploaded.
But for now, that’s all for this one. Hope you enjoy the Grunvale reboot when it begins dropping!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me. This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
Gilda and Wendy put on a clown-and-mime show to celebrate the fall of another hundred-follower barrier on Twitter!
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I’ve had a pretty consistent pace of growth with my Twitter account since I celebrated the crossing of the 500 follower milestone last August. And yet somehow, my amazement never fades whenever a new hundred-barrier falls. I reached 600 followers just as the old decade was finishing, then 700 followers during the biggest historical event since World War II. Now, in almost the same amount of time since celebrating joining the 700 Club that isn’t run by an evangelical dumbass bigot, as the time between crossing 600 and 700, I’m celebrating the fall of the 800 barrier, just as the world is starting to get back to normal… or at least as close to normal as we can get to with COVID-19 still out there.
Wear your masks, everyone. The sooner we all wear our masks, the sooner nobody has to wear a mask. We’ve lost the entire summer movie season to anti-maskers and Karens and Mr. Enter claiming that masks are a freedom of choice thing; if you don’t want to lose the holiday movie season, cover your freakin’ face.
Now to the piece.
Gilda Grime and Wendy Wyler have the closest friendship within the Tetrad, despite the fact that they have personalities designed to be opposite. Gilda is the geek of the Tetrad and Wendy is the punk, just like Margo and April are opposites as the tomboy and fashionista respectively. And as opposites, I imagine that Gilda and Wendy, if they put on a show together, would dress as a clown and a mime respectively. So, when I thought of a way I could integrate this idea into my 800 followers special, I got to drawing it.
As much as I like the idea of doing multi-panel comics, they also take me a really long time. So instead of spending twenty hours drawing seven panels like last time, I spent about half that time on this one, fittingly, making half the panels. I knew that four panels was all I needed to make; one for Wendy/Blackbean making an invisible wall, one for Gilda/Warhead smashing that invisible wall (making the ‘800’ in the process), one for both of them preparing to launch balloons into the air, and the last panel for the balloons revealing that they read ‘THANK YOU FOR’ and ‘FOLLOWERS’ to complete the message that Gilda/Warhead and Wendy/Blackbean set up at the beginning. Also a quick gag about Wendy breaking the unspoken rule about mimes… well, not being supposed to speak.
Oh, and I found a brush in ASP that helped with creating the folds of the curtain. Which was a relief to me, when I realized that there was a more effective and less time-consuming method of drawing curtains than overlaying a gradient. And, I’ll probably be using this brush to draw curtains from here on out.
Anyway, that’s all for this one. Now for the push for 900!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me. All four panels of this artwork were made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
Original DA Upload Date: June 22, 2020 (Twins)/July 31, 2020 (Tomboys)
Just an idea that popped into my head one day, that I decided to put to visuals. August and April Lowry dressed as each other!
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I’ve actually had a headcanon for a while now, that August secretly likes wearing girls’ clothes, and even lets April use him as a model for her outfits, to see how they’d look on her. I’ve also headcanoned that he and April like dressing as each other, just to screw with their family and friends. However, I somehow never got to drawing anything related to those ideas until now. I… don’t really know why. Twins/lookalikes posing as each other is a trope as old as… well, probably since the first twins in fiction. Did that happen in the Romulus and Remus myth? No? Well, then it probably happened in the next work of fiction that had twins in it.
Now to the piece!
While April and August are twins (albeit fraternal), they have several physical differences between them that go beyond just their genders. So no matter how hard they try, they’re not going to look exactly like each other, and their attempt to get it exact will just look uncanny. Which, of course, I had to keep in mind while drawing this. I used the Loud House segment Sister Act as inspiration for this piece, to figure out how to make the Lowry twins look like each other, while still having it be obvious who’s really who. I think I succeeded. The pose was difficult to draw, though. I used a screenshot from Big City Greens (which I started watching in the hospital… very underrated and hilarious show, by the way) as a reference, specifically from the segment Photo Op. But it was still difficult to figure out the angles of the arms.
Overall, however, I like what I pulled off here… and so I made a sequel with April’s and August’s respective girlfriends, Margo and Jazz!
It had been sitting in Sta.sh for a few weeks in July, and I wanted to get it out before August rolled around (that’s the month, not the mephitine). The idea of the Lowry twins dressing as each other was too perfect an idea not to make a sequel out of. So I figured a good second step was them surprising their girlfriends, August’s leporine girlfriend Margo Hynde and April’s tigrine girlfriend Jazz Daniels, by showing up dressed as each other.
They’re not fooled, by the way. Margo and Jazz have been around the twins enough to know who’s who. April uses a curling iron on her tail. She can never stand not to, even when dressing as her brother. Also, the positions of their ears. I don’t know who’s picked up on this by now, and… I don’t know if the characters are ever going to point this out in-universe (maybe they should, though), but my male characters, if they have visible ears, have theirs on the top of their head, and the females have theirs on the sides. This is because I felt, while developing my art style, that I’d be more likely to depict my female characters wearing ear piercings. And… that’s ended up the case. In fact, I don’t think I’ve drawn my male characters with ear piercings yet (although I will say that both Angus and Harry have their ears pierced, because of course they do). I don’t think only females should have pierced ears, of course, that’s just the way my art has turned out so far.
Not much to talk about in terms of the artwork itself, except for the shadows on the twins. I used a clipping mask on that layer, to mask out where the shadows would be, and where the light would shine on them. It was more time-consuming than the gradient I usually use, but the extra work paid of, no doubt.
That’s all for this one. Post in the comments what you think of this!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me. Both of these artworks were made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
More TLH-style Grunvale! Except this is Grunvale, so it’s called ‘The Cacophony Colony’.
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Anyone who has been following Grunvale would know that ‘The Cacophony Colony’ is the web novel’s way of addressing The Loud House‘s existence without referring to it by name. I felt that the show was too recent to mention by name in the web novel, so I decided referring to it by a ‘bland name’ would be the way to go.
Anyhoo, Margo is canonically a fan of ‘The Cacophony Colony’, as she connects well with the show being about leporines, and also being part of a big family. She’s the oldest of a set of triplets, and the show is airing just as her mother Sally is pregnant with quintuplets. On her mother’s side, she also has four uncles, Randall, Russell, Richard Jr. (Sally’s older brothers, who are also triplets), and Shaun (Sally’s own twin brother), her grandparents Richard Sr. and Joan, and her 99-year-old great-grandfather Charles, all of whom are frequent visitors to the Hynde household. And that’s not even counting the children of Margo’s uncles/Sally’s brothers, who of course would be Margo’s cousins. Of which she has many.
By the way, Sally’s brothers are nothing like her. In fact, Margo actually likes hanging around her uncles… and Sally can’t stand being around them. Or her children being around them.
Now to the piece!
Not much to talk about here, it’s just the Oddball Tetrad drawn in the TLH/Casagrandes style. Honestly, the title gives me more to talk about; I just combined the names of the settings of Grunvale, The Casagrandes and The Loud House into one funny title (‘Grunvale’ means ‘green valley’; ‘grün’ is the German word for ‘green’).
That’s all for this one. Post in the comments below what you think of this!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me. The Loud House/The Casagrandes is owned by ViacomCBS through Nickelodeon. This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
Just one of the perks of being friends with rock music royalty. They have thousands upon thousands of dollars (or note, in Grunvaliverse terms) of disposable income to spend on you.
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This is the piece I made to celebrate my 22nd birthday today, as well as the 4th anniversary of this DA account tomorrow. I was going to do a spiritual successor to Into the Gilda-verse with Margo, but I changed my mind when I thought of this idea. Margo taking advantage of her wealth, to get Gilda an expensive present for her 12th birthday. And yes, this is supposed to be her 12th. The rest of the Tetrad didn’t know her when she celebrated her 11th.
Anyhoo, the expensive present Margo got, as you can see here, is Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn. For those who’ve never heard of this franchise, probably most of you, Panzer Dragoon is a series of… mostly rail shooters, developed for the Saturn, Game Gear and Xbox, and remakes of the first two games are being made for the Nintendo Switch. However, Panzer Dragoon Saga is a role-playing game, considered to be one of the greatest in the genre alongside Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII, the latter of which it was intended to directly compete with.
However, because Saga was released late in the Saturn’s lifespan, the game received only a limited release outside of Japan; less than 25000 copies are thought to have been made for the Western market. And the game has been out of print for over 20 years; it has never been rereleased on any system. The only way to play the game legitimately, is spending over a thousand dollars on a rare physical copy, and playing it on a system that was a commercial failure. And yes, I did say a thousand dollars. For comparison, Chrono Trigger which is also a hard-to-find collector’s item, goes for a hundred. And even the DS rerelease goes for fifty.
…retro gaming is a very expensive hobby. Always get re-releases when you can.
Okay, now to the piece!
There isn’t much to talk about here, except the cake. It’s a citrus-flavored cake, and unlike others I’ve depicted before, it’s not drawn. I actually made that cake. Physically. With sugar. And flour. And salt. And shortening. And eggs. And almond milk. And orange zest. And lemon zest. And lime zest. And grapefruit zest. And frosting. And an oven heating the cake at 350 degrees for thirty minutes. And then I took this picture of it. Yes, that cake you see is a posterized image of my own birthday cake. And because it’s a citrus cake, I knew I had to have it be Gilda’s cake too. It’s only fitting.
Also, before any of you ask why I enlarged the eyes on the boxart… my art style depicts my characters with large eyes. In other words, the enlarged eyes are a reference to my own art style. That’s all there is to it.
That’s all for this one. Happy 22nd birthday to me!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it yourself, as long as you credit me. Panzer Dragoon Saga is owned by Sega. All five panels of this artwork were made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
Sometimes on her breaks, Gilda likes sneaking into the Grunvale Mall’s Sears or JCPenney, and laying on the furniture to listen to the music playing.
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This is a holdover from April, the first piece made after my dog Molly was put down on the 22nd, after suffering from diabetes and probable Cushing’s disease for several months (she was only officially diagnosed with the former, but we believe she also had the latter). I’ve never had to cope with the death of a loved one before, but apparently for me, one of the five stages of grief is… drawing stuff. I guess drawing replaces denial for me, because I never denied for one second that she was gone after it happened.
I defy you, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
Now to the piece itself.
Considering you’ve only seen me draw characters from profile, straight on, and quarter-angles, you’d think drawing Gilda from the isometric angle was the hard part of this. But actually, some of it wasn’t. I used an image of Lori Loud lying on her bed in TLH’s Garage Banned as a reference for the angle, which made drawing the top half relatively easy. Of course, however, I did say ‘some’ of this wasn’t hard. Because Lori’s legs are dangling over the side of the bed in the reference instead of lying straight, it was up to me to figure out how to draw Gilda’s legs. I think I spent more time trying to figure out how to draw them than I should have, however, given that the asset ended up cropped off the bottom.
The white blur on the floor is supposed to be the reflection of the ceiling light. I had to use a mask to pull off a realistic illusion of light. I’ve known how to use clipping masks in ASP pretty much since I started using the program, but regular masks, like the black and white ones used for obscuring layers, I’ve only recently figured out. I knew how to use them in the original ArtStudio and I know how to use them in Photoshop, but I’m still pretty new to using them in ASP.
In case it wasn’t obvious, Ms. Lake is the name I cam up with for the manager of whatever store this is. Although I specifically had in mind JCPenney, hence the orange lights (the JCPenney in both Guilderland and Jacksonville, I know to have orange-tinted lights).
That’s all for this one. Post below what you think!
Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you credit me. This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
After Albaneigh County opens back up following a disease outbreak, the Oddball Tetrad goes to Wendy’s sister’s spa and salon for much-needed haircuts. Gilda, however, as a lover of all things 80s, loves how big her hair has gotten, and wants to keep it that way.
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A piece referencing the COVID-19 pandemic with Grunvale, was something I debated with myself for a while whether or not I should do. And originally, my plan was, if I was going to do it, it’d have a more serious tone. I thought about depicting Gilda and Wendy consoling each other after xenophobic attacks against them, or Gilda standing up for Randy as Harper blames him for causing diseases. But then I thought about the South Park episode, Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants, and how critically acclaimed it is for addressing the aftermath of 9/11 in a respectful but humorous way. And I decided that, since Grunvale is a series with a humorous tone, that’d be the best way for it to address the pandemic and its effects.
One of the most notable effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had, has been the closure of ‘non-essential’ businesses, or businesses that aren’t responsible for keeping society running. Among those ‘non-essential’ businesses, are hair salons. Which has led to many people wondering what to do about haircuts. Some people have gone the DIY route (with… mixed results), while others have just decided to grow out their hair. The latter of which, as you can see here, the Oddball Tetrad decided to do.
Gilda’s pretty self-explanatory. She’s got a big, 80s-style ‘do going, and she loves it. So let’s just go to the rest.
Apparently, Margo’s hair when grown out, looks like what I can best describe as a mix between Farrah Fawcett, Joe Cocker, and an unholy case of bedhead. Considering her grandfather Angus became famous during the 1970s, I imagine he got a big kick out of seeing her with the hairstyle. Heheh.
Drawing April was my favorite part of this. She usually wears her hair neatly and just past her shoulders, so depicting her with long, messy hair that’s so out-of-character for her, was so much fun. She’s even started growing the Greg Heffley-esque triple hairs that Margo’s usually depicted with. XD
And, of course, there’s Wendy. Because this piece is obviously set after an extended lockdown, I knew I had to depict her, not just with overgrown hair, but with her hair dye fading and revealing her natural blonde. I used a spotty brush and applied it to the ends of her hair, while leaving the rest completely blonde to show that she hasn’t had it dyed since the start of the lockdown. There is still room for improvement on that aspect, but the overgrown hairstyle itself that she has here, reminds me of Fluttershy. Yay!
Finally, I expanded upon my recent decision to use subtitles instead of speech bubbles here, as I promised before, color-coding them to indicate which character is talking. You can figure it out here.
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 
