The Gallery of Stormy Adler

Grunvale Gazette Front Page, Vol. 151, Iss. 34

Original DA Upload Date: January 22, 2022

I may not have had much to say in the artwork in which this mock-newspaper was featured, but damn, do I have a lot to say about the newspaper itself. I don’t know how long this description is gonna be, but just trust me when I say that this description will probably be the most in-depth you’ve ever seen about a mock newspaper. So get comfortable. This is gonna take a while. Then again, if you’ve been following me for a while, you’d know long descriptions are usually to be expected. Whether you’re a follower or not, though… let’s dive in.

I – The color of the newspaper

“The color of the newspaper? But it’s black-and-white! Why are you dedicating an entire section to this?”

Yes, yes, ‘it’s black-and-white’. What a very broke observation. But you know me. Just turning it black-and-white never cuts it around here. Here’s the woke explanation.

The colors you’re seeing here are actually not black and white. Or any shade of grey, for that matter. The ‘white’ is actually a faded yellow, chosen for its close resemblance to the paper of actual newspapers, with a subtle paper texture added over it. The ‘black’, however, is actually black… or at least it was, before I applied blending effects and set the transparency so that it’d more closely resemble ink on paper. So it’s not true black you’re seeing here. I never logged the actual hex values of the ‘white’ and the ‘black’ before the paper texture was applied. But if you want a ballpark estimate, the red, green, and blue hex values for the ‘white’ are around E8-EB, E4-E7, and DC-DF respectively (with a margin of error of two units each), and the hex values for the ‘black’ are 27 and 28 for red and green, and 25 and 26 for blue. And for those unfamilar with hex values, that’s not ‘twenty-seven’, ‘twenty-eight’, and whatever. That’s ‘two-seven’ and ‘two-eight’, which are hex code for thirty-nine and forty respectively.

II – The newspaper title

As you can see, the newspaper is called ‘The Grunvale Gazette’. That’s self-explanatory, and it’s not what this section is about. It’s about the font I used to write it.

The font is called ‘Chomsky’, designed by Frederick Brennan and modeled after the font used in the New York Times logo. I’ve also seen similar fonts used for many other newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Miami Herald. Because of how prevalent Chomsky and similar fonts are for newspapers, I used it for the Grunvale Gazette logo. Call it cliche, but be honest, what other font do you think of as ‘that newspaper logo font’ other than Chomsky?

III – The issue information

Below the Grunvale Gazette logo (and of course in the title of this work), we see that this particular edition is the 34th issue of the 151st volume, dated August 26, 2017 and costing fifty cents. The fifty cents part is self-explanatory, except for the fact… apparently the cents symbol is so underused nowadays that modern keyboards don’t bother including it. So I went with ‘$.’ instead. Since it means the same thing. As for the rest of the information on this line…

This paper being part of the 151st volume of the Grunvale Gazette, means that 2017 was/is the 151st year of the Grunvale Gazette’s publication. Which, in turn, means that the newspaper has been published since 1867. And no, people bad at math, that would NOT mean issues published in 2017 would be volume 150. 1867 to 2017 includes 151 years. As for this being ‘issue 34’… well, that’s a part where I paid particular attention to detail.

I imagine the Grunvale Gazette being a subsidiary to the Grunvaliverse’s equivalent of the Times Union (the real-life newspaper of Albany county). It’s a smaller paper, of course, that has less content, narrower focus, and smaller circulation than its parent paper, and distributes only a Saturday edition. August 26, 2017 was indeed the 34th Saturday of that year; I counted through the 2017 calendar myself, and then did a Google search for ’34th Saturday of 2017′ to confirm.

Finally, ‘NP’ is an abbreviation for ‘New Pork’. For those outside the US, we Americans often refer to the states with two letters. For examples, New York is ‘NY’, and Florida is ‘FL’. It only makes sense that the Grunvaliverse would do the same for their versions of the states.

Those are the production notes for this section. Before I move on, I’d like to talk some notes on Grunvale’s history related to the Gazette… I’ve canoned ever since the web novel era, that Grunvale was founded in 1817. That would mean that the Gazette was founded during the 50th anniversary of the town, the Golden Jubliee. The anniversary was actually the original motivation for the newspaper’s founding. In fact, it was originally called the ‘Golden Grunvale Gazette’, before dropping the ‘golden’ from its title for its second volume in 1868.

IV – The headlines

The text reading ‘50,000 TWEETS’ is the second and last use of a font other than Times New Roman anywhere on this newspaper… mock-up. It is in DIN Condensed. The subheadline is also uniquely kerned, as I felt that special kerning would make this mock-up better resemble a newspaper. The smaller headline at the bottom, on the other hand, is a joke I’ve been wanting to do for a while, referencing the decreasing relevancy of newspapers.

V – The columnist names

The names of the columnists who ‘wrote’ the articles present on this page, are puns. ‘Tyne W. Roman’ is a pun on ‘Times New Roman’, the font which the majority of the text in this newspaper mockup is written in. And you are very familiar with by this point. I’d even say that it’s the font you’ve seen the most throughout your life. Although unless you’re a designer like me, or you remember the names of the fonts your teachers from school required you write in, you may not have known its name. As for ‘Walt Breaker IV’, that’s a pun on ‘fourth wall break’, doubling as a reference to how the headline itself is a fourth wall break.

VI – The article

Oh, was this a fun one to write. For this one, it wasn’t enough to just write a mock newspaper artcle about me reaching my 50,000th tweet. I had to imagine myself as a Grunvalian who has only heard of the human world, our world, through what me, the Phoenix of Grunvale, has revealed about it to the Grunvaliverse, as well as conspiracy theories and information distorted through word-of-mouth. I know that COVID-19 isn’t named after Corona beer, and 4 BC is the year I hear the most regarding Jesus’ birth year. This ‘Tyne W. Roman’, however, heard some time before writing this article, that coronaviruses are named for the beer, and that 2022 is the 2022nd year after our world’s Jesus’ birth.

It was also fun writing about my work and my life in a fictionalized matter. The ‘second senior year’ part is indeed true; I graduated high school in 2017, being held back a year to have me ‘better prepared for the adult world’, as everyone around me has liked to put it. And I admittedly forgot that my Twitter account used to be called ‘PRSToonCritic’ until writing that part; AnimationFan15 didn’t even know that’s what I originally went by on the site before ‘StormTheArtist’.

The ‘hue-mans’ thing is nothing new, I’ve had my anthropomorphic characters refer to humans that way before. But since I have an opportunity to talk about it now, I guess I’ll reveal what inspired it. It’s probably the weirdest place I’ve ever found inspiration from as far as Grunvale/OTOG is concerned… it comes from a movie I saw as a kid, called Aliens in the Attic.

Anyone remember that movie? Aliens invading home in the country? A lot of video game references? Ashley Tisdale was in it? Yeah, don’t feel like you missed out on anything. Even as a kid I thought it was stupid. But at least it has the weird distinction of inspiring the way my anthropomorphic characters pronounce ‘human’.

Finally, to keep continuity with the 50K arc, the Tetrad are all 12 years old, the age they’d be in August of 2017 on the strict timeline, on which they were all born in 2005. I’ve already stated the Tetrad’s birthdays before; Gilda’s is May 14th, Margo’s is June 23rd, Wendy’s is March 7th, and April’s is March 30th. And yes, I do acknowledge the irony of April being born in March. Always have. She’s the chain-breaker when it comes to the Tetrad being born in successive months. However, her Tetrad opposite, Margo, is the chain-breaker in terms of them being born under successive astrological signs. Wendy is a Pisces, April an Aries, Gilda a Taurus, and Margo a… Cancer, skipping over Gemini. And similar to April’s ironic birth in March, Margo’s birth being under Cancer is ironic considering that she’s from a set of multiple births, and Gemini represents twins.

VII – The Gilda photograph

This was the most fun part of the newspaper to work on. Gilda’s photograph here doubles as a WIP for the actual 50K special, as it features the assets that will be used in it. However, they won’t be presented in the same way that you see here. Gilda’s left arm? Not only is that asset rotated from what you’ll see in the artwork, but cropped out of the image is… April’s right arm, detached from the rest of her body, high-fiving Gilda.

Good luck getting that image of body horror out of your head, heheh. Truth be told, I could probably make an entire Twitter account dedicated to my most shitpost-looking WIPs. Hm… I’ll do it if you all can get my Twitter account to 1000 followers. It’s at 885 as I write this, I only have… a little while to go, numerically speaking. Then again, I haven’t crossed a hundred-follower barrier since August of 2020. Maybe I’ll start bringing in followers in bigger numbers again soon? Maybe?

Anyhoo, if you zoom into the artwork, you’ll see I went the extra mile with that photo in making it look like it’s actually printed on a newspaper. I used ASP’s built-in Halftone effect to render the asset in dots, much like those that would be used to display it if it were printed on paper. Not just newspaper, any kind of paper. Much like the text, the asset also has blending effects applied to it to further sell the idea that it is ink on paper.

That’s all the details regarding the piece itself, now for some miscellaneous production notes.

VIII – The miscellaneous production notes

There were typos in the paper in the 1.00 version of 50,000 Tweets (Give or Take)!, namely an omission of the word ‘runs’, and using the term ‘human’ instead of ‘hue-man’ twice. By the time I noticed my mistakes, I had deleted the PSD and only had the PNG. Thankfully, ASP has an inpaint tool, which is used for filling in blank areas of a layer with procedurally-generated pixels based on the imagery around it. So I just cut out the areas that had typos, filled them in with the inpaint tool, and typed the new text over them, complete with the correct blending effects. I even made sure the placement of the text was pixel-perfect. The 1.00 version of the paper is still visible in the background of the 1.01 version of the parent piece, however. Parent piece… does that term work here? Because the mock newspaper was made first. I guess you can call this is a chicken-and-egg scenario. Hm… egg piece. The dual-panel comic is the egg piece. And the paper is the chicken piece.

My logo is nowhere to be seen in this paper. I didn’t feel I needed to include it this time, since my name is already mentioned in the egg piece several times. Plus, the egg piece for includes my logo, so why include it twice, right?

IX – Conclusion

This was fun to make. I may even do more Grunvaliverse newspaper/magazine/print media mockups some time down the line, if this gets enough views. Say, 1000. That’s a 1000 barrier I break on a regular basis, DA views. I think this can make it too.

Anyways, that’ll be all for this one. Until next time, take care, stay safe, get vaccinated, reject crypto, and have a good one.

DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StormyAdlerPoG
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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.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 2160×2880 (aspect ratio 1:1.33).

Baby(sitting) New Year

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.

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).

Stormy’s 2021 Art Summary

Original DA Upload Date: December 30, 2021

Wow, this is my fifth one of these things? Damn, it feels like just yesterday it was 2017 and I decided to do one of these things, just because I managed to make at least one artwork every month that year. I’ve managed that output for half a decade now! Whoa!

Anyhoo, let’s continue the formula.

Just like the last four years, I’ve managed a consistent monthly output of art. Which isn’t really that impressive anymore, since I’m now working on a graphic novel, i.e. something that requires hundreds, if not thousands of drawings. I can manage it, though. The graphic novels as individual stories are gonna be released in black-and-white, which simplifies things tremendously. The colorized editions will come when they’re compiled into books.

I even have an idea of how to market and sell my graphic novels. I’ve told you all before that I’m gonna do the diagonal billing thing with my characters; Gilda to the left and Margo at the front. But I also took some other details into account. For instance, I’ve talked with JFMstudios about commissioning him to draw the covers to the books, since I feel he’s more talented than I am in making artwork look… um, how do I put this, cinematic. He’s better with things like staging and lighting. My approach to both is pretty simplistic; my characters mostly occupy the same horizontal plane or two of 3D space, and my lighting, aside from the inner shadow/inner glow effects generated by ASP, is mostly just blobs of a single color with a gaussian blur and a blending effect. JFM is better at both those things, plus, he has an ability to take the art style of whatever thing he’s making fanart of, and make it his own. With that in mind, I feel he can do wonders with Grunvale/OTOG, and I can’t wait to work with him when it finally comes time for designing the covers to my work.

In addition, I know what prices I feel my work would sell best for. In terms of the first six stories, I’ll be selling the individual, black-and-white editions for $5.95, and the colorized compilation, the actual book for which the stories are intended, for $25.95. So, six for the price of… just over five.

Oh! And while I’m still talking about OTOG, “Trivia Tussle” is scrapped. In the process of writing “The Swamp Witch Hagatha”, I’ve found it to be more of a Wendy chapter than an April chapter, largely due to her taking charge the most during the story. And because I want to keep to one chapter per Tetrad member, and also because I didn’t have any good ideas for “Trivia Tussle”, I decided to scrap that one, and give April a proper chapter called “Elect-ric Chemistry”, where she meets Jazz in an elective tennis class, and Margo and Wendy help her out on her first date with her.

“bUt WhAt AbOuT gIlDa?”

Oh, you mean Gilda the aromantic?

Well, I’ve said all I should about my graphic novel for now. Let’s talk about 2021.

“You know what’s great about hitting rock bottom? There’s only one way left to go, and that’s up!”
– Buster Moon, “Sing”

I knew 2021 could only be better than 2020, after the announcement in December of last year, that the COVID vaccines were starting to ship out. I wasn’t expecting it to be a good year, and… well, it wasn’t. There’s no such thing as a good year when a deadly pandemic is still going on. That, and this year also saw its own share of shitty events, most notoriously the Trump administration going out with a nasty bang as thousands of his supporters raided the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 elections, which BIDEN WON FAIR AND SQUARE AND THE ONLY POSSIBLE CORRUPTION THAT OCCURED WAS FROM RIGHT-WING VOTING DISTRICTS SUPPRESSING VOTES FROM THE ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED, BECAUSE OUR GOVERNMENT IS CONTROLLED BY THE BILLIONAIRES, WHO HAVE AN OBSCENE AMOUNT OF INFLUENCE OVER WORLD POLITICS AND WILL DO ANYTHING TO KEEP THEIR POSITIONS OF POWER SECURE, EVEN IF BY IMMORAL AND CRIMINAL MEANS.

But at least the movie theaters and such finally opened back up, and it finally became the norm again for movies to actually be released, and not delayed. Barring Omicron becoming another world-halting pandemic of its own, it seems that, with the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, movie theaters are back to normal, with the film making $121.8M on its opening day in the US (a figure that, due to the year’s worth of progress streaming made while theaters were paused, I didn’t think would happen again for an opening weekend, let alone a single day), and $516.4M domestically total as of me typing these words. Oh, and it also became the first film of the 2020s to cross the billion-dollar mark worldwide. Things are looking up for movie theaters, and even if my opinion on them has soured, I will admit I enjoyed the experiences of watching Mortal Kombat and Ghostbusters: Afterlife on the big screen. The latter in a Dolby theater!

2021 was also the year I finished college. I am awaiting my degree, Bachelors of Applied Science majoring in Digital Media, to come in the mail, and have started my search for employment immediately. Where this degree will take me, I don’t know. But at least I have a leg up among other applicants. And over the past year, I’ve refined my skill further, with attempts to draw sunlight, taking note of details as small as reflections of characters taking a photo, getting the hang of a tool introduced to ASP just in the past year, experimenting with a lineless art style, drawing backgrounds that pull off a convincing illusion of depth measured in miles, toying with different kinds of lighting to enhance the mood of a scene, and of course let’s not forget the wonders that stock images worked throughout the year, either making up the entire scene, getting traced over, manipulated for a texture, or used as a prop to make a scene less empty. The latter three are present in both of the pieces I released three different versions of.

Another trend in my artwork that took off this year was pixelating my own pre-made artwork, and presenting it as photos and posters hung on a wall. Which I feel I’ve earned at this point, considering the quantity of art I’ve made over the years. Besides, it’s not like that’s all I ever do for wall decoration. I’ve also done fully-detailed portraits of the elder generations of the Ketcham family and a minimalistic poster of Rita Hayworth because ha ha ha it’s funny because it’s a shared-name joke regarding Gilda. And let’s also not forget all the fanart. Animal Crossing, Amphibia, The Three Stooges, King of the Hill, The Ghost and Molly McGee, even an old PSA from my early childhood I rediscovered as an adult. All represented this year in my art. I also enjoyed making retro-style pin-up art of some of my characters. And I’m sure a lot of you guys did too; the Dolly one has racked up over two thousand views thus far.
Overall, 2021 has proved to be an immensely productive year in art for me, both in quantity, quality, and… development of quality. As I enter the next year, I look forward to seeing where my bachelor’s degree will lead me to, and how much my work, both professional and hobbyist, will develop.

And that’s all for this piece, and 2021 as a whole. To close out, here are the artworks featured in this edition of the year-in-review. Until next time, take care, and see you in 2022.

FEATURED ARTWORKS
January: tappitytappitytappitytappity
February: This Shouldn’t Still Be a Rivalry
March: Lowry Twins’ Birthday Party in Glorious Tri-Square!
April: A Single Piece
May: You May Now Kiss Any Hope For The Wedding Goodbye
June: A Bundle of Sticks
July: Lop the Jedi Bunny
August: Their Name is Auggie Lowry
September: Ballando la Tarantella nel Campo delle rose
October: Trick or Treatin’ Tetrad
November: Sisterly Bonding II
December: Beginning and Ending Like the Year Does

Grunvale/OTOG is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
Star Wars is owned by Disney through Lucasfilm.
Charlotte Walker is owned by AnimationFan15.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).

Gild-elf

Original DA Upload Date: December 21, 2021

🎵 I wish you a hopeful Christmas / I wish you a brave new year / All anguish, pain and sadness / Leave your heart and let your road be clear / They said there’d be snow at Christmas / They said there’d be peace on Earth / Hallelujah, noel / Be it heaven or hell / The Christmas we get, we deserve 🎵
Greg Lake (1947-2016)

—–

Geez, it’s already been over five years since Lake’s death? Which means it’s also been over five years since Keith Emerson’s! Damn, does time fly. Remember when we were calling 2016 the worst year ever? 2020 and 2021 have made me wish for 2016 back. At least 2016 didn’t have COVID-19 existing. And also we had a competent human being as president, and not a gross orange thing or Strom Thurmond’s goon.

Anyhoo, this is just an idea I’ve been wanting to draw for a while. Well, not specifically this, but more the loose concept. Since Gilda often has rosy cheeks when she smiles, I’ve for a while wanted to draw her wearing a costume where her cheeks would be painted red. Not just having her wear blush, but having bright red circles painted on her cheeks, like a clown or a ragdoll. I’ve tried before having her dress up like a ragdoll, but I ended up abandoning the idea somewhere down the line. But as Christmas approached, I decided it’d be cute to draw her as an elf. She already has pointy ears, so pretty much all else that needed to be thought up, was the outfit. And this is what I thought up. I knew a green and red color scheme was a must, as well as bells and curled-point shoes. But then I recalled seeing images of elves with red cheeks… somewhere. I didn’t remember where exactly, and I still don’t. But I know I’ve seen it somewhere. Anyhoo, the dubiously-accurate memory of seeing clown-cheeked elves let to me deciding to put the painted cheeks idea to good use, and have Gilda’s cheeks be painted red for her elf costume. I imagine she’d also put on foundation to hide her freckles; she wouldn’t want dark dots peeking out over the red circles, they’d ruin the look she’s going for.

Because I imagine elves being the size of dolls, I decided to also have Gilda wear big, voluminous false eyelashes, that resemble the eyelashes of a doll, like an American/Amareican Girl. I think they make her look cute, especially with the highlights in her eyes.

And of course, because Gilda is Gilda, and candles are associated with Christmas, I also drew Gilda holding a lemon-scented candle. As she’d tell you herself, everything is better with citrus.

Once again, I used filtered stock images for the scenery. However, I also put my photomanipulation abilities to the test. That fallen tree that Gilda is leaning against? The most prominent one in the frame? It wasn’t part of the rest of the scenery. And it didn’t even have snow on it; I drew that snow myself. Most of the scenery is a photograph I found online of the Canadian wilderness, but that fallen tree is taken from a photo I found on a website for a news station in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Wisconsin… I think I’m gonna call its Grunvaliverse equivalent ‘Whalesconsin’. I also thought of ‘Weasconsin’ and ‘Wiscoonsin’, but the former doesn’t sound punny enough to me, and the latter sounds too close to ‘coonskin’, and I’d rather not think of Gilda getting skinned, thank you very much. Plus, that latter name also contains a slur for a black person, and I’d rather not be mistaken for a racist.

It did take a bit of work to get the trunk to look like it was part of the rest of the image. Of course, I had to draw snow on the trunk, to make it blend in with everything else. I also masked out the side of the trunk that’s in the snow, and added a shadow, to make it look even more authentic. The colors were gonna be filtered as always, but I still wanted to make that trunk look like it was really there, not like it was a crude cutout placed on an image. For that matter, Gilda needed some effects applied to her as well, to make her look like more than just a drawing on a picture of the woods. So in addition to the shadows at her feet, I also added interior shadows coming off the sides of her asset going in, masked out the bottom of her right foot to make it look like it’s in the snow, skewed her asset towards the teal of the scenery, and I even added footprints in the snow to make it look like she walked over to wherever on Mount Hatcher this is. And yes, I did imagine this as being on Mount Hatcher, which means this piece is set in Hatcherwood or the outskirts of it, and not Grunvale.

Finally, I’d like to bring up the candle. While most of Gilda’s asset is skewed teal, I did apply a light, but large eraser to the teal block used to filter the asset, to show the candle’s glow. This glow effect shows the colors I used for Gilda’s asset, and I think the effect turned out quite well.

And that’ll be all for this piece. Happy first day of Winter, everyone, and until next time (probably the 2021 year-in-review), take care. Oh, and Happy Hannukwanzmas.

—–

Grunvale/OTOG 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 2160×2160 (aspect ratio 1:1).

Beginning and Ending Like the Year Does

Original DA Upload Date: December 18, 2021

Time to go back. Way, way, way, way back. With a remake of a piece I drew all the way back in kindergarten.

—–

On December 8, 2021, at 9:12PM EST, I submitted, barring any potential event in which I decide to go for an advanced degree, the final assignment I will ever have as a student. It was a travel campaign for a fictional place, done in the medium of our choice; I chose Loompaland, and I did the assignment as a mock-website, coded with HTML and CSS in Brackets, a semi-off-brand version of Dreamweaver. And I say semi-off-brand, because Brackets was made by Adobe, which kind of makes it a self-knockoff.

Anyhoo, I imagined the site advertising the Loompaland vacation, as a cruise line owned by the Wonka company, and I made six pages for the assignment, five which were part of the website itself (a main page, a page describing the staff of the boat, a page describing the fauna of Loompaland [hornswogglers, snozzwangers, and whangdoodles], a page of links to the Wonka company’s social media [which was really just a page of links to Nestle’s social media, as a reference to Nestle owning the Willy Wonka Candy Company brand], and a page where a code had to be entered), and one of which was a CSS stylesheet. Around 327 lines of code in all, and, including the photo-composites I made for the assignment, around 12 hours total of work.

The assignment was also the last of mine that needed to be graded. I ended up getting a 94/100 on it, in line with the consistent A’s and B’s I’ve gotten throughout… well, my entire life as a student.

In the hours after finishing my assignment, timed specifically to make a Rush reference (as 9:12PM is 21:12 on a 24-hour clock), I wondered how I could celebrate my completion of my Bachelor’s degree, and by extension, eighteen and a half years of education. As I sat down on the couch to rest for the evening and into the early morning, I saw a drawing of a snowman I made back in kindergarten (so we’re talking late 2003/early 2004), hanging on the wall next to the Christmas tree. And so I got the idea to do what many digital artists nowadays like to do with their own childhood art… remake it, to end my time as a student artist the same way that it began. With a winter-themed artwork. It’s kind of like how the year itself begins in winter, and ends in winter.

So, what more to add? I guess… just take the artwork in, as it represents the completion of an education that’s lasted as long as it takes for a newborn to age into adulthood. That’s right, anyone looking at this artwork born in September 2003 or later. I’ve been drawing longer than you’ve been alive.

—–

Nothing here to put a copyright disclaimer on, other than me owning this artwork.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 2160×2880 (aspect ratio 1:1.33).

Thanksgiving is About the Food!

Original DA Upload Date: November 25, 2021

Don’t worry, Redfeather is okay with Thanksgiving. Just as long as the day is treated as being about racial/ethnic unity.

—–

Drawing the Tetrad serving dinner in 50s-inspired outfits is an idea I’ve had for quite a while, and as long as I’ve had the idea, I knew Thanksgiving would be the best time to draw it for. And because it’s food that’s involved, I knew that meant the Tetrad had to dress as waitresses, much like the ones at Marilyn Springsteen’s. Since releasing three different versions of my previous artwork, also period-themed, went over so well (amassing over 2500 views in total despite two versions not even being part of my featured gallery), I decided to do the same this time around, too. There’s not just a color version, but keeping with the 1950s aesthetic, I also made a black-and-white version, and a version with a filter inspired by the paintings of Norman Rockwell. I enjoy the fact that FlapperFoxy releases multiple versions of her artwork in different filters, after all, and I think she’s onto something doing so. Especially considering the sepia version of my last artwork was the one that got the most views. Maybe it’s also because it was the one I uploaded last, but I’d like to think the period-inspired filter also helped.

BTW, shout-out to FlapperFoxy, since I mentioned her. She’s a retro-loving furry like I am, and if you like my work, then you’ll love hers. I’d even argue she’s even better at accomplishing a retro feel with her art, as she works mainly traditionally while I work mainly in digital. So drop her a follow!

Anyways, on to the piece! I’ve got production notes for all three of these, both together and separately. The notes that apply to all of them together I’ll talk about first, and whichever version you’re looking at (on DeviantArt) or want to know about (on WordPress), just look for the notes marked “Color Version”, “Black-and-white Version”, or “Filtered Version”. Now, with that out of the way, let’s get on with this piece already!

Notes for all three versions
For those that haven’t been keeping up with my Twitter, I downloaded the Animal Crossing: New Horizons DLC, Happy Home Paradise, the day it was released, and I’ve had a blast with it. During the DLC, in addition to designing houses, you also design ‘facilities’, namely a school, a restaurant, a cafe, a hospital, and an apparel store. Of course, I named all of these after what I imagined exists in Grunvale. I named my cafe ‘Wilkins” (after the coffee Jim Henson used his puppets to advertise for early in his career), my hospital ‘St. Rogers” (after Fred Rogers), and my apparel store ‘Searing-Lord’ (after Sears and Lord & Taylor). Wilkins’ and St. Rogers I know I want to make canon, but since I’ve established that businesses that exist in our universe exist in the Grunvaliverse, I don’t think I’ll be going with it. Also, for the record, I’m considering coming up with animal puns, much like I do for place names, for the businesses, to get around copyright.

The other two facilities, on the other hand, I named after places I’ve already made canon. The school is named ‘Iwerks U’, and the restaurant is named ‘Marilyn Springsteen’s’. The latter of which, of course, has a major 50s motif going on. In case you’re wondering, my staff at Marilyn Springsteen’s is Walker (the chef), Nate (the apprentice), Maddie (the cashier), and Cleo (the employee). And of course, the way I designed the Marilyn Springsteen’s on the archipelago, was part of the visual inspiration for this piece. I’ll go into deeper detail with the description of the color version.

The diner setting is based on a stock image I found online, and is made out of a combination of stock images and my own assets. The top of the counter table and the… other thing that’s above it (I’m just gonna call an awning because that’s the closest word I can think of to describe what it is), are made out of the same stock image, and the seats around it are actually not seats, but rather inverted and distorted tables with cushions on them. As for the pixelated posters on the wall, they’re all images of things from an inspired by the 1950s. The posters on the left wall are posters for Pleasantville, which anyone who knows anything about the film would know is mostly set in the world of a 1950s sitcom. As for the posters on the right wall, they are pixelated images of, from left to right: Andy Warhol’s paintings of Marilyn Monroe, the LP cover to the original Broadway recording of Grease, and the LP cover to Elvis Presley’s debut album. Perhaps I could’ve chosen less-anachronistic things, but then again, the images I used, other than the Elvis one, are still from things inspired by the 50s, even if they’re not from it. Also, although I don’t imagine this artwork being set there, Marilyn Springsteen’s isn’t entirely a 1950s-inspired restaurant anyway. It’s also inspired by the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Which still leaves Pleasantville as an anachronism considering the movie is from 1998, but also not, because, again, it’s set in a 50s sitcom.

The floor is a checkerboard pattern, of course, because no retro diner is complete without a checkerboard pattern. Like, seriously, if there’s no checkerboard pattern around, what are you doing? If there’s no checkerboard pattern present, it’s not a retro-inspired diner. It really is that cut and dried.

Finally, since all the other information is best saved for the specific versions, I’ll talk about the food, and how it reflects each of the Tetrad members’ tastes. Gilda, who I’ve established well at this point is a talented baker, is carrying an apple-and-lemon pie. Because citrus makes everything taste better, as she would tell you. Also because apple pie is my favorite thing to have around Thanksgiving. Margo is carrying a sourdough bread loaf, as a nod to her love of sub sandwiches. Wendy is carrying a chocolate milkshake, inspired by her love of coffee. And finally, April is carrying a deviled ostrich egg, as a nod to her own love of eggs. I have a brief moment in “Link of the Chain” where April expresses interest in the idea of eating ostrich egg, after Gilda mentions that Chandler is responsible for the Redfeather commune’s egg production.

“What? You drew Margo wearing glasses? But Margo’s not a glasses-wearer! Is she?”

Oh. Right. About that. Um… let’s talk about the information about the color version!

Notes for the Color version
The “Marilyn Springsteen’s” I designed on the Happy Home Paradise archipelago, has a cyan color scheme going on. Which, of course, influenced the color scheme of this piece. I did at one point consider color-shifting everything to a red-orange color, but by the time I had the idea, it would’ve been too complicated to fix it, as the posters had already been merged onto the walls. Plus, I kind of got used to the cyan by that point, so why mess with a good thing? Especially when it would mean erasing the most obvious inspiration I took from the ACNH location I designed.

That’s not the interesting part of the colors, though. That would be how I came up with the colors of the dresses. I started with a block of the hex value FFE6E7, a pale pink color much like the pastels I associate with 1950s color schemes. Directly over it on the layer above, I placed blocks of the specific hex values I associate with each member of the Tetrad, at 20% opacity. That’s how I came up with the main color of their dresses. The accent colors of the dresses were created by placing a black box at 50% opacity over the main colors, the colors of the hair accessories were created by placing a black box with the hard mix effect over the main dress colors, and the colors of the lace accents on the aprons (and Margo’s glasses) were created with a white box at 50% opacity, once again, over the main dress colors.

The socks and shoes the Tetrad are wearing are bobby socks and saddle shoes, respectively. Both of which were popular among females in the 1950s. And I used a similar method to come up with the colors for them; the black- and white-skewing colors of their shoes were created by placing blocks of their hex values at 20% opacity, over F2F2F2 and 1A1A1A. The eyelets and soles of their shoes, however, are all the same.

Notes for the Black-and-white version
I just took the color version and turned it black-and-white, right? Yeah, no, that’s too easy. When I work in black-and-white, I always try to make the light and dark values look a certain way. With the Victorian Gilda piece, I deliberately made it look overexposed and washed-out, as I’ve noticed a lot of Victorian photographs tend to exaggerate light and downplay shadows, as well as have smudges on them, probably due to many photos of the time (particularly the first half of the Victorian era) being printed upon metal surfaces and glass plates. Both of which give the photo a washed-out appearance.

And for this piece, I thought in terms of how I know black-and-white photography of the 1950s tends to look. Namely, that the contrast between light and dark is significantly greater. I made two black-and-white versions based on the original color version: one with the contrast set to 0, and one with the contrast set to 100. The zero-contrast layer had a ‘lighter colors’ effect applied to it, and then the two layers were merged, creating the black-and-white look I was aiming for, one with a light scheme (not color scheme; black-and-white is about light values) that wouldn’t look out of place if put amongst actual 1950s photographs.

Notes for the Filtered version
As I said before, the filtered version is made to look like a painting, like that of Norman Rockwell. After studying some of Rockwell’s paintings for a while, I’ve noticed a lot of them, not all of them but a large portion of them, have a muted color scheme, sometimes skewing sepia, sometimes skewing grey, sometimes even skewing a gray-green. And I sought to imitate that with the filtered version, giving a sepia tint to the image that reminds me of The Godfather and for some reason October Sky. Which is weird considering I don’t recall the latter movie looking sepia-tinted. Maybe I’m thinking of the poster.

But the sepia tint isn’t all I added. I also added a blur effect I’d not seen before, one that I felt made it look more like a painting and whose name currently escapes me, to two copies of the image. I also added some noise filters over the image, to make it look like it was painted on a canvas. The result was an image with softened linework, but colors and textures that I feel emulate the Rockwell style well, at least from a color perspective. It makes me want to draw the next pin-up artwork of Sally Hynde in a Rockwell-inspired look. Not a full-out emulation of his style, of course, that’d involve drawing humans. But emulate the textures and colors present in Rockwell’s work, for another 1950s-inspired pin-up artwork of Sally.

Conclusion
And that’s all I’ve got to say about this artwork. Just a cute, 1950s-inspired piece for Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to all my followers, and if you’re reading this the day after Thanksgiving, then Merry Christmas. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, then Happy Holidays. And if you have a problem with Happy Holidays, then Happy Shut the Fuck Up. I’ve got a funny idea for a Christmas/Hanukkah-themed artwork, but I’d like to run it by some of my Jewish friends first before I go out and draw it. It’s not meant to mock Hanukkah or the Jews anything like that, in fact, if anything, it’s meant to make Gilda, Margo, and April the butt of the joke in front of the Wylers. I’ll not say much else about it publicly unless I get the approval to draw it, but I will say it involves caroling.

Until next time, take care, and Happy Thanksgiving… and Hannukwanzmas.

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
Pleasantville is owned by AT&T through WarnerMedia and New Line Cinema.
I have no idea who owns the portraits Andy Warhol made of Marilyn Monroe. Probably his estate or the owner of the collection it’s currently apart of.
Grease is owned by… ViacomCBS through Paramount Pictures. The musical was written by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey.
Elvis Presley is owned by Sony Music Entertainment through RCA Records.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).

The Dummy Goober Effect

Original DA Upload Date: November 13, 2021

Another cartoon done as a college assignment.

—–

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a somewhat recent hypothesis in scientific history, in fact, it was first theorized and studied in 1999 by the namesakes of the hypothesis, David Dunning and Justin Kruger. It describes a cognitive bias, in which people with low ability think highly of their own. You might have this bias yourself about certain things. I might even. And you don’t even know it. The only people who know it are the ones who witness your ability.

That’s what I’m illustrating with this comic. Margo, the least intelligent of the Tetrad, overestimating her ability to speak publicly about her favorite food, submarine sandwiches, as she watches Gilda speak about citrus fruit. Which leads to her embarrassing herself and buckling under pressure, including singing “Yellow Submarine” to calm herself down.

Now to the piece! But first, since my college professor is strict about us showing professional behavior and not making stupid mistakes, and also because she expects us to submit this assignment as a link to its entry in our portfolio, I better put this paragraph in bold so she sees it.

No, professor Thomas, ‘Istallion’, ‘Amareican’, and ‘New Jerbosey’ are not typos, they are animal puns. ‘Istallion’ is a portmanteau of ‘Italian’ and ‘stallion’, ‘Amareican’ of ‘American’ and ‘mare’, and ‘New Jerbosey’ of ‘New Jersey’ and ‘jerboa’. If you follow my work, you’d know that many of the place names are animal puns. Again, they are not typos, they are puns. Please do not take off points for me spelling those words “wrong”, they are spelled that way intentionally.

Okay, now that that part’s out of the way, let’s get to the part for the general audiences.

For this comic, I sought to make the lighting play a role in the way the story is told. In regards to the most prominent example, Panels I and III are lit similarly to each other, to show that Gilda and Margo are confident in their public speaking abilities. Of course, the difference between each other is that panel III has a vignette around it, indicating that Margo only imagines herself as good at public speaking, while panel I does not, indicating Gilda actually is good at it. The setup of these panels makes a return in panel VI, which features much harsher lighting on Margo than in panel III to emphasize that she is uncomfortable with public speaking.

Gilda’s misspeaking in panel II, where she begins to mistakenly say ‘outside’ before correcting herself, was something I thought up on the fly. I initially, accidentally, typed ‘outside’ instead of ‘inside’, but decided to leave the typo there in spirit and have Gilda correct herself instead. Figured it’d be a cute way to characterize her, especially with her being on the spectrum and thus quirky with the way she communicates.

Panel VIII was actually the first panel completed. If you analyze the text closely, you’ll see that the black outlines around the dialogue are thicker than in all the other panels. I initially went back to change it for consistency, but after finding that the thicker outlines made it stick out from the background better, I decided to keep the text as it was.

Finally, all the facts about citrus fruit and sub sandwiches mentioned in this comic were fact-checked; I even looked up to see if the Holland I was an actual thing, as I’d never heard of it before. But after making this comic, I won’t forget it. Probably.

Anyhoo, that’ll be all for this one. Until next time, take care.

—–

Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
“Yellow Submarine” was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney for the album Revolver, owned by… okay, I’ll be honest, you’d be surprised how hard it is to track who owns the Beatles’ music. The most I can find is that Paul McCartney is the current rights holder. But the label under which Revolver was recorded is Parlophone, which is now a subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
All eight panels of this artwork were made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).

The Tetrad and the Phoenix

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!

—–

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.

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).

—–

…

BEEEEEEEEEEP.

50K Arc, Parts I and II

Original DA Upload Dates:

Hums of the Oddballin’ Tetrad: August 1, 2021
Highway to the Ganja Zone: September 11, 2021

—–

As a pilot chapter of sorts to The Oddball Tetrad of Grunvale, New Pork, StormArts presents…

THE 50,000TH TWEET ARC
PART I OF XII
“HUMS OF THE ODDBALLIN’ TETRAD”

It is the middle of summer, sometime around the end of the Zs and beginning of the Alphas. The Oddball Tetrad, a group of preteen mammals of privileged backgrounds consisting of the nerdy procyonine Gilda Grime, the tomboyish leporine Margo Hynde, the punkish sciurine Wendy Wyler, and the fashionista mephitine April Lowry, have gathered at the house of Wendy’s sister and brother-in-law, Dolly Wyler-Voronov and Gregory Voronov, to celebrate Margo and April coming home from their vacations in Dublin and Glasgow respectively, with another one of Wendy’s sisters, Nicole, tagging along as part of her trying to prove to her parents that she’s ready for babysitting. After Gilda finds Gregory’s old PlayStation, along with a multitap, several controllers, and a copy of Crash Team Racing stored away in a closet in the living room, the Tetrad have decided to play through all of the game’s 18 courses after getting the console hooked up to the TV.

Downstairs, Dolly is helping her lifelong friend and fellow cosmetologist, porcine Stella Svampsson, prepare for a show at the retro-themed restaurant and arcade, Marilyn Springsteen’s, at which she is to sing “Downtown” by Petula Clark. Prompted by Dolly to sing something from the 1960s upon getting in her attire for the show, Stella sings another classic from the decade, “Summer in the City” by the Lovin’ Spoonful. Her singing has unwittingly reached Gilda’s ear, inspiring the next entry in a long-standing tradition...

And…

PART II OF XII
“HIGHWAY TO THE GANJA ZONE”

After the Tetrad has decided to do something 60s-themed for the next entry of their tradition celebrating every 10,000th tweet, Dolly drives the Tetrad and Nicole down to Margo’s home, Hynde Manor, where Margo’s rock star grandfather, Angus, is staying, as he takes advantage of the break between the spring and fall legs of his most recent tour. While Nicole goes off to make a sandwich in the kitchen, Margo, Wendy, and April go into the basement to look for music to get them in the mood, while Gilda, having picked up one of her mix tapes (conveniently containing songs from the 1980s by 1960s artists) from her home at the Redfeather Commune on her way to the mansion, follows them, as she listens to said mix tape her Walkman.

While searching through the records, Wendy remembers that all the previous 10,000th tweet specials were 80s-themed, and casts doubt on the idea that the 60s theme they decided upon could work. Angus, who is in the room with them smoking marijuana and watching TV, invites the Tetrad for a joint, so he, as somebody who lived through both the 60s and the 80s, can spill his knowledge of the popular music of both decades onto them…

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You’d think that, considering that these comic are a whopping eight panels long, that these would be worthy of one of my signature, 1000-word-plus essays that I like writing for my artwork. And yes, it would be, if it were a stand-alone piece. But it’s not a stand-alone piece. It’s only the first eight panels of one comic, in a 76-panel, 12-comic storyline, that I decided to write and illustrate, both to test out my graphic novel abilities, and also to celebrate my 50000th tweet, which, funny enough, seems to be on track to drop around when I said it would all the way back in November.

“Anyways, that’ll be all for this one. See you for the 50,000th tweet special in… probably late summer/early fall of 2021, given how fast I tweet. Hopefully Donald Trump will be in prison and most people will be vaccinated against COVID by then!”
– The description to Smug (40,000th Tweet Special)

…might be more on the fall side, though, given I’ve been trying to slow down my tweeting lately after realizing my behavior on social media has been problematic. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s not in prison yet despite proving to the world thousands of times over that he’s a danger to humanity, and the Delta variant of COVID-19 is starting up another major wave of the pandemic. Ugh… Zeus help us if the GOP ends up taking over the presidency in 2024. I don’t know if Trump would run again, but I have a feeling that we could end up with something just as bad if not worse, like DeSantis/Greene. And let me tell you, as a Floridian and resident of Jacksonville, I am embarrassed that DeSantis governs my state and is from the same city where I live. And the less attenton I give to Greene and how much she embarrasses herself, Georgia, and the government of the United States, the better. Instead, I’ll just link you to Randy Rainbow and have him describe to you through Barbra Streisand parody what a shithead she is.

Anyhoo.

I’ve not got a lot to say about this artwork other than the story I wrote above, because I’m saving most of it… for something very different. Something far outside the scope of any DA description I’ve ever written. What exactly? Well, how about a documentary?

Yes, you heard me. A documentary. I don’t know how long it’s gonna be, all I know is that it’s gonna be a long one. Three hours, if I can manage it. And, if it can be made, it’s gonna feature speed-draw segments of me drawing the comics, and a soundtrack of video game tunes that I’m gonna take advantage of fair use for to include in my video. I know the general vibe I want the documentary to be; Summoning Salt meets ThaRixer, with some sprinkles of Blameitonjorge. I’ve ran into some recording trouble while making the documentary so I might end up going off on tangents during it for filler, but rest assured, if I can get this documentary made, it’ll be my magnum opus. Among videos. The Oddball Tetrad of Grunvale, New Pork and the series to be spawned from it, is still what I’d like to see as my true magnum opus.

That’s all you’re getting for this one. Until part III, take care.

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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.

Crash Bandicoot is owned by Activision; the original PS1 version of Crash Team Racing is owned by Sony through Sony Computer Entertainment.

PlayStation is owned by Sony through Sony Computer Entertainment.

V8 is owned by the Campbell Soup Company.

“Summer in the City” was written by John Sebastian, Mark Sebastian, and Steve Boone for the album Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful, owned by Sony Music Entertainment.

“Come Dancing” was written by Ray Davies for the album State of Confusion, owned by Sony Music Entertainment through Arista Records.

All eight panels of both of these artworks were made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).

Earth, Wind, and Fur II: Dos Zwei Deux

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).