Climbing Over The Garden Wall For Halloween

Ten years ago, Patrick McHale and a host of talented artists and performers created an animated mini-series called Over The Garden Wall exploring life, death, and everything in the unknown autumnal expanse in between. To help celebrate that groundbreaking show, Michelle and I designed a fun Halloween card for our Patreon supporters inspired by that cartoon.

The first thing we did was pinpoint a moment in the series (among so many impactful moments) that spoke to us and evoked cozy, autumnal vibes. As Halloween nuts, episode two — filled with old barns, cornfields, jack-o-lanterns, graves, and skeletons — has always resonated with us. So I sketched up the moment when Wirt and Greg, our two protagonists, stumble upon the pumpkin people in the barn, and are greeted with curiosity and suspicion.

Once the piece was inked, I laid down the yellows, oranges, and browns with watercolor and colored pencils. In previous years, we’ve drawn individual cards for each of our patrons. Simple ink wash monsters that didn’t take too long. But the Patreon membership has grown, and time is short, so this year we decided to go all in on the original art and then get prints made for the cards.

A note on copy shops: With time waning, we used FedEx/Kinkos. Never a first choice for prints, but we’ve gotten our marketing done there and it always looked fine. In our experience, when you use FedEx/Kinkos and ask them to make you some copies, if your order is less than $50, you will be charged a $2.50 “service fee.” It’s strange to charge extra for the one service you’re providing since, one would think, the actual base fee should cover that service. Regardless, if you bump up the order to top out above $50 to avoid paying that annoying fee, you will be told that if you want to take the copies home with you that day, you will be charged a “rush fee.”

So. Here’s your pro-tip workaround: Tell ‘em to stuff it….in the back room, and you’ll return the next day to pick up the copies. You avoid both fees and you can spend the downtime looking for a different printshop. And that’s your Cheapskate’s Tip for October. You’re welcome!

The way we designed the card, when our patrons open their envelopes, they’ll be met with the barn doors from the cartoon. If they swing open the doors, they’ll see Enoch, leader of the pumpkin people, reaching out to them, while all of the other pumpkin revelers stare at them with eerie, empty eye sockets.

But the mechanics of the design are such that, if they open the cards as if the barn doors are on rails, the space inside the barn becomes a room in three dimensions, and can be placed on your mantle alongside your pumpkins and candles and serve as a pleasant little fall decoration.

Now, it’s late in the season, and we’re not sure they’re going to get to their destinations in time for All Hallow’s Eve. But we raced to the post office first things in the morning and sent them out as expeditiously as possible. I’m just hoping our generous patrons won’t mind paying the C.O.D. Rush Charge we tacked on for all our trouble.

If you want to see our process for this card, you can watch the video at the link below.