Pink Galaxy Backgrounds

(This post contains images you can use as wallpapers, but they're not SEXY wallpapers, so I'll also be posting a SEXY wallpaper later today)

Here are some of the set pieces I've been working on for Pink Galaxy, mostly interiors for the ship, set up to allow characters to stand in the foreground, visual novel style. I probably should have posted these as I went along, over the course of the month!

1. First is the cockpit (definitely not called the "Flight Deck") with a couple of consoles for the player to access menus. It's a layered image, so different space backgrounds can appear outside the window, depending on where the ship is.

2 & 3. The crew galley is basically the lounge of the ship, of course.

4. The crew quarters section is dark and cozy on the way to the bedrooms and showers.

5. The greenhouse garden grows some of the ship's food and helps with air filtration.

6. This is the main promenade deck of the space station where the Pink Galaxy docks at the beginning.

7. The entrance to one of a number of planetary outposts on harsh and unforgiving exoplanets. Host to smugglers, scoundrels, and interplanetary dive bars.

8. The throne room of the Imperial Palace, on Earth, where Gaia Empress Adesewa Demetra Sainte-Georges, Empress of the Earth and Sun rules and hosts audiences with diplomats from around the galaxy.

The Earth is very keen on sounding impressive to all the other planets, but... the Terran Empire is mostly just Earth, Mars, and a few other polities in the Solar System, as well as a couple of planets farther away, like Terra Nova. They're not the vast stellar empire they make themselves out to be, but humans like pageantry.

Oh, now that I think about it, I'll add the Empress herself, as the 9th image.

Blog: I didn't post these over the course of the month for a couple of reasons, one being that I've still been doing a lot of tweaking on them - and there are a lot of backgrounds that are "done" but I don't want to post here, because they still need more tweaking to look good, and/or to work with characters in the foreground. Another reason being that it felt kind of boring plugging along on set pieces, and I thought it might be boring to post.

(Content Warning: Sad ->) The other big reason is that it's been a rough month for me. On about New Year's Day I found a lump on my cat's jaw, like the size of a fingertip. By the time I got her in to a veterinarian appointment it had about doubled in size. I was really hoping it was a swollen tooth infection or something they could treat, but the vet said it's cancer, really aggressive, inoperable, and at the rate it's growing she doesn't have long.

I'm really heartbroken. She's part of the pair of cats I got from a shelter in 2006, her "sister" died a few years ago, also from cancer. Some of you who have been patrons for a long time might remember. The one who died, she was always frail. But my cat who is still alive, this has taken me completely off guard because her health has always been perfect. If it weren't for this, she'd probably live several more years. It came out of nowhere. I mean, hey, cancer's not fair. Of course.

She's older than GalaxyPink, she's been with me through so much of everything my life has been in adulthood. She's a good kitty. She's affectionate and loves people and doesn't deserve this.

She's alive and in good spirits for now, happy, good appetite, not much pain. If I let this progress, she'd keep surviving until the growth (which is now the size of a golf ball and takes up most of one side of her jaw) prevented her from eating and slowly starved her. But she'd be suffering, and I don't want her to suffer. So that means I have to make the decision when to have her put to sleep, and that's a tough decision to make. It'll probably be in the next couple of weeks, before she starts to really have "bad days", which she's only had a few so far.

It's hard to do cute and sexy and fun character designs while I'm agonizing over this, that's why I was just plugging away at boring, but necessary background art this month.

I've had really good momentum on this project! And I don't want it to crash to a halt, but damn it's going to take a dip this month. I have a lot of auxiliary art like this still to do, so I'm going to try to keep making progress, but jeez you guys... I'm watching my heart break. My poor little buddy. When she's gone we'll only have my wife's cat, who is not MY friend. We get along fine, but he's my housemate, not my familiar. Life is going to feel so different, and I'm not ready for it - but I guess you never are.

I guess I'm lucky I get to decide when it's time, instead of someone who lost their pet in an accident or something. And DEFINITELY many people are going through worse right now, than losing a pet, so many have lost family members, etc. I know it could be worse. I'll count that one blessing at least!

I don't know if I'm going to post about it when she's gone - this isn't really the place, and the mood and style of my work is not really compatible with big emotional reveals like this anyway. But I had to say something! I'll probably be a bit quiet in February too, and I'll try to get back into full swing by the end of the month or the beginning of March.

I guess if you're the spiritual sort, pray for my special kitty to go to the Happy Hunting Ground, where she can sleep in the sun all day and every evening she can hunt and catch and consume The Red Dot to take its glowing power! <3

Yeah, I don't think I'll talk about this again. Like I said, I will post a SEXY wallpaper momentarily (I didn't want this one to be the pinned most recent post).