Meanwhile, in the Galactic Core...

I'm going to try something new. I'm going to provide this next wallpaper free of charge. No donation required. Sure, there's a donation button on the wallpaper page, but you don't have to click it in order to get the goods. Many of you have been quite generous in the last couple of months, and I don't blame you if you want to save your money for the upcoming book pre-order (which is about four, maybe five weeks out.) Meanwhile, in the Galactic Core Trivia: The image in that first panel took about three hours to create when I was coloring the strip last week. Most of that time was spent experimenting with filters until I found the combination of effects I liked. The final composition is a "Twirl" distortion applied first to one of my homemade starfields (20 hours of work in that file -- good thing I can re-use it!) and then to a lens flare. I then layered the two effects, rotating one slightly. Oh, and then I added the double-ring lightning layer, which is a texture I spent about six hours on a couple of years ago. Repurposing this as wallpaper took about 90 minutes, including the time spent coding the page and writing this post. Lucky you! Not only do you have free wallpaper, now you know what went into it.