Hey, guess what, I haven’t forgotten about Hope! I was actually working on a short story to go with these sketches, but I just didn’t like how it came out and the more I worked on it the less I liked it. So I’m scrapping that particular story and just posting the sketches as is. I’ll probably write a different story about Hope and her crew at some point.

The sifting room is where food comes in, after passing through a filtration system. The food is caught by nets and a grate, and the crew can sift through it and take out food for their own use, as well as remove things that will not be used for fuel (for example, if she eats any metal.) On the crew’s recommendation, Hope swallows most of her food whole, or in as large of chunks as possible, to make it easier for the mice to sort it (which is easy for her to do, as she no longer has a gag reflex.) Once they’re done with that, or if they don’t need to get into the food at all, the grate and nets are moved aside to allow any remaining organic matter to fall into a tube that leads to Hope’s biofuel engine, where it is converted into energy to power her body.