In the previous project, the character I designed lived on a post-post-apocalyptic Earth. A dozen generations after humans to an earth mutated by toxic waste, which they had initially abandoned to wait out the worst of its inhabitability. I played with a few ideas for different communities of mutations that she might encounter in her story, but found myself thinking about the world before her, during that abandoned time period—what was it like when humans left it behind? The sort of mutations I envisioned didn’t really arise from the kind of nuclear fallout that usually populates post-apocalyptic visions.
Rather than becoming a wasteland, the natural world reacted to the radiation by expanding and changing unpredictably, and while the air became toxic for humans, nature thrived and mutated at a rapid pace. While they were gone, Earth entered an era of overgrowth, which had a curious effect on the remaining technology that the humans left behind. In a few areas, this resulted in a gradual merging of technology and nature, and over time some of those pieces of technology gained sentience. It started with the more sophisticated computers who were eventually able to become autonomous robots, and over time the population grew from few to many.
I had some fun initially drawing sketches of the different forms they might have, but ultimately I felt this was less significant than the setting and environment, since the majority of robots wouldn’t look too similar to one another.
Since they are connected to all of the knowledge that humans left behind in technology, they have a very comprehensive education system, but are not all-knowing from creation. I had the idea to draw a classroom scene and depict a group of androids learning in some kind of botanical environment.
Since this community developed on Earth during a time when there were almost no humans living there, I also considered the potential conflict that could arise when they come back. Although the robot communities had access to information about them, humans would likely be considered somewhat of a tall tale as the generations went by, and I imagine their return would be as startling to them as an alien invasion.
This would most likely result in a long period of awkward resettling and human-robot relations. While they don’t need to compete for the same resources, they are still about as uninterested in cohabitation as the humans would be. Not only that, but humans being very historically bad for the environment would likely create some kind of ecological conflict over time.
