Animated Narratives Week 1 - The Robot

Response to ‘a cybernetic mercenary escapes from an artificially intelligent city’.

Prompt of the week required ‘an outstanding character, a dynamic action and an interactive location’, and I have chosen the premise of ‘a cybernetic mercenary escapes from an artificially intelligent city’. In this picture, I’m trying to depict an exiled combatant robot’s first contact with a human society. The robot is intended to be of streamline shape, dark in colours and cold in appearance. It fought long and hard battles and had just managed to escape an artificially intelligent city. Upon entering the first human town, all the adults stood afar in fear of this strange looking robot. As the robot stood there feeling very lost, some children approached it in curiosity and offered it a flower to make it feel better.

By creating a ‘screenshot’, I seek to capture the composition and ‘mood’ of the scene. As depicted, most people have singled out the robot in the middle and are scared to go closer. The robot appears aloof, cold and expressionless. Two children approach from the side with no fear in their eyes, postured upright to show friendly body language. A single beam of light is used for this scene to draw emphasis to the interaction between a cold, streamline killing machine and small, frail yet warm-hearted children.

The idea behind this scene was inspired by the movie ‘The Blind Side’. The movie’s theme also revolved around alienation from the general society. A simple act of kindness can save a person, and sheds light onto the gloomy situation. Humanity and compassion still exists and and our society is not hopeless.

This work was in reflection after some very tragic news. Oppression, attacks, harassment and aggression based on race and appearance has become an increasingly alarming issue since Covid-19 became a global pandemic. News became littered with reports of both verbal and physical abuse that it’s easy to lose faith in humanity. Through my work, I want to remind myself (and anyone that sees this) that kindness still exists in the world. Although it's not reported and celebrated by news agencies, it ultimately still exists. There’s still hope, love and compassion in our world.