My submission to the robot day 2022 event.

Picture is 4250x4250 if I recall so heads up if you zoom in

Apologies for the long winded paragraphs btw, Im in part writing this for myself as much as to explain things in this picture so excuse me if it's very rambling and stream of consciousness. That and all the grammatical mistakes as I need to get this down before the contest ends.

TLDR a lot of the themes I wanted to explore with this image involves the coexistance of "robotic" life forms and "organic" ones as well as how they're both able to be symbiotic and even arguably integrated with one another.

I made this using a world Ive been sorta building as sort of an experiment and reason to flesh it out a bit, so apologies if it's kind of obtuse. its sort of self serving so let me kind of explain the sitiation in the image.

Essencially the idea is that this is for a setting I want to turn into a video game actually, a platformer somewhat similar to stuff like spark and sonic. The setting is far off on a planet. Its far in the future and robots and augmented humans and aliens live. On this particular planet there is a mixture of robotic flora and fauna and carbon/organic based ones. The robotic ones have nanomachines that make their body up similar to cells in our own. The planet is also very very magnetic vs our own, like to a point a lot of uninsulated machines would break if put on said planet, and has stuff like those magnetic crystals (which would be the equivilant to stuff like rings in said game idea I had) due to this. Robots and those with machines and robotic parts have to there for be insulated to deal with this and the robotic native fauna have adapted to deal with it as well. Thats also why there's a giant island floating in the back, there are massive chunks of magnetic crystals in it that are keeping it in the sky. I thought that this both just looked cool and would also be a good justification for floating platforms in game as I could just say "fuckin magnets, how do they work?" as the reason.

The sorta idea is that these different types of life forms have evolved and live symbiotically in their sorta own ecology. The sort of themes I want to kind of explore iwth this picture and this world as a whole is the integration of robotics/artifical beings with more organic ones and how their melding and also co-existance would work. So stuff like the worm, the weird spring/mushroom like flora, and and that massive thing with all the vines on it are arguably robotic by our own definitions as they're made of "naturally occuring" nanomachines. I wanted to create a slightly somber but pretty image of what is essencially similar to that of a beached whale picture. The two robots, with the tall one being an alien that uploaded his mind to a robot body, and the human are trying to figure out how to remove it and why it crashed and died there in the first place.

Now to get into some of the ecology ideas I had. The worms usually avoid human settlements and often provice a large amount of resources to their ecosystem both through their constant stirring of the land, which releases things like iron trapped in the ground and those crystals which many "robotic" flora and fauna use as a food/energy source (you can even see one using an especially big one in that ditch for that to the left). I also imagine they'd make for a good excuse to explain how things like loop-de-loops and other weird ground formations exist in game since they carve the landscape. Many robotic lifeforms will also feed on their carcasses when they die and are above the surface. You can also see an instance of symbiosis with that large tower like structure on the left. its a large robotic flora that has heavy amounts of vines and other organic flora growing on it. These structures actually help provide a sturdier frame so that it cant break as easily and it provides a much better vantage point for things like vines to grow as its "stalk" is much easier to latch onto and grow on vs the other trees and such. Many of the trees grow in an almost creeper vine fashion across the land (which would make for fun envrionments to run around on I imagine in game). There's also the robotic mushroom like things that act like springs as to knock away anything trying to eat them (as well as to be actual springs mechanically in game). You can also see a large fungal tower growing in the distance.

What I really wanted to do is show how lush this ecology is as to push the idea of this "robotic and organic co-existance" theme. The three characters here also go for that. One's a pure robot, being the small round dude, anothers the tall robot that used to be actually one of those furry alien sonic inspired characters before slowly augmenting himself til he was purely mechanical even brain wise, and also the human girl on the left. I imagine most of if not all humans may also have nano machines based off this planet's robotic flora and fauna actually integrated into their own bodies too, so in a way one could make the argument even she is partially robotic on a cellular level. Further pushing the like symbiosis and co-existance themes I wanted to explore in a more fleshed out setting like a game. Also yes I like megaman how could you tell :v