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Description
Moving far ahead in my OC universe timeline, we have the ARKE Probe, better known to her friends as just Arke. Arke is the culmination of generations of the ever advancing biomimicry which defines the technology of future humanity. It all began in the late 21st century with simple microscopic medical droids and self-healing, self-replicating macromachines. Or, as many philosophers would point out, a new type of life essentially. Once feared to become the existential threat of the Gray Goo scenario, as time went on it became clear that this Gray Goo would act no different than the Green Goo which infected our Earth some 4 billion years ago. As humanity ascended into the other worlds of our Solar System in the 22nd century, these extremely adaptable mechanical species diversified to thrive in the extreme environments of other planets and moons, becoming a natural ecosystem in their own right, with humans sometimes as the guiding hand of their evolution.

Arke was the first such robot to be brought up to a human level. She was first conceived in the lab of Amber Okeanis and Thaumas Nephele in the year 5137. Raised from her microscopic components into an entity resembling a human child, Arke then spent the next two decades growing and being raised by her parents to learn how to communicate and study the environment. Arke's mission, you see, would be to go out and explore the Outer Solar System, which had been largely ignored as a cold barren wasteland to the colonists of the four Inner Planets. However, as biosignatures had been detected deep in the crevices of Saturn's moon Titan, someone had to go and check it out. Arke was launched in 5157, and arrived on Titan some seven years later. While thousands of miles away from her parents and any permanent human settlement, Arke was far from alone. She had a whole moon full of a vast and beautiful ecosystem with creatures totally alien to anyone. Her mission is to study and catalog each and every tree branch, and send the information back to her father. Her mother, sadly, is not around anymore to hear of her adventures.

Design notes, machines are not my forte. I've never been very mechanically minded, so my intuition on the inner and outer workings of robots is lacking. Thankfully I have an excu- uhhhh I mean lore that makes it so I don't have to worry too much about that. As I started building the far future setting for Drake Hero, I didn't want it to just be a generic sci fi space opera like everything else. One concept that's really grabbed my attention is biotechnology art, a sort of retort to the infamous Gray Goo apocalypse. In popular media, we often treat the machine as superior to flesh, destined to always overtake us as the next, cold-hearted phase of life on Earth. However, when you actually look at the path of technology in reality, metal is disproportionately worse than flesh in most ways outside of raw strength and speed. For efficiency and computing power, we have absolutely nothing that is on the same level as the bundle of meat between our ears, the most advanced supercomputer in the known universe. Machines may mimic it, it may copy it, and it can be uncanny at times, but it doesn't quite match does it? It doesn't understand. It doesn't react the same way a nervous system does. It's not alive. All living things are machines, but not every machine is a living thing. Every time we make a new machine, the first thing we try to compare it to is its biological equivalent, and it's often extremely inferior. Biomimicry is very much a real field in mechanics, because of course it is. Why reinvent the wheel when nature has spent 4 billion years perfecting the designs for every conceivable problem down to a microscopic level? Hell, not all robots are even made of metal. Soft robots are very much a thing, and they're kind of adorable. Arke's skin is very much based on that white rubbery self healing material you see on all those octobots. It's not a takeover, it's just life, life we've made. Drake Hero is a universe where we have embraced this new life and pushed it over the uncanny valley. There are robots that resemble giant whale blimps gracefully soaring in the clouds of Venus, and there are dog-like robots keeping people company on Mars. And Arke is someone's little girl. They think, they extract materials from the environment to grow and make more of themselves, they're very much alive.

Her outfit is made of much tougher material, because it had to survive entering Titan's atmosphere and keep her safe from the elements. But underneath, she's super squishy and full of delicate wires. Her hair is stylized cables which can grow and be cut like human hair. It also doesn't come across very well in the drawing but her mouth isn't a physical hole, it's just an LED display under her skin which can turn off and on in different locations to show different emotions. She ingests materials through a porthole in her stomach. Her cloak was a bit of a pain, and sometimes I wanna try to redesign it, but I can't quite put my finger on how I want to go about that yet. I tried to model it off of the way NASA tarps and parachutes often look. I'm a biiiiiig nerd for NASA, I love reading up on literally everything they do. James Webb is just the pinnacle of human achievement.

Now if only I understood numbers.

Description
Moving far ahead in my OC universe timeline, we have the ARKE Probe, better known to her friends as just Arke. Arke is the culmination of generations of the ever advancing biomimicry which defines the technology of future humanity. It all began in the late 21st century with simple microscopic medical droids and self-healing, self-replicating macromachines. Or, as many philosophers would point out, a new type of life essentially. Once feared to become the existential threat of the Gray Goo scenario, as time went on it became clear that this Gray Goo would act no different than the Green Goo which infected our Earth some 4 billion years ago. As humanity ascended into the other worlds of our Solar System in the 22nd century, these extremely adaptable mechanical species diversified to thrive in the extreme environments of other planets and moons, becoming a natural ecosystem in their own right, with humans sometimes as the guiding hand of their evolution.

Arke was the first such robot to be brought up to a human level. She was first conceived in the lab of Amber Okeanis and Thaumas Nephele in the year 5137. Raised from her microscopic components into an entity resembling a human child, Arke then spent the next two decades growing and being raised by her parents to learn how to communicate and study the environment. Arke's mission, you see, would be to go out and explore the Outer Solar System, which had been largely ignored as a cold barren wasteland to the colonists of the four Inner Planets. However, as biosignatures had been detected deep in the crevices of Saturn's moon Titan, someone had to go and check it out. Arke was launched in 5157, and arrived on Titan some seven years later. While thousands of miles away from her parents and any permanent human settlement, Arke was far from alone. She had a whole moon full of a vast and beautiful ecosystem with creatures totally alien to anyone. Her mission is to study and catalog each and every tree branch, and send the information back to her father. Her mother, sadly, is not around anymore to hear of her adventures.

Design notes, machines are not my forte. I've never been very mechanically minded, so my intuition on the inner and outer workings of robots is lacking. Thankfully I have an excu- uhhhh I mean lore that makes it so I don't have to worry too much about that. As I started building the far future setting for Drake Hero, I didn't want it to just be a generic sci fi space opera like everything else. One concept that's really grabbed my attention is biotechnology art, a sort of retort to the infamous Gray Goo apocalypse. In popular media, we often treat the machine as superior to flesh, destined to always overtake us as the next, cold-hearted phase of life on Earth. However, when you actually look at the path of technology in reality, metal is disproportionately worse than flesh in most ways outside of raw strength and speed. For efficiency and computing power, we have absolutely nothing that is on the same level as the bundle of meat between our ears, the most advanced supercomputer in the known universe. Machines may mimic it, it may copy it, and it can be uncanny at times, but it doesn't quite match does it? It doesn't understand. It doesn't react the same way a nervous system does. It's not alive. All living things are machines, but not every machine is a living thing. Every time we make a new machine, the first thing we try to compare it to is its biological equivalent, and it's often extremely inferior. Biomimicry is very much a real field in mechanics, because of course it is. Why reinvent the wheel when nature has spent 4 billion years perfecting the designs for every conceivable problem down to a microscopic level? Hell, not all robots are even made of metal. Soft robots are very much a thing, and they're kind of adorable. Arke's skin is very much based on that white rubbery self healing material you see on all those octobots. It's not a takeover, it's just life, life we've made. Drake Hero is a universe where we have embraced this new life and pushed it over the uncanny valley. There are robots that resemble giant whale blimps gracefully soaring in the clouds of Venus, and there are dog-like robots keeping people company on Mars. And Arke is someone's little girl. They think, they extract materials from the environment to grow and make more of themselves, they're very much alive.

Her outfit is made of much tougher material, because it had to survive entering Titan's atmosphere and keep her safe from the elements. But underneath, she's super squishy and full of delicate wires. Her hair is stylized cables which can grow and be cut like human hair. It also doesn't come across very well in the drawing but her mouth isn't a physical hole, it's just an LED display under her skin which can turn off and on in different locations to show different emotions. She ingests materials through a porthole in her stomach. Her cloak was a bit of a pain, and sometimes I wanna try to redesign it, but I can't quite put my finger on how I want to go about that yet. I tried to model it off of the way NASA tarps and parachutes often look. I'm a biiiiiig nerd for NASA, I love reading up on literally everything they do. James Webb is just the pinnacle of human achievement.

Now if only I understood numbers.