If the humans were grains of sand, wafting over the surface in a desperate dance, their automatons were ants, sent forth to scurry and prod those places the humans did not want, or feared, to go.

Varied in shape and form and function, the automatons roamed the surfaces, long after the humans had gone. A mobile archaeology of the industriousness of human greed and desperation.

Finally, power plants exhausted, reaction mass spent, they came to rest on a surface tapestry Millennia old. To be weathered and worn, shape shifted and reassembled beyond recognition.

To be absorbed.

I rediscovered this set of quickish sketches from Inktober of a few years back, which I had rescued from Instagram (hence the shitty quality)… except they weren’t ink but graphite. I did this as a way to explore some of ideas I was having for my book early on. Looking at them now, I still really like the aesthetic direction, which is so different from most of the stuff around these days. Some of them are tighter than others and some are definitely daft, but that’s what you get trying to come up with a new design a day!