Regarding my character concepts, I designed three main characters, the super AI, the librarian, and the old professor. Although the number of characters is small, I have some ideas about the detailed design and meaning of each character. Some of these ideas are conceptual, and some are about appearance. Here I mainly discuss the conceptual design, in order to provide a general direction for the modeling.

The Librarian

For the librarian’s appearance, at the beginning I thought about following traditional robot designs, doing something more human-like, or looking for some human-type robot references to complete this animation.

But on the other hand, I think humanoid robots might be a bit too bland, and humanoid robots also do not really match the characteristics of practical robots in our current era. Many robots that are actually in use now are non-humanoid.

Although humanoid robot technology is developing quickly, in the end it is still a technical path that is in the experimental stage. The robots commonly used now, such as delivery robots in hotels, are basically similar to floor-cleaning robots when moving through hallways—they focus on simple shapes and functionality first, rather than replicating humans.

Therefore, my final plan is to use more geometric shapes and distinctive functional modules on the robot’s body, such as a mechanical arm to assist in taking books and a module that serves as the “head” for scanning books. Its main part will be a terminal and a screen, allowing people to perform some self-service book-borrowing operations on the screen. At the same time, this form completely avoids the uncanny valley, makes the design more simple, and gives it a friendlier feeling toward humans.

The Super AI

The design of the super AI’s image. I think the super AI’s appearance only needs to be a projection, and influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey, I want to design the super AI as the projection of a stone monolith, using special symbols in the middle to focus the audience’s attention.

At the same time, this form is abstract enough and fits the cold feeling of the absolute order of AI. I don’t even need to make a very complex design drawing for it.

The Old Professor

Regarding the old professor, because my skills in realistic human character modeling are relatively weak, I chose a suitable public asset to serve as the appearance of the old professor. He will appear sitting in a wheelchair, and this look also appears proper enough.