这张图画的是个人科幻系列作品“电子之心”的早期角色，兔型机器人天青。天青这张图虽然很旧，但多年之后依然看起来效果不错。或许带有一些运气成分，也或许是当时的创作心态特别好吧。我在后面很长时间都无法创作出这么好看的机器人。

因为原图的整体感觉莫名地舒服，但细看之下人体结构和机械细节经均不起推敲，加上原始工作文件丢失，没有高分辨率的版本。我曾经不止一次试图重画它，但效果都不好。

第二张图是 2018 年的一次重画尝试，这次算是硬着头皮把它画完了，增加了很多机械化的细节，但风格不够统一，画面整体的平衡也不及原作。我曾经一度因为这张改版反映了当时自己急于证明自己，却又缺乏将概念表现出来的能力而搞砸了，因而羞于将它发出来，但现在看来它似乎也没有那么不堪。

天青原来的名字是“榛子 (Hazel)”，这个名字出自我儿时读过的英国动物小说“沃特希普荒原 (Watership Down)”的野兔主角“榛子”。这个出处与高达 AOZ 系列作品中的“海兹尔”是相同的，但我并没有参考 AOZ，而是直接致敬了原著，因为电子之心概念成型的时间要早于 AOZ 好几年。当时还随便设计了一些其他的兔型机器人，都是以沃特希普荒原中的兔子命名的 (黑莓、蒲公英)。后来考虑到与 AOZ 撞车不好，加上过多致敬原作其实也不太好，所以改为将“榛子”用作家族名，给这个角色起了一个新的名字叫做“天青 (Azure)”。

天青还有一个“双胞胎”的妹妹叫做“琥珀”，她是从电子之心系列中更加早期的一个人型机器人角色转换过来的。天青的配色是黑白蓝，琥珀的则是黑白黄。天青和琥珀在相当长的时间里都是电子之心系列的主角级角色，他们两人的原始设定是特警，符合科幻类动漫作品动不动就拿枪拿炮的刻板印象，也可能有受攻壳机动队的启发。设定上天青擅长射击，琥珀擅长格斗。

我为两兄妹撰写过十几种不同的故事，但感觉都“似曾相识”，后来“兔子警察”的设定更是跟“疯狂动物城”的兔子警官朱迪撞车，可以说越来越行不通了。随着设定上更合理，故事上更有挖掘空间的爱理诗和白云两人逐渐成型，天青和琥珀就被降级成配角了，他们的职业或许也要重新考虑了。

Azure the Robot Rabbit is one of the earliest characters in Electric Hearts. This picture was created in 2007. Perhaps due to luck, or my mental state being better at the time, the picture still looks okay today. There would be many years before I could reliably nice-looking robots like this.

The original picture had an inexplicably nice feel, but closer inspection revealed flaws in both the anatomy and mechanical details. Unfortunately, the original working file was lost, and I could not find a high-resolution version.

I attempted to redraw this picture multiple times with unsatisfactory results. The second picture was a redrawing attempt from 2018. This time, I pushed myself to complete it. While I added many mechanical details, the style lacked cohesion and overall balance is not as good as the original. I used to feel embarrassed to show this one to others because it reflects a lack of skills and confidence while being too eager to prove myself. But later, I’ve come to realize it’s not as bad as I once thought.

Azure’s old name was Hazel, which came from the rabbit protagonist of Watership Down. I also created a few other rabbit robots named after Watership Down characters — Blackberry, Dandelion and such. Unfortunately, a later Gundam title called Advance of Z (AOZ) used the same idea to name their robots, and I found it distasteful to pay too much homage to unrelated works, so I dropped the idea. I renamed my character to Azure, while using Hazel as his family name.

Azure has a twin sister called Amber. She was a humanoid robot in early iterations, but the idea went nowhere, and I decided to redesign her as a rabbit robot. Azure’s color scheme is black-white-blue, Amber is black-white-yellow. The twins were supposed to be the main characters of Electric Hearts for a very long time. They were special police officers, perhaps inspired by Ghost in the Shell. And thus, they were equipped with heavy firearms. On paper, Azure is good at shooting, while Amber is good at close-quarter combat.

I wrote dozens of stories for the twins, but all of them felt like derivative of existing animes. Then Zootopia happened. Judy Hopps being a rabbit police officer clashed with the twins, so I decided to drop the idea.

As Alice and Cloud slowly became more developed characters, they replaced the twins as the main characters. Maybe I should change the jobs for them, too.