Artist's commentary
Cloud with His Snowfield Gear
This is a quick concept sketch of Cloud White the Robot Rabbit when he is equipping with his snowfield gear. This picture is one of the early concept arts of Electric Hearts that stood the test of time.
Cloud’s snowfield gear is a cloak-like add-on. It has a multilayer structure.
The outermost layer of the cloak is made of Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) films that often seen on man-made satellites. The gold side facing outward is made of polyimide; the silver side facing inward is made of aluminum. There is a plastic layer in-between to maintain the shape of the cloak. The MLI films provides insulation and protection.
Under the MLI films is the middle layer. It consists of a foldable photovoltaic power generating film and flexible battery plates. By taking off the golden MLI films and expanding the photovoltaic films, Cloud can generate a very small amount of power by receiving moonlight and starlight.
The innermost layer consists of flexible far-infrared heating coils. This is used to maintain the body’s working temperature.
Although Cloud is a robot, he still needs to keep warm because the sun has disappeared in his time, and the temperature of the earth’s surface has dropped below -200 ℃ (-328 F). The whole atmosphere has frozen and fallen on to the ground as snows, effectively making the earth a giant snowball. While travelling on the surface, the condition is not so different from the outer space. Cloud’s robotic body would not function properly without a minimum amount of heating.
The body proportion in this picture looks off because I wasn’t in a good shape back then. Cloud is supposed to be a “longer” rabbit. This was also just a quick idea, it didn’t come with all the ideas described in the texts above. Maybe one day I will redraw and expand this concept further.