I’ve been working on this idea ever since Cecilia’s debut, and I really love the doll/automaton concept. DSmile is also one of the artists I look-up to, and hearing Cecilia play NieR made this a no-brainer.

The machine in her back references the Jaquet-Droz Writer Automaton, which is one of the four Jaquet-Droz Automata: A series of incredibly beautiful and functional machines that have served as predecessors to modern-day robots despite being built in the 1700s (A full hundred years before electric circuits were even invented)

Three of the four Jaquet-Droz automata are still functional to this day, and can be viewed at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

I worked backwards from the Jaquet-Droz concept to produce a suitable pose and 3D-modeled gears and lenses to show a sort of clockwork robot performing maintenance on Cecilia.