Grandfather.
The Mad Scientist.
Some of the earliest drafts had Grandfather having close cropped hair, a muscular built, and even a few decades shaved off his appearance. Sergei Sapiens-16 as we know him, however is skinny, strange, and wizened — as mysterious now as he ever was.
The Singularity is coming…
Most early drafts involved some notion of ‘Singularity’ — the hypothetical convergence point, in the future, of Artificial Intelligence technology — robots that could pass the Turing test — this was the stuff of legends…
The many faces of Grandfather…
Some of the earliest storyboards…
The story started evolving into something more than just chess and robots…
World of Caissa
Check out some more concept art here