Contest Entry Thingy

ALRIGHT SO I guess a lot of explaining is needed for this picture!
This is a contest entry for *darmoon87's contest right here --> [link]
and I feel that this picture needs some writing to go with it.
So

ABOUT THIS SHIT

This is a picture of Mantis and his rival, "Roamer".
Mantis walked out of Viva City when he was about 16 to find an army to fight in. He didn't know who or what he wanted to fight for, he just wanted to fight something to help. This was after getting "inspired" to fight for a good reason after seeing Marco come back from a bullshit war.
Mantis eventually came across a battlefield of ROBOTS where a war between The Eradicators and The Amity Preservers had been taking place for about three years.
(it only gets more normal from here)
Mantis didn't know what either side was doing, and he didn't know which side was the good side. He got tricked into joining the bad side (The Eradicators obviously). The robots there locked him up for a while and ran a bunch of tests on him to figure out how he worked, why he was so big, and what his species was "capable of". Mantis went through this for about three months or so before his "FUCK THIS SHIT" moment. He busted out and scurried over to the good side like "I'm sorry guys ;-;" and they're like IT'S ALL COOL BRO and they let him join.
But of course The Eradicators managed to get enough out of Mantis to be able to build a "super soldier" based around Mantis. That is Roamer.
The entire war is more like each side trying to hold the other side off. The Eradicators are a group of robots built to wipe out everything from the past and present to make way for the future. They're not built with the knowledge that you have to have the past to work towards a future and that's why they're bad guys!! If they ever managed to wipe absolutely everything out, they'd finish their mission by self destructing. Yes, their view and understanding of this concept is incredibly jaded. The Amity Preservers on the other hand are smarter than this yes. They were started by "The Chief", a robot who was made for The Eradicators, but was accidentally programmed with the knowledge of the need for all time periods to work together. So he knew he was doing something bad, and ran off to start his own army to hold the bad dudes off (and possibly beat them). The Amity Preservers are all about ~UNITY AND HARMONY~. They use the past to learn from mistakes, live in the moment, and also work towards the future to enhance the present. If that makes sense. But they aim to serve a world where everybody understands the importance in every time period, and accept ideas from all times.
Both of these armies are evenly matched, and they both consist of only robots (Mantis excluded), so if they get smashed/ripped apart/crushed/melted/obliterated, they always come back. It's basically a never-ending war.

That's where THIS PICTURE COMES IN!!
Even though that entire rant was worded awfully, the whole point of this war story is to look on the bright side of things, have fun, don't give a fuck, chin up, etc etc all those positive things.
Mantis is well aware of the pointlessness of the war whenever he fights Roamer. He knows that, if he manages to take Roamer down and rip him apart, he'll always come back READY FOR MORE.
And that's why Roamer's eye's still lit up in the picture.
The clouds "parting" is sort of a literal interpretation of the "silver lining". You know. Only reddish orange.
Mantis knows the fighting is kind of useless, and nobody is ever going to get anywhere, but he learns how to use the fighting to have fun and to give himself a good feeling, and that's why it's shining more on Mantis than Roamer, since Roamer's army DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO HAVE FUUUUN.
Blah blah symbolism.
The story is really all about stressing the positives.
The Eradicators are all built COLD AND UNFEELING. They have little emotion, and it's mostly just frustration and rage so that it enhances their fighting when they feel it. The Amity Preservers are ALL HAPPY AND EXCITED. Every soldier is like a son to The Chief, and they're all really close to each other like a fucking massive family. All robots have a WIDE range of emotions, they're smart and enthusiastic, almost always happy, and are all incredibly human-like given all the "normal" traits The Chief felt the need to program them with to make them enjoy themselves as much as possible, like a sense of humor, smell, feelings, even the ability to get exhausted so they can relax while another soldier takes his place, and TASTE BUDS!!!!!!! which he's still working on. About half of the soldiers can currently taste. He's getting there.

This entire story is really unbelievably huge and there's no way for me to explain the entire thing in an understandable way in just the description of one picture, and MAN was it hard trying right here. There's a ton left out just because this description is already way too long. But it's a story I really love working with right now.
tl;dr Armies fighting for different time periods. Bad side is mean and cold. Good side is happy and funny and take the war very nonchalantly as they have movie nights, relax in steam rooms, and listen to old wartime music over the PA system in the HQ while treating the war more like a game than anything. And the good side is managing to win to show ~~HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO TAKE THINGS LIGHTLY AND YOU'LL STILL ACCOMPLISH GREAT THINGS WHILE HAVING FUN AND ENJOYING YOURSELF NO MATTER WHAT~~.

ABOUT MAKING THIS SHIT

It was fun!!
The entire point of this contest is to give something some love and let it shine.
This didn't turn out exactly how I had hoped, but I am really proud of it for now.
I've been working on it every day since December 6th (that day is fuckin engraved into my brain because of the time spent on this shit :,|), so having enough motivation to work on a picture for 54 days felt really good.
There was one point where I had to take like a 3-4 day break because I had a small tachycardia attack in my sleep one night, so I didn't wanna spend a lot of time sitting up and staring at a computer, so I rested instead of working on this ):
It did feel nice though to give some love to this story and at least two of its characters, and I'm really happy I entered this contest so that I could motivate myself to do it, so thank you Dar!
I know there are a lot of mistakes in this picture. Lighting, angle, shading, placement, blah blah, but I'm just happy I could get this idea onto a picture, and executed in a way that I'm happy about at least for now.
I would go back and fix little things but I just really do not have anymore time to put into this. IT SADDENS ME. But oh well NOTHING'S PERFECT I GUESS.
Also 368 layers.

I THINK THAT'S ABOUT IT.
SORRY FOR THE INCREDIBLY MASSIVE RANT OOPS I guess that's been building up for those two months.