By Chris Tinglin

For those who enjoy Herculean challenges, a dare: see if you can find even one non-assembly-line person who doesn’t like robots. And as those Sisyphean fools sail off to begin their labour, let Torontoist introduce the rest of you to a rather down-to-earth artist-tinkerer, Thomas Girard.
A software engineer by trade—he has no formal training in art or electronics—Thomas also expresses himself outside the realm of stark, binary code. The little robots you see in the photo gallery above are the latest manifestations of a recently engaged analog imagination. “My wife made me a mixed media collage of robots as a gift and I loved it,” he said. “That’s what pushed me to make a resolution to really work at my artistic abilities.”
The inspiration for the handmade posed bots (they do not move or transform) came from his favourite place in all of Toronto: Active Surplus. He visits the store often, wandering the aisles with a little basket, filling it with anthropomorphic odds and ends. A lead is a laser cannon; a pair of tiny knobs, now omni-spectrum eyes.
It was not originally intended to be a series, but leftover parts begged for more variations and friends quickly snapped up the first batch. He’s on a roll. After only a few months, he’s already being commissioned for a variety of art pieces based on his quirky eye. It is the just fruits of a digital labour of love.
The bots are on sale in Girard’s Etsy shop, for $25 each.
All photos by Thomas Girard.