Mood Board of futuristic characters

Is most of the work utopian or dystopian?
Most of the work is dystopian, there is only one that I would consider truly 'utopian'. A lot of the examples I picked are based around violence and warfare, and several take place in post-apocalyptic versions of Earth. Some are based more around how Earth is now but set in the future with more advanced technology. An example being Deus Ex which is set several decades from now where there is a divide between the augmented people and the normal people. Deus Ex and Blade Runner both have a strong class divide as certain beings and people are treated very badly compared to others. Blade Runner is about a cop who's job is the locate android-like beings and destroy them whereas Deus Ex is about the rising tensions between people with augmented body parts and natural people who have no enhancements.

Are there any trends in terms of the aesthetic of the future?
Quite a few of the examples I chose don't have too much of a difference from today's aesthetics and focus more on the technology, gadgets, and weapons rather than the clothing. Although some of the clothing is a lot different like in Futurama or Fallout where the clothes have mainly just changed style, like Zapp Brannigan in Futurama has weird and pointless shoulder things on his clothes and has a very small 'skirt' like piece of clothing. Fallout's clothing styles are similar and based on the clothing from the 1930s-1950s as culture stopped advancing during that time period and technology began advancing a lot quicker. An example of futuristic clothing and attire from Fallout would be the Brotherhood of Steel, who wear 'power armour' which work a bit like exo-skeletons and take a lot more damage than modern combat armour.

Are there any visions of the future that you find work especially well?
The post-apocalyptic genre in media is fairly popular. Fallout is one of the most famous games of all time and was inspired by movies such as: Mad Max (1979) and A Boy and His Dog (1975). I'm not sure why this genre/theme is so popular, I believe it is most likely because of the chaos and havoc of the world. Another popular vision is the typical futuristic, sci-fi films which are about people in ships, flying around different galaxies and to different planets. Firefly is widely regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time and there is a lot of negativity surrounding the decision of cancelling it by the TV network 'Fox'.
are there any visions of the future that you find especially silly?

Images and video of the model

circle_around_robot_dont_look_at_this from James Satchell on Vimeo.

Ideas map with initial drawings and discussion about the different drawings

Above are the initial designs of my robot sidekick.
The robot on the far left was my original design and would have probably been a good easy one to go with, but I thought it was too simple and vastly overestimated my skills using Maya.
The one above that is a flying saucer-like reconnaissance robot. Its flying saucer shaped body is purely because I like old Sci-Fi looking space ships and would probably work well for a intel-gathering - maybe not for actual combat.
The next robot has the Iron Giant deal going on - it is a massive robot which is able to destroy cities. I thought it would be too big and stupid to use.
My next robot is the first robot I began to create, 'Clackers', and it is a robot which is mainly used for sneaking and attacking people when they don't expect it. Its tactic when fighting is to shoot steam into its opponent's face and stab their shins with its razor sharp fore-legs. The robot is inspired by the Dwarven Spider Workers from The Elder Scrolls. The reason I didn't complete this design is because it became way too complicated and I just couldn't get it right.
My fifth robot is based on the eye bots from the fallout series. The aren't often used for combat but can be. My design is fitted with communication devices which are unsurprisingly used for communication. New weapons can be fitted onto it, although they can't be too big like a rocket launcher.
My last design is a walking 'gas-guzzler' with mini guns fitted on the sides of it. It requires an insane amount of fuel and I imagine the fossil fuels would have run out by the time it would be used anyway. As previously stated - I originally went with the spider-like design but found it too difficult to complete and so I went with an alternate, simpler design which wasn't any of these.

Front, Back, and Side of Robot