Drac, I am at the moment holding a copy of "Fantasy Art Masters" by Dick Jude, published in 1999. On page 129 is a full color illustration created digitally by Fred Gambino used as the cover of an anthology called "Asimov's Valentines" published by Berkley in 1998. The image consists of a yellow robot, holding a rose in his right hand, a smoking barrel of a weapon serving as his left hand. Sound familiar? I doubt that the other fellow stole this idea from Gambino. Contrasting the soft organic flower with the hard metallic robot is probably an archetypically image among artists with a sci-fi bent. Anyone can do something similar, as long as the image doesn't DIRECTLY steal from another. We're all influenced by the same books and movies and music and artists. Saying only one image with a robot holding a flower can be done is like saying there can be only one image of a woman sitting in a chair. If you want to do the idea, go for it. Yours won't look anything like anyone else's, and I think you know it, too!

This is not my "second childhood". I'm not finished with the first one yet.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

"I'd like to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather....not screaming in terror like the passengers on his bus." - Jack Handy