Over the holiday’s I got to say one of my favorite phrases, “I have an idea”. Just ask my team. They hear it a lot. In this case it wasn’t a big idea, it was a small one that turned into a great bonding moment for my teenage daughter and myself.

Before I get on to the idea, a bit about my daughter. Both of my kids are extremely creative. My wife and I have worked hard to keep that creative fire burning in both of them. From Montessori schools to endless art supplies, my kids get to flex that creative muscle as much as possible. With my son away at college studying film making, this bonding experience was 1x1 with my daughter’s vivid imagination at the wheel. She loves the silly and bizzare, as you will see shortly.

The idea

Being in charge of an R&D team I spend a lot of time researching and playing with new technologies to see where there might be something interesting for us to tackle. I am also a photographer so the GenAI image creation has been on my radar for a while but I hadn’t taken the time to play with it.

The scene was a typical morning. I am sitting at the table drinking my coffee with my daughter eating her cereal when I look at her and say

“I have an idea…”

“Remember how I told you AI can create pictures?”

"yeah…”

“I wonder if we can make some crazy pictures of Bodhi…”

“YES! Let’s do it!”

Bodhi is our fantastic 5 month old Australian Labradoodle pup. The idea was simple. Can we get something that looks like him in fantastical setting. I used the following source images.

Next we used the following prompt:

“Make an image of this dog in a space suit sitting on mars”

The results:

Not bad! My daughter was floored! We decided the dog needed to be more realistic and add a helmet”

“Make it more realistic and add a helmet”

At this point we are just giggling our heads off and having so much fun! Interestingly when asked to make the dog “Exactly like the one in the photo” ChatGPT told us that it can’t create a direct likeness. Which after thinking about it for 5 seconds made a lot of sense.

Bodhi also went to the moon!

And now, this is where the spark happened with my daughter. Time to buckle up, it is about to get wild.

“Make a photo of the same dog climbing Mt Everest wearing the correct clothing for the climb”

“Make a photo of the same dog as an anime hero carrying an oversized sword”

“Make a photo of the same dog sitting in the jungle, fist bumping a gorilla”

“Make a photo of the same dog, riding a T-rex in a futuristic city of ruins”

“Make the T-Rex huge and the dog normal size”

There are a bunch more that I will throw in a gallery at the end of this post. See if you can guess the movies. Being able to use what I do for work, combined with the wild creativity of my daughter was an experience I won’t forget. Plus I get to pass on my favorite phrase to her…

“I have an idea…”

P.s. In the gallery below you can create coloring pages of your wild ideas as well. Just add “and make it black and white line art suitable for a coloring page” to your prompt.