Use Midjourney to explore a mascot or character before production illustration, treating variation as evidence for the design decisions the team must make and turning the selected traits into an original, rights aware style guide.
Source episode · 13:50
How I AI: Atlassian's Joel Unger on Prototyping UI, Animating Logos, and Illustrating Puppieswith Claire Vo
Joel uses a black and white image as a Midjourney mask, explores imaginative logo and mascot variations, and uses the inconsistent details across Taco the Trello husky outputs to start a design conversation about the character's official markings, palette, proportions, and style.
A curated mood board and character specification that records explored directions, selected traits, rejected patterns, permitted references, and production requirements without treating generated images as final canonical art.
AI image generation
Step by step
Follow the sequence once, then adapt the prompts, checks, and handoffs to your own setup.
5 steps
Write a character brief with role, personality, audience, narrative, silhouette, required poses, placements, brand principles, prohibited traits, and decisions that remain open. Use owned or licensed inputs.
Cute cartoon husky clip art, blue collar, grey fur, solid blue eyes, etc.
Frame Midjourney as exploration, not final delivery. Generate controlled groups that vary silhouette, proportion, markings, palette, expression, pose, or rendering treatment one dimension at a time.
Explore four original directions for [character role and personality] using this owned silhouette or permitted reference: [reference]. Vary only [trait]. Preserve [fixed traits], brand palette, audience suitability, and required placement. Do not resemble existing mascots or imitate a named living artist.
Curate outputs into a labeled board that shows the prompt, variable tested, strengths, risks, and unanswered questions. Include rejected examples when they reveal a consistency or brand problem.
Use the board to decide the character's anatomy, proportions, markings, colors, expression range, accessories, motion, and relationship to the product. Record disagreements and the evidence behind each decision.
Convert decisions into a model sheet and usage guide with front, side, key poses, expressions, palette, line and texture rules, minimum sizes, backgrounds, and exclusions. Create final assets through the approved production and rights process.
Act as a design director creating a character style guide. Based on the following design decisions, draft a formal style guide for our brand mascot, [character name]. The guide should be clear, concise, and easy for any designer or illustrator to follow. Organize it into logical sections covering key visual attributes. Design decisions: [Paste the list of decisions from your design meeting, e.g., "Fur: Medium floofiness, primarily grey with white underbelly. Eyes: Solid blue, no pupils. Paws: Black pads. Collar: Blue, no tag."] Generate the style guide draft.
Turn an idea into a PRD, user stories, and a plan.
After the steps
How to recover when the loop fails and where human judgment helps.
Recover
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