The Mystery of the Childhood Dolls
Who—or what—are these two mysterious stuffed figures, and just how did they end up in my possession?
Not a single soul in my family can recall their origin story or remember giving them over to me. With their eerily twisted features, they look more like escapees from a nightmare than childhood companions.
The case remains unsolved…
Trek Babies: Bringing Iconic Characters to Life with AI
As part of the celebrations commemorating the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, the Trek Babies project set out to reimagine the beloved crew and alien characters from Star Trek: The Original Series as playful, toddler-sized versions of their iconic counterparts.
Creating these characters required more than simply generating images. Each design needed to preserve the recognizable features, expressions, costumes, and personalities that have made these characters memorable for six decades, while introducing a distinctive visual style that would work consistently across animated videos.
One of the most significant challenges was maintaining character consistency across multiple scenes, expressions, and animations. This required developing recognizable characters that could be reproduced in different environments, poses, and situations without losing their defining characteristics. Solving this problem involved iterative prompting, reference image development, visual refinement, and experimentation with multiple AI platforms.
The character development process combined traditional digital design techniques with emerging generative AI technologies. Rather than relying on AI image generation alone, I developed a repeatable creative workflow that integrated artistic judgment, technical experimentation, and quality control to produce visually consistent characters suitable for ongoing video production.
Tools used in character development included Adobe Photoshop, Kling AI, DomoAI, Hedra, and ChatGPT. Each contributed to different aspects of the creative workflow, from conceptual development and visual refinement to character generation and animation.
The example featured here illustrates one of the character designs developed for the project. It demonstrates how traditional creative skills and AI-assisted production techniques can work together to transform a familiar character into something entirely new while maintaining a strong connection to the original source material.
The result is a growing collection of recognizable, expressive characters designed for a series of short-form comedic videos celebrating 60 years of Star Trek. Beyond the finished animations, the project demonstrates practical applications of generative AI, character consistency, iterative design, and AI-assisted creative production.
Star Trek and all related characters, names, and properties are owned by Paramount Global/CBS Studios. This fan-created work is made for entertainment purposes only, with no copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made from the use of these characters or settings.