Idea 1 - Portraits⌗

For 900lbs’ Holiday Party 2024, I and the rest of the Leadership Team wanted to prepare a unique gift themed after “Year of the Dragon”. We had finished an effortful push for several projects, including Frisco EDC and AWS re:Invent, and we wanted to make the team feel special, empowered, and appreciated. We landed on an idea for an “AI Portrait” - there was a trend at the time to generate fun AI artfor co-workers, and we were excited. I was in charge of making it happen - it was largely my idea, and I had messed with this a few times.

Content Sourcingi⌗

I needed to get high quality, high resolution, profile pictures of each person, idealy with waist up, not just floating head. Clear headshot, no accessories like hats or glasses. I used Slack profile pictures or other “#Random” Slack channel photos, so I didn’t have to go digging through LinkedIn or other Social Media. Privacy reasons, etc..

Image Generation⌗

I used a mobile tool called Lensa. They had a fun, retro, 1980s pixel art style, and an actual effect called Dragon Warrior. Perfect. It would take whatever picture I gave it and generate 8-10 variations of retro dragon warrior portraits.

Post-Processing⌗

To wrap, I removed any “hallucinated” text in the image. For each individual, I added their name, 900lbs, and “2024 - Year of the Dragon”. Then we printed small 5x7 posters at CVS and put into frames that Team Members could put on their work desks.

Gift 2 - D&D 5E Character Sheets⌗

Following a similar process, we also generated high resolution fantasy themed character images for each team member using ChatGPT (I think it was Imogen 3 image generation model at the time). We also generated character specs based on Team Culture. We selected Character Class, Build, and other details to match personalities. We also had ChatGPT generate character narratives. To keep things fun, we let each Team Member roll their own Stat Blocks. The cherry on top - each Team Member got colorful 7x Dice set. We were ready to start a full campaign!

How it was Received.⌗

The team really loved it. It was the perfect party favor and cap to a busy Q4.