I started this page as a school project to learn the basics of WordPress, and I needed a topic. We had a brief introduction to Adobe Firefly in my graphics design class, and one of the tutorial videos we watched demonstrated how to turn a sketch into a photo using reference images. When I tried it by providing Firefly with a sketch of a stick figure to show my target composition, I was surprised to see it return, well, a stick figure!
Out of curiosity, I fed it a drawing my 5-year-old gave me recently and described it as an underwater scene featuring a whale, octopus, fish, and turtles. After clicking the generate button, I was blown away by the results.
This immediately reminded me of two artists’ projects I had read about: Telmo Pieper’s “Kiddie Arts” series and “Things I Have Drawn.” I had always thought it would be a fun project to do with my kids, but I lacked the necessary Photoshop skills.
Well, now I can get AI to do this for me!
I spent a few evenings feeding my children’s artwork into Firefly and got a good feel for how the tool worked. I went through a third of my generous educational generation credits before I even realized generation credit limits existed. I only found out when they rolled out the “Fast mode” feature; at first, I thought they had cut me off for using the tool too much.
Everyone I showed the results to wanted to try it themselves, and so my WordPress topic was born. I also wanted a place to showcase all the cool stuff we created with Firefly.
From that initial result of the ocean scene, it became clear to me that AI image generation can do so much more than just render a single tortured animal. My youngest rarely draws just one creature anyways; instead, he fills the page with entire scenes and intricate details. Together, we work on crafting text prompts to render his artwork, allowing him to develop his storytelling skills both artistically and verbally.
This journey has not only been educational but also a wonderful way to bond with my kids through art and technology. My little artist has created an epic storyboard that spans multiple sheets of paper taped together. While I haven’t tackled that project in Firefly yet, I’m curious to see if I can upload a style reference image along with the composition to generate multiple images that can be stitched together. Stay tuned!