Character and World Building

One of my favorite things to do when I am creating a class is to create set characters with names and their own likes, dislikes, and background story. Especially when I am making a longer series of courses. It helps the learner start to connect with the characters and forget that they are AI generated scenes.

Meet Gina

I am working on a sales training for my company. When I am teaching live, I can ask the learners to "Think of someone you know that...." and then have them share back. In a CBT, we can't really do that well. So I created someone that the learners can follow and live through her struggles and victories in the CBT.

I am using Copilot for these and like it because once I set the style, I can tell it to keep that style throughout the conversation and then build off of that. For Gina, I had a discussion with the AI and told it the type of character I wanted. In this case, it was this (And yes, I know this is very Weird Science 😂):

I need create a character for a sales training. She is a woman in her 40s that works at a local DMV. She dresses nice but conservative. Her name will be Gina. She has two kids, Scott who is a 14 year old boy, and Lizzy who is a 12 year old girl. Lizzy is a competitive dancer, and Scott wants to be a video game designer once he graduates. When Gina is at work, she dressing in professional clothing, but at home with the kids, it is comfy casual and she likes 80s hair bands on her tshirts.

Can you create a background for her?

Form there Copilot had a field day creating information such as she has been divorced for 3 years, had sole custody of the kids, her ex is out of the picture, her mom still calls on the weekends and tries to give her advice, and on and on. AI is very good at this sort of thing.

Now I have a good grasp on my character and her life, so I can start throwing things at her for the course. BTW, people want drama so the characters cannot always be happy.

With that, I start to build the art style in Copilot. I will skip to the good part, but Copilot and I may have battled a lot on this, but here is the landing style prompt:

Premium Pixar-quality 3D corporate illustration. Cinematic lighting, sharp focus, ultra-clean rendering, realistic materials, professional presentation artwork, rich natural colors, no grain, no blur, no painterly effects, high-end CGI quality, uncluttered composition, executive presentation ready.

Once I have the image I want, I tell Copilot to LOCK THAT STYLE IN FOR THE REST OF THESE IMAGES. From there, we can start having fun:

Create an image of Gina talking to a female doctor. Gina is sitting on the doctor's bed in the doctor's office.

Not sure where that white line came from when I posted this....it's not on the original image.

Create an image of Gina grocery shopping.

Create an image of Gina worried about bills.

Hmmm...my clothes are getting rather repetitive.

In each image in this series from now on, create different clothing for the characters unless I say otherwise.

Problem solved. Now that I have Gina, I need other characters. I did the same style of character creation to create Rose, Jamal, and Mei. I give the AI ideas on the character's color likes and style. Now it is just fun to watch these characters grow in this world.

• Rose: pinks, rose tones, and polished professional attire
• Jamal: earth tones, warm browns, olive greens, and relaxed business wear
• Mei: bright, energetic colors and bold business fashion
• Gina: more everyday, relatable clothing that changes based on the situation

Now all I have to do is name the character and what I want them doing and AI creates it for me.

I hope this helps you think a bit more about the ways you can use AI to create cohesion in your trainings and bring your world to life!