A clay toy of anything

Nine more prompts for clay and other toys

These nine go further, grouped by what you want to make. We ran the first on our cat. The rest we read in full, so we say what each asks for, not what it gives.

Your own photo, a different finish

The shortest prompt in this guide is nine words, blank included: a handmade clay figurine with wire worked into it, based on whatever you put in the blank. We wrote the cat in this photo and attached it.

Both runs gave a painted clay cat with curly copper whiskers, wire in the ears and a coiled wire tail. One kept our sofa; the other set the cat on a small model sofa against white. Unlike our plasticine runs, both kept the stripes, painted on.

Not every toy is clay. This prompt turns an attached character drawing into a Santa figure in PVC, and spells out the finish the way we spelled out plasticine: semi-matte to satin finish, sculpted clothes, and a line that reads like the opposite of our sentence, Be careful not to over-emphasize clay or resin texture. Use it on a character you drew, not a photo of a person.

Same rule, other materials

Swap the material sentence and you get a different toy. We kept the template and wrote: The cat is a handmade needle-felted wool toy: you can see soft fuzzy fibres and a few loose strands, the stripes are felted in a darker orange wool, and the eyes are two black buttons.

Both runs came back as felt, loose strands included, and kept the stripes we named. For a felt scene with no photo, this beach frog is written the same way: every object is felt, down to the clouds. Three blanks: what the frog wears, where it stands and what floats in the distance.

A design sheet shows one toy from the front, the side and the back, a good way to keep a character the same across several pictures. This one asks for a plush look, soft and tactile like plushie figure; replace that phrase with your plasticine words to make the sheet in clay. The blanks are a head accessory, an eye accessory and a colour scheme.

Small clay worlds

A tiny clay world puts a whole scene on a round base: an event, a place and a building in the curly blanks, then a row of square-bracket blanks for details, figures, food, decoration, the base and the light. Fill the square ones too. It asks for a smooth clay render, the look our template gave, so add your plasticine sentence if you want marks in the clay.

Clay does not have to be coloured. This one makes a corner of a courtyard garden in white clay, close to the look of an architect's model. The material work is done by three phrases: monochromatic pure white, embossed paper texture and strong ambient occlusion. Change the garden for your street, your house or your desk and keep those three.

An animal in a clay forest, with the plants and insects also rendered in clay. Three blanks: the animal, the setting and the plant life. One catch: the second sentence still says The chameleon and lists its scale colours. If you swap the animal, rewrite that sentence too, or the prompt describes two different animals.

Scenes and charts with clay characters

Three green aliens in silver suits in a night desert, with one blank: how many. It is a plain scene written in full sentences, the way Google's guide asks, and claymation style does all the material work. Its cover reads as clay at a glance, but smooth; for tool marks, add the plasticine sentence.

Clay works for teaching, too. This one makes a children's chart of the phases of the day, in claymation with googly eyes and Matte clay textures, handcrafted props. The one blank is the child's age. The cover is crowded with short labels, so read every word before you print it.

More looks to try

More from the 3D renders and clay toys collection, each with its prompt on its page.

Questions

Will it keep my photo?

In all four of our edits, Nano Banana Pro kept the cat's pose, the sofa and the knitted throw. The coat changed: with the clay sentence, the tabby stripes faded to faint lines.

Naming the stripes brought them back in both of two later runs. Across all ten edits of the cat the pose held every time, and the room in nine: one wire run moved the cat onto a small model sofa against white.

Why does my clay look like plastic?

Usually the prompt says clay but not what kind or what marks it carries. Add a full sentence naming plasticine, the tool marks and what the eyes are made of.

Can I make a clay toy of a person?

Yes, with a photo of yourself or of someone who said yes. We only tested a cat and a plant, so start from the same sentence and swap the fur line for hair and clothes.

How do I keep the same toy across several pictures?

Edit the toy you already have instead of starting again. Google's guide says Nano Banana Pro takes up to 14 reference images and suggests saying plainly what must stay, for example that the character is exactly the same as Image 1. Attach your favourite clay picture as Image 1 and change one thing per request.

Can I make it big enough to print?

Google's guide says Nano Banana Pro makes images natively from 1K to 4K and suggests asking for 2K or 4K where your app allows it. Every picture in this guide was made at the default 1K.

What if it is nearly right?

Ask for the one change rather than running the prompt again. Google's guide calls this "Edit, Don't Re-roll": if an image is 80% correct, ask for the specific change, such as make the eyes a little larger.