You don't need to be an artist to

actually make video game characters

anymore. I'm building a multiplayer

soccer

game and I need like all of the players,

including the field, the goals and

everything. But here's the problem. I

can't draw like at all. So I figured, how

can I get this workflow going? And I

reached out to Claude AI to help me do

the

research. And I did a bunch of MCP tool

calls and said, you can use Gemini Pro.

So I actually used Gemini to make the art

and it costs about 13 cents per image.

And if you ever wanted to build a game

but just got stuck at the visuals part,

I'm going to show you how to get past

that.

So let's go ahead and cook. We've got

some sprites to make.

I'm going to show you a little bit of

prompting techniques, how I use JSON

prompts to generate some things.

So create this pixel art sheet of the

soccer player so we can just tell it to

create this.

Wait, I can just give it this prompt,

huh?

We're using the new Nano Banana Pro with

the Gemini 3 Pro image thing.

and we'll see what it comes up. Show the

following four poses on a sprite sheet.

Okay, let's just see

if I can run with this and see what

happens. Oh, interesting. Oh, that's kind

of cool. Did we just

generate all the sprites already? No way.

No way, no way, no way. Okay, I need to

have more conversations.

I grew up playing video games. I was so

addicted to video games. I had to kind of

completely stop and I

stopped playing video games. I took all

that energy and threw it into like tech

and coding and everything.

I wanted to actually make the video games

and I was actually wanting to go to a

school to make video games but like I

couldn't afford that school my parents

couldn't afford it obviously and so I was

like okay that's a lost opportunity

that's

like a you know previous life what I'm

thinking here to make the sprites by the

way is to kind of look at some references

and do a design forward approach so I

just

want to put a canvas out I'm gonna kind

of

shop around at different design ideas try

to see if I can choose some colors choose

some color palettes take a look at some

fonts I want to see some fonts that kind

of

inspire me and kind of bring me back to

this like, you know, world of, I think

Nintendo was really cool as

far as like nostalgic, but I also like

the SNES, like Sega Genesis, like, you

know, pixelations too,

because 8-bit is 8-bit, but then like if

you kind of up the bits like 16 or 32,

then like you get a

little bit more color variety, and this

is kind of where I can have a

conversation

maybe with Gemini

to create different worlds or different

ideas for things. So I want to combine

these different ideas

and kind of lay them out in canvas styles

What styles of things do I like that

really resonate with me Because I want to

make it more about me And then the AI

from

there should then be able to take that

concept and then help me generate like

sprites that will kind of fall

into that if you know what I mean. So

maybe I'll do some research tasks to get

sprites and all that.

I'm going to do Claude. I'm trying to do

some research and build sprites for the

game and work

with the game engine. I'm going to need

you to do some research using EXA MCP and

I'm going to also

attached the documentation for the

architecture plan here. I'm not even sure

what I should be doing

in terms of how I should pick the right

colors, fonts, and all these other

things.

And my thinking

was to just start with Figma and start to

look for inspiration to draw things in.

In

December of 2025,

Google has released Gemini 3 and it's

called Gemini Pro or Gemini 3 Pro or Nano

Banana Pro. And from there,

It's extremely powerful and we should be

able to give it reference images and be

able to describe things for our game.

And this is probably what we're going to

use to actually generate those assets.

Okay, so ExaCode MCP is a huge, huge

unlock for me.

Make sure you have this enabled.

And if you haven't, go ahead and sign up.

It's awesome.

It makes Opus 4.5 like that university

research student.

I prefer, first of all, Claude, like Opus

as a model.

and Opus 4.5 is extremely good at like

tool calling and sequential thinking. So

when it does a first step,

gather some information, it tries to

think about everything else in the

context

and then figure out

what the next steps need to do from

there. So it's really good at taking

something unstructured like

this, thinking through what I'm trying to

get through here, as you can kind of see,

Ray is asking

me about, and it's like, I asked about

seven different things in there, right?

And it says,

let me start by these three steps, right?

So it doesn't overload itself. It's like,

okay, I need to

So here it is doing actual web searches

and this is kind of it's doing its own

internal web searches and now it has some

more context. So I've created everything

we need. Let me create a comprehensive

checklist document for your game asset

creation flow. So here we are. It's

creating this stuff for us. This is

crazy.

Define your visual style, set up the

tools. So we're basically generating our

own course for ourselves, right? Like in

essence, that's what you would do, right?

Like we have the power of AI to help us

research and then help us generate the

steps that we need to get to the next

thing.

and I think this is the biggest unlock

for AI that we've ever seen in our

lifetimes.

So there's a research and reference

collection, there's a visual style guide,

awesome, and we

have a tool set up, a sprite, A-S-E-P,

right, so it's 20 bucks and there's three

alternatives,

there Gemini 3 Pro images so we can oh it

like 13 cents per image and there

character sprites so complete animation

list for outfield players goalkeepers and

chatbot player and the exact AI prompts

to

use

And then we have environment assets, so

that'll be like these structures, UI

elements, damn. And then there's a sprite

sheet for the export settings, animation

code, and example files. Wow.

So the key workflow, the research

confirmed your instinct. The AI

generation

manual cleanup is the winning combo. It

can handle character consistency for up

to

14 reference images.

which is perfect for generating sprite

sheets. You generate the concept with AI

and then clean it up pixel by pixel in a

sprite and then that crisp NES

authenticity.

Whoa, this is crazy. This checklist is

massive. Oh, I like these big head

character proportions. Roughly two to one

head to body. Games typically use four

colors per sprite.

Cool. So create a reference board. Note

what makes this style distinctive are

large expressive heads, small bodies,

simple but readable animations, and then

bold outlines.

Cold Outline. Sprite Dimensions. This is

awesome. Animation Frame Counts. Oh, this

is cool.

We can AI Prompt Template for Gemini 3

Pro. So create this pixel art sheet of

the

soccer player.

So we can just tell it to create this.

Did we just generate all the sprites

already?

Wow, look at this cool grass, lines,

dirt, goal. Oh, wow. This is going down a

really great rabbit

Hold on. I'm going to give it that prompt

guide. I gave it this prompt. How do we

improve the prompt to do more prompty

things? Okay, here are the characters for

my game and this is the prompt that I

have

used. Help me improve the prompt because

I

want to make the characters feel like

they're more modern and more relatable to

our current era. For example, we'll have

Team OpenAI versus Team Anthropic.

So each company has their own branding

and they have their own actual

characters.

So then I'll give it the prompt that we

had earlier.

Claude, I have the reference image

prompt.

I have my desired outcome and then

research and then I have attached the

image.

So character sprite sheet prompts.

Oh my God, this is insane.

Altman, Captain Team Striker,

distinguishing feature, slightly taller

sprite, confident pose, the light cap,

middle fielder.

and we have Brockman, The Defender, OG

Founder Vibe, Distinguishing Feature. We

have GPT Bot, The Goalkeeper.

This is awesome Okay notes for production

This prompt will allow for generating

individual character sprite sheets

maintaining consistency across teams So

meme potential with recognizable

characters and They not literal

depictions

so they inspired by characters Keep it

playful respectful

and focus on the fun rivalry between the

AI labs. How do I start with this prompt?

Should I generate them one by one? Which

markdown should I give to the nano

Banana Pro Model for my first prompt.

Let me give you the full team sprite

sheet that includes everyone plus assets

similar to what you've already generated.

Here's a complete prompt for your first

team.

Okay, so I'm going to paste this in.

Let's say we should be able to generate

the sprite sheet that we want.

So this is going to be OpenAI, colors is

going to be green, teal green.

I don't know why.

Dark green, white and black is for the

accent.

Why is Anthropix character look so fire?

They're like, yeah, this is gonna be

crazy. This is gonna be a crazy game. I

like this.

The current character sets, while they

are fun and worked for the previous era

with NES, I want to maybe do it a little

bit differently here because I do kind of

like this era, but we maybe can enhance

it

a little bit.

and I want you to do some research using

EXA MCP as well and look for some current

modern trends and help me understand some

fun characters that we can build so that

they feel a little bit more personal.

Because I think more people are going to

be invested if they can see themselves in

the game and if they can play as their

favorite characters.

You know, getting the opportunity to work

at Apple was really amazing because I got

to learn about software development and

everything.

but now I'm just realizing full circle I

can come back and actually make the games

that I want to make

but now I have all that experience

because I didn't have software

engineering

experience right so

it's kind of cool and we're using all

these cool tools and it's now full circle

and I can actually

make the things that I really want and

make them come to life which would be

super amazing

and at the same time I'm doing this live

because I want to show you the process of

how I do prompting

and then maybe you can learn something

from it. I'm actually kind of living my

dream now becoming a

I'm a game designer even though I didn't

think I was going to be one, right?

All right, so here comes the fun part.

Now I actually have to get these

characters in the game and I want to add

a

feature where you can actually put your

face as a playable character in the game.

And that's going to be the next live

stream. So make sure you drop in the

comments, would you actually play as Team

OpenAI or Team Anthropic? Let's keep

building.