Early AIGC Exploration
Using familiar sneaker icons to preheat a strange new boot launch.
I made this project in late 2023, during an earlier stage of AIGC development when Midjourney still dominated AI image generation. The realism and finish are less mature than what current tools can offer, but the project captures two things that still matter to me: original concept thinking and a willingness to keep working at the front edge of new content tools.
Idea
Creating curiosity through visual misrecognition
At the time, the brand was preparing to release a major new product: Cthulhu Boots. The design combined a leather boot base with four leather tentacles that could be styled into different shapes. The product was visually strong, but the brand itself was still relatively unknown.
To solve that awareness gap, I built the teaser concept around borrowed familiarity. I took three classic shoe models, recognizable at a glance, and used AI to imagine each one with tentacles attached. The visual effect was meant to trigger instant recognition first, then distortion, then curiosity.
That sequence matters in marketing terms. When people recognize a familiar object and then notice that something is wrong, they are more likely to pause, reprocess, and ask what the image is pointing to. The line "Cthulhu Boot Coming Soon" completed that curiosity loop and redirected attention toward the upcoming launch.
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Teaser Posters
classic silhouettes reimagined with tentacle logic
Logic
Why this teaser format was useful
The posters were designed to let the audience mentally bridge the gap between known sneaker culture and an unknown new product. Instead of introducing Cthulhu Boots with a cold product shot alone, I used iconic footwear references such as Air Force 1, UGG, and Air Jordan 5 as cultural anchors.
From there, the tentacle addition made the images feel uncanny and slightly humorous. That contrast was the hook. It gave the audience a fast reason to stop scrolling and imagine what a real tentacle-based shoe might actually look like.
Even though this project belongs to an earlier phase of AI image generation, I still see it as meaningful because it shows how I approached AIGC from the start: not as a novelty filter, but as a tool for attention design, concept amplification, and pre-launch storytelling.