Try these tips and prompts for spooky AI images
Between the fiery leaves, pumpkins and creative costumes, fall is definitely an eye-catching season. Get into the spirit by creating your own spooky, festive and fun visuals — whether you need party invites or outfit ideas, there’s a Google AI tool you can use to help you bring your idea to life.
1. Create spooky scenes, invites and more with Nano Banana
There are so many options for creating mind-blowing images with our latest image generation model, Nano Banana. You could ask it to turn your selfie into a ghostly portrait, give it the necessary details and create a creepy party invite or create a nostalgic scary movie poster starring…you!
Ask Nano Banana to turn you into a spooky Victorian-era ghost. Try this prompt with your photo: “Transform this person into a semi-skeletal spectral translucent Victorian ghost. Victorian clothing. Maintain existing pose and framing. ultra-realistic photograph. black and white Daguerreotype. wet plate photography. streaks. stains.”
To make your own scary movie poster, use your photo with this prompt: “Create a photo of me in a dream Y2K style portrait of me laying in shiny purple bedding as I hold a large 90s-style landline in a daydreaming pose. My long hair falls freely in loose curls. I wear delicate jewelry and gold chunky rings. The room behind me is girly with 90s-style posters that are license-free. My makeup is simple yet glamorous with pink lip gloss. The photo should have a grainy 90s style with a light source like a lamp in a dimply lit room at night. A 90s photo album rests beside me with a disposable camera. A ghost in a bedsheet stands behind me staring at me, slightly transparent, with its body dimly lit, and it should be standing in the doorway of a dimly lit hallway. The background behind it should be slightly dark and ominous.
Or try a prompt like “turn my cat, Sunny, into a cartoon character wearing a wizard costume.” Nano Banana will generate an image like this for you, and from there you can upload it to Gemini and use the Storybook feature to build an entire narrative around the picture.
You can even start with Nano Banana’s image-generation capabilities and then take your creation and turn it into a short, illustrated story. Try a prompt like “turn my cat, Sunny, into a cartoon character wearing a wizard costume.” Nano Banana will generate an image for you, and from there you can use it to create a story with Gemini — check out the final result.
2. Let Google Photos give your pictures a Halloween remix
Google Photos’ Remix 1 feature uses AI to transform a photo into a different style, like a 3D animation, anime or sketch — and now, there’s a new Halloween Remix option (check out the new Claymation, Pixel Art and Ukiyo-e styles too). Just open Google Photos and head to your Create tab. From there simply select Remix, pick an image and choose the Halloween Remix style.
Android users in the U.S. can also ask Google Photos for festive or spooky edits right in the photo editor by tapping “Help me edit.”
3. Come up with costume ideas using Mixboard
Mixboard is an AI experiment from Google Labs that helps you visualize and explore your ideas. It’s great when you have a concept in mind but want to see where it could go or what else you could come up with. Give it a shot at coming up with Halloween costumes — maybe just for yourself, a couples’ or group costume or even your pet.
4. Generate a short scary movie or festive video with Veo
We recently released Veo 3.1, our latest state-of-the-art video generation model; it’s even better at adhering to your prompts and allows for richer audio, more narrative control and other improvements. You can take an image and turn it into a video — like these moving portraits — or just describe an idea from scratch and see what it comes up with.
Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.
Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.
Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.
Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.
If you don’t want to go the scary route, describe a cute autumn scene to send as a fall-themed greeting to friends and family. Bonus points if you host a get-together and have your video looping on the TV in the background!
This video was made using the prompt: “Make a video that shows two dogs — one is a small orange, white and black shepherd and the other is a small, all-golden cocker spaniel mixed with a King Charles spaniel. The dogs walk out of a house in a tree-lined neighborhood. There are fall leaves falling and pumpkins on porches. The dogs are trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. At the end, the words "Happy Halloween!" come up on the screen. It should be no longer than 30 seconds; the style should be cute and sketched.”
5. Use Canvas to turn an image into a pumpkin carving template
Gemini’s Canvas tool is great at taking creative ideas and turning them into web apps, interactive visualizations and more. In fact, it can even take an image and generate a pumpkin carving template for you. You can ask it to “make an app that turns my selfie into a jack-o’-lantern and gives me a design I can carve at home.”
Now the actual carving and clean-up is going to be all you!
