Creative Technology · System Design · Brand Strategy · AI Assisted Development
An independent creative project translating music into a visual release world.
I conceived and built Selkie as a working prototype exploring how AI could help independent musicians turn a song and creative direction into a coherent visual release system.
Explore SelkieMy research pointed to more than 100,000 songs being released every day, and to many artists unsure how to brand themselves. An emerging artist I spoke with pointed to content as one of the main things people would pay for. That conversation helped focus Selkie on turning an artist's sound and direction into a connected release system.
Selkie organizes the track, release context, references, exclusions, and artist intent into a creative brief. Prompt rules translate that brief into three deliberately different worlds, each with its own concept, color roles, typography, image language, texture, and motion behavior.
The system proposes the creative territory. The artist chooses, combines, and redirects where it goes.
The artist uploads a track and adds release details, references, intended feeling, and exclusions. These inputs become constraints for the system rather than decoration around a generic prompt.
Prompt and workflow rules separate the response into three art direction propositions rather than treating the first generated look as the answer.
Through the World Mixer, the artist can keep a world intact or combine its imagery, palette, typography, and energy with another direction.
Artist visibility, image treatment, composition, palette, typography, and restrained, charged, or fractured motion modes shape the final system.
I tried the experience with different songs and creative inputs, checking whether the worlds felt distinct, the controls changed the direction in meaningful ways, and the outputs could work beyond the screen.
Palettes, fonts, and image language began repeating across songs, which made the system feel stylistic rather than responsive.
RefinementI tightened the rules separating each world and defined color, type, imagery, texture, and motion as distinct system variables.
A strong first image was not enough. References could repeat, questions felt abstract, and early motion studies were too uniform or slow.
RefinementI added clearer inputs, exclusions, the World Mixer, cover controls, and motion modes so the artist could redirect the result instead of restarting.
The concept needed to move from inspiration toward assets an artist could actually use or hand to a collaborator.
RefinementI expanded the workflow into a cover builder, a color and typography system, motion output, and a downloadable creative brief.
Walk through the complete v0.13 flow from track and artist input through three world generation, World Mixer controls, responsive cover styling, motion modes, and downloadable outputs.
Each session develops into a connected release system rather than a single generated image. In the Glimmer example, the artist can refine and download the cover, export an eight second motion loop, use a color and typography system, and hand a generated brief to a collaborator.
In folklore, a selkie moves between two forms. The name became a metaphor for the product itself, an experience designed to translate sound into image while preserving the feeling that connects them.
I developed the product concept and built a working web prototype, including its input flow, prompt logic, three-world framework, artist controls, visual identity, motion, and downloadable outputs. I used an AI-assisted HTML, CSS, and JavaScript workflow and deployed the experience on Netlify.
The stack combined creative direction and interface design with AI assisted development. Each tool supported a specific part of the workflow rather than standing in for the idea.
Building Selkie gave me a way to connect brand strategy, visual systems, interaction design, and AI experimentation in a working product. The clearest lesson was that useful creative technology needs distinct directions, meaningful artist control, and outputs that hold together as a system.