One reference picture kept Pea the same across about seven hundred more.
Grown in Ideogram · a case study
How Pea got its face.
Pea is a personal executive assistant, and we wanted a character that would connect it with our audience. We knew that meant a big brand kit, with one character that looked the same on everything, which most image generators simply can't do. So we went with Ideogram, because it's so much better at keeping a character consistent.
Stu Jordan, Chief Pea Grower
October 2026
Ideogram 4.5
Out
Out
OutPeaSome of the faces that didn't make it, and the one that did.
The back came first.
We started with a round velvet pea with one curly sprout. The first thing Ideogram really nailed was the back, little bum and all, and I loved it so much it went straight onto my X profile before Pea even had a front.
Then the face.
The face was a fun experiment and took a fair few rounds. We tried eyebrows, a single tooth, a full set of teeth, a stitched mouth like a designer toy, and belly buttons from a hole to a spiral. The eyebrows went, and so did the teeth.
The belly button came from one picture where I spotted a little sideways dimple and liked it, and every Pea since has had one. Then, just after half past midnight on 5 October, a batch of four came back and the last one nailed it.
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34PeaEight things that don't change.
Then I wrote down what can't change. There are eight things, all pinned to that one picture, and the picture goes into every prompt. The pose, the prop, the room and the light can be anything.
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- 1One sprout. Curl to the right, leaf low on the other side. Only ever one.
- 2Velvet bumps. No eyebrows.
- 3Googly eyes. A catchlight in each.
- 4Raised cheeks, plain green. No blush.
- 5The grin. Set low, tongue out, no teeth.
- 6A sideways belly button. An innie, with a little crescent.
- 7Matte velvet. One piece, no seams.
- 8Short and stubby. Mitten hands, round feet, and a little bum crease at the back.
How we prompt Ideogram.
Every Pea picture since has been made the same way.
One picture goes in.
The master goes in as the reference image, @img_1, and every prompt starts with "Use @img_1 as the exact character". We only load the picture a scene needs. For Pea from behind, we load the back view on its own, because if the front is in there too, Ideogram turns Pea round to face you.
The same paragraph, every time.
Then comes the character block, a paragraph that describes those eight things in plain words. It goes in word for word every time. When we changed a rule, like taking the blush off the cheeks, we changed the paragraph, and every picture after that followed.
5 October
Pea, the exact character from @img_1: a perfectly round seamless green pea with a soft matte velvet flocked finish, one single curly sprout on top (a short stem with one neat spiral curl and one small leaf), short stubby velvet arms with soft mitten hands, short stubby legs with round feet. Soft puffed same-green velvet brow bumps, plump raised cheekswith peach blush. Big glossy white oval eyes with large dark olive pupils and two bright sparkling catchlights each, full of life. A wide, warm, confident open smile, dark mouth with a pink tongue, no teeth. A tiny innie belly button: a short vertical crease ending in a small upturned crescent at its bottom, softly pressed into the velvet, same green, not a round hole. Charming and quietly confident, like a brilliant personal executive assistant, cute but never babyish. Pixar-quality 3D, soft studio light.
Since 20 October
Use @img_1 as the exact character: the same cute pea character with soft green velvet flocked fur, a round egg-shaped body, big round glossy eyes, two soft raised velvet bumps where eyebrows would be (no eyebrows), a wide open grin set low with a pink tongue and no teeth, a small sideways oval dimple belly button, short stubby velvet arms and legs, and one curly sprout on top whose curl turns to the viewer's right with one small leaf low on the opposite side of the stem. Keep it exactly on-model. IMPORTANT: no blush at all. No rosy, pink, peach or orange cheeks; the cheeks are exactly the same even velvet green as the rest of the body.
Struck through: gone. Underlined: added on 10 and 20 October.
Write the whole gag.
The scene is the only part that changes, and it works best when you write the whole joke. When I asked for little fires, the first round gave me Pea next to a candle. The next prompt asked for proper little fires popping up all over the desk and a helmet that was obviously Pea's, and that's the one we used.
the pea wears a small red firefighter helmet and calmly sprays a tiny fire extinguisher at a single small candle flame on a tidy desk, putting it out with a soft white puff, giving the camera a cool thumbs up with its other hand.
three or four cute cartoon flames popping up on desk things (a stack of envelopes, a desk calendar, a ringing phone); Pea the hero firefighter in a glossy red helmet with a gold pea-pod badge, sprout through the top, wide heroic stance, hosing them out with a pea-green hose; two already out, just wisps of steam. No soot, no mess.
Say where things go.
For my Zoom backgrounds I sit in the middle of the frame, so the prompt keeps the middle plain and says exactly where everything else goes.
CENTRE RULE: a person will be composited in the middle of this frame later, covering roughly the middle 50% of the width from the lower edge up to about 75% of the height. Keep that central area simple, softly lit and slightly out of focus, with nothing important in it. All the hero elements sit in the left third and right third, and in the top band. ... FAR LEFT EDGE, inside the leftmost fifth of the frame only ...
Any shape.
Every format we needed came out of the same Pea, at whatever size we asked for. For tall story cards we add one more block, which keeps the top of the picture clear for the words.
Tall vertical 9:16 phone story frame. Keep Pea and every prop in the middle of the frame, between about 30% and 80% of the height. The TOP 30% of the frame is only soft, plain, out-of-focus background with nothing in it. The BOTTOM 20% is only plain floor with nothing on it. No words, letters, numbers or logos anywhere.
- Square 2000 × 2000
- Feed 1792 × 2240
- Story 1440 × 2560
- Wide 2720 × 1536
- 3:2 2496 × 1664
- Sides in multiples of 32
Check every one.
Every picture gets checked against the eight things at full size. About one in four goes back, usually because a grin has grown teeth or the curl has flipped round.
Ideogram 4.5Magic Prompt offQuality HighFour at a time, twiceOne prompt at a time
Same Pea in every campaign.
Once it had the look right, Ideogram gave us a massive collection of poses, expressions and props, all consistent with the rules we'd set for Pea. The website, the waitlist emails, a run of Facebook gags, the story cards, my Zoom studio and a t-shirt print all came out of the same three weeks. When the master changed, we swapped the reference and everything after it followed.
The levels are shown by props. Pea itself never changes.
