Prompt: black-and-white vector mascot icon from a real photo

When to use this prompt

When you need to turn a real portrait into a clean, brand-ready cartoon-style mascot icon - typically for product avatars, founder branding, sticker packs, or design system mascots.

Tuned to:

• Stay faithful to the actual face in the reference photo (no invented features).
• Produce a flat, vector-style mascot in black, white, gray only - no color, no shading, no 3D.
• Keep the silhouette tight (head only, no neck, no body).

Prompt template

Create a clean, high-contrast vector mascot icon based only on the person
in the reference photo, showing the head in 3/4 view. Do not invent or add
odd elements not present in the photo. Use a wide, cartoon-style grin with
square front teeth, large block irises with white triangle highlights, and
a simple black mouth interior. The skin should be pure white, with no
gradients or shading - modern mascot art. Place the head on a solid gray
(#5A5A5A) background with no neck, no body, and no extra elements. Use
only black, white, and gray - no color, texture, shadow, or 3D effects.

Tips

• Attach 1 reference photo only (front-facing or 3/4 view works best). Multiple refs confuse the model into averaging features.
• For Midjourney use --style raw --stylize 100 to keep the output close to the prompt instructions and avoid the model adding artistic flourish.
• If the output keeps adding shadows, append: "strictly flat 2-tone, no greyscale shading inside the face."
• For consistent output across variants, generate with a fixed seed (DALL·E gen_id, Midjourney --seed).

Variations to try

• Replace gray (#5A5A5A) with cream (#F5F0E6) for a softer look (still no color elsewhere).
• Add add a small NateCue logo at bottom-right corner if you want branding baked in.
• Switch grin description to closed-mouth confident smirk for a more serious mascot variant.