Brand IQ helped bring the fictional “Gunnasaurus” character to life for the CEO of the New Zealand Marketing Association as part of the launch of his motivational book Sod It, Just Do It.

 

Starting with only a loose concept, we used AI-assisted image generation, character development, animation, and AI voice technology to create a fully realised mythical creature that embodied procrastination in a humorous, memorable, and highly relatable way.

Some creative projects begin with a fully formed brief. This wasn’t one of them.

The CEO of the New Zealand Marketing Association came to us with an idea that was more instinct than strategy. He had written an inspirational and motivational book called Sod It, Just Do It, built around the habits, excuses, delays, and procrastination that stop people from taking action in life and business.

Somewhere in his thinking lived a creature called the Gunnasaurus.

Not a polished mascot. Not a fully designed character. Just the vague idea of a beast that represented the procrastinator in all of us. The voice in your head that says “I’m gonna do that tomorrow” while actually doing absolutely nothing today.

That was enough.

Using AI-assisted creative workflows, we began exploring what this creature might actually look like. The goal wasn’t to make him threatening or slick. He needed to feel instantly familiar in a painfully human way.

The early concepts leaned into laziness, avoidance, excuses, and low-level chaos.

Eventually the Gunnasaurus emerged as a large, slovenly green creature with hints of dinosaur, couch potato, and overgrown man-child all rolled into one. Slightly ridiculous. Slightly pathetic. Very relatable.

The moment the client saw the prototype image, everything clicked.

That’s often the magic moment with character development. Up until then, the idea exists only vaguely in someone’s imagination. Then suddenly the thing has a face, a posture, an attitude, and a personality.

The Gunnasaurus immediately felt real.

Once the visual identity was locked in, the project accelerated quickly.

We began creating the creature across a wide range of situations, each one built around everyday procrastination and avoidance behaviours. The Gunnasaurus lounged around delaying tasks, putting things off, avoiding action, making excuses, and generally embodying the habits the book was challenging people to overcome.

The humour became a huge part of the appeal.

Rather than preaching motivation in a serious or self-important way, the character allowed the message to land through recognition and comedy. Most people could immediately see a little bit of themselves in him.

 

AI played a major role in allowing the character world to develop rapidly. Instead of spending weeks or months going through traditional illustration and animation pipelines, we were able to explore poses, expressions, scenes, and concepts incredibly quickly while still refining the creative direction collaboratively.

That flexibility allowed the Gunnasaurus to evolve naturally as his personality became clearer.

But the project didn’t stop at still imagery.

To help launch and promote the concept further, we animated the character and developed a video narrated using an AI-generated voice inspired by the iconic documentary style of David Attenborough.

That contrast made the entire piece even funnier. The overly serious, observational documentary tone treated the Gunnasaurus as though he were a rare species being studied in the wild, calmly narrating his procrastination habits with dramatic importance. It transformed a simple motivational concept into something far more entertaining and memorable.

Importantly, none of this would have been practical at the same speed or budget using traditional creative production methods. Creating a custom character, generating multiple environments and scenarios, animating sequences, and producing narrated content would normally involve illustrators, animators, voice artists, production teams, and significant timelines.

AI compressed that process dramatically, but the real value wasn’t just speed. It was creative freedom.

The client arrived with only the seed of an idea, something many agencies might have struggled to interpret clearly in the early stages. AI allowed us to prototype quickly, react instinctively, refine collaboratively, and bring an entirely fictional creature into existence before the momentum of the idea disappeared.

That’s where this kind of workflow becomes incredibly powerful.

Not replacing imagination, but helping imagination materialise faster.

The final Gunnasaurus campaign felt funny, strangely believable, and highly shareable because it tapped into something universal. Almost everyone knows what procrastination feels like.

The Gunnasaurus simply gave it a face.