Make your own blog illustrations with AI
Skip the stock library and generate original images that actually match what you wrote, without leaving your editor.
Cancel anytime before day 7 · no lock-in
Why stock photos let your posts down
Readers have seen the same handshake photo and the same laptop-on-a-desk shot a thousand times. A generic stock image tells people nothing about your specific argument, and it makes a careful post look like every other one in the feed.
An original illustration does the opposite. It can show the exact idea in your third paragraph, match your brand colours, and give a run of posts a look that people start to recognise.
The catch used to be cost and time. A custom illustration meant a brief, a freelancer, and a few days of back and forth. Generating one yourself removes that gap.
Connect Figgshield to the tools you already write in
Figgshield is an MCP connector, so your AI assistant does the generating. You point the assistant at https://api.figgshield.ai/mcp and it can create images and video on request.
It works with Claude on desktop and in Claude Code, with Cursor and Windsurf, and with ChatGPT in Developer Mode on a paid plan. Any MCP agent can call it.
In practice that means you draft a post, then ask the same assistant for the artwork in the same window. No new tab, no separate app, no exporting and re-importing.
Write a prompt that matches the paragraph, not the topic
The common mistake is prompting the headline. If your post is about async standups, "a team meeting" gives you the stock cliche in AI form. Describe the specific scene instead: a single laptop at night, three short messages stacked on screen, a coffee going cold.
Name the medium and the mood. "Flat editorial illustration, two colours, calm, lots of negative space" reads very differently from "3D render, glossy, busy". Nano Banana 2 follows that direction closely.
Keep a short prompt template in your notes and reuse it. Swapping only the subject each time is the fastest route to a set of images that belong together.
A repeatable workflow, from draft to published image
Once the connector is set up, the same short loop works for every post, so you are not inventing a process each time.
Keep the whole loop in one chat window. Because the assistant already has your draft in context, it can suggest the scene for you when you are stuck.
- Finish the draft and pick the single idea the image should carry.
- Describe that scene in your prompt, naming the style, the colours, and the mood.
- Generate at 2K and hold it next to the paragraph it will sit beside.
- Pass a previous hero image as a reference so the new one keeps your existing look; your reference is used in memory and never stored.
- Re-generate at 4K only if it will be shown large, then download it before the seven-day link expires.
Turn a hero image into a short clip
A still can become a few seconds of motion for the top of a post or a social teaser. Once you have generated an image you like, pass its id and ask for video, so the clip starts from the exact frame you already approved.
Video uses Kling 3, with a faster Kling 3 Turbo tier for when speed matters more than the last bit of polish. A five-second clip runs 35 credits, so treat motion as an occasional accent rather than something on every post.
What it actually costs
Pricing is at cost. Figgshield does not mark up the models, so you pay what the model costs and nothing on top. An image from Nano Banana 2 is 8 credits at 1K or 2K, and 16 credits at 4K. One balance covers both images and video, so there is nothing to juggle. See credits for the current rates.
There is no free tier. You start on a 7-day paid Pro trial that includes 150 credits for $5. If it is not for you, cancel before it renews and you pay nothing more. Details are on pricing.
Files you generate sit on a private link for seven days and are then deleted, so save the ones you want to keep. Everything else clears itself out.