FROM TRUCKS TO TALES: BRINGING WASTEATERS TO LIFE WITH GEN AI

For World Book Day, Biffa set out to do something ambitious!

Their ‘Wasteaters' (a family of colourful recycling characters seen on trucks across the UK) had long helped simplify waste messaging in the real world. Now, they wanted to take those same characters somewhere new: into a fully illustrated children’s book that could educate and inspire young readers.

The challenge was clear. Create a storybook that felt rich, expressive, and consistent with the brand, without the long timelines typically associated with illustration-heavy projects.

So, alongside their creative agency, Cogent, we explored a different approach...

A new way to illustrate

At J11 Studios, we’re interested in what happens when generative AI is treated not as a shortcut, but as a creative collaborator.

For 'Whitney the Wasteater and the Wrong Bite', that meant building a workflow where AI could help expand the Wasteaters’ world, while still being guided by human art direction at every step.

The characters already existed, but only in a limited form. Through carefully structured prompts and reference-led generation, we were able to extend them into a full visual language - capturing movement, emotion, and interaction across an entire narrative.

What would traditionally take weeks of sketching and iteration could now be explored in days.

From assets to a world

The real opportunity wasn’t just speed. It was scale.

Using GEN AI, we developed a repeatable way to generate scenes that stayed true to the Wasteaters’ identity while allowing for variation and storytelling depth. Each illustration was part of a broader system - consistent in tone, flexible in execution.

Every output was then curated and refined. Composition, character proportions, and emotional clarity. All shaped by human hands. The technology accelerated the process, but the storytelling remained deliberate.

The result was a set of illustrations that felt cohesive, expressive, and crucially child friendly.

A story with purpose

The finished book transforms a simple recycling message into something far more engaging. Through rhyme and character-led storytelling, it helps children understand what happens when waste goes in the wrong place, and why it matters.

But the impact goes beyond the page.

The book has been distributed through schools and community initiatives, with proceeds supporting WasteAid. Even its production reflects the message, printed on paper made from recycled coffee cups.

It’s a project where the medium and the message are closely aligned.

Why it matters

This wasn’t about using AI for the sake of it.

It was about unlocking a more flexible, responsive way to create. One that allows ideas to evolve faster without compromising on quality.

For brands, it opens up new possibilities for extending existing assets into richer, more immersive formats. For creative teams, it offers a way to spend less time on repetition, and more time on shaping the work.

And in this case, it helped turn something children see on the side of a truck into something they can read, enjoy, and learn from.