Zombie Pet Video: Turn Your Dog or Cat Into a Zombie

In the farmhouse the zombie trend prompt asks for milky white eyes with no pupils, matted dirty fur with patches of grey skin showing through, a torn ear and bared teeth. It also asks to keep the same breed, size, coat colour and markings as your photo, and for no blood and no wounds. In the meadow your pet is healthy again, with a clean coat and bright eyes.

Our golden retriever kept its colour, its face and its size in both scenes of the zombie trend film, and got the milky eyes in all three renders with the current pet description (8 and 9 October). That is one breed. A pug, a husky or a black cat may come out differently.

Cats are less sure in the zombie trend. In both of our cat renders on 9 October the grey tabby kept its stripes and its face but also its green eyes; the zombie part was a snarl and bared teeth. In the first cat render the last shot also showed two copies of the woman with the cat between them. We rewrote the pet film’s last shot the same day (she hugs her pet to her face, and is the only person in it), and the next cat render and the next dog render each had one woman.

Our render

Our first AI zombie trend pet render, on 8 October, asked for “matted dirty fur, clouded pale eyes, bared teeth”. The dog came back with clean brown eyes and a snarl. It looked like an angry golden retriever, not a zombie.

People recognise a zombie by the eyes first, and a dog’s fur hides grey skin, so we spelled both out: “milky white clouded eyes with no pupils” and “patches of grey skin showing through”, plus a torn ear. The next render, the same day, gave the dog white, pupil-less eyes and grey patches in the fur. Left: before the change. Right: after.

• The whole head and some of the body. A nose pressed to the lens hides the ears and the size of the animal.
• Eyes open and visible. The zombie look starts with the eyes.
• Daylight, no flash. Flash turns eyes green or white, and fur loses its colour.
• One animal. With two in the photo, the model has to choose.
• No costume or sunglasses on the pet. They hide the face the zombie look is drawn on.

The same file rules apply as for people in the zombie trend: JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC, at least 300 px on each side, up to 25 MB. Use a photo of your own pet, or one whose owner said yes.

The best moment of the zombie trend with a pet is the leap. In shot 5 your pet runs in from the left and jumps; in shot 6 the same jump continues into the meadow and lands in your arms. In our pet render of 9 October the farmhouse faded into the meadow in a short dissolve while the dog was still in the air, then the woman caught it and spun it around. The three frames below are mid-air in the room, the dissolve and the hug.

Like the people version of the zombie trend, the leap came about a second and a half later than the prompt asks, and in the wide shot of the jump the dog’s fur already looked clean. The close-ups were the zombie part.