Creative Lab #001 · 4 October 2026
Pookie lodges a formal complaint.
Pookie is one of our cats, and she dominates my lap every single time I sit on the sofa. So when the laptop was apparently needed for work instead, a formal complaint seemed inevitable.
The real Pookie — photographed the morning after the experiment.
“Apparently, the lap was needed for work. Work. I have reviewed the evidence.”
Hear the complaint
Our 29-second mock complaint, performed with ElevenLabs Eleven v4 in a remarkably convincing New Zealand voice.
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What we tried
Sol and I wrote Pookie’s complaint, then used ElevenLabs Eleven v4 to perform it. The voice was the standout: expressive, natural and unexpectedly Kiwi.
We then wandered into ElevenLabs’ Image & Video tools, generated a four-frame concept and a six-shot cinematic storyboard, and found the edge of the free tier before we got to finished animation. The experiment stayed small, which was rather the point.
We originally used an AI-generated cat for the storyboard. Once Pookie supplied this close-up herself, there was no contest.
What it sparked
Sol and I often use new tools as prompts for a more practical question: where could this actually help? The creative play around Pookie led us to a more useful prototype idea.
We’d like to trial a messaging agent that combines ElevenLabs’ voice capability and WhatsApp connector with the context we already hold for two very different real-world services: Swim Buddies and Beau Vista Pōhara.
Both generate lots of recurring questions from customers and users. The aim would be a bounded front desk that answers routine messages using the right domain knowledge, while handing anything unusual, sensitive or decision-heavy back to a human.
Creative Lab is deliberately low stakes: make something, learn something, keep what is interesting — and let the ideas that prove useful graduate into real prototypes.
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