Sports Star Pet Portrait

About the Sports Star Style

Sports Star puts your pet on the team-photo wall. Before your free preview, you type the sport into a box (football, baseball, soccer, hockey, basketball, golf, tennis, whatever your household watches) and the portrait is built around it. The result is a realistic painted, chest-up picture of your pet's own head on a body in a generic uniform in plain team colors, with the number 1 on the chest. Behind your pet, a stadium or arena melts into blurred lights, and the name runs across the top in gold script, like a player card. It is a good-humored way to celebrate the pet who plays the game on the living room floor.

Each sport brings its own gear. A football player gets a ball and a helmet, a baseball player a glove and a ball, a hockey player a stick, a soccer player a ball at the chest, a golfer a club. If you leave the box empty, you get football. The uniform stays deliberately plain: there are no real team names, no league marks and no brand logos anywhere in the picture. It is a sports pet portrait for your own imaginary team, which is part of the joke.

Your pet keeps its own head. The ears, eyes, muzzle, coat color and markings come from your photo, and the realistic finish lights the fur in the same stadium glow as the jersey, so a dog in a jersey looks like it was photographed in it rather than pasted on. Broad-chested dogs such as boxers, bulldogs and Labradors fill the shoulders naturally, and a small cat in shoulder pads makes the kind of funny pet portrait that people stop and talk about. Pick a photo where the face is clear and the eyes are open. The body and pose are painted new, so it does not matter whether your pet was sitting, standing or lying on the floor. We tried it on a dog on a couch beside a person, a small cat far across a room and a dark dog in a car, and each one came out large and recognizable.

It is an easy gift for a coach, a season-ticket holder or a kid who lives in a team shirt. A Matte Black frame suits the dark arena scene in a game room, and Pecan warms it up in a living room. A 16x24 framed print fits above a desk or a bar cart, and 24x36 suits a wall of sports memorabilia. If you would rather have a different costume, try Superhero or Dress-Up.

Best for

• Dogs that never stop chasing a ball, and cats that act like they own the court
• A coach, a team parent or a lifelong fan who already has a wall of sports photos
• Broad-chested breeds such as boxers, bulldogs, Labs and pit bulls that fill a jersey
• Birthday and Father's Day gifts for someone who talks about the game all week

Lovely in these spaces

• A game room, basement bar or man cave
• A home office or desk area with sports photos on the wall
• A kid's bedroom with a team-color theme

Think twice if

Sports Star uses plain made-up team colors, so if you want a particular real team's uniform, name or logo, this is not the style for it. The sport you type changes the equipment, but the uniform is always generic.