Creating figures for research papers is tedious and time-consuming - yet a good figure can make or break a paper. In this talk, I'll introduce PaperBanana, an open-source tool that automatically generates publication-quality academic illustrations from paper text. I'll walk through the core workflow (from methodology description to candidate figures to iterative refinement) and share lessons learned from building the system. Whether you're a researcher tired of fighting with PowerPoint or just curious about how generative AI can fit into the scientific workflow, this one's for you.