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Key takeaways
- A tight, specific description gives the tool something concrete to hold on to.
- Feeding an anchor image back in as a reference is the single most effective thing you can do for consistency.
- Locking your seed, aspect ratio, and stylize settings cuts drift between shots.
- Checking each shot against your anchor as you go catches drift before it wrecks a whole sequence.
Getting one great image of a character is the easy part. Getting that same person to show up again in a new pose or a new scene is where it falls apart, and where most people give up and start from scratch. We've run into it plenty. Here's the method we use to keep a character consistent across a full set of shots.
Start with a tight description
Asking for a "cool looking guy" and hoping the tool remembers him gets you nowhere. Pin down the specifics: hair color and length, face shape, the exact clothes, and one or two standout details like a scar or a certain jacket. The more you spell out, the more the tool has to hold on to.
Run that description five or six times, then keep the clearest result. That image becomes your anchor for everything after it.
For more on writing prompts that read like photography instructions instead of AI output, see our guide to prompts that don't look AI.
Use a reference image
Feed that anchor image back in as a reference on every new shot. This is the single most effective thing you can do for consistency. In Midjourney it's --cref, and most other tools have their own version of it.
A text prompt on its own tends to drift. A reference image holds the face steady far longer. There's usually a strength setting on it, and it's worth dialing in:
- Max it out and every shot comes back identical, with no room to change the pose.
- Drop it too low and the face wanders off.
- Start in the middle and adjust from there.
Keeping track of your anchor image and settings gets easier with a dedicated setup. Our free character consistency tool is built for exactly this.
Lock your seed and settings
When you get a result you love, write down the seed. Reuse it with small prompt changes and your starting point stays steady, which cuts the random drift between generations.
Lock the rest too, especially aspect ratio and stylize. Change those partway through and your character can look off by the third image, even with a solid reference. It's an easy one to miss, so keep an eye on it.
Plan your shots first
Think like a photographer. Write down every pose, angle, and expression you need before you generate anything, then work the list one shot at a time. Check each result against your anchor before you move on.
Drift shows up fastest in the first few shots. If shot three already looks off, fix it right there, before you build four through ten on a bad base and lose an afternoon.
Taking it into video
Going to video? Make your best still first with everything above, then feed that still into your video tool as the opening frame. The video picks up from a face you already locked, which carries all your consistency work straight into motion.
What to expect
Even with all this, plan to redo a few shots. Seven or eight out of ten holding across a sequence is a good result right now, so don't sweat the misses. Give yourself time for a second pass on the ones that don't hold, and you'll end up with a sequence that reads as one person from the first shot to the last.
