Guide
How to keep a character consistent across AI images.
The same face, the same build, the same outfit — image after image. It is the most common thing people want from an image model, and the thing most models are worst at. Here is why, and what works.
Why characters drift
- Conversation memory
- In a chat, each image is generated in the context of every earlier turn. Corrections accumulate, and the character becomes whatever the transcript implies.
- Words are ambiguous
- “Short red hair” describes thousands of different haircuts. The model picks one each time.
- Weak references
- A single image from a single angle leaves the back, the side and the hands undecided — so every render decides them again.
- Lighting read as design
- Warm evening light turns a grey coat brown. Without a fixed palette, the model cannot tell a lighting change from a costume change.
What actually works
- Start every image fresh
- Send the same references and the same identity description with every request, and nothing else from before. No history means nothing to drift.
- Give more than one angle
- Three or four views beat one perfect illustration. A turnaround is the most valuable reference you can have.
- Write the identity down once
- Skin tone, hair, build, outfit, materials, palette as hex values. Keep it separate from the scene prompt, and send it every time.
- Review, and promote what is right
- When a render is on-model, add it to the references. When it is not, reject it rather than correcting it with more words.
- One character per image
- Two characters in one frame compete for the same identity budget and bleed into each other. Compose them afterwards.
How Kyara Lab applies this
Every generation in Kyara Lab is one stateless call: your samples (up to 14), your character notes and canon, and one prompt. Approved images can be appended as extra references, turnarounds first, so the reference set improves as the sheet fills.
Two limits come from the same design, and we state them rather than hide them: there is no way to draw two characters interacting in one image, and text inside a render is unreliable — ask for a blank sign and set real type over it.
Try it on your own character.
30 free credits. No card. One credit makes one image.
Start Free — 30 Credits