Use case
Designing an original character from scratch
Character design with an image generator works in one order: silhouette first, then wardrobe and palette, then turnaround views, then lock the design and stop describing it. That order fits how the catalog is split, because inventing a character and protecting one are different models here, and the frame you keep at the end of each stage is the input to the next.
Silhouette first, judged small
Start with the read. A character works when someone can tell it apart at thumbnail size, in shadow, with no colour and no face, which is what survives a crowd scene or a small preview. Faces arrive last and stop mattering first.
Shape carries meaning before detail does, though not symmetrically. Cwiek and colleagues, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2022), ran the bouba/kiki test on 917 participants speaking 25 languages from nine language families and using ten writing systems. Their result is lopsided and useful: "bouba was reliably matched with the round shape in 22 out of 25 languages, whereas kiki was reliably matched to the spiky shape in only 11 out of 25 languages." Roundness reads as soft almost everywhere; spikiness is the weaker signal, so an angular silhouette is doing less work than you think and needs help from pose and costume.
So write shape, not adjectives: where the mass sits, one geometry governing the figure, one deliberate break in it. Run a spread of cheap drafts and judge them shrunk down rather than full screen. The failure mode is judging the face, because a striking face on a generic body passes at full size and vanishes the moment the character is small or backlit. If two drafts read the same as thumbnails, your description is vague about mass: change a noun, not an adjective.
Wardrobe and palette, once the outline holds
Costume is a second silhouette laid over the first, and the test is whether it changes the outline. A hood, a heavy collar, a cape or a bag worn across the body all alter the read; a pattern printed on a shirt does not. Pick the one element that breaks the outline and keep it in every prompt from then on.
Palette is value first and hue second. Settle where the light, mid and dark areas sit before choosing colours, because value is what holds up under bad light, in print and at small sizes. Hue on its own is fragile: the American Academy of Ophthalmology states that "an estimated one in ten males has some form of color deficiency", usually "between greens and reds, and occasionally blues". A cast that reads apart only because one wears green and another red collapses into one character for part of your audience. Name the palette as a relationship rather than a list, since a list of colour words gets redistributed around the frame on every run.
Turnaround views
A turnaround is the front, three-quarter, profile and back of one design, and it is what makes a design usable by anyone else. You cannot ask a text-only model for the same person twice, so the sheet has to be built rather than requested.
Do it the other way round. Generate the front view on a text-only model until one is right, upload that file, then run an editing model and ask for the same character from a new angle. One angle per run, each anchored to the same original rather than to the previous angle, because errors compound the moment you chain. Keeping a character consistent covers why chaining each output into the next walks a design away from itself, and from a still to a video has the upload step.
Whether a model reads pictures at all is declared on its catalog page and enforced on the request, in both directions, so a mismatch comes back as a refusal rather than as a wrong picture. Check before you write the request. Valid sizes are per model too, and attachments can carry a surcharge, which choosing resolution and length explains.
Locking the design
A design is fixed the moment you stop describing it and start supplying it. From then on the sheet is an input file rather than a memory: later images carry the same anchor pictures instead of a longer paragraph about the jaw, and the wording around them stays still.
The sheet belongs on your own disk, because nothing you generate stays on the server indefinitely, and an anchor you no longer have is a series you cannot continue. When a later frame drifts, replace the anchor rather than rewriting the prompt: drift means the evidence was wrong, not the wording. Concept art takes the places this character has to stand in.
What the missing filter changes for this job
Character work hits consumer filters constantly, and usually not where you would guess: scars and amputations, an anatomy pass under the costume, a weapon held rather than sheathed, occult regalia. Nothing screens your prompt here and nothing rewrites it, and where a model ships a rewriter as a vendor setting it is sent switched off. Writing prompts without a filter is about spending that precision rather than working around a list, and the unfiltered art workflow covers the wider subject range.
What stays prohibited is a category rather than a guess, and one of them lands squarely on this job: no depiction of anyone under age, and no real, recognisable person without their consent. Basing a character on an actor is not permitted, and uploading the photograph does not change the answer, because the rule is about who the output depicts. The rules page has the policy in full.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my character come back as a different person every run?
Nothing carries between runs and nothing pins the draw, so a text-only request is re-negotiated from your words every time. The fix is structural rather than verbal: generate the character once, keep the file, and supply it on every later image instead of describing the person again.
Can I get a whole turnaround sheet out of one image?
You can ask for a multi-view sheet in one frame, and the views will often disagree, because nothing enforces that they are the same construction. One angle per run from the same anchor is slower, but then a bad angle costs one run rather than the sheet.
Which model should I design on?
Draft on a cheap text-only model while the silhouette is still open, then move to an editing model once you have a frame worth protecting. Drafting on the dear one and finishing on the cheap one is the usual way to spend a budget on nothing. Costs sit on each model page and in pricing.
Can I design a character who looks like a real person?
No. Depicting a real, recognisable person without their consent is prohibited, public figures included, whether the likeness came from your prompt or from an uploaded photograph. The permitted case is invention: a character who corresponds to nobody who exists.