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Create Consistent Characters Using AI | Step-by-Step Tutorial

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Getting consistent characters in your AI

videos is one of the most challenging

aspects of the creative AI process. But

luckily for you, I've gone in and tested

every single AI character creation

workflow, and I have what I think is the

very best way to get consistent

characters that actually look accurate

again and again. So, in this video, I'm

going to break down the entire process

and give you a few helpful tips along

the way. I'm super excited for this one.

Let's hop in. Welcome to Curious Refuge.

So, first things first, we need to

create our base images. And when it

comes to creating the very best and most

cinematic images possible, the best tool

out there is MidJourney. There's all

sorts of advanced features, including

iteration and style reference, that make

MidJourney an incredible tool. and you

can create a lot of images really

quickly. So, the tool is incredible to

use. So, in order to use MidJourney, all

you have to do is go to the Midjourney

website and there's the explore page

which has a ton of really inspiring

photos, but we're going to ignore that

for now. And let's go ahead and go to

our prompt window here. So, for our

prompt, I'm going to keep things pretty

simple. We'll say a cinematic still of a

man in a sci-fi film. Of course, that's

very generic, right? Like you probably

want to go in and prompt for the

specific composition, the lens

qualities, the location, what the

character is wearing, all of those

things. But for our example, I'm going

to keep things really, really simple.

Now, before I hit render, first things

first, we need to bring in our

character. So, for our example, I'm

going to use a picture of me in the

studio here. And I should note that it's

usually best if you have a bunch of

pictures of your subject. You can have

everything from just their face to the

actual clothing that you want to see in

the final result. It really depends on

if you just want the character's face to

be consistent, their clothing, or

basically everything that they're

wearing. It's entirely up to you, and it

will change from project to project. For

this project, I'm going to pretend like

I want that exact same clothing and

character again and again. And so you

can see what I'm wearing here. It's like

a denim jacket. It has a a brown emblem

on the pocket. And then the hair is, you

know, gray and swoopy. And we'll just

ignore the fact that his mustache,

eyebrows, and hair are completely

different colors. So we have our subject

here. And all you have to do inside of

MidJourney is just drag and drop it to

the upload file section. So we're good

to go there. And make sure that you are

in image mode. Right now I'm in video

mode. We'll select image. So, instead of

keeping this image in the image prompt

section, I'm going to drag this over to

omnireence, which is basically like

character reference. And one last thing,

we're going to add in a code to generate

multiple iterations of this prompt. So,

we'll do d-r,

and then you can type in any number you

want all the way up to, I believe, 40.

But for ours, we'll just do five. You

know, that gives us 20 images. It's

really quick. And you do have the

ability to upload style references,

image references, which will create

compositional references that will try

to put the character in the same

location. And you also have the ability

to use mood boards inside of MidJourney

to get consistency when it comes to the

lighting and style and just any other

stylistic elements that you want. again

and again. This video is not going to

cover those things, but you'll find a

link below this video to a few resources

that will show you how to use those

things. Okay, cool. So, let's go ahead

and hit render and see our results.

Okay, and after about 30 seconds, we

have a few images here. Let's take a

look. And you can see that that looks a

lot like me, but it's not exactly me. It

did a pretty good job. But if we want to

get a more consistent character,

especially in the clothing, there's

going to be a few other steps that we

need to take. And we have this shot

here, which kind of looks like me. It's

pretty close, but it's not quite right.

If we're working on a film or

advertising project and we had multiple

shots with this character, there might

be inconsistencies. And then I should

note that totally looks like an AT-AT

mixed with an X-wing, which is uh pretty

cool. We have this shot here. Again, the

beard is completely different. The

clothing is inconsistent. This person is

not me. The clothing is close, but you

get the idea. So, working with

consistent characters inside of

Midjourney can be tricky. You can turn

up the omni reference slider all the way

to 1,00 and you're still going to have

problems getting the character and the

clothing again and again. But that's

okay. I have a workflow that I want to

show with you. So, let's take a look at

three different examples. All of these

images I generated from midjourney using

the method that I just showed you a few

seconds ago. So we have shot number one

here, shot number two, and shot number

three. Let's set the stage. Basically,

let's say that for shot number one, I

want to have the character be, of

course, me. And then I want them to be

wearing the denim jacket from the other

photograph. We'll do the same thing for

shot number two. And for shot number

three, I actually like the clothing that

this character is wearing, but of

course, the character is not exactly me.

They have different facial hair and

their face is just a little off. A lot

of times when you watch video tutorials

showing you how to do consistent

characters, they'll use the most generic

AI looking character that you've never

seen before and it'll generate the

character again and again, but you don't

know that person and ultimately it's not

actually doing a very good job. So, this

method actually will do a good job. So

the next thing that we need to do is hop

over to a really impressive tool called

Idoggram. Ideoggram is an online tool

that can do everything from generating

images to batch generations. There's a

bunch of other editing tools that are

really interesting. But for this

specific example, I'm actually going to

go over to our canvas section here. And

you can see that we have a canvas with

our images. It's actually really easy to

use this canvas. All you do is just drag

and drop the image and it drops it in

there. You can just arrange them however

you want. So, we have our three images.

Now, it's time to swap the face of these

characters. So, what I'm going to do is

I'll select this first one here. We'll

zoom in. And we want to swap just the

face. Again, for this specific image, I

don't want the clothing to change. So,

we're going to go to a little tool on

the left called Magic Fill. I think that

this is one of the most underutilized

and appreciated tools in the entire AI

creative ecosystem. So, let's go ahead

and select our character's head. And

we'll be mindful not to select too much

because, of course, we don't want the

background or the clothing to change

here. And we'll go ahead and select

next. So, you can see we have our magic

fill box here. We're defining that we

want to change the head. And then let's

go ahead and select character here. So

now it's time to go to a new character

and go ahead and click upload. Okay, so

now comes the fun part. Let's go ahead

and select a face that we want to bring

into the generation. So I have a bunch

of different faces here of me looking

around. We'll say we want to bring in

this one here. So we'll go ahead and

bring him into ideoggram. And for our

prompt, you don't have to be hyper

specific, but let's go ahead and direct

what we want our character to be doing.

We'll say, "A man in a sci-fi film looks

to the left." So, really simple. And

then we'll also go ahead and set up a

magic prompt so that it basically goes

in and expands the prompt to be as

specific as possible. It's very helpful.

And we'll go ahead and select magic

fill. Okay, let's take a look at our

results here. We have shot number one. I

think he's looking the wrong way. Shot

number two, basically perfect. It did an

amazing job. That looks like me. It even

has like my cowl hair like pointing up

to the side. Really good. Number three,

not the best. And then number four,

again, it did a really, really good job.

I think number two is just balling. That

is like crazy photorealistic. That's

great. But we're not done yet. So, we'll

go ahead and download that to our

computer. And let's go ahead and do one

more example. Okay. So, we're back here

in the canvas. Let's go ahead and select

this image here. We'll go to magic fill.

Select their lasso. Just grab that guy.

Boop. Just like that. You can select

more if you want or less. It's entirely

up to you. Go ahead and select next. And

again, we need to select our character.

I have found that whenever you are

uploading your reference images, you

could totally just use one image where a

person's looking forward with flat

lighting. That's totally fine. If you

have a wider variety of images so you

can pick and choose the right one with

the right orientation, that's also very

helpful. Again, really flat lighting. If

you have your character standing in

front of a window or a large soft box,

that gives you as much lighting as you

need. It doesn't have to be like really

dynamic or match the lighting of the end

result. So, I'm going to deselect that

character. Let's go over here to the

character button and we will go to new

character. So, for this example, I'm

going to go ahead and select upload and

let's pick a shot of our character where

he's a little more facing forward since

this shot uh is not him looking off like

crazy to the side. So, we'll go ahead

and look through our training data here.

Try to find a good shot. Just kind of normal.

Okay, that's fine. That's like slightly

uh stoned looking, Caleb, but we we'll

take it. So, we'll go ahead and bring

that into ideoggram. And for our prompt,

we'll say, "A man in a sci-fi film looks

up and to the right." And go ahead and

click magic film. And while we wait on

this generation, I just want to let you

know about our AI courses at Curious

Refuge. We train artists at every major

studio and in 172 countries around the

world on the latest AI film making,

advertising, animation, documentary, and

VFX concepts, and we would love to have

you inside of the program. Our artists

go on to land full-time jobs in the

industry, create featurelength films,

and just frankly, they're awesome and

doing amazing things. We would love to

support you on your creative journey.

Okay, cool. Let's take a look at our

images here. So, we have shot number

one. Wow, it put a helmet on me. That's

pretty interesting. Shot number two

looks really, really good. Shot number

three. And then we have shot number

four. I think that like three or four

looks pretty good. Not too shabby. So,

it's kind of hard to pick here between

three and four. They're both pretty

good. I'll just download three and go

ahead and download that to your

computer. Okay. So, now that we've

swapped the face, and it looks pretty

darn good, it's time to swap the

clothing. Now, there are a lot of AI

clothing swap tools out there. And if

they ever allow you to swap clothing,

but you don't have the ability to

actually upload a reference image,

that's not very helpful for a film

making project. However, there are a few

tools out there that do allow you to

contextually edit your photos using

reference imagery and prompts. So, a few

of the most popular are Frames, Nano

Banana, and Seeddream. Now, we've tested

all of these tools, and there are pros

and cons to using them, but ultimately,

I think that Seeddream is the best tool

for doing clothing swaps. whenever you

need to have this conversational

experience to art direct what your

character is actually wearing. And I

think the easiest tool that allows you

to use seedream is freepic.com. So if

you go to freepic.com, go to generate

image and for our image reference, we're

going to bring in our image from the

previous example. So we have this shot

here of me wearing this jacket. Let's go

ahead and drag and drop that into image

reference. And now we need to bring in

an image of our character wearing the

clothing that we want them to wear. So

again, it's a very specific denim

jacket. You'll notice the little patch

on the pocket here. And we'll go ahead

and drag and drop that into image

references. And on the left, make sure

that under model, you're going to

Seedream and then going to Seeddream for

4K. So it's the best quality version of

Seeddream that we have at this time. So

we'll go ahead and select that and then

make sure that the iteration is as high

as possible. At time of recording that

is two, but I like getting as much as I

can because more iteration just gives

you more options. And for our aspect

ratio, we'll do 16x9. So we have our

face swapped image as image number one.

And then image number two here has the

clothing that we want to swap. So we'll

say change the clothes

in at image one. So you see we have this

little box here. So it's going to

reference image number one. We'll say to

match the clothes from image number two.

Keep the original composition

of image number one. And when you're

ready, go ahead and hit generate. Now

you may be wondering why aren't we using

the character feature here inside of

Freepic? The short answer is it's just

the quality is not as good as using

ideoggram. Okay, so I generated four

results. Let's take a look. So, here's

result number one. Again, look at the

clothing. It's exactly the clothing that

I was wearing in the original image. It

even has the overlapping like white

t-shirt that's kind of peeking through

here. Pretty good. Number two, kind of

changed the composition and the lighting

a little bit. Number three, not the

right composition. And then number four,

again, it's looking at the camera. It's

not looking off to the side like we

want. So, I think number one is the one

that we want to use. and we'll go ahead

and download that to our computer. In

most of your creative projects, you

probably would just be able to download

that image. You could upres you could go

into Photoshop and edit it if you wanted

to. But I do think that we can go one

step further and help the character to

be more composited into the final

result. You'll see that in this image,

it almost seems like the character is

lit by completely different lighting

than the ambient lighting inside of the

environment. So, how do we composite

this character to make it look like the

lighting and environment is just more

natural? Well, we're going to use a

feature inside of Photoshop and

specifically the beta version of

Photoshop. So, if you're not already

familiar, go to your Creative Cloud

application if you have a subscription.

I think it's worth it. And go over to

the apps section, click beta, and you'll

see there's a Photoshop beta version.

You can go ahead and download that to

your computer, update it, do whatever

you need to do in order to have this

specific application on your machine.

So, I have Photoshop beta open on my

computer. We'll go ahead and select

open. And let's go ahead and select that

image from Freepick, which again looks

awesome. That is definitely me wearing

the exact same clothes in this cinematic

environment, but I think that we can

composite it a little bit better. So,

first things first, let's go ahead and

select the layer on the right side. Hit

command J to duplicate the layer. I'm

going to turn off the eyeball for the

top layer. And now select the bottom

layer. So, we have only the bottom layer

selected. And let's go ahead and select

the subject. So, it's cool cuz it's an

AI tool. Can basically outline your

subject. You don't have to do that by

hand, which is frankly amazing. And go

ahead and select remove. And that will

remove the character from your image.

So, there you go. We have a blank

background. And I'm going to go ahead

and select that new layer here. So, we

have this eyeball that's basically

covering up the character in the

background. I'll select the bottom

layer. Hit command E to combine those

layers. So, now we have a background

layer here. So, background layer. And we

have the layer on top here, which is the

original character. And let's go ahead

and select the remove background button.

And it removed the background. So we

turn the eyeball on and off. You can see

we have our character isolated from the

background. Now in some use cases, let's

say you have multiple characters or you

need to have just certain elements of

the foreground also brought into that

layer. You may have to go in basically

by hand to edit. But luckily for us in

this example, we're able to use the AI

tools. And I should note that the

character swap feature using ideoggram

also works with multiple characters. You

just select their face and you could

swap them very easily. Okay, cool. So,

the final thing that we're going to do

is select that top layer. We're going to

hit this brand new harmonize button. So,

go ahead and select that. And basically,

Photoshop will go in and automatically

composite the lighting and the color

grading to help the character blend a

little bit more. So, let's take a look

at a few of the final results here.

Again, these are only slight

differences, but I think these small

differences really can help elevate your

work. We have shot number one, number

two, and number three. I think number

three is the best. Again, very slight

difference. And we'll go ahead and hit

file, export, and we'll just quick

export as a PNG to our computer. So,

there you go. That's how to get a

consistent character with clothing

utilizing AI tools. Of course, if you

want to learn the latest creative AI

techniques, be sure to go over to

Curious Refuge, hit that little blue

button in the top right corner, and you

can subscribe to our email newsletter.

We curate the very best creative news

for you each and every week and we'll

even give you a free intro to AI

filmmaking course just for joining our

community. And of course, you can like

and subscribe here on YouTube to get the

latest tutorials and AI news directly

here on the platform. Thank you so much

for watching this video and best of luck

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